DEMON'S VIRTUE

Enka's voice kept ringing through Eiro's ears, as if he had been screaming right next to his head. But that was all it was, he really didn't feel influenced by his voice all that much. <The Devil> mentioned that 'artificial' monsters like Eiro were supposed to have a naturally high willpower value. Now that it was brought to 100, together with that extra ability, it seemed to be enough to resist Enka's 'Charming Voice' skill like this.

"I don't know what you're talking about. Did we meet before?" The Demon asked with a light grin as he slowly stood up. When he placed too much weight on his left leg, he nearly fell down again though. Eiro barely noticed through all the pain that the Bloodlust had put him under, but it seemed like his leg was broken. The central part of the blessing's mark that was on his chest was completely gone as well, just replaced by burnt up skin and blood.

"Oh really? I didn't think there'd be that many Imps with three cards around these parts. Weird." Enka replied with a light smile on his face, but Eiro just stared back at him with a deep glare. He was aware that it would be useless to try and hide it, since Enka was obviously more than just confident in his information, "How do you know?"

With a light smirk, Enka looked at Eiro and placed his hands behind his back, "Right, I was told you'd be quite knowledge-hungry. Then let me give you a bit of a treat for now." He pointed out, and then proceeded to explain something that made it obvious to Eiro that Enka's 'promise' from before was complete bullshit. After all, there was no way Enka would let someone with such vital, obviously secret information go freely.

"You see, the organization I'm part of has a lot of really great researchers. They were able to create mock-versions of the half-dozen cards we have. And of course, that means they would also be capable of recreating the most basic ability anyone with a card has, and that is to sense the cards other people have." Enka explained, and Eiro slightly narrowed his eyes. Then what he felt from that earring really was the vibe a card gave off. A card to stop time, huh..?

"Well then, thanks for telling me how I can get six more cards in the future." The Demon said, and Enka seemed to be quite amused, "I think just to make this fair, I should give you some information about me as well." He figured, and Enka seemed actually slightly intrigued.

"Hmm, interesting. Go on." Enka replied, and Eiro just lightly smirked.

"My stats. 197 Strength, 98 Constitution, 181 Resistance, 245 Agility, 76 Evasion, 196 Dexterity, 159 Intelligence, 144 Wisdom, 102 Perception, 71 Willpower, and 265 Charisma." Eiro said in a clear tone, although he suddenly held his hand up to his mouth in shock, "Oh no! Sorry, I made a bit of a mistake there, those aren't my stats, they're-"

"Mine..." Enka interrupted with a deep glare, "How do you know my stats?" The man asked, seemingly slightly losing his composure.

With a light grin, Eiro just held out his index finger and pulled the skin on his right eye lower, "I have pretty good eyesight, you know?" He pointed out, and Enka immediately managed to realize what exactly was going on.

"You're trying to tell me that when you asked me to open my status, you used that chance to read the reflection in my eyes?" Enka asked, and with a bit of a grin, Eiro nodded his head, "That's exactly it." He replied.

"And now, let me tell you the conclusion I've come to." The Demon said, "It seems to be a family tradition to beat your child into obedience. But because you were never allowed to, you have no idea how to dodge. You probably physically can't. Trauma's a bitch, aye? Your horrendously low willpower goes to show that you have some issues going on. Sure, you seem pretty smart, but that, together with agility, dexterity, and charisma are probably just the natural increases you get through your class. 'Charming Pugilist' seems to be a pretty interesting one, by the way."

"Shut it." Enka said in a commanding tone, but Eiro slightly shook his head in response, "I'd rather not, but thanks for the suggestion." He replied.

While grinding his teeth, Enka just glared at Eiro once more, "I said to shut your mouth." This time around, Enka's voice made Eiro's head just completely dizzy. The world started twisting around, and the Demon had a hard time ripping apart his lips.

But instead, Eiro chose to do something pretty different. He opened his status and immediately pushed thirty more points into resistance, his by far lowest stat so far, and increased it to 50, just to get a little bit more of an edge in that sense. It wasn't by much, but resistance also helped out mental resistance a bit. However, the stats that by far would help him out the most in this situation were two others.

Eiro pushed 90 points into wisdom, and 85 points into intelligence, and brought both of them to 200.

[Your Intelligence has passed the 200 Point Mark! <Though Processing> Ability upgraded to <Fast Thought Processing>!]

[Your Wisdom has passed the 200 Point Mark! <Speed Learning> Ability upgraded to <Speedier Learning>!]

With a grin on his face, Eiro looked forward at the top of his status.

[Name – Eiro][Race – Ice Blue Collector Imp][Level – 35]

[Health – 6.423/30.750][Mana – 40.135/77.500]

He had nearly double the mana that he had this morning. Seems like despite the murderous spree he had no control of, he managed to get quite a lot of levels out of today. It seemed rather surreal to him how many he got, actually.

But that didn't matter right now. Because of his new stats, the rate at which his mana replenished was far higher as well. And the mana that he was pushing through his body in a circle with the help of his tail definitely helped with that as well. Eiro just had to hold on a bit longer so that he could figure out what he should best do to at least have a chance against Enka.

His body was a mess right now, so there was no way that he would be able to actually do anything against him if it came to a physical fight. Nelli was doing her best to heal Eiro a bit right now, but even that would take a fair while.

But luckily, Eiro already had a good idea of what he could use to fight. The water that used to make up the bodies of the naiads mixed together with the blood of the people that Eiro killed, making it a lot easier to manipulate it all. The Demon kept pretending as if Enka's words actually managed to control him, while the man himself seemed to slowly approach Eiro thinking that he had won this thing already anyway.

"Now, as I said before, tell me where the fuck the kids are." Enka said in a commanding tone, but his words just caused nothing more than a slight ringing in Eiro's ears.

Slowly, the Demon made sure to spread his mana out as much as he could, making it travel through the blood to reach any possible part while pulling anything that was further away closer toward Eiro and Enka already.

"They're... near the lake..." Eiro announced, acting as if he was forced to, and Enka slowly turned around to look at the large body of water. However, Eiro used that chance for something else. He moved the tip of his tail directly behind his own back and then used it to take out one of his cards out of his treasury before activating it. The liquid inside of the ace of cups quickly was taken control of while Eiro made the cup itself disappear into the card again while the card disappeared inside of his treasury.

And as Enka was still looking at the lake, Eiro made the black liquid move underneath the dark red blood while slowly mixing in with it.

The man slowly turned around, even if he noticed something weird going on at the moment, "You just took out one of your cards, didn't you? Answer me truthfully." He asked with a deep glare with as much mana infused into his voice as seemingly possible, and Eiro just naturally replied, "No, I haven't."

It seemed like since Enka thought Eiro was actually under control, the man just figured something went wrong for a moment there. And while the blood from the corpses around here completely disappeared from Enka's perception without him realizing that there was supposed to be blood here, the Demon just lightly smiled as Enka turned back away from Eiro for a moment.

"Fine. Come on, show me where exactly they-" Enka commanded and turned his head back to look at the Demon, although at that moment he had to notice that he was suddenly just gone.

Eiro had covered his body in a thin layer of the mixture of naiad-water, blood, and the Ace of Cup's potion. It practically just made him disappear from Enka's sight, and that's all that he needed for now.

Seeing that Enka was freaking out over where Eiro suddenly disappeared to, the Demon turned toward his Spirit, who could still perceive Eiro as well as the special liquid he was covered in, and tried to let her know to do anything she could to distract Enka for a moment on the other side of the plaza.

She quickly did as asked and floated over there just to cause a little bit of noise using her water by throwing it against a wall at a high speed. Enka turned around and stared at the source of the sound, and with an annoyed voice exclaimed, "I was gonna let you leave, but now you'll just have to die. I'll find those kids without needing your help!" He exclaimed, and Eiro just looked at Enka's back as he made his way over to the other side of the plaza, and then quietly stepped along the side of the building to properly reposition to somewhere where he could get a proper advantage.

Of course this was pretty hard to do while dragging his leg, but because he could somewhat help his movement out with the water and blood around him, it was fine. He made his way into a nearby alley and started spreading out the invisible water again before starting to form a magic circle in the air to be able to create some invisible ice-spears to shoot at Enka from here.

It didn't take long until the Demon managed to do so to an extent, and the liquid under Eiro's control was used as the base for those spears, like he wanted it to happen, and the next moment, half a dozen of them were shot forward toward Enka.

But the moment they were shot, Eiro of course tried to reposition again while the spears flew through the air, one after another digging into Enka's limbs. The man fell down to the ground confused, since he still didn't notice that the spears were there because of the potion mixed into the blood and water, but they definitely were there, there was no doubt about that. Eiro received the damage-notifications for it, after all.

And while they didn't do as much damage as Eiro wanted, they-

The demon's thoughts were suddenly interrupted. He hadn't payed attention to it anymore, and it was actually pretty hard to sense the outside through the layer of this liquid even for Eiro, but it seemed like... Lugo had returned to the plaza. With Arc and Felix on his back.