DEMON'S VIRTUE

The Demon couldn't believe what was happening. Felix was standing there, having his ear canals be completely obliterated. He was writhing in pain, twisting his arms over his head to grasp his father's face while he wasn't even able to scream. The pain made it impossible for him to even breath.

Just a couple of moments later, Felix dropped to the ground after being let go by Enka, just falling to his knees while grasping at his head. Soon after, he simply fell completely forward while both Eiro and Arc were looking at the young man in shock. Of course Eiro immediately tried to have a look at him to see if he could be healed but... Felix's ear canals had been burnt so badly that they were completely fused shut. Eiro himself couldn't heal something like this.

His heartbeat sped up as anger came over him. What kind of father would do this to their own child? The Demon raised his head and pushed himself off the ground with his broken leg and basically obliterated body, just ignoring the crippling pain in his body. It wasn't possible for the mark of wrath to take him over again now, though. At least not without him wanting it to. And there was no reason why he would deny the power-up that the mark of wrath would give him now.

"Oh? Angry now? Sorry about that, but that's the kind of punishment that we put on betrayal of your own flesh and blood. Not that you would understand anything about that, your kids were just brainwashed into being with you." Enka said with a light smile, thinking that he had already won all this.

Obviously Arc wanted to refute what he just said, but Eiro just raised his hand a bit to signal him to stop while turning his eyes to the side where he finally saw Nelli returning from the lake. And with her came a mass amount of highly refined water that was just flowing through the air as if gravity wasn't a thing.

Then, the Demon looked over toward Lugo. It seemed like he didn't simply go to the carriage because he was scared. He actually went there to get something. Some of the staffs and wands that Eiro had in the carriage were in the stag's mouth, while there seemed to be even more magic stones stuffed into the satchel together with a lot of roughly refined rock from the gnomes.

As a light smile formed on Eiro's face, Lugo stepped up behind Eiro, his antlers towering above him while Lugo dropped all of the things he brought onto the ground in front of the Demon as Nelli managed to bring the water there too. But Enka was just amused.

"Heh, right. Sorry, but all that seems like a lot of useless preparation for no reason. You'll be done before you know it." Enka pointed out and started raising his hand toward his earring, although he was interrupted by Eiro starting to speak.

"Did you know..." He started, "That staffs have a limit?" Eiro asked with a light smile, and Enka stopped his hand from moving. He seemed confident enough to listen to Eiro's rambling for a bit.

"A staff can sometimes be overloaded. It's hard to do with pure mana, but if it's actual elemental magic you put into them, that's another story. When a staff overloads, it will create something like an explosion of magic. There are mages that actually make use of that fact in troublesome situations, because that explosion of magic is much stronger than magic the staff usually can handle. It's pretty dangerous, though." Eiro explained to Enka with a slight chuckle. Of course, he only read about this, he never witnessed it.

With a smile on his face, Eiro managed to circle some deep breaths through his body, "And then, there's also that 'health essence' you spoke about. It's true that there is something like that, but it's actually called 'Life Force'. While mana holds your spiritual body together, life force does so with your physical body. Mana can be used to control magic, and life force to control the physical plane." Eiro explained, and then looked at Enka with soft smile, although the man didn't exactly know what Eiro was getting at here.

"So? Why are you telling me that? I heard the thing about staffs, but I'm not sure if everything you said about this 'Life Force' is true." Enka pointed out, "Well, nevermind. I'll look into it, thanks for the info. Now, goodbye." He chuckled and just slightly tapped his earring.

Or... he wanted to. But his earring wasn't there anymore.

With a slight laugh, Eiro held his hand forward to reveal the small round earring that held a round gem in it, "Probably shouldn't have made your son learn pickpocketing, huh?" He asked, and then took out his dagger out of his treasury before cutting into his wrist, making deep red blood that was heavily infused with life force gush out over the dozen or so staffs and wands that were laying on the ground.

Eiro luckily still had enough life force left, even if it was just in the hundreds after this.

"Well, this wasn't your only mistake. Your greatest mistake was doing something that showed me that even if their identity is hidden, I will need to make sure my kids are safe. But even then, I'm not the bad guy here, so I wanted to do you a favor." Eiro said as he forcefully started speeding up his breathing and bloodflow to make his heart beat faster while not letting any blood flow out of the slit in his wrist.

And then, Eiro just started pushing his teeth together and thought about anything and everything that he was pissed about. How weak he was in the end when compared to people like Enka, how he couldn't save them back then, how he lost two people he cared for, and how he lost even more of those just now. And of course, how much he despised Enka. A notification with a red base and blue text appeared in front of him.

[Manually placed into a state of Bloodlust]

[You are still under control, but the effects and costs of Bloodlust stay the same asd ever]

With a broad smirk as anger turned into ecstacy, Eiro squeezed the earring tightly and pushed his mana inside while Enka started freaking out. But before anything else happened, the world slowed down to a halt. Well, not completely. It was still moving, just very, very, very slowly. And Eiro could move like normal as a notification appeared in front of him, actually just slowly appearing as if being put together by slight mist that Eiro had never really noticed before until now.

[Time has been slowed. This magic item's durability will run out after the effect has been made use of for a total of 5 Minutes and 43 Seconds from your perspective]

"Hm... That's fine, I guess." Eiro muttered quietly and just slowly placed the earring into his mouth so that he could keep it on his person, just in case that was a necessity for it to work, and then slowly pulled his card out of his treasury. This actually worked at the same speed as usual, which was quite nice as far as Eiro was concerned. He activated it and then had five rings around his fingers. It seemed like this was how far he could go now with his heavily increased willpower stat.

And what Eiro did next was simple. He made the blades fuse with staffs or wands. Luckily this kind of thing was possible with them too. They could basically fuse with any sort of weapon or tool, even with shields or Eiro's carving tools.

Either way, next Eiro held his wooden hand up to the water that Nelli had brought him and started using it as a base to draw different magic circles using these one dozen staffs. They were all just supposed to be types of attack magic to do as much damage to Enka as absolutely possible.

Once all the water was completely used up to make these complex magic circles, Eiro grabbed the mass amount of magic stones that Lugo brought him and started to use them to push out as much raw magic into these things as possible.

At some point, the staffs or wands just wouldn't take any more magic into them, it was kind of like someone stuffed dirt into a bag. If you pushed and more dirt in it, the bag would rip at some point. That's what Eiro was hoping for.

After this happened to any of those staffs or wands, the Demon moved on toward the next one until this applied to any and alll of them. Of course they were all properly placed into position and floating in the air, because that's just what happened when Eiro let go of something here.

Eiro turned to the side and saw that he still had three minutes left, so he figured to keep going. The blood was already covering all the staffs and had seeped deeply into them together with Eiro's Life Force. He tried to make it so that there was a slight bit of a focus on the tip of each staff right at the point where the magic would usually leave it, and then just walked over directly to Enka's body Eiro let go of the magic stones that Lugo brought and started cutting through them with the three of swords' blades.

After all, when a magic stone was cut, it would result in a large feedback explosion as well. Eiro wanted to make use of any sort of damage he could. And as a second-to-last step, Eiro just started pushing everyone that was within range right now as far away as possible so that they couldn't be damaged by anything at all, and then, he had another minute left.

Using the roughly refined rock in the satchel that Lugo brought, he covered his fist with it in a thick layer and then walked up to Enka. Like he 'practiced' with the ice pillar in the Inn's backyard, Eiro started swinging at Enka with as much force he could muster.

Hit after hit, Enka's body was pushed in just so slightly. His cheeks caved in, his arms started twisting around, his back arched, and more and more, Eiro started growing more satisfied.

Eiro made his way over toward the others again, and spat out the earring while watching the countdown hit zero.

"Bye bye, Enka Markos." The Demon said with a light smirk, and in the next moment, the world sped back up and the gem connected to the earring shattered into dust while all that could be heard was the sound of a massive explosion followed by rubble hitting the ground even a fair bit behind Eiro.

A pretty heavy shockwave hit everyone's body afterward as well, but Eiro's focus was on something else entirely.

On the numerous damage notifications in front of him that kept appearing one after another as if they were rain droplets in a storm. And at the end of them, they were followed up by the notification that Eiro really wanted to see right now.

[Lethal Damage done to Enka Juviad Markos]

[You have leveled up!]

[You have leveled up!]

...

[You have leveled up!]

[You have 265 Stat points available]

A bright smile grew on the Demon's face as he cut through these notifications with his dagger. His mind calmed down and he exited the state of bloodlust as he peeked around the corner and stared at the crater in the middle of the street that just had a puddle of blood and flesh-sludge at its bottom.

With a slight chuckle, Eiro looked forward at Nelli, Lugo and Arc. "We're fine now. We can keep going...." Eiro muttered, before collapsing forward onto the ground to lay right next to the unconscious Felix.