DEMON'S VIRTUE

Eiro looked at the Goblins and Hobgoblins around him, and simply grinned a bit as he did so. The strongest Hobgoblin in this village, Gobo, was simply writhing underneath his foot. It seemed like these guys were obviously quite scared of Eiro. Usually, even then, Goblins would attack someone despite being scared. It was like their main reaction to fear was aggression.

But it seemed like it was quite different here. Maybe this Hobgoblin trained them into submission through fear, or this was simply what Mountain Goblins were like. Either way, Eiro liked how easy this was.

"Hm, let's try this a little, huh?" Eiro suggested and stepped off of Gobo, before kicking him toward a spot where everyone could see him. It seemed like he managed to control himself a little after the pain subsided. Gobo stared up at Eiro with spit running down at the side of his mouth and slowly tried to push himself off the ground to fight against him. But Eiro simply pushed air magic into his throat and then spoke, so that all the Goblins in this village could hear the command that he was about to teach them.

"Kneel." The Demon commanded, his voice carrying through the area. The regular goblins became a little rowdy and more of them gathered around the 'arena', just staring at Gobo as he tried to stand. But instead, Eiro simply grabbed him by his shoulders and pushed mana out of his fingers while pushing him down.

Gobo's eyes twisted around and only his white could be seen for a moment before he dropped to his knees. Eiro simply repeated himself, "Kneel." He said again, and Gobo simply stayed in place, kneeling in front of Eiro.

Seeing that Gobo managed to do so properly, Eiro turned toward the Hobgoblins and deeply glared at them, "Kneel." He commanded them one more time, and the Goblins, seemingly connecting the sound that Eiro made with how their lord was sitting, they did just that, kneeling down behind Gobo.

And then, Eiro looked at Gobo again, "Bow." The Demon commanded them next. Gobo, still under a lot of pain, slowly bowed forward and basically pressed his palms and forehead against the ground he was standing on just now. The rock-floor that was covered in the green, disgusting blood of these mountain goblins and hobgoblins.

After Gobo bowed forward, immediately, one of the Hobgoblins tried to follow and also bow in the same way, "Oh~. You seem like a smart one." Eiro grinned, and then looked at the other Hobgoblins that didn't follow their example.

"Bow." The Demon told them again, pressing his foot back onto the back of Gobo's head, and the three other Hobgoblins finally understood and pressed their foreheads against the ground, with the exception of one of them.

After Gobo, he was actually the strongest amongst the Hobgoblins, as his physical body also showed. He seemed to be just a slight bit shorter than Gobo. He kept staring at Eiro, his anger obviously not hidden too well. So, the Demon stepped up to him and quickly pulled out his Dagger. The hollow one, that was still filled with some water.

Without hesitation, Eiro stabbed it into the center of this Hobgoblin's chest, the same spot that he had attacked Gobo at to make him writhe like that before. Eiro pushed mana into this Hobgoblin's chest followed by making the water flow out of some of the small holes and right into the wound.

In there, Eiro immediately made it freeze and spike up. The Hobgoblin tried to endure it somehow, but instead, all that he did was fall backward in pain. He tried ripping the ice out of his chest, but before he could continue, Eiro pulled his hand away and crushed it underneath Eiro's foot. Not like this still made any difference, since this Hobgoblin was already screaming a fair amount just because of Eiro's initial 'attack'.

Eiro was thinking that this was a good chance to stare into this Hobgoblin's eyes and read its notifications. It was still a regular red notification telling it about damage, but the words were simply different. They were written in the Goblins' language, so Eiro couldn't understand them just yet. He could just have some of them do things that would trigger notifications to appear and then read them, that seems like a good way to get the skill to start it off with.

Since language skills first supported verbal understanding and only after that written understanding, Eiro should be able to understand what these guys are saying pretty quickly if he learned the language through text.

Either way, this Hobgoblin wasn't the only one that had a notification appear at this moment.

[<Torture> Skill Learned!]

'Hm, I was more out for another skill... Whatever' Eiro thought to himself quietly and cut through this notification with his dagger before putting it away.

At this point, all of the Goblins saw and heard Eiro do this to these Hobgoblins, the ones that they feared and respected.

And then, the demon slowly stepped up to the front of the arena to look at the mass of regular Goblins. Making his voice carry as far as he could make it, the Demon held his hand forward and pointed at the ground.

"Kneel." He exclaimed, and it seemed like most of the Goblins didn't understand what he wanted from them, even if some followed his command. So, he repeated himself, "Kneel."

This time, more of the Goblins listened to him and fell to their knees, even if not all of them. One last time, Eiro said the command. "Kneel."

There were some that didn't listen to Eiro's words, and they were quickly turned into experience with a simple ice bolt spell. Now that everyone was kneeling, and were even more scared by Eiro, the Demon continued.

"Bow." He exclaimed, and this time, with only the exception of a few, bowed down and pressed their heads against the ground.

"There you go." The Demon smiled, although that wasn't directed at these Goblins, but rather at the notification that appeared once all the Goblins bowed to him.

[<Leadership> Skill Learned!]

With a satisfied expression, the Demon turned around and stepped past the Hobgoblins. He walked up the steps that were carved into the ground, and then made his way over toward the slab, finally acknowledging Nelli's expression.

"What is it?" He asked her, and the Spirit simply sighed a bit, "I'm just a bit surprised. You saved the Gnome because it was definitely in pain through its body being taken, and then torture and dominate these guys?"

With a slight chuckle, Eiro nodded his head, "Yeah, why not? The Gnome was a defenseless child, you know? And it was being treated like an object, something to be purchased. Sure, I used fear to control these guys right now, but that's because that's what that 'Gobo' guy used. If he used love to control them, I'd be making them food or something. I don't plan on treating them bad. Well, it's not like I care if they die, and the 'torture' was really just minor." Eiro pointed out, and Nelli looked past the Demon at the Hobgoblin writhing around after having ice placed into the center of its chest.

"Mhm." She hummed sarcastically, and Eiro slightly shrugged, "He's pretty strong, so he'll be good manpower. No way am I going to waste that. He's barely taking any damage, it's just keeping pressure on that point. It shouldn't hurt him too badly if he doesn't move around, so it's his own fault."

"Oh. Well, fair enough... But why exactly do you need 'manpower'? You plan on taking over as Monster King in the future?" Nelli asked, and Eiro just stared at her with a light frown, "Of course not, why would I? I just want to get the Magic Stones from here, and I'm not going to stay here and mine them myself." Eiro explained to her, and at that point, Nelli understood.

"Got it, got it!" She exclaimed, and Eiro simply nodded his head. There was a pretty specific reason why Eiro wanted to take advantage of this large source of raw magic stones. At some point, Magic Stones ran out of 'Magic'. The more you used them, the less potent they would become until they couldn't be used anymore at all. And normally, you wouldn't be able to just buy a magic stone from a shop, since most Magic Stone mines were monopolized by the countries they were in.

Because of that, only high-tier mages or people in positions of power would be allowed to have them. Meaning, Magic-Stones were mostly a noble-only ressource. The only reason that Eiro had so many was that he took them with him from the Lord of Greed back then.

Since simply using a magic stone let you get proficiency in a magic skill, it was the perfect ressource to train with, but Eiro never wanted to use them too much in case of emergencies.

He even had to replace the magic stone placed onto his dagger a couple of times already as well. A Magic Stone mine was really something big that he could make use of pretty well if he managed to make sure this place was going to stay hidden. Who knew, maybe Eiro could even find some other uses for these guys at some point?

But for now, there was something else that needed to be done first. Eiro turned his head and looked at the Gnome floating next to him. It was just continuosly staring at the rock slab without reacting to anything else, so Eiro figured that this really was the perfect place for the immature spirit.

"Go on." The Demon told the spirit, and it slowly approached the rock slab in response. It basically was just floating above it before pressing itself down on the surface and repeating what Eiro and the Gnome had practiced together for the past week.

And before Eiro knew it... the Gnome's body fell apart into fine dust.

"...Huh?" The Demon muttered quietly, just turning toward Nelli. But it seemed like the Naiad was pretty relaxed, so he simply assumed that nothing actually went wrong just now.

And as if responding to Eiro's thoughts, the dust gathered together again and clumped up, turning into thick, dense rocks. On top of that dust grew more rock, making it all expand to the size of a boulder that simply sat there on top of the carved slab.

It didn't take long for something else to happen after that either, since the boulder quickly had cracks forming on its surface that spread out until the boulder shattered into small pieces. And at its center floated a small figure. Some pebbles were still floating around its body, but otherwise, it was a humanoid figure the same height as Nelli. Covering its arms, legs, back and neck was hard rock, although the rest of its body was covered in simple regular skin.

And with a surprisingly deep voice, the male Golem spoke. "Thank you for your help, Eiro.. I have found my name."