DEMON'S VIRTUE

"Hm..." Eiro hummed quietly as he looked at the being in front of him, "I think your race-type was called 'Slime'? Judging from what I've read about those... you should be a Shapeless Slime?" The Demon asked, and with a voice that sounded as if someone was speaking with water in their mouth, just gurgling through it, the 'Monk' replied, "How did you-"

"How did I know? You just have the scent of a monster. Besides your outer 'Shell' there was nothing 'human' about you. No blood, no heart, or any other vital organs. You were just like that inside of that shell."

The moment that Eiro finished speaking, the shapeless slime just seeped out the bottom of the clothes it had been wearing before throwing itself toward Eiro. And just as it was doing so, parts of its body turned into sharp blades that were supposed to injure the Demon. But since he had the Golem Gondos, Eiro didn't have to worry about that. Because before anything happened, a layer of rock appeared in front of Eiro's chest that blocked the attack.

Well, Eiro would have been able to dodge easily, but that would have most likely made the slime think that it was actually pushing Eiro back or something. The Demon wanted to just show the overwhelming difference between them for now.

"It gets pretty cold around here, doesn't it? That must be hard for slimes like you." Eiro pointed out with a slight chuckle as he waved his hand to the side and took control over some of the water that Nelli prepared for him, just making it thin out into tiny droplets that were floating in the air. This was pretty easily done using Air-Magic, of course.

But on top of that, Eiro simply heated this slight cloud of water up immensely, until it was basically just vapor that the Demon was holding down, "Let me warm you up a bit." The Demon added, doing his best to use this vapor as a carrier to heat the shapeless slime's body up a bit by combining water and fire magic to cause especially high temperatures directly around the slime's body.

This seemed to just freak it out even more, though, and it started attacking even more rapidly until it had to stand down for a while. It seemed like quickly changing its shape and state like that was pretty exhausting to its mana.

"Oh, sorry, you don't like the heat?" Eiro asked apologetically, before taking a deep breath, "I'll make up for it." He suggested, and then pushed out freezing cold air out of his mouth by combining air magic with ice magic. Immediately, the vapor was cooled down immensely and turned into thick, dense mist that Eiro had gather right around the slime's body.

Eiro knew that beings without sensory organs like slimes used other methods to see the world, which was usually something like magic perception. It was mostly just a lesser version of what Spirits could use to see mana around, basically.

The vapor that had been created through magic was already blinding enough to the shapeless slime, but this was even worse now. And on top of that, its body was starting to slightly freeze too. The slime really had to be careful not to-

"There we go." Eiro said with a happy expression as he pushed his hands into the center of the slime's body while holding a bottle. Usually, a slime's body was highly corroding to any and every substance, but since the focus of a shapeless slime was the control over the physical form and its high intelligence, this wasn't really the case. It was just a bit more corrosive than regular stomach acid of a human. It would only turn out to be an issue if you bathed in it for a while.

But since Eiro wasn't planning on that, he was able to pretty easily go through with his plan, and trapped the slime's nucleus, or core, inside of a small glass bottle. And without its core, which was basically the thing controlling the mass of slime that acted as its body, that slime simply dropped to the ground. And since it was technically a liquid... it was quickly scooped up by Eiro and frozen so that he could keep it with him more easily for now.

"That..." Sammy muttered quietly, "...was a monster..?" She asked, and Eiro slowly turned his face toward her with a deep frown.

"Yeah, it was. And I think we really, really need to talk. Preferably before you regain the ability to coerce anyone using your voice." The Demon growled slightly as he sat down on one of the rocks at the side of this path as he dropped down the block of frozen slime onto the ground while holding the bottle with the nucleus inside tightly.

"Why did you think I would end up killing a random person that actually seemed to want to help us out?" Eiro asked Sammy, but the young girl just kept staring at the ground, "I... I don't..."

"Is it because of what happened at that lake town? Or simply because I'm a monster?" The Demon asked, and Sammy immediately raised her head, "No, of course not! It's not because you're a monster, I don't care who or what you are! But what do you expect me to think when you make such insinuations! I didn't know that he was a monster, and you just went and told me 'I'm going to hurt him later'!" Sammy exclaimed, and Eiro slowly looked down at the ground. She did have a fair point with that, maybe Eiro should just choose his words a little better in the future.

"I see." Eiro muttered quietly. He still felt a bit upset at the fact that Sammy didn't trust him not to be horrible as to kill a random being for no reason. It made sense that she was more accepting of Eiro killing monsters, though, since most Monsters were horrid beings that lived to kill.

"Sorry about that, then. I'll try to stop doing things that make you think I would resort to useless, random slaughter." Eiro pointed out, and then just stood up while grabbing the mass of ice again, "Just take a break for now, we'll keep going in a bit. I'll have a bit of a talk with this guy." The Demon explained, and just made his way away from Sammy and Leon, albeit while making sure that he could still hear and smell them. This was actually rather hard to do right now, because Eiro's senses were still dulled because of the pressure the sealed monster gave off.

Sammy just pressed her face into her hands sourly after Eiro left. It was a pretty unsatisfying 'fight', after all. Eiro simply left after hearing what Sammy had to say. He did think that she was right, but he still felt slightly bad about knowing that Sammy didn't really trust him that much anymore.

"Lady trouble, huh? You know, I may not look it, but I've had a lot of experiences with basically all genders! I can help you out with that little lover's quarrel!" A voice coming from inside the glass bottle muttered quietly. Eiro probably wouldn't have been able to hear it if it wasn't for his highly-tuned senses.

"She's my daughter, you disgusting bag of shit." Eiro glared deeply, and could soon notice the bottle shivering and quaking lightly.

"Hah! Daughter?! Don't make me laugh, she's just a human girl, you're a demon! What kind of delus-"

"She's not my blood-daughter, but I raised her since she was seven. And now stop annoying the shit out of me even more before I kill you. You realize that won't be hard for me at the moment, right?"

"...Right..." The Slime core replied quietly before Eiro just looked forward and sighed.

"Tell me, why is a Shapeless Slime guiding us up the mountain? Especially after you came down to 'eat'?" He asked, "And most importantly, why are you literally unaffected by the pressure from that creature?"

"Well, I never lied to you, so figure it out yourself!" The core exclaimed, and Eiro slowly nodded his head in thought. He stayed quiet for a few seconds while trying to come to a proper conclusion, before cupping his chin.

"That temple is one made up of monsters, instead of people. You were a monster that was born up there and raised toward the race you are now, but you came down here to eat a person anyway. I don't think that's something normal though, since there's not a single speck of human blood anywhere in the town, and nobody seemed to be too worried about the fact that there's a temple of monsters up there. I doubt the people at the village even know about it." Eiro suggested, and noticed that the slime core just stayed silent for a little while.

"Good guess..." It replied, and Eiro slightly chuckled and grasped the bottle more tightly, "I see. So there's monsters up there, huh? Makes it feel kinda more troublesome to be honest." Eiro pointed out. Considering Leon's skills, everyone up there is probably going to just completely go mad. But Eiro didn't really care about that all too much, as long as the three of them managed to get back out as soon as they possibly could.

"Then I guess there's no need to worry for now. We'll see what's actually going on once we're there. It's not like I can just blindly trust you, after all." The Demon pointed out, but the core in the glass bottle started rapidly shaking in response.

"Don't you dare step foot into that ancient temple, you demonic piece of-" The slime core yelled out as loudly as it could, creating enough pressure to even nearly press the cork out of the bottle, so Eiro simply let out a little bit of that pressure and then closed the bottle before the core could escape.

"Right. Too bad, but we're going to do that." Eiro pointed out and then kept pressing his thumb onto the cork to keep it in. For now, he chose to simply take a break like this as well until Leon and Sammy were good to go again.

It took just another five to ten minutes for that, really. With Leon in her arms, Sammy came back up to Eiro, who quickly picked up the young boy to help him up the mountain again. In his other hand, he was just carrying the sphere of ice while Nelli carried the bottle with the slime core.

For the next three hours, they kept walking up this mountain, took another break, and then kept going again, until the steep dirt path turned into a long set of stairs.. And at the end of it, Eiro could see the temple in question.