DEMON'S VIRTUE

Eiro stared at <The Devil> as he stepped out of the gate that appeared behind <The World>. The supreme Demon just slightly smiled and approached his fellow Royal.

"Now, now, who allowed you to play with my toy? That's not very nice, you know?" The Devil laughed, and slowly extended his hand toward the World's arm. But the part where he would have touched it simply turned into black mist.

"Oh? So you want to do it the hard way, huh?" With a deep glare, the Devil took a step back before pointing its index finger toward the World. And then all of a sudden, the body of the world was flung back toward the gates of the temple, and Eiro's chest slowly started closing back down after the key was removed.

"Hmm, what an interesting Card that is." The Devil said with a smile as he leaned forward, "I want it... Now, dear little Toy, will you get it for me? I'll even give you a reward if you can successfuly do so."

Angrily, Eiro stared back at the Devil. It was as if his marks were going crazy just by him being around, which most likely was actually the case.

It seemed like after the seals on them were removed, the devil was able to grasp the situation instantly... And Eiro wasn't sure if he was lucky or unlucky anymore.

"And if I don't? Are you going to kill me?"

"Kill you? Why should I? I'm preparing a perfect playmate for you at the moment, dear Toy. I don't want all that work to go to waste." The Devil chuckled lightly, "No, no. If you don't want to, then you can just leave. Well, a slight bit of a punishment is appropriate, of course... Let's see..." The Devil muttered and leaned forward again, staring at the room inside of Eiro's chest that was still slightly open. He pushed his hand inside and slowly pulled out some aspects of Eiro that was probably the worst to lose in this situation.

[Your fear was robbed from you]

[Your empathy was robbed from you]

[Your fatherly instincts were robbed from you]

And then, all of a sudden... Eiro looked back at the Devil. He knew that he definitely wanted to get those aspects back, but he wasn't feeling passionate about it either.

"Now, if you fight the World for me, which you should be able to do, as it has been considerably weakened, I'm going to give you two things. For one, I'll take the key and use it to return these parts of yourself to you. Should you leave, or be unable to beat the world, I'm going to cut these three apart and forever destroy them." The Devil pointed out, and Eiro stared back at the Devil. Just from that, he had more motivation to go and fight that thing than to leave. But there was something else that Eiro was wondering...

"What's the second thing?" Eiro asked, and the Devil just smirked, "We Royals are symbols of strength, you see? But that doesn't mean we really are the strongest of the strong all the time. If you kill a royal, you can take its place by taking the Major Arcana card it holds. I don't have any use for it, I can't even touch another Major Arcana card. But you, dear Imp, might be the perfect candidate for the new World."

"So you're going to let me take that Major Arcana card after I kill it? Just like that? Why?" Eiro asked the Devil, who just kept smiling broadly.

"I'm curious to see what's going to happen, what else?" The Devil replied, and Eiro just returned a chuckle as the hole in his chest closed down fully and he was able to move around again.

"Fair enough." Eiro said and just moved his hand forward before pulling a card out of his treasury, the Ace of Cups.

"Nope, you're not using that one. I want to be able to actually see what's happening, you know? And remember, I have hostages~!" The Devil pointed out, and with a click of his tongue, Eiro looked back at him, "Fine. I'm not going to drink it, but can I at least use it in another way as long as I don't activate the main effect?"

"Hmm... sure, why not? Just remember, if I don't like what I'm seeing, then you're dead." He explained, and Eiro just shrugged, "Fine." The demon muttered quietly, and in addition to his Ace of Cups took out his three of swords. He pushed the tips of the five blades he could summon into the black liquid making up the ace of cups and picked it up using water magic, all the whilst making it spread out and somewhat activating it using his mana. Like that, the blades and the thread belonging to it became invisible, all the whilst Eiro grabbed his two daggers in both of his hands. He moved two of the three of swords' rings toward his left hand, kept two on his right hand, and moved one to his tail as he properly prepared for the fight.

The World was moving relatively slowly, after all, so it was fine to do so for now. But then, all of a sudden, as if noticing that Eiro was done, the World fell apart into black mist that soon appeared in front of Eiro as well. But knowing that this was about to happen, Eiro swung both his arms forward, trying to slash at the mist not only with the three of swords but also with the two daggers, and basically just cut that mist up.

[<The World> -29 Damage]

The World appeared there, but at the very least, Eiro knew that he damaged it a bit. It didn't have a full form, so its body, and with that its health, was dependend on what it was using as its body.

The Demon immediately jumped backward and quickly snapped his fingers, with the spark-snapper on his thumb and middle finger, and made flames explode outward toward the world.

He made the flames constantly surround the world so that he could cause the black blood making up part of its body boil away and maybe harden. If it could turn sticky somehow and make the rock parts stick together a bit and hinder the World's movement, that would be even better.

With hopes like this, Eiro kept running around the path as quickly as he could while trying to avoid any attacks that the world might try to attack it with, but before he knew it, the world fell apart into mist once more and approached the Demon again.

But he already managed to cause a fair amount of damage to it through this, a couple hundred Health worth, so Eiro was sure that he would be able to steadily lower this thing's health and beat it like that. It was somewhat underwhelming for a Royal Monster, if he had to be honest.

For a couple of minutes, this was exactly what had been happening over and over again, and Eiro managed to reduce the World's health by a couple thousand points so far. But at some point it seemed like the world had enough. There were still some of those underground monsters here, so the World dug into the ground with its rock-hands and made one of those monsters surface. The first thing that it did was open the monster up, in the same way that Eiro and Hyjun had been opened up before.

The World proceeded to take basically everything that the monster had. Its abilities, its senses, everything. It seemed like this particular monster was blind, like most monsters traversing the underground were, so it had other senses that were particularly strong.

After this monster's abilities were devoured and the world's body had changed just so slightly again, it proceeded to just go ahead and take its body as well. The claws that it used to dig through the ground, the nose that it used to navigate, and the World's biggest mistake... Its eyes.

Now, Eiro was actually able to see notifications that the World could see. It wouldn't help Eiro too much necessarily, but it was a good enough start.

The world's body grew a slight bit after taking in the monster's flesh, although it seemed to have replaced parts of its rock body. Internally, it seemed to be mostly made of muscles now, since that most likely seemed like the better idea when compared to rock all the way through.

But to Eiro, that just made it easier to damage it as long as he managed to heat the area up. Since the Demon still had a little bit of water with him, he could just start boiling it as he continued running around the path, swinging his tail in seemingly random patterns.

By combining air and water magic, Eiro could pretty easily turn all the water into steam while making sure that it couldn't escape. While condensing the steam into one place around the world, Eiro also added even more flames to the mix, trying to make everything spike up and burn up as much as possible. The steam travelled through the thin gaps of the rock further into the World's body to steam it from the inside, while Eiro was just heating up the rocks on the outside to turn it into something that could basically just be called an oven.

Eiro was going to kill this thing no matter what. Sometimes, the World tried to transport itself away using the black mist, but whenever it did, Eiro's steam and flames travelled with it. It seemed to have been considerably slowed down by having foreign magic technically inside of its body. But then, it did something that Eiro was a slight bit bothered by. It dug into the ground and travelled through there. Although, that was probably a pretty bad idea for it...

It would be digging around in there and could resurface anywhere, but since Eiro knew exactly where it was, he was able to predict where that 'anywhere' was, and when exactly the World would reappear. So, like that... Eiro could even somewhat lead it around in a good way and use it for what he wanted to do.

Eiro didn't have many magic stones left at the moment, but he was still willing to sacrifice them to be able to kill the World.

It resurfaced a couple of times over the next few minutes, each time exactly where Eiro wanted it to be. And while running around the path, to all four exits that Eiro practically made it create, he pushed as much of his mana as he could push out all at once into the magic stones and caused explosions to travel into the holes.

But to avoid that, the World had to do one thing. It had to come out in the center of the square that all four of those holes formed.

It dug its way out while taking some more damage from the flames, and Eiro just slightly smirked all the whilst stretching, "Finally. Let's finish this up quick, I think the kids might be waiting for me." Eiro chuckled, and all of a sudden, something that even surprised the Devil appeared.

Using rocks and pebbles, water, steam, even some flames, Eiro had been creating a large magic circle the whole time. That's what he had been using the blade connected to his tail for as he was fighting the World, trying to manipulate all this stuff while turning it invisible for the final attack.

"Oh, as I thought. Truly interesting." The Devil smirked, and Eiro just snapped his fingers for a second and made flames appear once more.

The magic circle activated, and a deep tremor travelled through the air right toward the center of the magic circle. With a strong impact, all parts that used to make up the World's body were spread around, including even the numerous small 'aspect' versions of Hyjun and those underground monsters.

Eiro tried to make sure he could find them properly later on... He was pretty curious about what could be done with them, after all.

After the World's body was once more reduced to nothing, it just stood there in its child-like, invisible form that Eiro just stepped up to slowly. With a swing of his arm, he cut through the invisible body.

[Lethal Damage done to <The World>]

[You have slain a royal. Experience multiplied by 10]

[You have leveled up!]

[You have leveled up!]

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[You have leveled up!]

[You have 420 unused stat points available!]