DEMON'S VIRTUE

The first night inside of the castle was pretty uneventful. Eiro didn't really sleep all too much, even leveling up his exhaustion resistance skill once. He wanted to make sure that really nothing was going on, so he kept trying to focus on the children's rooms for the night.

But luckily, Eiro had no reason to worry, and the children were able to have a good night's sleep in really high-quality beds. The next morning, they all enjoyed a hefty breakfast prepared by the King's personal chefs, and they even ended up letting Rudy follow them around for the day to teach them a thing or two about cooking.

Of course, this made the young man more than just excited. He seemed to be incredibly interested in things like this, and couldn't even properly bring himself to eat the food in front of him because he was so curious about it.

After the breakfast, Eiro made sure that everyone had something to do, and that in a safe environment as well. Sammy and Felix chose to stay with Leon and Avalin for the day, all the whilst Felix would help Sammy practice controlling her unique skill again a little more, while Felix himself started sculpting using some clay just to get the actual 'sculpting' skill.

Arc and Clementine, both of who were quite happy and outgoing people most of the time, ended up quickly befriending Charles as well as his younger brother and sister, fourteen years old twins, and were just staying with them for the day, playing and messing around a bit.

And so, Eiro was able to head out again to punctually meet Jess, Krog and James at the guild at 12. But before then, Eiro had something else to take care of... Now that he had a place to actually stay at again, he had far, far more space to store things. Meaning, that he could finally buy more books!

He had been a bit hesitant when buying new ones over the past little while, since it would mean he would have to get rid of the old ones. It would have been a waste of storage, after all... But he hated throwing away, so he actually stored most of them in his satchel instead of leaving them on the side of the road.

And so, he would now indulge in buying a lot of new books because he was unable to properly do so before! He still had roughly an hour left before he had to get to the adventurer's guild, so Eiro just stopped by the bookstore first. It was just a minute or two away from the guild, so Eiro could spend a fair bit of time here.

He stepped through the store's front door and looked around, immediately trying to read the titles of the books. There were a bunch here that he's read before, but there were also far more that he didn't read yet. There was such a large amount of variety that this place seemed like some sort of heaven to him.

Eiro thought about it just for a little while, until he went around and started picking up a couple of different books that he thought were interesting. Most of them were things related to general local information that would come in useful, now that Eiro would live here in this town. But there were also the odd books that were simply about different methods of mana manipulation or combat techniques that seemed interesting.

The demon carried the stack of books to the counter standing near the door and turned toward the employee, who stared back at the Demon with a bit of surprise, "That's quite an amount. We're open nearly ever day, so you can come again, you know?" She laughed while she started calculating the cost for these books in her head, and the Demon slowly nodded his head.

"I know. I'll be coming back to buy more in a couple days, so." Eiro pointed out, and the employee slowly raised her head from the piece of paper she was taking notes on.

"Hm? Ah, are you a researcher and these are for your team?" The employee figured. But Eiro immediately shook his head, "No, I just really like books. There's quite a lot of interesting ones here, so I most likely will become a regular here after this." After that explanation, Eiro quickly placed the right amount of coins for the books, which he had already calculated beforehand using the information on the tags placed on the actual bookshelves, and then stuffed the books into his satchel.

"Now then, see you in a couple of days." Eiro said and turned around to head toward the door, just feeling the stares of the employee in the back of his head.

And as the Demon stepped out onto the streets that were covered in a thin layer of snow, while fresh one was currently dropping around him, he stopped moving for a moment and started grinding his teeth in annoyance.

"By Lady Winter..." Eiro growled and quickly climbed on Lugo's back to make him hurry toward the Guild. He only had a couple minutes left until it was noon, and when he stepped into the adventurer's guild, he already spotted the party of three on the other side of the room, waiting for Eiro together.

Seeing the Demon step into the building with the stag behind him, Jess chose to wave at him, "H-Hey there! Had a good morning?" She asked, trying to do some simple Smalltalk, and Eiro silently nodded his head while still grinding his teeth.

"Mhm. Let's get into the private training room." Eiro barked, and Krog looked at him with a frown, "Oi, don't need to be such an ass for no reason."

But in response, Eiro just glared at him and followed Jess and James as they started walking toward the large training room they already booked for the rest of the day in the very back of the guild where they would have as much privacy as possible.

"Hey, I'm talking to you." The warrior said angrily, and Eiro, without even turning toward him, rushed past James as he opened the door to the room up and immediately pulled the large staff slung to his back away from him.

"I know already, you fucking piece of shit!" Eiro yelled out, and without a single moment's hesitation swung the cloth-wrapped staff against the wall repeatedly. James, Jess, and Krog were just staring at him.

"You called us here just to insult us?" Jess asked annoyedly, and Eiro immediately turned toward her and shook his head as he threw the staff to the ground, "What? Of course not, I wasn't talking to you guys." The Demon told them, "Now close the door already." He said in rather angry tone, and the moment the door was closed, he pulled off his mask and cloak before snapping his fingers.

"Seriously, if I didn't have a use for you, I'd have literally killed you just now." Eiro said while Nelli appeared and sighed as she covered Eiro's skin in some water, since it had started lightly bleeding all over.

"...Are you actually crazy..?" Krog asked confusedly as he tried to turn to James and Jess for some kind of opinion, but Eiro ignored the warrior's question as he looked at the cloth-wrapped staff and the strap connected to it before it slowly turned translucent and gathered together to take a roughly humanoid form.

"The fuck was all that for?!" The Shapeless Slime asked, and Eiro just deeply glared at it, "You're seriously asking me that? I know your body is mostly water, and you already told me you don't like the cold, but you grew up on a fucking mountain top! So don't freak out that much! I told you to make a small bump near my shoulder, not turn the whole inside of the strap into motherfucking needles!" Eiro yelled out, and the Slime stayed silent for a few moments.

"Oh, that's why. Yeah, makes sense." It agreed, and Eiro just sighed annoyedly, "I swear, I'll enjoy the day where I can finally kill you oh so much..."

Now, Nelli finally healed the small wounds that the slime inflicted all over Eiro's body. They didn't really damage him, but hundreds of needles all over Eiro's chest, shoulder, and side really weren't that pleasant when all your senses, including touch and pain, were raised to incomprehensible levels.

"What the fuck is that?!" Krog asked with his axes in his hand as he saw the slime just 'stand' there, and Eiro turned toward him with a bright smile, "You three, meet this piece of shit. Piece of shit, meet James, Jess, and Krog." Eiro told them as he sighed annoyedly. He didn't really bleed at all because he could manipulate his blood not to let that happen, but it was still really annoying, so Eiro checked all over his body, shirt, and cloak to see if there were any lasting damages anywhere.

But luckily, the needles that the slime formed had been so thin that they just slipped right in between the threads of the cloth. After checking that everything was fine, Eiro turned toward James, Jess and Krog again.

"Sorry about that, I get angry pretty easily lately." Eiro tried explaining, and Jess laughed awkwardly, "H-Haha, stress from moving to a new place, huh?" She suggested, and Eiro just looked back at her for a few seconds before finally placing down his satchel and letting Lugo sit down as well.

"...Sure..." He replied, and then walked over toward the table placed into this large training room, sitting down on one of the chairs.

"Come on, first, let's talk a bit." Eiro said, "I've asked you three about a lot of things, but I didn't really give you the chance to properly ask me questions. So, ask anything you want. I may or may not answer, depending on whether or not I want to."

"Thanks, how kind of you." James replied as he sat down on one of the other chairs, and Eiro soon heard the first question from Krog.

"Well, let's ask the obvious first, eh? What actually are you? I know you've been saying you're an Imp, but in no way is that true... I've never heard of an Imp as tall as you, and especially not of one so weirdly..." The warrior started, and Jess quickly finished for him since he seemed to be struggling to find the right word.

"...handsome?" She suggested, and Krog quickly snapped his fingers and nodded his head, "Yup, that's it. Or is it? It's so fucking weird. You're not an ugly fuck like this guy's 'Imp Mask', and it ain't like you look like a human, but in a very weird way, you're a pretty handsome guy."

Eiro lightly shrugged as he looked back at them, "Well, I can just tell you that I'm an Imp, even if I've gone through two consequent unique evolutions."

"Say what now?" Jess asked, "Unique Evolutions? But-"

"I have three cards, what did you expect? First, I was a Lesser Imp, that's when I first met James as well. Then after that, I evolved to become a 'Scholar Imp' and got an ability that gives me perfect memory. Then, I evolved to become what I am now, an 'Ice Blue Collector Imp'." Eiro explained to them, and James raised his brows surprised.

"But you're not blue." He pointed out, and Eiro sighed as he pushed off the shoes off his feet and then pulled off his socks and the glove on his left hand, before lifting his feet to place them onto the table while he stretched out his two hands toward the three adventurers, "I'm partially."

And then, Eiro swiftly stood up and pulled off his shirt, exposing the pale blue mark that came from his 'blessing of winter's lonely naiad', "The 'Ice Blue' part mainly comes from this."

While Eiro showed them this, Jess couldn't help but keep staring at Eiro's chest confusedly before she yelled something out in a way that surprised both James and Krog, "You have a motherfucking blessing?!"