DEMON'S VIRTUE

While Eiro had James take the spiders apart properly, the Demon once more sat down on the stone slab. He looked at Lugo in front of him and opened the stag's status window.

[Name – Lugo][Race – Forest Deer][Level – 1]

"Still level one... and no more progress within the level at all?" Eiro muttered with a light frown, "It seems like whatever you are, you're not a Magic Beast... And you're also not a monster, otherwise you would have made some progress within level 1 as well... You did help me out a little bit with that monster on the way to the swamp slimes before."

Deep in thought, Eiro tried to figure out what exactly this could all mean, and what kind of creature Lugo actually was. Eiro had never heard or read about something like this.

"Maybe the practice technique is wrong?" As Eiro mentally went through some possible reasons, Jess took a closer look at the pile of magic stones in front of the demon, and soon grew rather curious.

"Eiro, what's that purple one? I have never seen one like that before." She pointed out, and Eiro slowly turned around toward her, "Hm? Right, me neither, actually. It looks a bit similar to a spatial magic stone, but the shade is completely off." Eiro said, "I guess there's only one way to find out."

And with that, the Demon picked up the small purple magic stone in front of him and pressed it against his chest. He made mana pour out of his hand, through the magic stone, and into his chest right into his heart. Immediately, Eiro's body was put under different forces. He grew lighter for a few moments, before basically being forcefully pressed onto the slab underneath him.

Sometimes it felt like his body was going to be pulled to the side, or backward and forward, but it all somewhat settled a few moments later when a notification appeared in front of Eiro.

[Your body has been infused with gravity. You will able to manipulate the force acting on your body]

Eiro looked down at himself, seeing basically not the slightest difference in his outer appearance, although he was positive that his body was actually being infused with... gravity magic. The Demon slowly stood up, and as he did, the weight of his body decreased for a while before going back to normal.

When Eiro squatted back down, his weight momentarily increased again, before also returning to normal.

The Demon thought about what exactly this could mean, before simply trying to manipulate this magic inside of his body.

Eiro made it all move upward inside of him to make his weight lighter, before he simply jumped up, reaching twice the height when compared to normal. But that wasn't the only effect of this, but his body was also falling far, far slower than normal.

"Wait, you can fly?" Jess asked confusedly, "Is it because of that magic stone?"

Eiro slowly pulled the magic stone away from his chest and tried to dispel the magic for now as he explained, "It's gravity magic. I wasn't flying, I just jumped like normal, and that 'gliding' there was me falling down again."

The Demon slowly looked at the magic stone in his hand while trying to think about what to do with it. Right now, it would probably be smarter to try and keep it like this so that he could infuse his body with it, but... It would be far more useful to actually have gravity magic as a skill.

It would be impossible to get it without having more magic stones, because the growth in his affinities is just completely miniscule even when directly infusing himself with magic directly, even when Eiro was making use of the fact that foreign mana would change his body. Eiro was positive that he had to use up all of these nature magic stones and probably more to be able to even get to a point where he might be able to train to awaken nature magic, without even awakening it as a skill yet.

Either way, for now, trying to use this gravity magic stone up to increase his affinity was useless. The Goblins might find more of this in the mines at some point, so if that happened, Eiro might consider it.

"It's surely going to be useful. Here, you can take a closer look at it if you want, but try not to use up too much of the magic inside of it." Eiro told Jess as he stretched his hand out and gave the gravity magic stone to the young woman.

With a happy and excited expression, Jess took the light purple magic stone into her hands and then started to take a closer look at it, all the whilst Eiro grabbed another nature magic stone. Just like that, he chose to simply continue pushing this magic into his body so that he could gain nature magic as soon as possible. It would definitely be quite an amazing asset.

Eiro continued on doing this for the next few hours, until right after sunset, and at that point, ended up using up two whole magic stones. He grew around another centimeter in size, and his horns especially became rather large. Annoyingly so, actually. Hopefully that would change after Eiro evolved one more time though, or else it would be tough hiding his horns in the future.

He already figure out that by infusing only his horns with shadow magic, he could simply 'fold' them down a little and make them press against Eiro's head. He would most likely have to resort to that for a while until he figured something else out.

"Daddy..." Avalin muttered quietly as she looked at the Demon who just sat down on one of the nearly-broken wooden boxes, "Why are we here..?" She asked while tiredly rubbing her eyes, "I want to see Sammy and Clemmy... And Arc and Rudy..."

With a light smile, Eiro just picked the young girl up and sat her down on his lap, "Don't worry, we'll be going back in a few more days."

"But I want to go back now..!" Avalin whined slightly, while Eiro just rubbed the top of her head a bit, "Are Leon and I not enough for you?" He asked, and Avalin, with tears in the corners of her eyes, pressed her face against Eiro's chest while shaking her head. "You are, but I want to see them too..."

Eiro slightly sighed while he tried to figure out the best thing to do to cheer her up a little, before turning his eyes toward Nelli, telling her to make some of her water appear.

With just a few movements of his hand, Eiro started to take control of that water. Avalin and Leon were still wearing their thick winter clothes, so Eiro could do this without worries, but he swiftly spread the water out around the room and turned it into ice. To be exact, ice in the shape of small flowers that were covering the ground, exactly like Winterblossoms.

"You remember these, right?" Eiro asked with a smile as he slowly made Avalin turn around toward the ice-flowers that appeared near to instantly, "Mhm... From the forest, right? During winter soll... sols... solstace?"

"Exactly right, during winter solstice." Eiro replied, while Avalin slowly became distracted while looking at the flowers and remembering their old house, "We'll be back home with the others before the pretty lights appear in the sky, alright? This year, we're all going to watch them together. I heard that the capital city has a huge festival as well. Do you want us all to go there and have fun together?"

For a few moments, Avalin thought about it before starting to nod her head excitedly. She still had some tears in the corners of her eyes from before, but Eiro quickly rubbed them away, before noticing the expressions Krog, Jess and James.

Jess seemed to be gushing over how cute Avalin was while being more than just impressed at the ice flowers that Eiro basically instantly made. Krog was just rolling his eyes at that rather embarrassing display, while James had a quite bitter expression on his face. This was something that Eiro didn't miss either. It was obvious that James would be reminded of the 'original' Avalin through things like this.

Luckily, someone quickly came to interrupt all this a bit, getting rid of the somewhat troublesome atmosphere.

"Master! Gobo here! Gobo speak Master!" The Hobgoblin exclaimed from outside, and Eiro slowly let Avalin down on the ground and walked over toward the exit, where Gobo was currently waiting for Eiro.

The Demon stepped out of the cave and sighed as he looked at the Hobgoblin Chief, "Mhm? What is it?"

"Gobo want... want fire!" It pointed out, and Eiro slowly raised his brows, "You want fire? You have a big one going right over there, right?" The Demon asked, and Gobo quickly shook his head.

"Not big fire! Shiny fire!" Gobo said excitedly. It seemed like he saw Eiro make use of the magic stones in different ways before, and now wanted to know how he could use the fire magic stones in particular.

The Demon sighed and held his hand forward, telling Gobo to give him the magic stone he was holding, and them immediately pushed his mana inside.

Flames shot forward the moment this happened, and Eiro made sure to properly control them, but Gobo still flinched in response to the sudden fire floating through the air.

"Is this what you mean?" Eiro asked the Hobgoblin, and he quickly nodded his head with pure excitement, "Shiny fire! Yes!"

After a bit of thought, Eiro simply handed the magic stone back to Gobo and nodded his head, "Tomorrow morning, when it's bright again, come over here with the other Hobgoblins. Then I will teach you how to make this fire. That, and many other things." Eiro said in a clear tone, all the whilst Gobo showed his dirty, yellow teeth in a bright smile and turned away excitedly before running off.

With a bit of a groan, Eiro stepped into the cave again, before looking at the slime, "Do you know what we need to seal away the monstrosity of the hobgoblins?"

"Yes, and we have all of it as well. It's like I guessed." The slime replied immediately, albeit while obviously being rather annoyed, and Eiro turned away in satisfaction, to look at Jess.

"Come, help me prepare some affinity tests for five people." Eiro told her, and Jess lightly tilted her head to the side in thought, "Five people? Wait, do you mean the hobgoblins? Do you want to teach them magic?"

Quickly, Eiro shrugged in response, "If they have the right talent for it, then maybe. But no, my main focus is to find out what kind of skill talent they might have. We can't test those things too easily, so I at least want to try and figure it out using magic affinities and talents. If they have talents for non-combat things, I'll teach them some smaller crafts or try to make them better miners, if they have talent for magic-oriented combat, I'll teach them magic, and if they have talent for non-magic-oriented combat, then I'll teach them to fight.. As easy as that."