DEMON'S VIRTUE

"Hey, you brat... Didn't your parents teach you not to throw rocks around?" Eiro growled angrily as he stepped up in front of the guy that had been throwing the boulders into his direction before.

He looked at Eiro and opened his eyes wide in surprsie, "Ooh! So it's true, you're really a demon! Haha, this is really amazing!" The man exclaimed with a loud laugh. He seemed to be rather childish in his demeanor and speech, "Hey, can you call that Lady back here? I want to get the kill reward~!"

Eiro ripped his eyes open and ground his teeth together as he stared at the man, "What do you mean, 'Kill reward'?" The Demon asked, and the man looked back at Eiro rather surprised.

"Eh..? You don't know? You get ability rewards for killing supreme beings like that! Like the Kings and Queens of elemental magic spirits! I think it's the same with Elder Dragons, and of course anything with a true Divine nature! You don't get chances to kill ladies all too often, but she seemed so weak right there, so I gave it a shot!" The man exclaimed with a broad grin, acting as if this was the most natural thing in the world and it was weird not to want to do something like that.

"But I must say, I'm impressed you were able to catch that first one! And that kid over there's also pretty interesting! Hey, do you mind if I play with him a bit~?" The man asked with a loud laugh that stung Eiro's ears.

The Demon stared back at him and ground his teeth, "Don't you dare even think about touching him." With a deep growl, the Demon smashed his foot into the ground, immediately breaking apart not only the layer of snow laying there, but also the rock making up the streets.

Without hesitation, the Demon pushed everything he could right toward that man. But with a casual expression, he just 'caught' nearly all of them. It seemed like he had incredibly high dexterity to be able to do that.

But even if he was able to catch them, that wasn't the only thing that stopped him from taking any damage. The moment that the rocks and chunks of ice touched his gloves they shrunk down to the size of pebbles and lost most of their power.

Eiro looked at the man with a deep frown and tried to observe the surroundings. Right now, nobody was watching him. He was keeping a small layer of the Ace of Cup's potion around him right now to make sure that even if people were to look outside, they would have a hard time spotting Eiro except if they had immensely high intelligence, wisdom or perception.

The only reason why the man right in front of Eiro was able to see him was because Eiro only activated this after he was already seen by him, so he was aware of Eiro from the start. But even he seemed to be struggling to keep his attention on Eiro. Whether this was because of the potion or simply because he was a moron was not something that Eiro was really able to judge.

"So you're part of 'that' organization, aren't you?" Eiro asked while keeping his glance focused on the man's gloves. These were a mock-card item imbued with the power of another Cup-Card, or at least that's what Eiro assumed when seeing this effect.

The three of cups, the potion with the ability to change one's size to whatever you may wish, although there were of course limitations depending on how well your body could handle extremely large sizes.

Eiro didn't know much about these special gloves yet. He knew that they were capable of shrinking things they came in contact with, but Eiro wasn't particularly sure what other effects they may have. For example, was this man able to shrink himself as well, or just other items? Was the mock-card item's ability limited to shrinking things, or was it also able to grow things?

These were both important things to know, but he had an answer for neither at the moment, which was rather troublesome, considering that Eiro was about to fight this person. Eiro figured that the man at the very least hadn't been using the ability to make things grow so far, but rather nullified the effect of shrinking something after he had used it to make the boulder return to its normal size after use. His mental reasoning for that was simply that he wasn't in contact with the boulder as it was returning to its size. It was still small in his hands, but then grew in size again after it stopped being in contact with his hands.

And with a light smile, the man picked up another one of the rocks that he was sitting on, and set himself up for another throw. With a deep breath, the man stared at Eiro. All of a sudden, he had a serious expression on his face.

The man threw the rock forward with such force that the air once more audibly cracked. But the air wasn't the only thing that cracked, but the rock itself did as well. It shattered into pieces, most of which flew directly past Eiro and crashed into the stalls or buildings around him, causing immense damage to them within just a single moment.

"Oops. Guess that throw was a bit too strong~." The man pointed out with a light smile, "Let me try again, shall I?"

With that, the man picked up another one of the rocks, but Eiro didn't want to give him the satisfaction of getting another attack in. The demon infused his body with air magic for just a moment and then jumped forward as quickly as he could. It seemed like even this man with his own high speed was able to react in time, before Eiro pushed both his hands onto the rock and did his best to use earth magic on it.

And just like that, he managed to confirm his suspicion. As he tried to use magic, it became warped, as if its area was being shrunk down as well, as if this rock was the same size of the boulder before. He wasn't able to affect it all at once like he normally would be able to with a rock this size.

Eiro pushed his tail with his new stinger in front of his body and tried to push it into the man's skin, but before he could do that, the rock that the man was holding split perfectly into two pieces as he grinned broadly.

He pulled his arms to the sides as far as he could and then tried to slam the two halves together again right where Eiro stood, just that he was increasing their size at the same time.

Immediately, the Demon used his magic and his wings to jump out of the area where those two halves of the boulder were about to meet, but if he hadn't, this would have definitely done an immense amount of damage to Eiro and maybe would have done more than just crack a few of his bones.

And then, before Eiro knew it, the man had already picked up another one of the rocks and threw it at Eiro, trying to increase its size at a more rapid rate compared to the times before, and Eiro was soon once more hit by one of the boulders. Just that this time, it was a bit different. Eiro had expected the hit and started using his magic as much as he could to slow it down. He pushed his three of swords' blades into the boulder and tried to fuse them with it so that he would have even better magical control over it, and then just split it apart into pieces.

Eiro infused magic into them directly to make the large shards of rock usable as proper weapons, which mostly involved sharpening them with earth magic and cloaking them in wind magic for extra speed, sharpness, and cutting ability. And on top of that, they would have the weight of the rocks they were based on, so that made these even better weapons, even if one ignored the 'Card effect' support from the three of swords, which were immeasurably sharp at any time. This helped increase their cutting ability as well.

Eiro changed the position of these special rock-blades so that they were basically five giant claws, each one the size of Eiro's arm floating around Eiro's left hand while he started to cast proper magic spells with his right hand.

"Oi, oi, isn't it kinda cheating to take your enemies' weapons from them during a fight?" The man asked with an excited grin on his face, but Eiro was simply floating there, flapping his new wings as he stared down at him, "What do I care? As long as you die, I'll cheat in any way I need to."

"Whooa! So harsh!" With a loud laugh, the man simply tried to continue hauling rocks at Eiro. It was a very, very simple attack pattern, so he probably wasn't even all that experienced with fights. Eiro simply couldn't imagine this person being an important enough part of the organization to be able to receive that kind of item as he was using now.

But most importantly... he just couldn't believe that this attack was as 'in the moment' as this man was saying it was. It just didn't make sense.

With a deep breath, Eiro activated a magic spell that was supposed to cover the area in a thick cloud of dust to disrupt this man's ability to see. He dove down toward him and swung the five claws at him, but the moment he did, his arm was simply stopped. As if his speed immediately disappeared just like that. The dust disappeared with a single strong gust of wind, and Eiro saw what exactly happened.

The man simply caught Eiro's attack. It was like he had shrunk down the rock-blades completely and with that slowed them down immensely as well. The distance that they had to traverse was much, much longer now, somehow.

"Heh... You think that's enough to-"

But that didn't really matter to Eiro. Even if he had more than one trick up his sleeve than just shrinking things down, since this obviously involved more than just that, Eiro also had multiple tricks. While the man was trying to speak, Eiro pushed his stinger directly into his right eye while pulling the three of swords out of the rocks.

The size-changing effect was dispelled, since a regular card was stronger than a mock-card, and the blades continued to travel forward. The rock bits had been shrunk down, but the blades couldn't be stopped. And just like that, Eiro cut through the man's fingers and destroyed glove.

The magical effect that had kept the rock-claws shrunken down was dispelled with that and they swung forward at the man all at once.

His hand was cut off, one of the blades shot right through his right shoulder, another one cut through the side of his throat. The other two simply missed, but either way.... This man just lost this fight.