DEMON'S VIRTUE

"That's really a Grimoire?" Armodeus asked with a light frown on his face as he stared at the small book, "I've never seen something like this before. Not only does this book change the more magic is infused into it, but it can write information down into itself on its own. How... is that even possible?"

"Would you like to take a look? I feel kind of bad, since it turned the grimoire of your friend into a regular book." Eiro explained, and the Craftsman King in front of him slowly looked back at him with a confused expression.

"Excuse me..? It did what..?" The Elder Dwarf asked, and immediately, Nelli proceeded to explain what happened, "That small book that Eiro had completely absorbed the magic inside of Achidmedis' Grimoire, and it doesn't seem like it can be used like one anymore."

Immediately, Armodeus flipped the book open and flipped through the pages, trying to figure out what exactly happened. But somehow, the pages of this book were incredibly brittle, partly crumbling just to his touch. The pages of a proper, high-tier grimoire were able to defend against the slash of a sword. And Armodeus knew that this was the case with this item in particular, considering that he was the one that created the physical aspects of it.

The base was created by him, and Achidmedis was the one that turned it into a grimoire. Armodeus stared at the small pieces of paper that had dropped onto the ground with a wry smile, "How is this even possible? What kind of book is that?"

"...I don't know." Eiro admitted immediately, "It's like it can steal magic and make it its own. I have no idea what this book is... But either way, it's certain that it's some form of artifact, isn't it?"

"An artifact? One beside a Card... Haven't those-"

"Mostly been destroyed? Yes, I know. But I think this book might be an exception... I'll have to speak to that old man at the shop I bought this book at to figure out where he got it from. But first of, can you maybe figure out all its physical properties for now? Like the materials and such, maybe they're part of the reason why this is the way it is."

Eiro handed the book over to Armodeus, who slowly nodded his head, "Aye... I'll do my best." He admitted, before suddenly flinching back a bit the moment he held the book properly, as if he was zapped by static electricity.

"Urgh, couldn't you have told me if you've already bonded with this? My hands are gonna go numb at this rate." The Elder Dwarf pointed out. Eiro didn't fully understand what he meant, but luckily, Nelli was there to explain it, "Right... 'Bonding' is something that most do not know about, but for those that can actually do it, it's something incredibly trivial. As such, I doubt you will be able to find much written information about it. Basically, it's something similar to our contract, or how Lugo is your familiar. Usually it can only be done with powerful magic items, hence why it was possible with that book, if it's truly a grimoire. Only you can use the magic effect of this item now, and if you strengthen your Bond with the item, you should even be able to summon it from wherever you want. And 'Bonding' is kind of an umbrella term, since bonds can act in a lot of different ways. A lot of the time, two bonds with the same effect can have completely opposing natures, so it's hard to define them, really."

Eiro quietly listened to Nelli's explanation and slowly nodded his head. That made sense to him, at least. He could feel some sort of vague connection between him and the book now, although he wasn't able to see some sort of thread connecting him with the book like he could see with Nelli, Gondos, Sarius, and of course Lugo.

"Well, it does seem pretty useful. Some sort of protection for my items seems like something that can only be positive, really." Eiro pointed out, and Armodeus looked at him as he flipped through the book to inspect the pages properly, "Sure, but can't you already tsore this book inside of you whenever you wish to?" The Elder Dwarf asked.

Eiro slightly shrugged as he looked back at Armodeus, who just let out a deep sigh, "Alright, I'll inspect this a bit more, and then I'm going to tell you everything that I find out." Armodeus explained.

Eiro looked back and simply nodded as he stared down at the book that he was just given by Armodeus. This used to be a grimoire just a few minutes ago, but now it was nothing else but a simple book without many uses other than to transfer information to those that cared enough.

Obviously, Eiro looked at all of the pages of the original grimoire, trying to remember the pages of the new, small grimoire that Eiro had now that he looked at before. As far as Eiro could tell, from the purely physical aspects, meaning the things that were written or sketched into this book, had been copied close to perfectly.

And now that he had done this, Eiro was wondering about something else as well. When he just infused some Air Magic into this book only a few minutes ago, it seemed like the book accepted this magic. The Grimoire changed physically just so slightly, and it had gained another page.

The page was really just related to what Eiro himself already knew, and he quickly managed to figure out some sort of conclusion that seemed to make sense to him.

"Hm, it may be that this book will continue to copy my own knowledge to place it into this book. Granted, the magic that's been infused into this did seem quite similar to the magic that Eiro had witnessed ravaging around outside for a couple of days. It was similar in that it was slightly related to knowledge, since Eiro's goal was to properly infuse this grimoire to make it grow better, more and more.

If this grimoire would end up becoming a powerful weapon to whoever used it by taking and enhancing the knowledge of everyone that had it, then obviously Eiro wanted to be the one that took care of this item properly.

And so, to see what was going to happen, Eiro proceeded to infuse more and more air magic into this grimoire. Mostly because it was simply amongst the easiest things to procure at the moment, beside flames of course. But considering the raw nature of the item that the Demon was holding, a book with relatively thin paper pages, he didn't want to risk accidentally burning this grimoire up because he wasn't careful enough.

Using air magic was easy and quick, and the more air that he infused into it, the more the book would change. Outwardly, its colors became more and more vibrant. Some of the small cracks that had grown on its surface over the years were closing down. As if the time on this object was being reversed, basically. The grimoire had spent years over years over years simply rotting away in the possession of others that didn't appreciate its worth.

And on the inside of the grimoire, Eiro could see something that quite surprised him, although he should have expected this already. On the pages toward the very back, numerous sketches for different spells had been drawn out. Some of them were regular magic circles, others were spoken aspects of spells that one had to use together with that magic. A few of them even had specific cadence or pattern written down underneath it that one had to be particularly careful of when casting the spell. Without such things, even though they certainly were minor details, if you didn't pay attention to those 'minor details' a spell could end up going terribly wrong because the spell was 'misunderstood' while casting, or the spell would simply be weakened considerably.

Since there were quite a few cases where people died through different, completely magical means when they even messed up slightly like this, Eiro really did have to be as careful as he possibly could be. Even in their day-to-day life, many mages had to be careful. Their voice was one of their most important physical aspects, since it was simply needed to cast many different high-tier spells.

Quite curiously, Eiro flipped through the pages, although he realized quite soon that there wasn't any sort of new information inside of this book. He had been aware of most already, really.

Well, that's what he thought at first, but at some point, Eiro noticed a small peculiarity for a specific spell toward the end of the air-magic section of the grimoire.

The spell had been just so slightly altered. In a positive, beneficial way it seemed, but this wasn't an alteration that he had been trying to cause himself. It seemed to have simply happened when he infused his magic into the book. As if it had been using its own knowledge in order to fix or improve some of the spells just so slightly.

And of course, this altered spell had its efficiency and strength increased considerably. It was one of the spells that Eiro knew that were basically 'example spells' ones that Eiro didn't really care for or use all that much in the first place. It made sense that they could be rather easily improved upon.

Since Eiro hadn't used them in battle before, he didn't have even the slightest need to improve or change parts about them in the heat of the moment to fit his situation. Hence, the variation of this spell that was in the book was one that seemed quite old already and still had a lot of parts that one could probably instantly fix anyway, which was why the grimoire took over that task with ease.

"But this is truly amazing..." Eiro muttered quietly, while he raised his head to Armodeus. He had been trying to think about what exactly the materials used for this book were, since they didn't seem to be regular ones, but no matter what he did, the Elder Dwarf seemed to struggle with this task quite a bit.

Mostly, this seemed to be because of the fact that he simply never saw these materials before. He knew similar ones, but it would take him a while to mentally analyze the effects of the grimoire's materials just through those rough memories that Armodeus still had in his mind about the times where he used the materials closest in similarity to the one that Eiro was currently remembering.

But one thing was for sure.. Considering the fact that Armodeus had trouble figuring this out in the first place meant that the materials were incredibly and utterly abnormal.