DEMON'S VIRTUE

As Eiro pushed the Crow againt the wall, this Monster said something that Eiro didn't expect at all. He turned his head to the side for just a moment, getting a glance at a figure standing far in the distance in the middle of the air. And he wasn't flying with something like wings, he was really just standing there, as if levitating.

And it was really just for a moment, and Eiro didn't loosen up the grip he had on the Crow either. But when he was in the process of turning his head back toward the Crow, he could feel the literal lack of mass in front of him. Eiro dropped forward a little and tried to collect himself as he realized what was going on.

The first thing that Eiro realized was that there was no way that the Crow actually just ran away. Eiro would have been able to notice it in one way or another, whether by seeing it, hearing its footsteps, or even just by feeling the wind that it pulled with it.

But no, none of that happened. Instead, for a fraction of a moment, the area around Eiro was completely empty. It was probably a shorter time than it would take you to blink. But in that fraction of a moment, the Crow was gone. And then, it returned.

Maybe just 10 or 15 meters away from Eiro, so not an amazingly long distance, but it was still quite a bit. The air in that area started to shift, as if incredibly hot flames were placed right underneath there. And out of that shifting space, the Crow's figure appeared.

It was able to teleport, or rather blink, a short distance away. Through its sheer speed, it unlocked the ability to do this. And this could only mean one thing.

The Crow was just toying with Eiro. It could have turned the tables instantly. Maybe it was just too dumb to realize this fact, or it held some sort of pride inside of its mind, although Eiro doubted the latter to be the case.

This Monster stood there and was about to keep moving away, before turning back around as if it forgot something. It held its hand up and caught an item that was seemingly thrown into its direction from the man that was standing in the middle of the air in the distance, although that would require an incredible amount of force or incredible magic control even at such a large distance.

"Nearly forgot. If that Orc is going to die soon, I have to do this." The Monster said and held its hand forward. The item that it was now holding seemed to be a carved gemstone, a sort that Eiro didn't remember ever seeing before. It started to glow, and Eiro immediately had a guess at what was about to happen.

He tried to twist out of the way as quickly as possible, and he was barely able to escape the attack. It was basically an extremely powerful stream of light that was about 5 meters in diameter shooting out of that small gemstone.

It ate away at the mountain immediately, digging through the Orc Village. The side of Eiro's body was slightly scorched through this beam as well, but luckily it didn't seem to be life-threatening Damage, even if it did drain quite a bit of his Health. Basically just being scraped by it took about a fourth to a third of Eiro's total health.

The Demon clenched his teeth and turned toward the giant hole created in this mountain. He sent a pulse of mana through the rock of the mountain and figured out that this was enough damage to make the hollow space soon cave in on itself. The Orc village would be destroyed.

Immediately, Eiro knew what he had to do. Sure, he wanted to chase after the Crow, but that was a lost cause anyway. It was already being dramatically surrounded by black feahters for a grand exit.

"I hope we can play again sometime. Hopefully you'll be stronger then. I want a challenger I can go all-out against. Will you be that challenger? Will you?" The Crow asked, and Eiro stared back at it with deep anger welling inside of himself.

"Yeah, sure... And when that time comes, I'll kill you. You hear?" Eiro announced with a growling voice, as he watched the Crow just grin as the gem it was holding before fell to dust, before the Crow turned into an actual crow to fly away at an extremely high speed.

And Eiro proceeded to concentrate on the matter at hand, despite how exhausted he was right now. The Demon pushed himself up using the stone under his feet and pushed himself toward the closest groups of trees, grabbing whatever nuts or seeds he could get from them, before rushing over toward the elderly Orc.

Nelli seemed to have managed to stabilize him for now, but from what Eiro could tell, he didn't have too much longer to live with that sort of wound combined with his old age. As angry as this made Eiro, the Demon quickly picked the elderly Orc up and started sliding down the tunnel that was created through that beam right there.

The ground was melting, but through a bit of ice and earth magic, Eiro was able to ignore that a bit.

Soon, the Demon reached the inside of the cave. The first thing he saw were a few chunks of Orc-bodies scattered near the hole, with one of them half-buried in the molten rock. Dead, of course.

Others were crushed by the falling debree. One of Orcs seemed to help out by using earth magic, protecting especially the children and the Orc Child that Eiro had spoken to before.

Eiro angrily ground his teeth and proceeded to push his magic into the nuts that he had with him on top of those that he gathered just to be sure. He threw them to several different parts of the cave right around him, and proceeded to use Nature Magic to make trees rapidly grow from those nuts.

Through these trees, Eiro was able to temporarily stabilize at least this area of the cave. The demon looked at the Orc Child near him, and quickly rushed over, handing him a small bag filled with Nature Magic stones.

"Make whoever here has any sort of control over their mana pour it into this rock and into those trees. That will sustain them a little while longer. I'm going to take care of the rest of the cave. When everything is safe, I will give you a signal and make a path for you to start descending down the mountain. Go wherever you need to then, I will find you no matter where you go." The child didn't really seem to understand what was going on, but he at the very least heard Eiro's words and knew what he had to do.

Meanwhile, Eiro did his part of what he said he would. After letting down the elderly Orc next to one of the physically stronger Orcs around so that someone could carry him, Eiro grew trees throughout the cave to have something that could be used as a support, stopping everything from immediately caving in.

Eiro also tried to make some of the roots of these trees grow toward a single place where he could supply them all with magic while everyone else was escaping, but that seemed to be a lot harder than he thought. At the very least, he managed to sustain a bit more then half of the trees by himself. The others were kept up through the nature magic created by the magic stones by those Orcs.

"Kid! Get going!" Eiro yelled out into the direction of the Orc child, and once the place was cleared out, Eiro sent Nelli, Gondos and Sarius to make the other Orcs finally leave as well, the ones that were holding up the other trees. Gondos made sure to hold back some of the smaller rocks that were falling, but luckily that wasn't necessary anymore once they all left. Once they were gone, Eiro turned his head and watched the other trees immediately rot and decay. That's what happened with plants created through nature magic, if they weren't constantly fed it, they would immediately die down.

And now, all that Eiro had to do was to quickly run away himself, something that wasn't an issue considering his wings.

He rushed after the Orcs and could see them descend the mountain in a bit of a distance. It seemed like that was the direction of the Kobold village.

Eiro wasn't sure that nothing was going to happen to the Orcs if Eiro just let all of this happen uncontrollably, like a landslide or avalanche or something, so he quickly tried to take control of specific parts of at least this side of the mountain so that the Orcs could have a safe descent.

It took a good while longer until Eiro could make sure that everything was safe, since the mountain in this part finally fully collapsed. There were quite a few quakes happening, and some avalanches as well as Eiro thought would happen. But this was only happening in areas where the Orcs weren't affected anymore.

Soon, the Demon flew down toward the place where the Orcs had all gathered, in a relatively safe, flat area where they could sit down and properly rest, now that nothing was happening anymore.

Eiro landed in front of the Orcs, and they all looked at him nervously, thinking that he might have been the cause for the collapse of that village. Even the Orc child that Eiro had been speaking to before seemed quite nervous about that possibility.

"D-Did you-"

"No, I didn't. There was a monster hiding out at the peak of this mountain. It came out when I was trying to converse with that old one over there." Eiro explained, seeing the barely open, tired eyes of the dying elderly orc, "...It was the one that was killing everyone. It was incredibly fast and could even teleport. I think it might have damaged the Orcs in your village internally without damaging them externally."

The child stared up at Eiro, "Why would someone do that?!"

"...There are some very wicked individuals in this world, kid. Remember that. I managed to chase it away, but it let out that last attack that I couldn't defend against. I'm sorry for letting this happen."

Tears gathered in the eyes of the Orc Child, "W-Will it come to try to kill us again..?"

"No, don't worry. It doesn't seem to have any plans like that.. Don't worry."