DEMON'S VIRTUE

Having accumulated a small heap of paper scraps, Eiro softly smiled. He had completely forgotten about this aspect of memories, or at least it didn't seem perfectly obvious to him for a while. Eiro had gone through a few different books now, but hadn't completed any of them yet in the form of repairing them. But he knew that he would be able to repair them, with the exception of the parts where full pages were missing.

After getting all the scraps of around a dozen books by actually re-enacting the different memories the books were about, Eiro sat down at one of the desks again and continued to add the things from the scraps to the books that he was rewriting.

Like this, Eiro managed to finish another couple of books, although there were still clearly parts missing. Most of the parts that had been ripped out could be filled in, but there were still some other parts that Eiro didn't manage to get a perfect grasp on. It felt like there was something missing, although he was on the right path.

Maybe Eiro had to figure out what else would involve memories that he could get done here... But for now, getting any and all scraps that he could just by playing out the scenes was the most important for him. He knew how to get the information for those parts, and hopefully he would be able to remember many of his memories through this already.

This whole process was certainly one that involved specific action a lot more than Eiro had anticipated. At first, before he even came here, he thought his issues might all be solved just through some meditations and specific breathing techniques, but that clearly was not the case in this situation.

It was a naive thought, albeit one that didn't seem too far-fetched when Eiro looked back on the knowledge he had at the time. Either way, for now, Eiro knew what he had to do if he ever ended up forgetting something. He had to look inside himself and actively recover the memories. And now that he knew this, Eiro would be able to do all of this even when he wasn't here in this cave with Lognir.

Eiro continued his work and soon felt a bit of exhaustion come over him. An exhaustion that was accompanied by nausea, a sign that Eiro had to take a bit of a break for now.

He opened his eyes and found himself back in the large open room of the cave system that he was currently in, where he had spent most of his time, simply to keep practicing. Eiro stood up and stretched his tensed-up body while Lognir looked at him curiously, "You are not finished yet, are you?"

"Of course not. It's going to take a lot more time... At this rate I should be done... Tomorrow evening maybe?" Eiro suggested, and Lognir looked back with an impressed expression, "Interesting. It would take many others much, much longer than you. So it seems like you wish to take a break?"

"Mhm. At least from this for now. It's mentally taxing." The Demon explained, before the Dragon in his human from silently smirked for a few seconds, as if he was slowly working out an interesting idea in his mind.

Eiro took a deep breath and waited for the idea that Lognir was about to voice.

"How about you try out the next step, then? It's something that I usually wouldn't recommend just yet, or maybe not even at all, but considering how well you've been doing until now... It might be alright." The Dragon pointed out, and Eiro looked back at him rather curiously.

"The thing I taught to you was the manipulation of abilities until now. Something else that requires this ability to manipulate abilities is the combination of abilities. Whether it's magic, skills, or simple passive abilities. With a bit of training, you should be able to-"

"Oh, I did that once before." Eiro pointed out bluntly, and Lognir's body froze up, "Excuse me? What do you mean?"

"Well, it's probably not exactly what you're talking about, but it's something similar. You see, I managed to make use of a Fire Magic Stone and something else that works the same as an Ice Magic Stone would in order to create 'Freezing Flames' of sorts. It wasn't something that came from my own abilities, I guess, but the concept isn't foreign to me." After this swift explanation that Eiro gave to Lognir, the Dragon clicked his tongue, "And here I hoped to be able to get you a bit excited, finally. But fine. This is going to make it easier, at least. Anyway, come on, let's try it with your Five of Pentacles again."

"...Alright, what should I try to combine it with?" Eiro asked, and Lognir looked back at him confused, "What do you mean? Combine it with itself, of course." The Dragon said as if it was obvious.

Eiro looked back and was about to ask what he meant, before swiftly realizing it himself. He should combine one aspect of his ability with another part of his ability.

So in this case, that would mean linking a sense with another sense.

Eiro closed his eyes and looked at the sensory Homunculus in his mind. What would it look like if he combined some of his senses with each other there? The Demon thought for a while, until he came up with a relatively simple idea. All he had to do was to merge the representative parts with each other.

First, Eiro merged the ears with the eyes. The eyes were large and bulging out anyway, so moving the ears forward a little bit and adding their base into the whites of his eyes at the side wasn't too hard to do.

But as Eiro did so, as he slightly merged these senses, he could feel something spark up in his mind. As if a new connection that wasn't there before was linked up in an instant.

The moment that Eiro opened his eyes, he was surprised by what he saw. Colors were moving around his sight, and he quickly knew what they corresponded to as well. The chirping of the birds outside was one color, and the sound of Armodeus working in another part of the cave was a different color that seemed to be coursing through the room in waves.

But of course, Eiro could also hear Lognir's heartbeat right now, and it was like waves of paint were being pushed out from the center the Dragon's chest beat by beat.

Eiro slowly removed sound from his sight and instead added scent. Now, soft clouds were floating around in the air, also each having specific colors to them. It was... interesting to say the least. But not only that, it was like Eiro was able to smell certain things when looking at certain parts of the cave. When he saw something, he registered something of a scent, but not the one that the object really had. It was kind of... weird. He knew what the smell was supposed to be, but it was off compared to normal.

Not able to really get used to this, the Demon removed scent and added taste to his sight. Now, whenever Eiro looked at Lognir, he felt like he was able to taste him.

But obviously, Eiro wasn't actually able to taste him, it was more like Eiro was able to taste what Lognir's personality tasted like to him.

Well, either way, this was an experience unlike anything that Eiro had seen before. Sure, he created some visualizations for himself of different sounds and scents that he could make use of when Eiro tried to search for things at a larger scale.

But if he combined the ability to analyze those visualizations that Eiro had trained for a while already with this ability to combine his senses themselves, this should help Eiro experience certain things that he never thought he would experience in this form.

The Demon looked back at Lognir after clearing up his senses, returning to how they were supposed to be, "This is quite interesting, to say the least."

"...Right, of course you managed it instantly." Lognir sighed, "Well, I figured that combining your senses like that would allow for a good representation to start off with. Other benefits might not be as obvious as that, but they should be easier to grasp for you now."

"Certainly, yes. Now... Should I combine other abilities with themselves, or should I combine certain abilities with each other?"

"The former. Try to find some unique ways to do so if you can. Sometimes it's obvious, other times it's not as obvious. And there should be multiple ways to combine different aspects of abilities as well, so try to just play around with it sometimes." Lognir explained. Somehow, this weirdly sounded like it was supposed to be relaxing to Eiro.

Either way, this was exactly what Eiro did next. He tried to combine other abilities with themselves. For example, he was able to increase the thickness of his rock-skin ability even more by simply seeing a part of his body that was covered in rock already as the 'Base', to allow himself to activate the ability one more time.

It made that part of his body a lot heavier and far harder to move, so it would be tough to make use of this long-term, but it might be good for instant defense when he knew that an attack he couldn't dodge was incoming.

Beyond that, most of the ways of how Eiro could combine his abilities with themselves were truly minimal, where the cost outweighed the benefit. Either it cost too much mana, it required too much concentration, or it was a waste of time compared to the minimal benefit that he received.

In very, very, very specific situations those benefits might come in useful and Eiro would be able to not care for the costs, but most of the time it would be nothing but a waste to make use of these things.

And then, there were abilities where Eiro was unable to figure out anything that he could combine or overlap in any manner, although it seemed like there should be a way. Eiro could figure this out somehow at some point, but now it felt like too much of a bother for him to do so.

Soon, Eiro realized something else, however. What if he tried to combine his <Memory of a Scholar> with itself somehow? Would he be able to remember certain things more easily? Would he be able to find the scraps of paper that he was missing with ease?

Well, he had to try, at least.