DEMON'S VIRTUE

Eiro and Koperia walked up to the prison, and the moment they approached, the Guards stepped in front of the entrance. They were three rather suspicious figures, including the undead that was following Koperia the whole time, after all. However, Eiro quickly held up Solomon's brooch to them, "We're allowed to be here."

The two Guards looked at each other nervously for a second, "I apologize, but I am going to quickly verify this with my supervisor. We know we are awaiting guests, but we just need to make sure."

"Of course, it would be weirded if you were to let me in without any second thought." Eiro said, as he took a step away, turning toward Koperia to ask her to come along as well.

And while the guard stepped into the building, Eiro looked at the Necromancer next to him, who was already annoyed, "Can't we just go in and not care about them? We can easily kill them if they try to bother us."

"Yes, but as I told you a couple of times throughout our way here, we are not going to kill them. Those guards are innocent people, they didn't do anything to deserve being killed." Eiro pointed out, while Koperia raised her brows, "What, you care about things like that? What a surprise~!"

"Well, I can't just be someone that randomly kills people if I want to live amongst them. So yeah, I do. And generally, I do just believe that if there's no reason to kill them, then I just shouldn't do it." The Demon explained, and Koperia looked back at him with a surprised expression for a few moments, before she turned away, "You sounded like Jura there for a second."

"Hm? I did?" Eiro asked, but before Koperia could say anything else, the entrance to the prison opened again, and the Guard from just a few minutes ago came out with who seemed to be his superior.

He approached Eiro and Koperia, "Good evening. May I please see that brooch you just showed to this guard?"

Without another word, Eiro did as asked, and the Head-Guard took a closer look at it before nodding and handing it back, "Yes, it is indeed real. In his Majesty's letter, your appearance was described to us, but of course due to the nature of what you are wearing..."

"You can never be sure if it's actually me, I know. But it shouldn't be an issue to come inside now, right? And to get to the basement?"

"Ah yes, of course, of course. We have prepared everything for you already." The Guard said with a smile, and swiftly turned around to lead Eiro, Koperia and the Undead into the prison. Soon, the Demon noticed that a few things changed around here since Eiro was last here a while ago. There were more of the royal guard here, most likely to make sure that there was nobody amongst the original guards that were loyal to the former Warden.

Quickly, Eiro, Koperia and the Undead made their way down into the special basement area together with the Guard that was leading them. Quickly, Koperia was able to sense that which was ahead of them, "Oh, it truly is quite powerful. As you would expect of such a creature." She said with a broad grin on her face, and Eiro rolled his eyes, "Keep it down a bit." He sighed.

The Guard seemed a bit surprised that Koperia seemed to know what was kept down here, but Eiro swiftly turned toward him to change the topic to something else, "Would it be possible to completely vacate everything down here? It would be nice if there was no way for someone to accidentally get hurt."

"Huh? Oh, yes, of course. And you are truly sure that you can take care of it without issues?" The Guard asked. Eiro turned his head toward Koperia, who was just smirking in excitement already, "Yeah, I think we'll be able to manage pretty well." Eiro pointed out with a wry smile underneath his mask.

Soon, they were all downstairs, but Eiro noticed something weird going on. The moment he realized what it was, he squatted down onto the ground annoyed, "What are the chances..?" He groaned, before turning toward the Guard.

"What exactly did you do to prepare for our arrival?"

The Guard seemed a bit surprised, "Well, we made sure to prepare the 'cage' for easy access."

"And how did you do that?"

"...By removing some of the sealing-objects we placed around it?" As if it was obvious, the Guard looked at Eiro unsure of what he was saying.

"Now that's fucking great." Eiro said as he waved his hand to the side and made a small glass container appear in his hand.

"Wait, you have its phylactery already?" Koperia asked surprised, and Eiro nodded his head, "Yep. Well, this body's phylactery. 'The Death' itself doesn't seem to need one."

"Oh? A lich-like creature that does not require a phylactery... Intriguing." Koperia muttered quietly, "Mhm, sure. Well, it's safer with you than it is with me, so make sure you hold it now. I'll go look for anything that it might have messed up around here."

"W-Wait!" The guard exclaimed, and Eiro turned around toward the man, "What?"

"What's going on?"

"What do you think it's going on? You prematurely removed seals that were keeping 'The Death' and its powers inside of that huge cube. Shit, it was able to create Undead around here even before that, what do you think it's trying to do now?" Eiro pointed out, rather annoyed at the guards' actions, "Now get the fuck outta here before I make you. I'll send all the other guards up there as I find them."

Nervous at what Eiro just said, the Guard quickly turned around and sprinted back up the stairs, while Koperia, whose eyes were not moving away from this phylactery, asked, "What are you so worried about? We were going to bring it out of there sooner or later anyway."

"I know, but we would have done that without its miasma escaping and creating undead here. You know, 'The Death' isn't the only being kept down here. There's some other high-security prisoners. Four of them, I think. They're pretty far away from the cell that 'the Death' is in, so we wouldn't have had to worry about it before, but now we do."

"So? If they're causing trouble, we can just kill those four as well." Koperia pointed out, "Those guys aren't 'innocent', right? I doubt you'll mind killing bad people." She said with a grin on her face.

"...Right. If they attack us, we'll kill them. But it would still be better if we didn't have to. The point I was trying to make was rather that if we're not careful, 'the Death' will try and switch to one of their bodies."

"So wh-"

"I get it, you don't care. Just come on." The Demon grumbled quietly, and swiftly started making his way through this basement layer, trying to find any guard that he could sense. Most of them were totally fine, if a bit confused, so Eiro just sent them upstairs. And then, there was a group of three that was trying to rip open the door to the cell with the suspended lump of metal that the Death was kept in.

"Really now? It got three of you?" Eiro sighed deeply, as he pulled one of the now undead guards away from the door. The miasma had infected them, and they died of a heart-attack, followed by their bodies being turned undead before their bodies even went limp.

However, now, Eiro had just one thing to do. He pushed his hand into his satchel and got out a small flask with a white-golden flame inside of it.

"This comes from one of my first attempts at artificing, but I'm quite proud of it anyway." The Demon said, taking control of the holy flames by letting them burn away at his mana. The holy flames hit the Undead, two of their weaknesses in one form, and they soon fell to the ground dead once all of the Death's miasma was burned away. Eiro pulled the bodies to the side to make sure they wouldn't be damaged too much, before pulling the flames back into the flask.

"Oh? A demon wielding holy magic?" Koperia asked as she approached the Demon, "I sensed the energy so I was a bit worried about you, but to think you were the one to make use of it... intriguing."

"Mhm, right." Eiro replied silently, and then looked at the door that didn't even budge when all three of those undead guards tried to rip it open. And with a quick kick from the Demon, it swung open as if the lock was made of paper.

"Now, shall we get to it? Doesn't seem like any of the other cells were opened." Eiro pointed out, as he started walking down the stairs into the huge cell. Koperia swiftly followed the Demon down there, curiously staring at the huge cube floating in the center of the room.

"Alright, I have an idea. I'll surround the cube with the holy flames to make sure it can't somehow escape, while you break the chains." The Demon suggested. Koperia shrugged and snapped her finger, summoning one of her undead. Coincidentally, the same one that had attacked Eiro not too long ago. It swung its weapon around a few times at the chains holding up the cube, and even cut through some of the other things holding the cube together to make it simply collapse later.

And just like this, they had started their battle against a Royal.