DEMON'S VIRTUE

Eiro looked at the three monster chiefs in front of him, each of them in their new human forms thanks to the artificial artifacts Eiro gave to them.

Gobo was turned into that pale, nearly-human person. Eiro didn't know what exactly he looked like, but he would pass as a person either way. Kitsue simply turned into a beast-woman, as was to be expected, so the most that happened was that she lost fur on most parts of her body.

And as for Boju, he turned into a dark-skinned young man, and even the chieftain-tattoos that he had on his body changed color along with his skin, fitting themselves to Boju's new body-shape. These three would definitely pass as people, that was for certain.

Eiro was glad that this worked out alright. These artifacts were specialized perfectly for these three, but the others that Eiro brought with him were different. The only thing that they had to focus on when giving them out now was that they were distributed depending on their race. A 'transform' artifact meant for an Orc would do weird things when used by a Goblin.

"I have a dozen of these in total. Four for each of the three races here in town for now. Give them to those that have to wander around outside for their jobs. Those that are most likely to encounter people, at least." Eiro told them, "I might be able to bring more in the future, but we need to produce specified ones for the servants I'm taking with me first. They'll be the ones most likely to actually meet with people, after all."

"Master, this feels weird..." Gobo pointed out, and Eiro smiled back at him a bit, "Don't worry, you'll get used to it. And you don't need to use it for long anyway, simply use it in emergencies. Otherwise, you can keep it deactivated." The Demon explained to them, as he slowly stood up from his seat.

"Now, I think that's all for now." Eiro pointed out, and once more moved his hand in a motion to pull a book out of his treasury, just that this time it was an old tome written in the Ancient Language. Eiro had come across it some time ago, and had continuosly tried to keep on using it to learn the Ancient Language, but whenever he did, he would forget the meaning he figured out immediately. He would write it down, so he slowly accumulated a list of meanings for different words in the ancient language, but it was still impossible to actually find any sort of logic in the words or sentences. As if it was some sort of curse placed onto the language itself.

But now, Eiro had a way to learn this language. It was perfect. He should be able to enhance his spells incredibly once he figured this out. The Demon made his way outside and soon stood in front of the wooden slab. It seemed like the area around it had been cleaned up a bit, but beside that was left alone.

Eiro was glad about that, because otherwise they might have somehow destroyed the effects of the slab. And at the same time, the hiddend cave was also still right behind him, so Eiro would be able to keep using it as his own personal space while he was here.

Eiro took a seat on the slab, while the three chiefs were looking at him curiously. Eiro raised his brows a bit, "What, something wrong?" The Demon asked, and they immediately shook their head.

"Of course not, Master! But what exactly are you trying to do right now?" Gobo asked, incredibly curious. Because it seemed like whenever Eiro did anything with extreme purpose like this, he was doing something amazing.

"Well, I'm just going to study a bit." Eiro explained with a smile on his face. Gobo seemed somewhat disappointed, "St-Study?"

"Yes, study. What, have you forgotten what that word means since I've left you here again?" The Demon asked with a slight smirk, but Gobo immediately shook his head nervously, "No, of course not! I studied everything you told me to, Master! Whenever I had the time to!"

"Good. I would have reprimanded you if that had been a lie." Eiro pointed out. He pushed his mana into the slab underneath him, and redirected the flow of the mana gathering within there into his own body. At the same time, he was fusing the chaos that both the slab and eiro himself were causing with the help of the armor, hopefully supporting the effect that Eiro would be able to study the language.

The Demon opened up the book and looked at the words, having Nelli and Gondos hold his notes next to the book. He let Sarius just wander around for a while, since he had the tendency to burn whatever he touched.

Quickly, Eiro was able to figure out rough basics of this language. Patterns in the letters and words. The way that the different ancient symbols were connected to one another in a smooth way to allow for consequtive writing. It was as if each word was its own symbol, made up of the letters as building-stones.

The writing wasn't linear like the Common Language either. The letters were placed right next to one another in Common, while in the ancient language they were placed in different patterns. Above one another, side by side, or even overlapping. Overall, the ancient language seemed to be made up of 53 individual, unique letters, at least as far as Eiro could tell so far.

With that large amount of letters, it was more than just possible that there were some that were just so rarely used that they didn't appear to him yet. But for now, once Eiro reached this point, he felt like he made progress. So he figured he should risk to lose all of that progress.

He pressed the book shut and let his mind wander for a few moments. Eiro looked at the scenery of the village stretching out toward the other end of the ravine in front of his eyes. And after a few moments, he tried to recall the information.

"Non-linear writing, 53 letters..." Eiro muttered, before grinning broadly as he recalled all of the individual letters one by one. It seemed like this slab actually worked. Eiro had no idea how, but it was clearly connected to Arcane Magic. He couldn't help but be excited about this. It's been so long, and now he finally managed to figure out how he could learn the Ancient Language.

And so, Eiro quickly continued trying to learn the Ancient Language. Bit by bit, by trying to analyze the texts no matter the orientation of the words relative to each other, the Demon was able to figure out more and more meanings of the words.

It was incredibly complex, which now made Eiro realize exactly why he was only able to figure out the meanings of a few dozen words and note them down. Luckily, the speech aspect wasn't that hard to figure out. There were many spells that were created with chants, that were passed down ever since the Ancient Language was still commonly used. As such, there were 'Commonized' versions of the Ancient Language to note down the way that those words were pronounced. The fact that Eiro used that Commonized version to note down the Ancient Language words he already 'learned' before might have been the only reason that he was able to somewhat remember them and their meanings.

But now, Eiro didn't have to rely on just that anymore. Instead, he was not only able to figure out the meaning of certain words to cross-reference with spells that he knew about, but instead, he was able to figure out the way that certain letters were pronounced in different configurations to other letters.

Whenever Eiro figured out not only the meaning but also the pronounciation of a word, he would write it down in a thick, blank book that he brought with him to create a dictionary for the Ancient Language for himself.

And then, after quite a bit of work, Eiro seemed to have overcome whatever hurdle made it so that he was unable to learn the Ancient Language normally, and the notification that he wanted to see right now appeared in front of Eiro's eyes.

[Congratulations! <Beginner Ancient Language Comprehension> Skill Learned!]

With a grin on his face, Eiro ran his fingers through the notification to get rid of it, and a moment later stepped off of the slab to test out whether Merlin was right. If Eiro was able to learn the Ancient Language now, when disconnected from the slab, then everything was going perfectly.

And so, Eiro continued going through the tome written in the Ancient Language to try figuring out another word. Bit by bit, Eiro analyzed it. And soon, Eiro had figured this word out. He closed the book, once more let his mind wander to something else, and tried to recall the word.

And he did. With a broad grin on his face, Eiro placed both books away. Now that he was able to learn the Ancient Language without the need of the slab, he could also safely rely on the library in his mind. While he was in there, he could do things while the world out here slowed down to a crawl, all depending on how quickly Eiro's mind could process information. And of course, since he had abilities that increased his processing speeds, Eiro was able to manipulate the effects of those abilities and layer them on top of each other, focusing on his speed of learning and comprehending raw information.

In return, that would reduce Eiro's reaction speed and ability to focus on what his senses were noticing outside his body.. But like this, Eiro might be able to create a dictionary that included every single word inside of this thick tome he had with him, and that within just a few days.