DEMON'S VIRTUE

Eiro casually walked around the Monster Village, taking in the scenery a bit. That was because it was basically one of the only few things that he could do. Walking around and casually looking at things didn't require a lot of mental capacity, which allowed Eiro to continue working on his Ancient Language Dictionary in his mental library.

It was multi-tasking at a basic level. If Eiro had to stop to hold a conversation with one of the village's monsters, he couldn't really continue working on the dictionary, so it wasn't really true multitasking. But it was still good enough, since the conversations with the monsters didn't particularly take up too much mental capacity. Like this, Eiro was able to briefly observe some more specific ways that the village had changed over time.

For one, the housing had developed in incredible ways. Not only did the number rapidly increase, due to the increase in monsters living here, but the quality of individual houses increased as well. The dirt and rock that was the floor before was now actually turned into wood from nearby forests, prepared by the Orcs with a woodworking-based task. Proper doors had been created, and the structures for families of different races were just slightly different. Bridges and stairs had been created so that the higher parts of the ravine's walls could be made use of like this as well.

Storage-facilities had been created right next to the main mines so that the raw findings could then later be processed and brought into the proper storage-rooms in the large building Eiro was in earlier. Most of the monsters were doing some sort of work right now, whether it was a job they had been assigned, or simply training. This latter part was the case especially for the Goblins, Kobolds, and the younger ones amongst the Orcs. They were training and learning depending on their basic abilities and talents that had been measured by Gobo, Boju and Kitsue.

It could be production-based talents, in which case they would study under the more experienced and were directly instructed. And if they were combat-based talents, they would mostly train on their own with some references, somewhat developing their own style with rough guidance from those that were more experienced already.

[<Beginner Ancient Language Comprehension> has leveled up!]

Eiro slowly raised his hand and ran his fingers through the notification. He was now at level 8, which was surprisingly low considering the process that Eiro made already. He had transcribed roughly 6 to 7 percent of the total words that could be found in the tome. If he had done something like this with other languages, he would have leveled up far more by now.

"That's kind of weird." Eiro thought to himself, "All languages are supposed to be on the same rarity and difficulty tier... The only difference comes from the individual. But I don't have those restrictions... I have neither talents nor inabilities. That can only mean that..." The Demon thought, trying to figure out if he was really right.

"That would mean that the Ancient Language isn't just a language, but that there is more to it than just that." Eiro concluded. And it wasn't a ridiculous idea either, honestly. The fact that the Ancient Language was the one mostly used for spells and magical enchantments had a reason, which was the complexity of the language and the magical capabilities that were deeply rooted in the language due to the way that it had been developed.

Eiro intertwined his fingers with each other in his mental library. If this was the case, then that meant that he might be able to increase his understanding of the Ancient Language rather quickly through different means than just regularly studying and using the language. And that was through a rather simple thing that he was going to try and do anyway.

Eiro was going to compose his own vocal component for a spell, in which he used ancient runic writing to make up its structure as well. Basically, Eiro was going to try and modernize ancient magic, a concept that felt more than just exciting to him.

The Demon stood up from his seat in the mental library, and stepped up to the free open area in its center, where he had gone through his memories to try and recover them.

In front of his eyes, he started to try and develop a spell with the words that he had found out so far. First, he made use of the letters and overall symbols to integrate them into the spell's magic circle. Luckily, Eiro found some words that meant things like 'cold', 'ice', and 'frost'. And to properly make use of the way that the ancient language's words were written, Eiro created a layered magic circle instead of a flat, single-plane one.

He was giving each of the layers different aspects of the magic circle to take care of instead of only adding the letters into different layers, for better stability and hopefully functionality. Of course that made the spell quite a bit more difficult to create, but that wasn't an issue for Eiro right now. As he wasn't trying to just create another new, simpler version of a spell, and instead just a version that had the ancient language deeply ingrained within it.

And at the same time, Eiro was thinking about what kind of vocal spell he could create for this. Usually, from his increased understanding of vocal aspects of other spells, you are mostly asking another being, usually a 'higher' being, for help in casting this spell. But Eiro wasn't particularly sure if that higher being had to be the generic 'god' and 'goddess' used to refer to the cluster of divine beings, or if he could refer to his own 'higher beings', as in the Spirit Kings and Queens of the various elements.

So, to try it out, Eiro called upon the Lady of Winter for this ice-based spell. In most spells with vocal aspects of the Spirit Magic variety, one seemed to already call upon the spirit's help to cast the spell, so it was rather likely that it would be able to work. Eiro highly doubted that someone was monitoring what those that cast spells said, considering that Eiro could very well cast any spell without a vocal aspect. It simply made them more stable, and in some cases more powerful, than before, although to Eiro there was often little difference.

The time that he was able to save by just instantly drawing the magic circle and activating it instead of having to speak the whole spell more than made up for the miniscule bit of power lost in its activation.

Eiro created the spells chant, and it roughly translated, 'Oh my lady who rules over winter, cover the space around me in deep frost.'

Once Eiro had finished the chant, he was ready to go. He took a deep breath and spread out his wings. Eiro swiftly leapt into the air and looked around the area. There was an empty field near here. The Demon placed his mask onto his face, since Bavet was somewhere lazing around here in the village, and then he flew over toward that empty field.

Once he landed, Eiro held his hand forward. He started constructing the magic circle, and repeatedly voiced the chant as he was doing so. Eiro had adjusted the speed at which he was building up the magic circle so that he would finish it at the exact time as when he finished speaking the chant.

Eiro's mana was pulled out of his body and entered the center of the magic circle as it was activated. The next moment the air cooled down rapidly. Frost covered the blades of grass, leaves, and trunks of the trees that were in front of the Demon. In a huge Circle around Eiro, reaching around 50 meters in diameter due to the amount of mana Eiro used for the spell, the area had been frozen. As if temperatures suddenly dropped to far below zero.

The heat given off by Eiro's body caused mist due to the sudden change in the air's base temperature, nearly hiding his whole body.

"This... This is quite effective, isn't it?" Nelli pointed out surprised, and Eiro slowly nodded his head, "Yeah, it is... But why?" Eiro asked. He hadn't expected that this area would become this cold so easily. Being able to affect a whole large area like this nearly instantly was more than just useful, and there weren't many spells like this that Eiro knew of. At least none at this level of efficiency.

"Hm..." Eiro muttered, "Wait, let me try something out..."

The Demon jumped back up, away from this frozen area, and quickly flew toward the main building. Eiro rushed through the doors past the monsters and entered the storage facility.

There was a Goblin working in here, and Eiro looked at them with a grin, "Bring me all of the Gravity magic stones. Now." Eiro told it, and the Goblin tilted its head to the side confused. Eiro pushed his hand into his pocket and pulled out one of the 'empty' gravity magic stones he had, which had all of its magic used up. It still kept most of its color, albeit having slightly lost its vibrancy. Eiro thought about having Armodeus make something with this, as these sorts of magic stones were often used for decorative purposes.

Either way, the Goblin took the magic stone that Eiro gave him and hurriedly turned around, while Eiro closed his eyes and entered a meditative state. He wanted to focus all of his mental capacity on this. He had found some sentences in which words related to 'weight', 'mass', or even 'gravity' directly made sense.

Eiro was going to focus his analysis on these areas in particular to try and decypher everything. After all, if Eiro removed all the parts that turned the spell from earlier into its frost based version, he would receive a base version to create spells that affected large areas.

If he then changed the runes and some of the patterns to make it something that increased the weight or the level of gravity affecting everyone in this area beside himself... This was a way for Eiro to immediately incapacitate a large amount of people without necessarily injuring them.

Or rather, the use that Eiro would make use of more often.... a way to stop his prey from fleeing from him to make hunting far, far easier.