DEMON'S VIRTUE

Eiro looked at the Arcane Magic floating in front of his eyes. It's been a while since he felt this sort of immediate familiarity in the magic that he was casting. The first time he felt it was when he used Ice Magic for the first time. And now, it was Arcane Magic. These two elements, although Arcana wasn't in fact an element itself, seemed like they were an innate part of Eiro's very being.

It just felt right. Eiro stretched his hand out and touched the tip of his finger against those of the magical hand. Nelli looked at Eiro a bit concerned, however.

"Eiro, it's draining an insane amount of your mana per second, you should probably be careful..." The Naiad pointed out, and Eiro turned his head toward her. It was like he heard her words, but it took a few more moments to understand their meaning.

"Oh, right... Of course." Eiro snapped his finger, and the arcane hand disappeared from the Demon's sight. He quickly pushed himself off the ground with his tail and stood in the center of the room the next moment, "But that was really... Really amazing."

"Was it? It seemed like regular magic to me..." Nelli pointed out, and Eiro turned toward her with a broad grin on his face.

"I know, it wasn't any different than any other sort of magic at the end of the day. But it still seemed like more than that to me. I need to thank Merlin for teaching me about this. And the next time I meet those four, I will need to tell that Arcane Mage just how glad I am that he gave me that sort of brief hint through his question. Sadly I was unable to meet them again after that, but I'm sure that it wasn't the last time I encountered them." Eiro said, a calm but broad smile on his face that seemed like it would not disappear anytime soon.

Nelli let out a bit of a sigh, but soon floated around Eiro's head and leaned her body against his cheek, "I'm glad that you're feeling happy about this. Sorry for possibly overreacting a bit because of Merlin..." She said to Eiro in a genuine voice. Eiro simply kept smiling, "Don't worry. It is true that Merlin wasn't to be fully trusted... he hid something rather important from me, after all."

"Hm? He did?" Nelli asked confused, slowly moving away from the Demon's face. Eiro slowly nodded his head, "He hid the way that I was supposed to control this magic until I cast the spell. Now that I saw the magic in action, it dawned on me what exactly was happening just before."

"Really? Then what was it? It was kinda shocking to see ya come out of there like that..." Sarius pointed out, and Eiro slowly looked back at the spirits, "My essence." Eiro said as he pulled the bottle that he had filled with it out of his treasury.

"This is the only reason that I am even able to control my mana. You see, I can perfectly control this essence, far better than I can currently control even regular mana. But I also noticed that it quickly faded away once I pulled it out of my body. Had I let go my control over it for even an instant, it would have immediately disappeared for good. This is why you easily lose complete control over spells outside of your body, usually at least, and why such spells fade away quickly. The essence disappears, and the mana is purified. But pure mana also can't exist that easily in the world, so it quickly fades as well. Because both fade in such a way, mana quickly falls apart and becomes uncontrollable even long before it fully disappears." Eiro explained, "At least, that's my theory on it right now. But this was also why I couldn't properly push this pure mana out of my body. Because it wasn't really seen as 'my' mana fully anymore. It was a foreign substance, and while I was able to control it to an extent, my body still somewhat rejected it. That's why, when it pushed against the walls of my soul, did it rip apart my flesh in those areas."

The three spirits looked at each other somewhat confused, since they had no idea in what way this related to Merlin having left something out to Eiro.

"Well, what else were you supposed to do then? That's what Arcane Magic is, right?" Nelli pointed out, and Eiro slowly nodded his head, "Of course, but not at the beginning. Right now, the pure mana is still mostly seen as simply that pure mana, because of my low level in the Ancient Language and my complete lack for an affinity in 'Arcana'. But once that grows, and the Arcane Magic created from the pure mana becomes its own thin in a way, my body is going to be able to properly use it." Eiro explained to them.

"Of course, that in itself once more doesn't mean that anything has been left out. However, when you combine the two things I just told you about, what I mean will make more sense." Eiro said, as he pressed the opening of the bottle with his essence against his lips, and practically poured some of it down his throat, as if drinking it. Then, inside of his body, Eiro combined the essence with the pure mana that had pulled the Ancient Language into it already. The mana returned to its original purity, but there was just one difference. The three spirits all realized what exactly it was, being able to see the mana flowing through Eiro's body.

"Ah..." Gondos let out, "It is still different from regular mana? Did the reliance of the Ancient Language that the pure mana possessed stay intact in its original form?" The Golem asked, and Eiro quickly nodded his head.

"That's exactly it, buddy. It's not true Arcane Magic right now, but it technically is in a bastardized away. That means that I can still do something like this." Eiro said, once more casting the same spell from before with the impure arcane magic. It flowed out of his skin exactly as it normally would as Eiro quickly cast the spell. The next moment, a hand appeared floating in the air again. Just that this time, it looked a bit different. It looked nearly cracked into pieces, barely holding itself together. And it was barely visible in the first place, being so translucent that it was close to invisible.

Eiro asked Gondos to create some dust and a few pebbles for him, and then held them above this hand's palm, "It costs far less mana if I do it like this, although it's still far more than usual for this level of spell. However, at the same time..." Eiro dropped the pebbles and dust. The dust travelled halfway through the hand and then stopped there, starting to float through this translucent hand along with the flow of the magic it was made of. Meanwhile, the pebbles already hit the ground, having created multiple clean holes in the hand.

"It's not even able to fully hold off dust. It's enough to practice, and over time, I'll just keep using a verson of this that is a little bit more pure each time. That should be enough to get used to this pretty well." Eiro pointed out, "And also, I'm not saying that Merlin hid this with malicious intent... Sure, he's a bit suspicious, but I can't expect him to reveal every single secret in his life. It didn't seem like he 'forgot' anything, but rather that he simply chose not to tell me. He seemed rather distressed that I was able to get a grasp on his life's work so easily, so maybe he just left it out to have me struggle a bit. Or he was trying to test me to see how well I could handle Arcane Magic."

"...Are you sure that you want to believe in him like that?" Nelli asked, staring into Eiro's eyes, and the Demon slowly nodded his head, "For now, yes. Of course I shouldn't trust him blindly, but I simply want to. That's how it is. But if it comes to it... I won't ignore his actions due to the relationship we have."

Nelli smiled softly as she looked back at the Demon that she was contracted to, "Good. Thank you for being more reasonable than before." The Naiad thanked Eiro, before the Demon walked up to the door and stepped out of the room.

"Now, I guess I'll just sleep for the rest of the night, and recover some of my mana. And tomorrow, I'll see if I can find anything about one's essence at the library in the academy." The Demon said as he stretched his body out a bit, and quickly made his way to his bedroom.

Eiro stripped out of his clothes and dropped onto his bed, looking at the ceiling for a while. As he drifted off to sleep, in his dream, Eiro entered the library in his mind. He sat down at one of the desks, and pulled two books out that he placed down in front of him. The tome written in Ancient Language that Eiro found, as well as the dictionary that he was writing the more he uncovered the meanings of certain words.

The Demon continued looking through the tome and started trying to figure out more and more meanings. Right now, while things were a bit more stagnant, Eiro was once more left in a deep 'study' phase. He studied to figure out how to use Arcane Magic, and he studied to understand the Ancient Language and increase his language comprehension skill's level more and more.

And once Eiro's arcana affinity grew more and more, he would be able to awaken the Arcane Magic skill, and the amount of spells that he was able to cast would grow far larger, especially once Eiro perfected elemental fusion.

However, one thing became more and more apparent to Eiro.. He was striving further and further away from being a creature that could simply live in peace in a place such as this.