DEMON'S VIRTUE

Eiro looked at the armored man on horseback that just arrived at the gates to his manor. He had sigils of the royal family on his armor, so he was a royal guard.

"What is it?" Eiro asked, and the horse soon came to a halt in front of the Demon. The man climbed off the horse's back and saluted to Eiro for a moment.

"I bring a message from his Majesty, Solomon Sigurd Skyhart!" The guard exclaimed, holding forward a sealed letter. Eiro pulled the wax off of it and pulled the actual letter out of the envelope. And all that was written on the piece of paper were the words 'The ingredients have arrived'.

This was definitely Solomon's handwriting, and it didn't seem like the letter had been tempered with somehow, so it seemed like Eiro and Bavet would have to get to work soon.

"Thank you. You can leave now." Eiro told to the guard, who quickly nodded his head and climbed onto the back of the horse again, swiftly riding it off to get back to the royal castle soon.

"The ingredients have arrived? That mean what I think it does?" Bavet asked, and Eiro immediately nodded his head, "Yes. Or it should, at least. I don't know what other ingredients Solomon might be talking about." Eiro said, "Did you plan everything out properly? How long is it going to take to make everything that we need to unseal their memories?"

"Well, shouldn't take too long. I'll just instruct you properly, and then you can go for it immediately. With your hands, we should be able to get through it rather quick. I'll just be the one using mana on everything though, since that's, well, a lot easier than teaching you the whole process of the mana and all that shit. It's a bother, and it's gonna be quicker and more effective if I do it." Bavet explained, and Eiro slowly smiled as he swiftly turned around.

Using a gust of air to push himself off the ground a bit, Eiro flew back to the window that he had jumped out of before. Once there, he made his way back to Avalin and Leon's room, and looked at Armodeus, "I'm going to have to leave for the royal castle for a while. Can you make sure to watch them for another while? Everything should be fine with Leon for now, but if something's wrong, you know where to find me."

"Aye. Don't worry, and take your time, lad." Armodeus replied. Eiro smiled back at him, "Go ahead and eat some more cake. I should be back in a few hours." The Demon said, and swiftly turned back around. But he didn't immediately rush back outside, but instead rushed through some of the hidden passages to head to one of the manor's storage rooms.

Once there, Eiro grabbed the materials that he himself already gathered for this process, and placed them into his satchel.

"Bavet, we've got everything, right?" The Demon asked. He knew the answer, but he wanted to hear it from the expert again, just in case. The slime swiftly created an eye for itself on Eiro's palm, using it to look around the room a bit more.

"Yep, seems like we've got everything. But just in case, let's bring some more tools that we know we'll be able to use." Bavet suggested. Eiro swiftly nodded his head, grabbing a few more of the glass bottles and tubes that were needed to create the concoction.

"Then let's go." Eiro said, and swiftly turned around. He made his way outside and pushed himself off the ground immediately, swiftly flying off toward the royal castle. Eiro landed in an alleyway near the gates, where nobody would be able to see him, and then made his way over toward the gate.

He greeted the guards, who let him inside without a moment's hesitation, already knowing Eiro quite well.

And then, Eiro just had to make his way into the castle itself. Once there, he quickly made his way toward Solomon's study, and knocked on the door with a smile on his face.

"Solomon, it's me." The Demon said, and the king swiftly stood up from his seat on the other side of the door, "Oh! Come in!" He exclaimed, and Eiro pushed the door open.

"It's always nice to see how quickly you respond. The messenger didn't even come back yet." Solomon chuckled as he approached his friend, who was already looking at the wooden crates that were stacked up in the corner of the room.

"Well, flying is always a bit faster than horseback. Otherwise I would have taken Lugo here as well." Eiro pointed out, and the King slowly smiled back, "I see. Well, it seems like you already want to get started. The materials are all there. Should we do the unsealing right now?" Solomon asked, although he was clearly quite nervous about what he would end up finding out.

Eiro quickly shook his head in response, "We can't do the unsealing, but we can prepare everything so that the unsealing-process is going to be rather quick. It'd be best if you stayed around, though, so that we can use the seal in your mind as a reference directly. For the fine-tuning, you know?"

"Ah, I see. Then please, go ahead and start." Solomon replied, and Eiro looked at him a bit surprised, "In here? Don't you have a space that's better for this sort of thing?" Eiro asked, and Solomon crossed his arms in thought, "Well, sure, we can go there as well. I didn't really think about that. But you are right, a larger space should be better."

"Yep, exactly." Eiro said, as he quickly picked up some of the crates, walking out of the study's door. He knew his way around the castle better than most of the guards, probably, so Eiro made his way to the room that he was thinking about immediately.

It was a laboratory that a royal mage, that recently passed away, had been using. It was mostly cleared out, so there was plenty of space for Eiro and Bavet here. And most importantly, it only had really small windows that were nearly impossible to get to from the outside, so Eiro didn't need to stay fused with Bavet and could let the slime do his thing properly.

"Alright, all of you, please leave. This is a process that you all can't watch." Solomon said to the Guards, realizing that Eiro wanted to split off of Bavet, and the guards immediately did as told. By this point, they knew that Eiro was someone to be trusted, so none of them hesitated for another moment to leave Eiro alone with Solomon.

At the same time, they also knew that even if Eiro tried something, they would lose that fight instantly, and that Eiro was the best bodyguard against other intruders that Solomon could possibly have. There was no need to watch him closely anymore.

Once the guards left, a flesh-like mass gathered on Eiro's left hand, as his skin turned back to its regular red and blue color. Bavet jumped off of Eiro's hand and sat on one of the tables.

"Alright! Let's get this started, then." Bavet said, as he did something else as well. He split off a bit of his body, that was still under his control, however, and made it cover Eiro's right hand like a glove of sort, so that he could properly go for the sealing-arts aspect of what they were going to work on now.

Eiro had already remembered the physical aspect of everything completely, through Bavet's instructions, and as such was able to quickly get started.

"First, extract the sap out of the roots." The Demon muttered quietly. Luckily, through nature magic, Eiro was able to manipulate the roots themselves to easily extract the sap out of all of them. He then placed the roots to the side after extracting all water from them as well. They weren't needed now, but they were useful for other things.

Slowly but surely, Eiro mixed some of the different saps together. As he was doing that, he also worked on something else at the same time. And that was mixing together the venom from different snakes and spiders with the ground-up parts of specific dried herbs and flowers.

Overall, although Eiro only had two hands right now, it certainly felt like he had more. Especially to Solomon, who was simply watching everything happen at such a speed.

"A bit less of the bloodblossom, some more of the rabbit-snake venom." Bavet instructed as he kept an eye on the seal on Solomon's mind. Meanwhile, the water inside of the two different concoctions was evaporating and mixing inside of the same tube, before dripping down into a separate bottle.

"Good, now carefully make a hole in the inksac." Bavet said, and Eiro rolled his eyes in response, before the slime added something else, "The luminas one, not the redtear."

"What?" Eiro asked confused, "Why the luminas one first? I thought the basis was supposed to be the mix of redtear and opiopod ink?"

"Yeah, but I changed my mind... Just do it! We'll still be using both, the order just changed. And bring it up to 79° instead of 84° to make up for the change."

"Right, obviously.." Eiro replied with a bit of a sigh, as he continued on working on the concoction that was required to unseal not only Solomon's mind, but the minds of all the others that were affected as well.