DEMON'S VIRTUE

"Is everyone ready to go?" Eiro asked, looking at the people around him, "If you change your mind about wanting to leave the island mid-trip, you won't be able to get off until we reach our destination." The Demon explained to them, and everyone slowly nodded their heads, ready to come with Eiro to wherever he wanted to go.

Until now, Eiro had never even told them specifically where they would go, just that they would go somewhere where they can live in safety. He quickly turned around and left the room, looking at his party as he did so, "Sorry to ask you to do this again, but please stay here and kind of watch everyone, make sure that nothing happens here."

"Of course, it's not like we can really do anything else anyway, can we?" James pointed out, and Eiro shrugged, "You could do plenty of stuff, like try to rebuild the city or something, I don't know."

"Rebuild a city with what, a couple dozen people and a handful of monsters that won't try to kill us?" Jess asked with a laugh, "I don't think that's gonna happen anytime soon."

"Yeah, we'll need to figure out what to exactly use this island for before that." Eiro explained, something that seemed to surprise the three people around him. James looked at Eiro with a wry smile, "You don't know what you want to do with the island yet? Then why are we even taking it?"

"...Because I don't want the Holy Empire to have it? And also, it's 100% going to come in useful at some point, so don't judge me..."

"I forgot how petty you can be sometimes..."

"Yeah, that's on you." Eiro said bluntly, as he walked out of the room. The moment he left, he flapped his wings to shoot himself forward through the castle's hallways, so that he could reach the underground levels more quickly. Soon, Eiro found himself in the large crystal cave, and stepped up to the central area that he would connect one of his spells to. First, Eiro quickly constructed the spell in question, placing it over the magic circle carved into the crystal floor. And then, he activated all the magic circles that he had a connection to currently. That meant this one right in front of him, as well as the four magic circles placed around the bridges. He could feel the shockwaves from the explosions through the ground and the crystals, which was immediately followed by the feeling of his weight very suddenly increasing instantaneously.

Due to the loss of the restraint in the form of the bridges, the island practically shot upward for a moment. Not by much, but it was probably enough to make a few people upstairs fall over because they weren't prepared for it. But before anything else happened, Eiro's connection to this 'control' based magic circle was established. And right at that moment, Eiro sat down within its center and spread out his perception as much as he possibly could, trying to make sure that he could sense every part of the island to make sure that nothing was wrong with it.

If the island tilted just a little bit, then Eiro would manipulate the gravity and change this fact, balancing it out. Although, this was something that this huge crystal structure did on its own to an extent. It was just that the sudden release of the bridges caused a slight imbalance in the island for a short moment that Eiro had to make sure to correct as quickly as he could. And once that correction happened, this huge cave's magical array did that job on its own, letting Eiro focus on the rest.

The first thing he did was slow down the speed at which the island was rising into the sky. It was basically what he wanted to do anyway. That way, Jess would actually have the chance to adjust the air in the room with all those people. Since the air pressure would change quite a bit on the path upward to above the clouds, Eiro left Jess with a spell that would help counteract this more easily, especically for the particularly young children.

As far as Eiro knew, just chewing on something or making yourself yawn woud help relieve some of the pressure that would build up, but that wasn't something that everyone could do right now, so Jess would try to keep the current air pressure in that room for a while, and then slowly let go of her control and influence in a controlled way to allow everyone to gradually adjust to the pressure difference.

Soon, the island rose up further and further into the sky as the bridges shattered apart upon hitting the surface of the water below. He already apologized for this fact to the Lord of the Lake as well as the Lonely Naiad beforehand, so that they wouldn't be too mad for their home to be filled with so much trash.

It took a while until they reached the right height, and Eiro slowly stopped making the island ascend further. Instead, he tried to influence the gravity to make it slightly move forward, all the whilst keeping this specific height. They were above the clouds now, after all. At the same time, Eiro could now get rid of part of the special barrier that was covering this island underneath. He could get rid of the aspect that was supposed to hide the island through the Ace of Cups' influence. Instead, he would just focus on the cloud-gathering aspect to make this island seem like any other cloud.

Once Eiro had finished everything that he wanted to, he slowly got up and took a deep breath. The island was now slowly moving toward Skyhart. Well, 'slow' was relative. They would get there in at most a day, probably. But it was much slower than the island could move. The main reason why Eiro didn't make it go any faster was just so that the buildings weren't ripped apart due to the violent winds that would be created through it.

Even now, the wind would probably be rather strong, so much so that Eiro didn't want anyone to really go outside right now in case something did happen. He made sure to prepare a place for the leftover harpies to stay during all of this as well, since they were the ones most influenced by it.

And so, Eiro made his way out of this cave while making sure that everything was fine with the island. The connection between him and the island's personal gravity would keep being a thing for now. He just had to go back every couple of hours to strengthen that connection, at least for now.

If he just wanted it to stand in place, then he probably wouldn't even need that connection. This magical array down there was perfectly constructed to allow the island to keep up such a stationary position. The people that controlled this island before just didn't know how to make use of all this properly. Which did make sense to an extent, considering that most of the aspects that would allow one to interpret the magic array were written in the Ancient Language, something that most being couldn't really learn that easily.

Either way, for now, Eiro made his way outside to see the state of everything a bit more easily, and to feel the actual strength of the wind on his skin. It was really quite a lot. Enough to make Eiro glad that he wasn't wearing a cloak that much anymore, but not enough to really cause too much damage to anything beyond plants.

So now that this was established, Eiro made his way back to the place where everyone else was currently waiting, so that he could help Jess regulate the air pressure here in this room.

"Wait, are you already done?" Krog asked surprised, and Eiro shrugged a bit, "Not 'done', but we're on our way to Skyhart."

"Skyhart?" Someone suddenly said, surprised to hear the name of that country, "We're going to Skyhart?" This young woman slowly stood up from where she sat, and although she was clearly incredibly thin and weak, and one of the people that were still more scared of Eiro than they were thankful, she approached the Demon bravely.

"We are. I'm close to Solomon Sigurd Skyhart, the king." Eiro explained, and the woman looked back at him as tears filled her eyes. Eiro was confused, unsure what was really happening right now, before this woman slowly explained why exactly she was so moved at hearing all this.

"I-... My name is Maria Rosalina Skyhart..." She explained, and Eiro opened his eyes wide, as the others also realized what exactly was going on. And Eiro knew that she was telling the truth, and with a smile, he looked at her, "I'm happy to meet you, then.. I guess now I know that Solomon won't be too mad at me for stealing a whole island from another country. Who can be mad when someone they long thought to be dead returns, especially when they're your sister?"