DEMON'S VIRTUE

Eiro watched as Solomon's carriage left again, before he slowly turned around and went back inside. Bavet split off of him and instead slithered over the ground in his snake form, "What were you two talking about earlier?" The Slime asked, and Eiro slowly turned toward him with a shrug as he pulled his mask and cloak out of his treasury, just dropping them onto his body.

"I'll explain it to you later. I just need to clear my head for a while. Maybe do a little hunting. You remember how to do the 'signal' thing, right?" The Demon asked as he spread his wings out, making them peak out from under the cloak. Bavet slowly opened his mouth, changing something within his throat, before letting out an incredibly high-pitched sound that immediately made Eiro's ears ring.

"A simple 'yes' would have sufficed... If something happens, just call me with that and I'll be right back. I'll be nearby." Eiro pointed out, and Bavet slowly nodded, "Alright... Do you need me to do anything while you're gone? I mean, I can tell you're not doing too well yourself..."

"I'm fine." The Demon replied bluntly, "I just feel like killing something."

---

With a single crack accompanied by a yelp, the wolf in front of Eiro dropped to the ground. Its body was still flinching here and there, but its death had been confirmed anyway. The Demon had received the experience from killing this being. He let out a deep sigh, wiping the blood and small bits of gray matter off his dagger.

When the wolf was dead, Eiro turned toward the other wolves that were still around him, who were all growling at him, "I killed your strongest, but you still want to fight?" He asked, and slowly pressed his foot into the ground. Pebbles started floating up as Eiro picked them up with a smooth motion, and released them even quicker than he picked them up. With a flick of his wrist, he threw the pebbles toward the wolves, using earth magic to speed them up even more, and watched as the pebbles easily penetrated the wolves' eyes. The pebbles, not strong enough to crack the skulls themselves, moved in through the hole in the eyesockets and bounced around inside of the wolves' skulls, turning their brains into nothing but mush.

Within a few moments, all the wolves around Eiro had dropped to the ground dead, and Eiro was even closer to his next level up.

"This should be fine for now..." The Demon muttered quietly to himself. These wolf-type monsters had suddenly increased in number and were disturbing the forest-life way too much, so there turned out to be a few requests to take them out at the guild. Just so that he had some kind of direction, Eiro picked those requests up and figured he would go through with them. Now Eiro just had to harvest something from the wolves. The things with the most worth were the fangs, claws, and hide, but Eiro was too bothered to skin the wolves right now, so he simply pulled the fangs and claws, and left the rest for other monsters to feed on.

"Now, just four more requests." Eiro whispered, as he moved through the forest in front of him quickly. Supposedly, someone spotted a wyvern around here. If that was true, then that was really an issue that had to be taken care of. Wyverns were powerful monsters, and it was possible that its arrival was the thing that caused the imbalance in the forest. The area it was spotted in was in the territory of the monsters that those wolves clashed with the most, automatically decreasing the numbers of either sight.

Now, the wyvern will probably have killed those monsters for food while scaring the wolves, who possessed strong instincts, to run further away, causing their numbers to increase beyond control on top of them being in areas where they were able to feed a lot more easily, since there were only weaker animals and monsters around.

This caused trouble all over the forest, just because there was a single extraordinarily strong monster around. The issue was that for now, he didn't manage to find said monster directly, but he did find some traces that a large monster came through here. Thick, flattened and cracked branches, deep cuts on the trees that clearly came from claws. Eiro spread his perception outward and quickly tried to follow these traces through the forest, and soon found something that seemed to be what he was looking for.

With a few flaps of his wings, Eiro rushed through the forest, soon reaching what could only be the wyvern's nest. It was a structure that Eiro had actually seen from above before, a patch of trees that was tightly intertwined. They basically created a huge wooden nest on their own. A large creature had forced its way through two of the trees to create a proper entrance into this spherical structure.

Eiro slowly stepped inside, and what he saw in front of him were five wyvern eggs. They were the size of a person's head, and just laying there out in the open. But the issue was... that they weren't fertilized. They were 'dead', or rather, they was never a trace of life within them in the first place. But even so, they were protected by soft beds of leaves, and they had clearly been warmed up a good bit. They were slowly starting to cool down, though.

And the Demon didn't know why he did this, there was quite literally no reason for him to do so. But the wyvern was nowhere around here, so when it came back, the eggs would just be stone-cold. Eiro knew that monsters like this were smart enough to at least realize what they had to do to their eggs, otherwise they wouldn't have been warmed up like this. And if the wyvern returned to stone-cold eggs... what sort of reaction would it have.

With a slight wave of his hand, around started to just so slightly heat up the air around the eggs, to warm them back up to a safe level. The Demon just sat there, for a few hours, trying to keep the eggs warm. It went so far that he thought the wyvern had possibly just died already, or it had abandoned this nest when it realized that its eggs wouldn't ever hatch.

But then, just when Eiro was about to give up, he heard something approach. It was the sound of wind slightly hissing underneath a large creature's wings. The wyvern was finally returning. The Demon pressed himself against the wall, dropping right into the shadows. A few moments later, the wyvern climbed back into the nest, but the scent and taste of iron filled the air. The wyvern had been fighting something.

As if with the last of its strength, the wyvern climbed onto its eggs. And then, Eiro saw something even more surprising. The wings of the wyvern were utterly ripped up. Whoever attacked it wanted to make sure that it couldn't fly anymore, but probably by using some form of air magic, it was able to make up for the damage at least until it returned. Parts of the wings were destroyed to irreparable levels, and a form of venom seemed to be flowing through its blood. From the entry-wound, it was most likely a poisoned arrow of sorts.

And in the distance, Eiro was able to hear footsteps approach. The Demon moved through the shadows of the forest to see who it was that was approaching this wyvern's nest. It was a group of bandits, it seemed. There were plenty of outlaws here in the area... and they held bounties comparable to monsters. So if Eiro were to kill these guys, he would really just do everyone around here a favor. The large group of bandits approached the nest, and got ready to attack after tracking the creature all the way here.

The first one that tried approaching them was a guy holding... a bomb of sorts. Something they clearly wanted to use to finish the wyvern off all at once, or at least force it back out of the nest. The bandit prepared to throw the bomb into the nest, but Eiro made sure that it wouldn't happen.

He didn't know why, but he wanted to defend that wyvern, at least for a little while. So, he simply used ice magic to make the bandit's hand so cold that his skin froze to the rusty metal used to build the bomb.

It stuck to his hand, and the bandit had no idea what was going on. It tried to throw the bomb again and again, and then even tried to rip it away from his hand, but it was too late. Eiro used Arcane Magic to construct a small barrier around said bandit, one that would contain the explosion and any noise that accompanied it.

And then, the moment the barrier had been finished, the small bomb blew up. The blast filled out the barrier, crushing and ripping apart the body of the bandit. This all happened within at most ten seconds, so none of the others had the chance to realize what exactly was happening. And they really didn't know what was going on when a creature made of nothing but shadows climbed out of the ground, spreading large dark wings outward.

Eiro stared back at the bandits that seemed ready to yell out in confusion and anger, but the Demon simply placed his finger in front of his mouth, "Be quiet.... she's resting."