DEMON'S VIRTUE

The Captain looked at Armodeus after the Elder Dwarf's announcement, saying that he wouldn't be doing any work on this ship. Yesterday, Eiro had tried to insinuate that Armodeus would work on the ship a little bit as long as the captain allowed Eiro to use magic to speed the trip up a bit. But a lot of things happened after that, which would make this basically impossible.

"I'd like to remind ya that we're the only way for you to reach your destination." The captain said with a light glare, and Armodeus couldn't help himself but laugh out loud in response, "Hah, trying to threaten us now, are ya? If ya dropped us on an abandoned island with no tools, we'd still be at Baram earlier than you, you hear? The only reason we're even taking this ship is 'cause Eiro wanted us all to relax on this trip."

The captain immediately turned his head and looked at Eiro, who simply smiled back at him in the middle of eating his food. A moment later, he looked back at Armodeus, "I'll pay ya whatever you want."

"You can't afford my services." Armodeus chuckled, and the captain glared back at him at this point.

"I see that the only possibility for this would be that I allow that man to use magic to meddle with my ship. If that is the case, then-"

"Oh come on man, what kind of dumbass are you?" Arc let out with a wry smile after just swallowing his food, and Eiro quickly glared at him, "Language."

"Right, sorry, but come on. This dude never even did any research on who he was transporting? Guy, my dad is literally one of the most powerful and versatile mages alive. As far as I know, second only to Koperia, who's also sitting right there." Arc pointed out, "If he's asking you to use magic to make stuff easier for all of us. What, you don't like arriving a few hours ahead of time?"

The captain turned his head and looked at Arc instead, "I will not allow such disrespect toward me on my shi-"

"Just everyone, be quiet for a few moments please, alright?" Eiro said, annoyed at what was happening right now. He was hoping to be able to scout a talented captain to hire in the future, for when Eiro was going to travel to other continents for research or training. And what better candidate would there be but the captain hired by Baram, the country housing the current hero?

He tried to test his cooperation with Eiro's methods, but the captain took his own pride and position as more important than something that benefitted everyone else on the ship. The captain had some sort of negative feelings toward magic, but when it benefitted himself, he would accept it, as can be seen by his request to Armodeus to have the ship upgraded just like the carriage, which was done mostly through the use of magic-based materials. Either that, or he simply didn't know enough about magic, and just held prejudice toward what he thought it to be, which was even worse.

The way he handled and treated his crew was abyssmal, and he chose a person with a completely horrendous personality as his right hand man, and didn't even attempt to correct his behaviour, which brought Eiro to believe that he had similar feelings to him.

Eiro crossed his arms in thought, as the captain was losing his patience again, "Oi, who-"

"Silence." Eiro said, putting as much pressure into his words as he could. He fused his charisma with his aura, and changed the pattern of his aura to be as aggressive as possible. Immediately, the captain's eyes dilated and his heart-rate sped up.

"Get back to work, and leave us be until we're at our destination. Understood?" Eiro asked, locking eyes with the captain. If he treated him like this, then he might be able to re-train this guy to become useful, but the way things were going, it seemed a lot easier to just not mind him and use a monster from the monster town and train him to be a good captain. Maybe one of the fish monsters in the lake could be helped to evolve into a form that let them live on land. That seemed like a good plan for now. This was why it was easier to deal with monsters than people.

The scared captain immediately rushed out of the room, and the crewmembers that had never seen him like that before just stared at Eiro in confusion. Luckily, it seemed to have scared all of them off from even thinking about trying anything in regard to Sammy and Clementine, since they knew that Eiro was going to retaliate immediately.

For now, the group returned to eating their breakfast, and then later on split up so that everyone could do their own thing, although everyone was mostly gathered on the deck of the ship, since it was most fun there. They were going to reach the ocean soon as well.

Not long after breakfast, Eiro was pulled to the side by Armodeus, "Lass, I was right in denying him, wasn't I? I'm not sure if ya were planning anythin' with that man, but..."

"No, don't worry, you're fine. I was kind of planning something, but he lost any sort of privilege to allow that. On our way back, let's make sure we find a better ship, captain and crew than this one." Eiro replied with a light smile on his face to reassure Armodeus. The Elder Dwarf slowly nodded his head, and walked over to the edge of the ship with Eiro, as the two continued speaking for a while.

"Are you alright, by the way? You're holding up a lot better than I thought you would."

"Yeah... being up here with all the fresh air helps, at least." Armodeus replied with a wry smile, "I did throw up a few times yesterday though. But it feels like I'm getting used to this."

"...You know we didn't even enter the ocean yet, right." Eiro pointed out with a wry smile, and Armodeus quickly nodded his head, "Yeah, so?"

"Right now we're following the flow of the river's water. But soon, we're going to be in an ocean where the water is a lot wilder than this. It's just going to get worse." He explained, and Armodeus looked to the side as his face went pale, "Is... is that so?"

---

A few hours later, the ship finally left the river, and was now on the wide open ocean. It was the first time that Eiro saw something like this. It was truly incredible, the way that the water stretched out far beyond the horizon. It was even greater than the world lake, since everything just felt different.

The smell and taste of salt in the air, the creatures swimming in the water underneath them, it was all so different from what Eiro had seen before. It was really quite beautiful. Out of Eiro's children, the only one that had seen a real ocean before seemed to have been Arc, although it was seemingly not one of this world.

Everyone else simply looked at the ocean spreading out in front of them in awe and excitement. Avalin did seem a little bit scared for a few moments while the waves were especially strong, but for the most part, she was having fun as well.

Felix seemed to want to try and ingrain everything that he was seeing into his mind as much as possible, and he was slightly moving his fingers around along the wooden railings in motions similar to when he was painting.

Eiro was glad that they were all enjoying this trip as much as Eiro hoped they would. And they didn't even reach Baram yet, where Eiro was reassured they would be able to relax quite a bit while Eiro was off and meeting the other winners of the tournaments all over the continent.

It didn't take long for the first island of Baram to come into view, although it seemed like that wasn't actually where they were going to stop. Soon, they were travelling inbetween the islands, so there wasn't that 'infinite' view of water anymore, but it was still quite an amazing sight. Culturally, this country seemed quite different to what Eiro was used to, from the bits and pieces that Eiro was seeing along the coastlines.

Soon, Eiro could hear the sound of a larger city, as they approached the harbor. From what Eiro could tell, this was apparently the central trading city of Baram, since there was a huge amount of ships from different countries here. People were buying and selling herbs and spices from all over the world, as well as certain types of food or metals that were hard to acquire here.

Night had only just come, but the streets of the city were extremely bright and colorful, as if nobody was planning on heading to sleep anytime soon.

Soon, the ship came to a halt, and everyone slowly made their way off the ship. Immediately, Armodeus felt relieved, and squatted down onto the ground while taking some deep breaths. Even Lugo was looking at him with a light smirk while passing by him, since he was able to pass the time by just sleeping the whole two days. Lugo was really amazingly lazy.

The group's guide soon stepped in front of the group and looked at them with a smile, "I officially welcome you to the country of Baram. We will take a break for the night at a nearby Inn, and then we will begin our travel to our final destination.. It is not too far away, but it will still take a day by carriage to get there."