DEMON'S VIRTUE

Once they finally got back to the champion-village, the group sat down in the gathering area, where plenty of tables and seats were set up. Here, Eiro was going to work on the prosthetics for that little monkey. Overall, it was a lot simpler, just because of the small size of the monkey.

"For you, let's go with... some Limas." Eiro muttered as he moved his hand to the side, once more pulling the box out of his treasury. He opened the central section and pulled some wood out of it, once more splitting off a good section of the wood, although it was of course much smaller than before. And after grabbing a buch more of his tools, Eiro quickly got to work again.

It really didn't take as long this time, although Eiro had to make three different more complex prosthetics. But due to the size, Eiro was able to quickly carve this light wood with a slight orange tint to it into the pieces that he needed.

The main issue this time was the scorched flesh of the monkey's body. It penetrated quite deep, so Eiro had to be a bit more careful if he wanted to properly help him. The transmigrator set the monkey down on the table in front of Eiro, and the Demon immediately got to work. Considering the area of the body that Eiro had to work on, this time, he anesthetised the monkey completely so that it was asleep. That would make things a lot simpler to deal with, especially considering the frail nature of this small beast.

The first thing that Eiro did was remove the scorched sections of the monkey's body. The arm and leg couldn't be saved anymore, as the monkey's body had been in this state for too long for even high grade healing magic to do anything at all. Luckily the scorching didn't go to any fatal areas, and only consumed a little bit of flesh on the monkey's body, so Eiro could replace it quite easily with his prosthetics, although about a third of the monkey's body would then be made of wood.

Eiro used magic to stop the bleeding, making the blood flow in a healthy way around the wounds, and then quickly attached the base parts to the monkey's body. Now, it had a complete torso again, but was still missing its limbs. This was the easy part, though. Since he now just had to attach the prosthetics to the wood part that he already fused with the monkey's flesh, he could simply build off of that, and construct everything quite quickly. And after letting the monkey's life force flow through the prosthetics, Eiro carefully flipped its body over and started to work on the tail. Eiro quickly created a cleaner section that he could attach the new tail to. If he remembered correctly, then the tail of this sort of monkey was quite long. It was a monster in the end, after all. It was about two meters long, a fact that even the transmigrator didn't seem aware of.

"It's supposed to be that long?"

"Mhm, it is." Eiro quickly replied, "The tail is actually quite tough as well, to the point where it's harvested just for that trait because people believe that you can create a potion that increases one's resistance stats permanently. It's ridiculous of course, but it's probably what happened with him. I'm guessing you found them in the same place?"

"Yeah... he was in that camp as well..." The transmigrator replied with a bitter expression. Eiro sighed, quite annoyed. The fact that they used both that huge bear and this little monkey for the same sort of fights was even weirder to him.

Eiro let out a deep sigh, and quickly started to put the tail together, first fusing the base with the rest of the tail that was leftover, the one inch away from its base, and then piece by piece added the different sections, making sure that it was going to be agile enough to be moved around like the monkey's true tail. Of course, it naturally just wouldn't be as agile, being a prosthetic, but Eiro tried his best to make sure that it was at least close.

And then, he added the last piece, and slowly pulled the monkey's life force into the prosthetic tail. With a slight smile, Eiro slowly placed two of his fingers onto the monkey's chest, and started to slowly pull out the anesthetics to slowly wake the small beast up. Eiro slowly leaned back and just waited, tapping his fingers onto his arm. Just a minute or so later, the monkey seemed to be waking up. It was struggling a lot more than the bear, just from how much of its body had been replaced. It had gotten used to moving in a specific way, or rather, not moving around too much at all.

Slowly, Eiro pushed down the monkey's body so that it was forced to stand on its new leg, and soon it realized that it was able to move normally again. Its prosthetic tail was waving around wildly, and was even hitting the monkey itself, but it didn't take long until it remembered how to move such a limb around.

The Demon smiled lightly as the monkey was getting more and more used to its new limbs, before he turned toward the transmigrator, "Alright, my work's done. It's going to take them a while to really get used to it, though. And again, if there is some major damage to these prosthetics, just try and contact me somehow, and we can figure something out. Of course, if you happen to come across any other beast that needs my help, the same applies." Slowly, Eiro stood up and started to clean everything up, storing the material and tool box inside of his treasury again.

Most of the people that came to watch Eiro work had gone away, and the ones that did stay were Biril and the three transmigrators. And from a bit of a distance, the little hero was watching what was going on as well, curiously staring at the monkey whose body was now partially made of wood.

"So you truly are a 'prosthetist', as you say. That is truly intriguing... so after this is all over, will you choose that as your class?" Biril asked, and Eiro looked back at him for a moment, and slightly looked away, "If I get the chance to, sure."

"Eiro." The beast tamer said, looking at the Demon and locking eyes with him, "After what you just did... What we talked about before... I will join you." He said in a clear voice, and Eiro just smiled.

"Great, but let's talk about it sometime else. We have some freetime, so I would like to spend it with my kids."

"Hol' up, you've got kids?" The beast tamer asked surprised, and Eiro immediately nodded, "Yes, I do. Why, does it seem surprising to you?" He replied, and the transmigrator slowly scratched the back of his head, "I mean, kinda. You look pretty young to me. How old are they?"

"Four of them are 16, the other two are eight. Well, there's another kid with us that's part of our family. He's 19 now." Eiro explained, although the transmigrators seemed rather surprised. The archer looked at Eiro curiously, "Erm... are you... not human? Do you age differently?"

Eiro smiled lightly, "Well, I won't answer that question. But what I can say is that they're adopted. They're not related to each other either."

"Huh..." She replied quietly, as Eiro started making his way over toward where the kids seemed to be right now. Although, there did seem to be a bit of trouble going on over there. Annoying trouble that Eiro thought he had already dealt with.

"Kid. You're a Goliath, ain't ya?" Tin looked at Rudy, towering over him with crossed arms.

"Erm... yeah, I am... and so are you, right?" Rudy replied, for the first time seeing a full-blooded Goliath. Of course, he spent plenty of time around Krog, but he was only a half-goliath. This one, on the other hand, seemed to have truly grown up in the Goliath Clan, judging from his appearance.

"I am. But-" Tin started, although he soon felt a crushing pressure covering his body. He turned around, and saw Eiro slowly approaching. Able to tell that Eiro clearly wasn't happy, the Goliath immediately shook his head, "Wait, wait, you're wrong, I'm not trying to bully him or anythin'. Just... trying to figure somethin' out."

"And what is it that you're trying to figure out?" Eiro asked, and the Goliath slightly frowned while looking at Rudy, "I was just gonna talk to this kid. Cause you know, you might've been right. No need to judge 'im too early, right? But now... this kid ain't even got a birthmark. But just look at 'im, he's definitely a goliath."

"...I just wasn't given one, alright?" Rudy replied with a frown, as Leon slowly tugged on his shirt, "What's a birthmark?"

"It's something that shows that he belongs to a specific Goliath family. It's given the moment that a child is born. Even that half-breed had one." Tin said with a frown, clearly talking about Krog, "If you've been born to two goliaths, there's no way they wouldn't have given you a mark. It's not like it proves you're a goliath itself. It proves that you're the kid of yer parents."

"Well, good that I didn't get one. Because those guys aren't my family. The only family I have is right here." Rudy said angrily, angrier than Eiro's seen him in quite a while, "But it don't make sense. You're a fuckin' goliath, you should have a mark!"

"Tin, what did I tell you? Shut it, and leave my kid alone, alright? And if you swear in front of them one more time, I'll make sure you can never swear again." Eiro said with a frown, pushing Tin away from his kids. Seeing that things wouldn't go his way for now, Tin turned around and left with a loud groan, before Rudy spoke.

"Dad... shouldn't I just..? You know..?" Rudy said, and Eiro turned around immediately, "What? Are you sure?"

"I... We have thought about it for a while. You said we can choose it ourselves... And with you as our dad, it won't seem weird, and nobody is going to try weird stuff, knowing who you are, especially once you're promoted in Skyhart."

"Do you think now is the best time for that?"

"Well, we figured now is the best time, really." Arc pointed out, "You know, with all those super powerful people around? It's not like we're all that impressive. Well, Sammy and Clem are, but Rudy and I, our abilities are kinda meh compared to that, when push comes to shove."

"Yeah, and... you'll help us out when it comes to it, right?" Clementine added, "But.... I think we do all want to reveal our unique skills."