DEMON'S VIRTUE

Eiro and the head warrior looked at each other for a while, as the Demon was waiting for the man in front of him to say anything at all. But before he could, someone else did it instead.

"What makes you think you should be allowed to stay the owner of those two cards? This was an attack targeting the hero. We are the ones that took most of the damage. We should be the ones to take ownership of them." A man pushed through the crowd. The Hero's father, with a determined expression. Eiro looked back at him with a slight smirk, "Sorry, but it's not happening. I won't give these cards to you." The Demon said bluntly, and the Hero's father glared back, "You will regret not-"

"I don't think I will." Eiro replied immediately, "If you want them at a later point, sure, I'll think about it. But what will you do with them right now? Giving these cards to a child like the hero is more than just a bad idea. But do you know what a good idea is? Letting me have them, so that I can grow in power and assist the hero in the war against the monster king.. The party fighting against the monster king will not have dozens of people in it. Rather, it will just be a small number of incredibly strong individuals. The hero is fated to become the strongest man in this world anyway, so having the strongest companions is natural, isn't it?" He explained, and the hero's father let out a deep sigh.

"We will speak about this another time, then. As long as you are loyal to us an our cause, then it matters not if the cards are in your hands. Rather, letting you have them for now might be useful... if, or when, the time comes that you do give us the cards, you can teach the hero how to use them properly." The man said bluntly, and Eiro smiled back at him, "Exactly, that's the right way to think about it. And believe me when I say, by the time the boy is strong enough, these cards will be in the hands of the hero."

Surprised to hear Eiro promise something like that, the Hero's father nodded his head, "Then for now, that is settled... we could not take them from you in the first place, even if we wanted to, could we?"

Eiro chuckled slightly and shook his head, "Of course, there's no chance."

---

Looking into the bright blue sky above him, Eiro let out a slight yawn. He was laying in the crow's nest of the ship that was going to bring them back to the mainland. Of course, a different ship and crew than the one that had brought them to Baram in the first place.

The first meeting of the champions was ended pre-maturely, and the moment that first recoveries had been made, the ones in charge of the event had immediately organized for any means of transport possible so that everyone could be brought back to their homes. Basically the moment that everyone had settled down, Eiro started having constant meetings in regard to the threat of possible further attacks, as well as the conditions for handing over the cards. Obviously, Eiro used his stance as the owner of the Knight of Pentacles, the absolute domain of truth, to get through those meetings more easily. Luckily, things like the domain of truth were hard to get a grasp of.

Once Eiro managed to convince them that it practically forcefully compelled him to tell the truth, the rest was a breeze. And that statement was the truth in itself as well, to an extent. It was just that, as someone who had spent his whole life suppressing his monstrosity and influence of the Monster King, and quite a long time trying to lock away the effect of the Devil's mark on top of that... something like being compelled to tell the truth was laughably easy.

But even then, Eiro does feel like he started telling the truth a lot more often. Maybe it did sort of make him want to explore the tactic of truthfully revealing part of his abilities to the champions, which was certainly a possibility. For now, it didn't matter though. In the end, Eiro was definitely going to break the promises he made the past few days. Most of them, at least. Eiro said quite a few things that were technically the truth to make others believe him more easily through the Knight of Pentacles' effect on others. Things like 'The hero will own those cards'. It technically wasn't a lie. After all, Eiro was going to become the hero himself at some point, so the hero certainly will own the cards.

Eiro lightly smiled, noticing that they were finally at a good spot in the middle of the ocean. He jumped off the crow's nest, and jumped over the side of the ship without anyone noticing, and just stood there on the water for a while, which he had frozen to turn into a platform of ice that he was making steady using magic, and waited for the ship to be far enough away.

After looking around and making sure that they was nothing else in the way either, Eiro pulled out one of his new cards. The Ace of Swords. He held the card, and quickly turned it into its true form, that large hammer.

He tightly held the handle, and pulled his arm backward, before glancing at the three spirits floating next to him, "Maybe you guys should back off behind me a bit. It might affect you three as well." He pointed out, as Sarius scoffed with a deep glare, "As if something like that could bother us! Just do it already, I wanna see this!" The Salamander exclaimed excitedly, and Eiro turned his head, looking at the other two as well. It seemed like they were thinking the exactly same thing as Sarius. They wanted to see the full power that Eiro could currently present with this weapon. It was a special one, after all.

The Mountain Breaker was a hard-to-control hammer that could exert an incredible amount of force. If you can't control the weapon properly, your whole body is going to be ripped apart the moment you try to swing it. But in return, when you do manage to use it... it exerts an incredible amount of power. There was a reason why the cards of the suit of swords were amongst the most sought-after. Their effects were usually quite clear and straight-forward like this, and more openly powerful than the effects of other suits' cards.

Eiro took a deep breath, spreading his wings just in case. First, he swung the hammer through the air slowly, so slow that it wouldn't even do damage if he hit someone at this speed, at least usually. But since Eiro was trying to properly use the hammer, it soon hit the air, as if it hit some sort of barrier. It was just a slight tap, but a gust of air was pushed out in front of Eiro. He could feel his muscles tensing up in response, as if he was just shocked from not using lighting magic properly, but it really didn't do much.

So, Eiro pulled the hammer back again, and this time swung it forward a bit faster, preparing for the feedback this time. Once more, Eiro hit the air. It wasn't a strong base attack this time either, but a shockwave appeared in front of Eiro that caused ripples in the water. Once more, his arm tensed up quite a bit, but Eiro expected it this time.

Now, Eiro swung the hammer a third time, once more a bit stronger than before. This time, the air seemed to crack and an explosive shotwave appeared in front of him, creating strong ripples in the water while pushing the ice platform backward, something that Eiro stopped with his wings and magic control.

"Hm... let's just assume the damage keeps rising in that pattern..." The Demon muttered. These first three attempts were just to figure out how much restraint Eiro needed to show, and how much he needed to concentrate, or how much damage he had to expect from using the hammer. Eiro could basically see the curve in his mind of how much the feedback was going to be depending on the damage output.

"Then... let's go with something I think I can handle a bit more..." Eiro muttered, and once more pulled his arm back. But this time, he really concentrated on the movement and the effect of the hammer. He had copied quite a few movements not only during the tournament, but during the champion meeting as well. His body had adjusted to the techniques that others used perfectly. One of the champions was actually someone that used a warhammer, so he was able to copy an expert's movements. And of course, he also copied the movements of the minotaur and the chimeras.

It didn't seem like it took any particular damage from using the hammer so freely, so it must have had an immense amount of control over it. Eiro slowly closed his eyes and combined the two techniques, trying to minimize the damage to himself while maximizing the damage output.

He swung the hammer forward, and hit a wall in the middle of the air. He could feel his body tensing up and his shoulder hurting, but a lot of the damage came from his weapon suddenly stopping completely mid-swing rather than the cost of using the weapon in itself.

But that wasn't important right now. Eiro's ears were overwhelmed as the explosive sound echoed out around him in the middle of the ocean. A shockwave was shot forward, and the ocean seemed to fold around this circular cone that was created through the impact with the air. It only stopped after about a dozen meters, and the water that had been pushed above this 'tunnel' quickly crashed down.

With a grin on his face, Eiro looked at his arm. It did sting a bit now that things settled down, but it really wasn't much for his standards. He just had to adjust to using this weapon properly over time. But somehow, Eiro didn't want to stop now. He split up his arms, and held the weapon with all four hands, even his freshly-repaired wooden hand.

Using his whole body for an all-out attack, Eiro swung the hammer. The moment that it impacted with that invisible wall, Eiro's whole body was pushed backward. It was like he himself was hit by the full impact of the hammer, or so he thought in the first moment.

By the time that Eiro recovered mid-air, he saw what had happened. It went on, practically all the way to the horizon. A huge tunnel that seemed to swallow up the ocean. The water folded up over the invisible cone. The fish and sea monsters swimming through the water, both above and below the Demon. The mist of water that was left within this tunnel glimmered in the light of the sun that was clearly visible through the center of this tunnel of water.

It was an image that Eiro ingrained in his mind immediately. Even though his wooden hand once more shattered into pieces, and his skin along all his arms cracked and ripped open, and even his bones developed thin cracks that would cause them to shatter into dust if Eiro did this same thing again... Eiro found this sight absolutely beautiful.

The Demon watched as the water crashed onto itself again, creating a loud noise that sounded even more impactful than the initial hit from the hammer. He wouldn't be able to bring out this sort of power in the middle of battle, but... even if he couldn't do that, with this hammer, Eiro was sure that his battle power went up immensely.