DEMON'S VIRTUE

Eiro walked down into the new town that was being constructed. Numerous monsters were working all around him, with the ones that were doing the actual brunt of the work being the trolls and orcs. Although, the molemen did do a great job at supporting everyone and creating all the foundations that were needed. The speed at which they were working was actually impressive, especially compared to what Eiro had seen from construction sites in the capital.

Thinking that this was a good chance to help out a bit, Eiro brought out his mirror again. He looked into it, and soon, a dozen copies of himself appeared all around him. Having just three copies was weird, considering that all the experiences and senses were shared between them, but having a dozen sources of information like that was even more overwhelming. But luckily, since all the minds were able to think on their own, the dozen Eiros were able to get over it quite quickly.

Without him even needing to speak out a command to them, the original Eiro watched all the doubles spread out throughout the new town, ready to help out wherever they could. The Demon smiled lightly at the light glee that he felt when thinking about just how much he could get done with these. It did seem that overall, the doubles weren't nearly as powerful as Eiro. The greatest focus on the duplication of himself seemed to be placed on enabling them to think at the same mental capacity as himself. So while they would certainly be useful in battles, everything considered, their main use would be with Eiro finally being able to fulfill one of his long-term goals.. Whenever he had the time, he would flip through the books at either his own home's library, or the library at the Academy. During the time that his evolution was active, he had the time to at least do the former, even if he didn't have the time to fully comprehend each and every book yet.

But with the help of the doubles, which practically let him duplicate his conscience as well, he could get everything done even faster than he had planned. He could properly read everything in his mental library with dozens of doubles walking around in there, before strategically going through every single book in the Academy's library, which was very well a dozen times larger than the library at Eiro's home. It was the prospect that he was most excited about.

"Maybe I should try and find the whereabouts of the Librarian soon. Being able to read all of those books... that sounds like heaven." Eiro thought to himself, noticing that all the doubles were thinking about similar things at the same time. It was interesting. Even though one of them would know everything that the others were thinking about, effectively letting them think about a dozen things all at once, most things they thought about were usually sort of in tune with each other.

"M'Lord!" A familiar voice suddenly yelled out from near Eiro, as the leader of the trolls, Rashi, approached him with a broad smile on her face. She was running at him at full speed, with no intention of stopping in the slightest. Of course, Eiro simply pushed his hand forward, using magic to forcefully slow her down before she impacted with him, "Slow down. Is there an issue?"

"No! Of course not! I'm simply happy to see you again! You left before I could see you, last time!" She pointed out in troll-speech. Eiro was actually sort of annoyed at that, "Still not making any attempts at learning common, are you?"

"Urgh..." Rashi looked at the Demon with a wry smile, "...is that really necessary? It's so hard!"

Eiro rolled his eyes, "Listen, if I was able to learn it when I had single-digit intelligence, then you can learn it as well. So stop complaining, and just get to it."

"Yeah, but you-" Rashi said, before stopping upon hearing what Eiro just said, "Single-digit intelligence?"

Gobo let out a deep sigh, standing right behind Eiro, "Master is a monster created by the Monster King, just as you are. He started out at the very bottom, so of course he possessed single-digit intelligence at one point. But that makes him even more impressive, seeing where he got from nothing!" Gobo explained, nearly as if he was bragging about himself at the moment. He was speaking in an accented troll-speech. The Troll and Goblin languages were actually quite similar, so it wasn't tough for him how to learn it. But maybe just because of how similar they were, Gobo had a tough time fixing his quite heavy accent, even though he could speak common quite fluently, without much of a noticeable accent.

"Well, yeah, I know that, but how'd he learn a language that early..?" Rashi asked confused. Eiro rolled his eyes, "My soul used to be that of the Sage, so my base intelligence is quite high. The people that I met back then gave me a skill-boost to accelerate my language learning speed. It was luck, basically. But the only thing that was sped up was my learning speed, my base ability to learn wasn't affected. So while you might not proceed at my rate, you should be fine." Eiro explained, "If you need any help, ask Gobo for now. I'll start working on some dictionaries. Which might be a bit tough, since most monster languages are purely vocal, but I'll figure something out."

"That reminds me." Gobo said, "We started those common-language classes a few weeks ago, and they're doing alright, but... I think there are a lot of them that just aren't made for learning languages... Some can barely even speak their own race's language."

"...Right." Eiro replied, "In that case, focus on teaching that part of the monsters those respective languages. That way we can split things up as well. Focus more on the ones that show promise, and give more support to the ones that need it, since we can use other monsters to teach the monster languages." He suggested, something that Gobo immediately took in. However, since they were speaking in common just now, Rashi wasn't able to follow along with what was being said.

"Oi, you two talking about me?" She asked in an annoyed tone, and Eiro quickly turned toward her, "Learn common, and find out." He said bluntly, before soon turning around again. He had already sensed every corner of this town by now, so he knew the exact progress of what the town was like compared to before. There was not really much else that he wanted to check on. So instead, Eiro was now going to make his way back to the old town to see what was going to happen to the doubles as the distance between them increased.

Of course, Gobo once more followed closely behind him, and for some reason, Rashi followed as well, although she was supposed to be supervising the construction efforts. But considering that eleven of Eiro's doubles were there, it didn't really matter whether or not she was running around. It didn't seem like she actually did too much work, and instead was just lazing around the whole time. But for the most part, Eiro already gave up trying to correct her behaviour. No matter what he did, she wasn't listening to him. And when he started resorting to extreme violence in the face of the fact that she was a troll capable of regenerating nearly everything that he did to her... that method backfired. Rather than be put off by the injuries, she was starting to look forward to them. In general, most trolls seemed to have a weird relationship with pain.

And while not all of them took the sort of pleasure from it like Rashi did, they still felt a different kind that focused more on combat. They were creatures born for war, and the more they were attacked during combat, the more fired up they were going to become. Not out of anger, but out of excitement. So, since there didn't seem to be much he could do for now, since he still hadn't found much out about direct mind-control magic which he was currently researching and had no interest in seducing Rashi to make her do what he wanted, he just put her education off for now. She was still much easier to deal with than all the other trolls, after all.

Eiro walked up the steps leading to the tunnel that would bring him back to the old town, already taking notice of the changes that were happening in the doubles' bodies. It wasn't anything big, and Eiro wouldn't be able to notice it if he didn't share a consciousness with the doubles. Bit by bit, with every step that the original took away from the doubles, their strength was slowly fading away. Each step taking away more than the last. And not just that, their physical forms were slowly degrading as well. Not visually, but their bodies were weaker than before in every aspect. Wondering how far this would continue, one of the doubles shot up into the sky and flew into the distance, its body degrading more and more. Soon, the double could barely be recognized as Eiro himself, as its horns started melting away. Its wings soon weren't able to hold its weight anymore, and the double fell to the ground, dying upon impact.

Shivers went through Eiro's body as he experienced true death for the second time in his life. It was a truly uncomfortable feeling. But even then, knowing the limits of the doubles was useful in many ways.