DEMON'S VIRTUE

With a satisfied expression, Eiro sat in one of the armchairs in the hidden library of his manor. He was sitting here while he went into his mental library, properly reading through all of the books that he had remembered but not truly taken in yet.

For a while, he thought that he would have to do all of this alone, but now, he had finally managed to do duplicate something more abstract than his physical body. He had duplicated his mind, allowing multiple of himself to appear in the mental library. In total, Eiro managed to create two dozen minds that were all just reading these books intensely. But that seemed to be the limit as well. At some point, while creating more doubles, Eiro could feel himself grow utterly overwhelmed by the amount of information flowing into his mind. When creating actual doubles, this started happening at just a dozen, but with these mental doubles, which all existed only in the realm of what Eiro technically already knew, he could double that number to two dozen. But even then, Eiro had to be here in the mental library as well, or else he wasn't sure if he could truly stay in control of the mirror of duplication.

So now, while doing this, he simply picked out a comfortable spot and entered a sort of meditative state, while the mental doubles, and himself of course, were doing their job. Due to the sheer amount of minds, and the sped-up time in the mental library, it barely took any time at all to be able to truly comprehend all the books that were here in the library.

So, now that this was done, they could focus on some rather big tasks. Increasing their understanding of different languages.

About a quarter of the doubles were in charge of continuing Eiro's understanding of the ancient language, while the rest were all working on learning Aquarian. As the Eiro that was currently in the elemental plane of water started flipping through those books, another section had opened up in the library, directly different to the others. It had a wide and large arched gate. There was no door in front of it. Instead, a vertical wall of water stood in front of anyone that wanted to enter it, as this new section was reminiscent of the elemental plane of water itself. The whole section was filled with water, and the moment that one of the mental doubles stepped inside, their body would turn into the form that Eiro took on when infusing himself with water magic. This whole place was just Eiro's mind, so something like that could happen in an instant.

And slowly but surely, that library was filling up with the books that the water-elemental Eiro was looking over. Currently, all of the doubles in charge of learning aquarian were sitting at a large circular table in this new section, trying to take notes in empty versions of these shell-books about what the different symbols could potentially mean. Some of them were figured out a bit faster than others, simply due to how often they appeared, but for others there were simply too large gaps in knowledge to be able to figure them out. But there were plenty of people that Eiro could just ask if he wanted to know what a word meant.

This whole ordeal took quite a while, and whenever a new book came in, things became busier and the note-based dictionaries were continuing to expand further and further. The original Eiro was just glad that the fire-elemental Eiro hadn't reached a town yet, otherwise, this same thing would happen there.

Obviously, it would take a while to be able to analyse this language, but at the very least he didn't have to deal with the fact that the language seemed to be designed to be forgotten, like what was the case with the ancient language. And there were plenty of texts to reference as well.

The largest hurdle, however, was to figure out how each word was actively pronounced. For that, the water-elemental Eiro would have to spend some time in the busy parts of town and listen in to as many conversations happening in Aquarian as possible. The doubles would then take all that information, combine it with the things that Nelli was going to teach him, and then complete the comprehensive dictionary of the Aquarian language.

Luckily, this was a quite peaceful place, and people seemed to simply enjoy each other's company even if they had never met before then, so he could work without too many distractions.

A few hours later, when the water-elemental Eiro had barely gone through half of the books, the original Eiro chose to take a bit of a break. He made all but three of the doubles disappear from his mental library, and had them simply continue their work. With that few of them, the demon could function without any trouble in the slightest.

For now, Eiro had to meet with someone else. He had flown by earlier to see if he could talk to him then, but he was busy with something that he didn't feel like interrupting. It was a meeting between him and some of his advisers and some high-class nobles. Even Eiro wasn't senseless enough to pull Solomon out of something like that.

But now, he should just be sitting in his study, doing paperwork. It was pretty late, and since Leon and Avalin should be asleep by now, it was the best time to go. Giving Solomon a little bit of a break didn't seem like a bad idea either.

The Demon jumped off from the balcony, and shot away from the manor straight into the direction of the faint glow given off by the royal castle in the distance. It didn't take long until he was there either, quickly landing on the castle's balcony.

"Surprise visit." Eiro said with a smile, pushing open the door. Solomon shot around startled until he saw who it was, "Eiro... seriously, announce yourself a bit earlier, will you?" The King asked with a wry smile, turning his head to look at the Demon, who soon made his way over to the couches, taking a quick seat while pulling his wings into his back.

Solomon stood up and sat down in front of him, "I heard about what happened."

"...It was quite a mess." Eiro said, "But I took care of it. And, I brought two new cards with me."

"I heard about that as well, and you made a deal with the hero and his caretakers to give them to him at some point." Solomon added with a frown, "I'm glad you're trying to figure things out, I really am, but you basically already sold the cards to them. They're theirs. They own a part of you now, Eiro."

"Meh, not directly." Eiro said, grinning, "The exact wordings of the contract were that the cards will be in possession of the hero by a specific point in the future. And that wasn't a lie. They will be. Just that it won't be that kid, but me instead."

Solomon smiled lightly, "It feels sort of weird to be part of your ploy to trick the hope of all people."

"Hey, I'm working on getting rid of the need for that kind of hope, they should thank me when the time comes. I'm going to cause actual change in this world." Eiro pointed out, "The least those guys can do is leave a few artifacts to me."

"...Speaking of. You're going to be searching for more cards, right? It's just... some of them are in the possession of other countries. They're in the possession of kings. And since inevitably, you will end up encountering those that won't give them to you willingly... please think about what will happen if you were to hurt people in power, or even just look at them the wrong way. They will obviously think that another country stole the card. You might cause wars." Solomon explained, "Hell, if I had a card and someone suddenly came in here and stole it from me, I might end up starting a war, and I despise war."

"Don't worry, Solomon. I'm not going to be doing anything to cause wars, trust me. I don't want that either, it just doesn't help anyone. However, I do need the cards. I need whatever I can get to be able to beat the Monster King. He's... he's strong. He's really, really strong. So much more powerful than I ever thought possible... Without the cards, and the power they give me, I'm not sure if I can win against the monster king and all the tools he has by his side."

Solomon let out a deep sigh, nervous when just thinking about this fact, "Don't you... think that he's going to attack soon? What if he tries to attack before the hero can mature and fight him?"

"Hah, I doubt it. Solomon. He killed both the former monster king and the hero that was meant to take him out, and that was before he became monster king himself. That was half a century ago. A normal hero has no chance against him anymore, that's the whole reason why... I exist. He brought everything into disarray, he destroyed the balance. That's why I was given that splinter. The Sage was greedy. He wanted more and more of anything he could get his hands on. That's why he was chosen. He was supposed to be given the power to do so. I'm sure that the Monster King is aware of that. He helped me clean out my mana. He's trying to make me stronger. The Monster King wants a fight with me, and he's not going to interrupt me while I'm growing stronger so that I can do just that, before I grew sufficiently. Don't worry. He won't attack."