DEMON'S VIRTUE

Chapter 619: Stomach

Eiro’s body had changed. Its form was no longer the way that it had been just a day ago. It was to the extent where he was a little worried that it might affect the shape of his soul, but luckily, the magic that caused it had something akin to a safeguard to this. He was sitting in the infusion-chamber in the attic and was busily infusing himself with flesh magic. For the first few hours, he could only feel his body quivering as the magic flowed through him, and then as if a coin had been thrown to signal the start of a race, his physical body practically blew up in mass. His flesh was out of control, and filled this room to the brim. Random masses of meat were growing on any surface they could, and Eiro was actually starting to get worried that the walls might be damaged by the constant pressure his body was putting on them.

Not only that, but in the first moment that his body had grown in mass like this, multiple bones in his body had been broken. Luckily, he had been able to force them back into place before the flesh magic forced the parts away from each other, which was something that really could cause permanent damage if he wasn’t careful. But right now, Eiro was just trying to keep infusing himself with this magic and not spend any time worrying about his physical body right now. If he managed to acquire this magic for himself by growing his affinity further, then he could undo all these changes nearly immediately anyway.

And, as if the system had been listening to Eiro’s thoughts, a message appeared in front of him. Of course, he wasn’t able to see anything, since his eyes were covered in flaps of his own meat, but he knew the information that was given to him instantly in that moment anyway.

—

[Congratulations! You have learned the skill {Beginner Flesh Magic Mastery}]

[The skill {Beginner Flesh Magic Mastery} has been integrated into the Superior Skill {Elemental Magic Mastery}]

—

Eiro flexed his muscles for a moment as he let his new magic flow through his physical body. Like earlier, his flesh quivered, but this time it wasn’t because it wanted to explode outward. Instead, step by step, the large and numerous growths of flesh all over his body were starting to compress down to the point where Eiro was at least able to move again. With ease, he split the masses off from his body and manipulated the wriggling mass until it reached its limit of compression. Of course, since he was manipulating something like flesh, there was a limit to how he could compress it, but still, he was able to press the mass that had filled up the entirety of this room into something about twice the size of Eiro’s head.

The Demon looked at his arms and chest, watching his skin naturally heal itself from the damage he had undergone just now. Slowly, Eiro placed his hand onto the mass of flesh in front of him, fusing one of his cards, the Three of Swords, with the claws on his prosthetic. Like this, Eiro ripped a chunk off flesh off the mass. It was sort of satisfying to do it this way instead of just funneling it down his throat like he worried he might have to do later on. That’s right, Eiro was planning on eating the meat that came from his own body in order to complete one of the changes to his own body.

He ripped into the flesh with his teeth and devoured the flesh as if he was a starving pig forcing its feed into its body. Eiro did this until he wasn’t able to eat any more. It was to the point where anything else he ate would be stacked on top of each other right in his throat. But even so, Eiro continued. He even tried to mix his stomach acids with some necromantic magic to make the flesh break down quicker, even if it was by rotting it, but he had to continue eating it, so that he was able to do a very specific thing. And soon, he could tell that he was starting to achieve his goal.

—

[Congratulations! The skill {Beginner Overeating} has leveled up!]

—

It was a skill that Eiro had earned quite early on in his life, but one that he hadn’t made use of since a week after he first got it, simply because he didn’t need to. Or rather, because he didn’t want to. Back then, he got it because he was force-feeding himself the strips of meat in his bag, but after that, he was trying to take care of his training as well as his kids under Jura’s guidance. He was learning that you should pace yourself as he was starting to become a bit more civilized.

However, not too long ago, he had learned an important new fact. Although, it might be more correct to describe it as an obscure trivia fact.

“You’re doing what right now?” James asked with a wry smile, looking at Eiro’s duplicate outside in the garden. They were all currently taking a break from training and took a seat inside one of the pavilions.

“Well, it’s not ‘me’ directly, but rather the original version of me. Whatever the case, he’s eating a few hundred pounds of his own flesh, since he finally managed to acquire flesh magic,” the duplicate demon explained quite casually, before Krog turned toward him with an even more confused expression than James’, “And why are you doing that..? Wait, you’re not trying out some new method of bulking up mass to increase musculature, right? Because I heard that you’ve gotta eat a lot for that, and I really-”

“No, no, don’t worry, you won’t be doing this. There’s absolutely no reason for you to. But actually, how about I pass off this question to you, Jess? You should know why I’m doing this, even without me telling you,” Eiro pointed out, and the young mage looked back slightly surprised, “Huh? Me?”

“Yeah, of course. Go on, rattle your brain and show us that your continuous training is paying off as well.”

Jess slowly averted her eyes and stared down at the table in front of them. She started to think as if her life depended on it, while Eiro curiously watched. Really, there was only one reason for Eiro to do this right now, but it was so obscure that it wasn’t something that you could simply guess. Rather, Krog’s idea was something more realistic than what the Demon was actually doing right now. So, being aware that this was something that normal people wouldn’t be able to simply guess, boarded a different train of thought.

Eiro said that she should know this, meaning that he knew for sure that Jess had read something about this before. At the same time, Eiro had already pointed out many times that he was trying to attain flesh magic in order to modify his body in a lot of different ways. And soon, as if all the pieces of the puzzle fell together in one fell swoop, Jess had an epiphany.

“You want to enlarge your stomach,” Jess said bluntly, and the duplicate of Eiro quickly grinned, “That’s right.”

“Wait, what? Why would you need to do that? Do you want to enter an eating competition?” Krog asked immediately, but Eiro once more just glanced at Jess, waiting for her to explain everything. Quickly, she got out her bag.

“Okay, so… Let’s take this bag. It’s made of leather, and put together by a craftsman out of the hide of an animal, right?” Jess pointed out, and quickly continued, “But in the past, they didn’t do that. So that they could store water or food in a way that they could carry it more easily, they would use animals’ innards for this, including the stomach, of course,” she explained, slowly glancing over at Eiro, who was just watching with a smile, giving her the confidence that she was on the right track. Relieved, she moved on with her explanation.

“So, at some point, two things coincided. There was a culture that had strong agricultural skills by making use of magic, and at the same time, had a large cattle population, even larger than the amount of people they had. So, since they often ended up with too much in terms of grains or crops, they started to feed them to the cattle that were supposed to be slaughtered, so that they could make the most out of the situation and add more meat to their diet. And since they wanted to make use of every part of the cattle’s bodies, the stomachs were turned into just those sorts of bags,” Jess explained, and slowly, James looked at Eiro, trying to understand, “So you want to turn your stomach into a bag.”

“Sort of. But shush, let her finish the explanation,” Eiro sighed, and Jess smirked, “Anyway, it just so happened that the people of this culture were a clan of barbarians and warriors, and their cattle were monster bulls, even if just barely. It still meant that they had access to the system, and since they were force-fed so much feed, they learned the overeating skill. That continued and continued, until at some point, they noticed something. Even though the bags were the same size, they ended up being much heavier than others. And then, they measured, and the bags made of the stomachs of force-fed cattle held more water than that of others. The space within their stomachs was somehow expanded through the overeating skill. And well, that was how the first spatial bags came to be.”

“Wait, what?! Spatial bags are made from monter stomachs?” Krog practically yelped out, but Eiro simply shook his head, “Of course not. Spatial bags are made by artificers these days, using principles of spatial magic to artificially increase the space within the bags. It’s just that they were inspired by these proto-spatial bags,” the demon explained, “But yeah, you’re completely right, Jess. I’m trying to increase the space within my stomach by raising my overeating skill as much as possible.”

“And why would you want to do that?” James asked curiously, while Krog was just a little weirded out, “I mean, I get that it’s an interesting topic and all, but is there any reason for you to do that? Is it particularly useful?”

Eiro leaned back, “I have three main reasons. One, my treasury ability. Even now, it can still only hold as much as my body’s physical volume allows. I’m sort of curious whether this ‘volume’ will increase if the space in my stomach increases as well,” the Demon replied, “It would simply allow me to store more things, and more importantly, bigger things, and that’s always useful.”

“Right… that makes sense. What’s the second reason?”

With a smirk, the demon explained, “The original’s body will be going through a lot of changes soon. And, if everything works out, those changes are going to include sub-spaces inside of his body that can be used to store as many different venoms as possible. Right now, it’s nearly impossible to to properly make use of my stinger, because I don’t have enough venom for the sort of enemies I’m fighting. It’s just not worth it if I can just blast them away with magic. However, if I have the chance to develop a large array of different venoms, I might be able to make use of this part of my body. I don’t have any need for things that I don’t use. So, it’s either this, or I’m going to get rid of my stinger altogether and replace it with a stronger physical weapon.”

“Yeah, and that would suck. Your stinger is actually hella cool,” Krog pointed out, looking at the demon’s tail as it was wrapped around Eiro’s waist. With a slight chuckle, Eiro nodded, “That’s part of why I would prefer not having to get rid of it. But yeah, I don’t have the space to store that many different venoms in my body right now, so I will be increasing the amount my stomach can hold, and then take part of my stomach and turn it into compartments within me to make up for that lack of space. And then, there’s the third, and maybe most important reason. For me, the easiest way to make use of my absorption ability is through eating. And I want to be able to absorb as much as I can, as fast as I can, so having a stronger and larger stomach is the best way to achieve that.”