Demon's Virtue

"Hmm, Spirits give quite a lot of experience, huh?" Eiro muttered to himself quietly, and Nelli just groaned in response and looked at the demon as if it was obvious, "Of course, we spirits are special, you know? And usually it wouldn't be this easy to kill a spirit, but... these guys are idiots, apparently." She pointed out, and Eiro immediately nodded his head and pushed his hand forward to grab an item out of his treasury, the spark-snapper, and then placed it onto his fingers.

"Oh, definitely." The Demon replied, "Then let's indulge a little, shall we?" Eiro suggested, and then just casually snapped his fingers to create some small sparks that immediately spiked up into proper flames that Eiro used to wrap the bodies of the leftover spirits that were too slow to properly react.

And of course, Eiro didn't just try to heat up their bodies with his flames, an action that would keep draining their mana more and more, but he also kept going in to slash at them with his two daggers. It was a little awkward to figure out the proper tactic to wielding two of them at once, but his body was soon just able to react on its own basically.

[You have leveled up!]

[You have leveled up!]

[You have leveled up!]

The notifications kept popping up as Eiro continued managing to kill most of the rest of the spirits, even if one of them was seemingly especially evasive. Eiro tried hunting it down as quickly as possible while evading the people that lived in this town as they were staring at the demon in horror.

It didn't really seem like the spirit would be able to reach the lake as soon as it was probably hoping to, since Eiro could already start seeing the notifications that he was causing actual damage to it in front of his eyes.

Eiro's dagger was just about to stab through its body one last time, when the demon just completely tensed up. It was as if he was suddenly hit by some petrifying attack, something that forced him to stand still.

But in reality, it was just that Eiro picked up a tiny bit of a scent. A scent that somehow now made Eiro so disgusted that he was unable to keep his body from physically reacting to how bad it reeked. It was worse than anything that could and would rot, anything that Eiro usually couldn't stand to be around. And this was many, many times worse. Although, it probably wasn't that bad, it was just the smell of a 'regular' person.

It was just that exactly that smell made something boil up in Eiro. It was something that he really hadn't ever experienced before. Wait... no, that was wrong. He actually experienced it many times before, there was just a rather big difference now.

As Eiro's chest starting practically burning and ripping up, he could spot the last naiad diving into the lake while Eiro saw a large tower of flames spark up in the distance on the other side of the body of water.

And that was just when he realized what scent made him so... angry.

He was starting to hear whispers in his ears although he didn't actually find the source of where exactly those whispers came from. Where they even really there? Was Eiro imagining them? Was someone here? What was Eiro doing here? Why was he... Why was he... why was he...

[The Mark of Wrath is speaking to you. It's telling you to get rid of the source of your anger]

"Source of... my anger..?" Eiro muttered thoughtlessly as he looked at the notification, completely ignoring the sound of Nelli trying to make him snap out of it while guards were approaching the Demon.

But Eiro could only do one thing right now. His whole mind, his whole being was occupied trying to figure out what the source of his anger was.

And then, it simply clicked as one of the guards approached Eiro, thinking that his 'Rampage' was over and he gave up. The guard's weapon was lowered so that he could properly apprehend Eiro.

But the very next moment, the guard instead found a sharp pain in his chest as the Demon stabbed his dagger through the thin cloth acting as the guard's 'protection' at the moment.

"Ah, I know... I'm angry because I'm weaker than him... because someone stronger than me was trying to take everything away again..." Eiro said as a quiet chuckle took over his whole body and a broad grin covered half of his face, "Can you help me with that..." The demon started as he slowly turned toward the guard that was just standing there with completely mad eyes that penetrated the guard's self despite them being hidden by Eiro's mask. It was like their whole existence terrified him. And that just grew more when Eiro finished his sentence, "...my little bag of experience?"

The next moment, before anyone else knew it, Eiro pushed the dagger inside of the guard's chest further inside until it basically got stuck inbetween the crack of the guard's bones after Eiro pierced through them into his heart.

Eiro naturally let go and held his hand in front of the guard's face before proceeding to just snap. The spark-snapper that was still strapped into his fingers caused a spark to appear that was immediately sparked up into large flames that practically devoured the guard's face. And when his body slowly dropped to the ground, the smell of burnt hair and the sound of boiling blood and ripping skin filling the air, Eiro set his sight on a notification.

And this one was rather weird. The box itself was blood-red, so much that Eiro for a moment was unsure if it wasn't just some actual splattered blood, but he was soon pulled out of that thought when the royal-blue writing started sticking out to him.

[The Mark of Wrath has set you into a state of bloodlust. Until this state subsides, you will start losing health if you don't cause enough damage to others]

[Bloodlust will cause all your stats and basic damage to increase considerably, but the damage you receive will increase similarly. The longer you are in a state of bloodlust, the higher the negative effects on your own body will be]

In the end, while Eiro read through these notifications a couple of times, he didn't really register it. Sure, there was a deep pain in the center of his body, and yes he did feel it, but at the same time he didn't. It was like he knew it was there and how painful it was, but it was simply... numb. Beside the heat that felt like Eiro was about to burn up, there really wasn't any pain.

Eiro looked down at his body to make sure he didn't really somehow take any damage to his actual body, but since he was fine, he just kept looking around, even if he felt that something rather annoying was obstructing him right now.

With one hand on his mask, and the other on his cloak, Eiro just pulled both off of him and placed them into his treasury at the same time while unwrapping his tail from around his waist, "Much better..." The Demon muttered quietly and started pulling off his glove from his left hand while getting rid of his shoes as well. He just somehow felt like he didn't need them.

And he even let go of his satchel for a while, even if he simply strapped it onto the bag that Lugo was carrying on his body for a moment. The next moment, while the heat in his body increased, Eiro stepped up to the body of the guard he just killed and pushed one of his feet onto his chest to pull the dagger out properly.

With a satisfied, crazed expression, Eiro looked around as a small card appeared in his hands before the card disappeared in a bright light and Eiro was suddenly wearing two rings on his left hand and two on his right hand.

The ring around his left hand's index finger was connected to the blade of Eiro's newer hollow dagger, while the ring around his right hand's index finger was connected to his regular dagger. And as Eiro started looking around the guards of this small town, all of which were just completely overwhelmed by such a situation, the Demon showed his teeth in a mad grin.

This town was usually rather peaceful, actually. Especially because of the fact that there were so many spirits living in this lake, although that number had now dwindled a fair amount, not that many monsters approached this town anyway, so the guards were both inexperienced and low-leveled. Sure, at least they received some basic training and managed to level up a little bit through that, but the majority of these people was never in a real fight before. And now there was suddenly this blood-crazed demon standing in front of them? There was no way they would be able to instantly put up a good fight against Eiro.

And without saying anything else, the Demon just started. He took one step forward and the water that used to make up the bodies of the naiads that Eiro killed gathered around him and started to bubble up while it floated above him.

That boiling, highly magical water then immediately flew toward the three guards standing in front of Eiro. He tried his best to keep the water boiling while it was being pushed into guards' bodies, of course, just because that would cause more damage than ice for now.

But the moment that he managed to push through their skin, Eiro started freezing the water up inside of the guards' bodies and had the ice spread through their whole being. Finally a few of the guards actually ran up to Eiro to kill him, but the demon was one step ahead of them. He already jumped toward those guards and started pushing the three of blades into two of the guards' bodies and jumped directly onto the third, and last, of this group of guards with his feet forward.

The moment that his feet had a solid base on this guard's chest, since he was the heaviest of them all, Eiro just kicked off backward while making his blades swing upward. And as two heads were flying through the air, the Demon easily caught himself and used the next moment to jump toward the first of the three guards who he was trying to kill slowly with the naiads' bodies, while Nelli was just there watching for a while to let Eiro do his thing.

And the 'thing' that this demon was going for right now was utter slaughter. He moved two two rings from his right hand to his left and made the threads wrap around his fingers so that he had basically four literal dagger-sharp claws that he used to rip into the face of one of the guards while pushing his other hand to pull the ice out of the guard's body.

He was already dead, and Eiro just ripped right across the guard's face one more time just because he felt like it and slowly started truly being swallowed up by his bloodlust at that point.