Demon's Virtue

Without a moment's hesitation, James, Jess and Krog took on their combat stances after seeing the mass amount of Goblins in front of them.

"What's going on here?" James asked immediately, and Eiro just stepped further into the village, "That's exactly what I want to know..." Eiro muttered, albeit for a pretty different reason to the others. He wasn't confused about the mass amount of monsters, but instead about the fact that they seemingly gave out all the magic stones to the Goblins themselves, instead of gathering them for Eiro.

"Put your weapons away." Eiro said, "We came here to meet these Goblins, but to think they're fucking around like this..." The Demon stepped along the path followed by the others and then slowly took his mask off while removing his tail from his hips.

All the Goblins were gathered in some kind of central area of the town, and Eiro slowly turned around, "Stay here." He told them, and then stepped right into the crowd of distracted goblins. At first, the goblins that noticed Eiro growled at him, ready to attack, but the moment they remembered who he was, they jumped to the side in fear.

Currently, Erio was walking up to Gobo, the Hobgoblin that ruled this village before Eiro first got here. He was enjoying having others 'offer' magic stones to him. So of course, Eiro figured he should give him a little bit of that pleasure as well. Eiro ripped the magic stones one of the other goblins was carrying out of its hands and stepped closer toward Gobo, whose sight was focused on the magic stones in his hands.

And then, Eiro slowly reached forward and added another magic stone to the mix, with his pale blue wooden hand, "Here you go. You like these a lot, don't you?" The Demon asked with a calm voice, and Gobo's whole body froze up immediately.

"Hm? You don't have anything to say?" Eiro asked, "I thought you'd at least know how to say 'Thanks'." While hearing these words, Gobo raised his head and looked directly at Eiro, "M-Master, back! Gobo get shinies. Master shinies!"

"Oh? So you're saying that you got these for me? That's why you were gathering them?" The Demon asked, and Gobo quickly nodded while his whole body was shaking in fear at the sight of Eiro's figure, "Shinies for Master!" He exclaimed, and Eiro looked at Gobo while grasping his light brown skin tightly, "Good. Then stand up and show me what you got for me." Eiro told him, and Gobo's fearful expression became a smile as he jumped up and placed all the magic stones in his hands onto the ground, while Eiro took a seat where Gobo was sitting until now.

What Gobo showed him was a real, proper haul. Numerous yellow Earth Magic Stones, the occasional dark green Nature Magic Stone, and even a handful red Flame Magic Stones. And inbetween the small mounds of magic stones was one more that Eiro thought to be quite interesting. It was a small purple crystal, obviously also a magic stone, but Eiro didn't know what exactly it was for. He would take a look at that later.

"I'll take the green ones and the small purple one. You can keep the rest for yourselves." Eiro said, and Gobo looked at him with a broad smile, "Gobo keep shinies?"

"Some of them, yes. Just the red and yellow ones. Bring all the others to me, alright? Ah, and now that you did bring them to me..." Eiro muttered while pushing his hand into his satchel, grabbing a small pouch filled with a couple different magic stones that he had. They were small, and didn't have much magic left in them, but they were most likely still a good gift for Gobo.

There were things like Water and Wind magic stones, and even light, holy energy, or darkness magic stones in there. The moment that Gobo looked at them, he seemed to understand what they were as well.

"Shinies! New shinies!" Gobo yelled out before starting to dance happily with the new magic stones in his hands, all the whilst Lugo with Avalin and Leon on his back, as well as Jess, James and Krog, also got closer to EIro.

"Eiro, what's going on? Where did all those magic stones come from?" Jess asked with a deep frown, and Eiro just smirked back at her, "This is a magic stone mine, what else? And these guys are all mountain goblins, and a couple mountain hobgoblins. I took this place over a little while ago and made them mine magic stones for me."

"Holy gods, seriously... You'll be rich if you can sell these!" Krog exclaimed, his loud voice even making some of the goblins flinch, and Eiro just started to laugh, "I won't sell them, of course. I have a much better use for them." The Demon said as he quickly picked up all the magic stones that were now his own. He wouldn't use them right here, of course, but he just quickly put them away into his satchel for later.

"We're going to stay in this area for a while. As I said to the slime, we'll train them into behaving properly, teach them the Common language as well as manners. Make sure they can actually use tools and maybe even weapons for those that don't have a talent for mining. And at the same time, we will use this place for training. Since we're in the wild, there are many different, quite strong monsters around here that are perfect to have you guys level up some."

Nervously, Jess grabbed the overhanging cloth of her robes and pulled it over her chest a bit, "B-But that means... We'll be sleeping in a village of Goblins..?"

"Don't worry. They're a variant race of Goblin, Mountain Goblins. They're smarter, less aggressive, and don't have as strong a libido. I'll be here to protect you." Eiro said reassuredly. Jess slowly nodded her head, although she obviously was still quite nervous about this.

"But wait, what if you end up evolving again? You said you fell unconscious during your evolution once, what if it happens again?"

"It is possible, but I highly doubt it. And should something like that happen... we have a bit of a secret weapon." Eiro pointed out and slowly smiled at Leon. But it seemed like through this short conversation, Gobo remembered something.

"Evo... looshun..." He muttered in thought, and then slowly turned around to look through the crowd of goblins, "Looshun!" Gobo yelled out and pointed at a group of a couple different Goblins, who Eiro had already paid a little more attention to himself.

They were goblins who managed to evolve, most likely by killing the monsters that these goblins here were feasting on. And to Eiro's surprise, none of them turned into Hobgoblins, instead, they turned into different Mountain Goblin subraces.

Eiro had them open their statuses and then copied the content he saw in their eyes onto some paper before having Gobo translate it for him. In total, four of them evolved. Three of them became Mountain Goblin Miners, while one of them became a Mountain Goblin Swordsman. It seemed like the latter of those was the one that actually did most of the fighting amongst these Goblins.

"Bring them here." Eiro told Gobo, who immediately jumped up and dragged the four recently-evolved goblins over toward Eiro, something that was pretty easy for this bulky Mountain Hobgoblin.

"Gobo, give each of them one of each magic stone... sorry, shiny. And explain to the goblins that it was because they evolved." The Demon said, and quickly watched the Hobgoblin follow his command without any hesitation. With a satisfied expression, Eiro stood up.

"Good job, Gobo." Eiro said with a grin on his face, "You can keep celebrating if you want to. We'll find a place to stay for the next while." With that announcement, Eiro stepped away and toward the others that were part of his group.

With a nudge of his head, he told them to follow him before guiding them toward the very back of the village, right where the carved rock-slab was. The one that Gondos had made use of to find his name and mature.

Right behind it, Eiro remembered a small cave being, even if the only entrance to it was a thin slit too small for anyone to fit through. Eiro should be able to open it up and turn it into a place to stay, though.

"Seriously, why exactly are we here? We're not going to just kill these Goblins to level up?" Krog asked, and Eiro immediately shook his head, "No, you're not. Those guys are mine, and I still have plans for them. As I said, we're going to use this place to help you level up and get stronger. For one, you will simply hunt monsters around here. This area is full of them, and the ressources here are pretty important as well."

"Yeah, we get that, but why did we have to come here for that? We could have just done it near the town." James pointed out, saying exactly what Krog and Jess were thinking.

"The monsters as close to the town as that are too weak to be of any use to you. We'll be fighting other monsters, monsters that are supposed to be a fair bit stronger than you stat-wise. Also, I figured it would be easier to motivate you guys here." Eiro pointed out as he pushed his fingers into the slit in the rock-wall to properly use his earth magic on it to open the entrance up enough for them to step through.

"What do you mean?" Jess asked. With a slight sigh, Eiro pushed the three of them to the side, "Stand here." Eiro said, and then quickly used some air magic to get rid of the worst of the dust, bugs, and things like cobwebs that were inside of this small cave before Eiro stepped inside.

He placed his palm onto the carved piece of rock right next to him on the wall in here and pushed his mana into it, causing numerous runes to light up all around here before activating light magic stones placed at the roof of the cave.

"Well, I'll be teaching the Goblins some things too. I thought it would be a good way to make you try and learn everything more quickly. After all, it would be embarrassing if you lost to goblins, right?" Eiro laughed, although right now, the three of them were looking around this room and at the furniture placed in here. Someone lived in here, and he was a capable enough magician to create such magical arrays.

"Ah, right. Well, this place here is another reason why I wanted to keep this place. The fact that it's a magic stone mine isn't the only interesting thing here."