Demon's Virtue

From the backlines, without lifting a single finger, Eiro watched Jess, James and Krog fight against masses of dog-sized spiders.

Of course, he was a bit busy making sure that Leon and Avalin didn't see anytihng that was going on, but Eiro still sensed everything that was going on around here nonetheless. Eiro thought about how exactly these three would fare against the masses of spiders inside of the place they turned into their nest.

After all, even if they were doing well right now, that was only the case because they had relatively much space to fight. The tightly-knit system of trees, rocks, and underground tunnels that was the spiders' nest had none of that. There would be monsters all around them from any possible direction, and they would need to fight their way through there according to Eiro's instructions if they wanted to get stronger. Each for their own reasons, of course.

Eiro crossed his arms and looked through the area. It didn't seem like there were too many spiders around at the moment, and the ones that were were simply scouts that didn't think they could survive attacking them. They would probably still do so at some point, but for now, this was a good chance.

"Update me." Eiro exclaimed toward them, and with breaths that showed that they were far more exhausted than they were when they first came here they slowly opened their statuses, and Eiro quickly got the update he asked for by looking into their eyes.

James had leveled up four times in total, and Jess and Krog three times. It was surprisingly quick, really. But this just showed just how little these guys had actually been concentrating on gaining strength. Money was probably their priority, so they took requests that brought them money even if it meant that they couldn't grow too much stronger with that method.

Eiro was a bit disappointed, but he figured it wasn't that unreasonable in the end. With a wave of his hand, the Demon started extracting the blood from the different types of spiders, "Gondos, Nelli, clean this up alright?" Eiro asked, and the two spirits quickly did as asked. Since they also knew that they could calm down for a little bit, the others inquired about something they were wondering about for the past few hours.

"Why do you..." Jess asked before trying to swallow with her dry mouth, "... collect all that blood? And then refine it?"

With a slight sigh, Eiro pointed at the flask at Jess' side, "Drink something first. You use chants while spellcasting, so don't let your mouth and throat dry up." The Demon said, and while Jess quickly did as told while Eiro started to explain, "And well, it's rather simple. Clean Monster blood is really useful. So Nelli and Gondos are removing any impurities in it so that I can use this blood to play around a little."

As Eiro explained this, he moved the bits of blood that Nelli and Gondos just finished to the orbs of blue blood of different shades and amounts above his body, "What do you mean you want to play around with it? As in like... Witchcraft offerings?" James asked with a light frown.

"Heh? Where did you get that from?" Eiro replied immediately, "Of course not. Sure, I'm trying to read up on witchcraft, but it's illegal everywhere I go so I can't find anything on it anywhere. No, what I mean is that monster blood is a good fodder for seeds."

"Seeds? What'd'ya mean?" Krog asked with a confused expression as he kept looking around to make sure they wouldn't be approached. Eiro wouldn't warn them right now anymore, after all.

After a bit of thought, Eiro just shrugged and explained, "I know that all you've seen me do is carve wood for practice, but you know that I'm not a carver, right? I'm a prosthetist, I learned that profession for years. Being a prosthetist doesn't just mean carving prosthetics, at least not to me and my teacher. It means imbuing a piece of wood with life. It's like the prosthetic becomes your child, so you care for it from the moment it is born to the moment you hand it off to another person. And of course, you make sure that the other person is a good fit for it as well." Eiro explained, but Krog still didn't fully understand, something that Eiro could tell immediately.

"Alright, then let me say it more clearly, sorry. The skills that I currently have in relation to my profession amount to three. Intermediate grade carving, as well as apprentice botany and zoology. My first goal is to bring botany and zoology to intermediate as well. I'm trying to achieve both at the same time. I take the lives of Monsters to learn more about them, and then take both that knowledge and their bodies to create new life in the form of my work." The Demon said, trying to be more clear this time around, "So, once I get my hands on the right seeds, I'm going to feed this blood to them to create the right trees. Then I will use the wood from those right trees for prosthetics." Eiro added, and finally, they all understood.

"Then what kind of seeds do you need?" James asked the demon, who thought about it for a few moments, "I'll tell you when I find it."

"Wait, you can't just use any? You need specific seeds, but don't even know if they exist?" Jess asked, and Eiro just looked at her with a light smile, "Technically, yes. But I'm pretty sure that seeds like the ones I'm looking for exist. And if not, then I'll improvise a bit." Eiro pointed out and then slowly turned his head over toward James, "And yes, it's the same with you. We need a specific seed to grow a tree that would be a good prosthetic for you. It has to align with your being, so it might take a while to find the perfect fit."

"Hm, I'm doing pretty well with this one though, don't you think? Why do I need a perfect fit?" James asked, and Eiro started lightly frowning, "Because I made the choice to help you, and I don't half-ass things. I'm going to make you a limb that even you can't distinguish from your arm back then. For you, I already have a rough idea of what might fit, but I don't know its in-depth scent because I didn't have this ability when I last saw it." The Demon explained, "So I'm just going to find that seed and see if it works for you. If it doesn't, I'll look for a new one until we have a match."

A bit surprised at Eiro's rather aggressive reaction, James raised his brows, "Listen, I just told you that even this arm is an amazing fit. Who knows, maybe Light Elves just have a good adaptability for this kinda thing. Either way, I'm just saying that you don't need to stress yourself out to make something unnecessarily 'perfect'. Just because you disagree doesn't mean you need to be such a bitch about it." James told Eiro with a deep frown, and the Demon stared back at him annoyedly.

He could feel that he was getting angrier and angrier, somehow. Maybe it was because of the lump of ambient mana inside of his body, but his anger was amplified many times more than normal.

Eiro wasn't entirely sure why that was happening, but he was convinced that it wasn't a good thing. Hopefully his body would really use that lump during his evolution like Eiro wanted, or else this would be pretty bothersome. Maybe he should just put all his extra stat points into willpower, because this was a bit too annoying. But before Eiro could actually do anything, his mouth moved and he spoke without properly thinking about it.

"James. For the next encounter, you're not allowed to fight with your daggers. Fight bare-handed. I know that you have the skill, it's the main way you used to fight back then." Eiro told James, more than just annoyed "Don't worry, I know the risk. I'll intervene if it gets too bad, but I want you to realize that your arm is anything but a good fit at the moment." The Demon said clearly, and James ground his teeth angrily as he stared back at him.

"Are you fucking with me? Do you want me dead or something? You want me to fight them with my fucking fi-"

"Quiet. Don't swear in front of the children." Eiro interrupted, and James just pushed the two daggers in his hands into their sheaths, "Fine. Just watch me. I'll show you that you're completely wrong." James said with a confident grin on his face. He turned around and started to continue walking, practically announcing that the short break was over.

With annoyed groans directed toward both James and Eiro, Krog and Jess followed behind the Light Elf and prepared for any sort of attack from the spiders. An attack they didn't have to wait for for long.

There were only few spiders this time, just three of them, but they were probably three times the size compared to all the spiders before.

"Huh, now, let's show him." James said with a grin and stormed ahead, while Krog quickly followed behind. Jess prepared to cast a spell while they were doing so, and soon, James just jumped straight onto the body of the first one.

He kicked its face right above its mandibles and just below its eyes, seemingly doing a fair bit of damage to it just like this. The spider squeezed its eyes closed while James proceeded to climb over its body onto its abdomen.

With a quick punch with his prosthetic, James hit directly onto the abdomen numerous times. It was rough and just seemed unpracticed. James probably didn't use hand-to-hand combat for years either, so it became just as rough as Eiro expected it to be. At some point, the large spider's abdomen cracked open and blue blood splattered onto James' wooden hand, something that he was lucky and skilled enough to avoid as much as possible until now.

But at the moment, it seemed like James didn't care. He just wanted to show off and show Eiro that he was wrong, while the demon was simply watching silently. After he broke through the exoskeleton, Krog came in and swung at the opening, cracking everything open further and just causing immense damage by directly attacking the internal organs.

Soon, this spider fell down dead. In the meantime, Jess had been casting spells on the other two spiders to keep them in check, and the flames had been doing fair amounts of damage to them. She extinguished those flames for one of them to let Krog and James attack, but without waiting even a moment, James jumped onto the smoking spider's body and repeated practically the same thing as before.

This time, the exoskeleton broke nearly instantly after damaged this much by the fire, so James hand travelled right through and ended up being covered in blood even more.

He practically ripped out the spider's organs and killed it, while Krog changed the direction of his attack and instead swung his heavy axes at the next spider and shattered its abdomen as well. After these three spiders were dead, James stood up triumphantly and stepped over to Eiro.

"See? It all worked out perfectly, right?" James asked smugly from afar, and Eiro slowly approached James. Without hesitation, he stared into James' face with an angry glare, "Get your shit together already? Worked out perfectly? Look at your arm."

Confused, James turned his head toward the prosthetic, seeing that it was covered completely in the blue blood.

"What, you're angry I got it dirty?"

"It's not the blood, you idiot. I mean the fact that you dislodged the joints of your index finger and didn't notice. And that you let hot blood slowly congeal around your elbow joint, which would end up clogging it up within maybe ten minutes. And most importantly, that you didn't treat it as a hand, but as a weapon."