Demon's Virtue

The sound of pale, wooden knuckles knocking on a door echoed through the silent hallways of the manor, quickly followed by something that cut through that silence.

"Yo, Eiro. Come out here already, you lazy asshole." James yelled out, standing in front of the room that Eiro had basically locked himself up in for the past two weeks. Just a few moments later, the door opened up without either James, Jess or Krog being able to hear any sort of footsteps before it happened.

But that eery detailed disappeared from the group's mind rather quickly when they saw Eiro standing in front of them. They couldn't see a major way in which he had changed, but he indubitably did. For one, instead of just having two colors for his horns, Eiro had five.

The two pairs of horns that were intertwined with each other until now had untwined, and more pairs grew, one pair for each color. Dark blue, pale blue, red, yellow, and green. In the order of the strength of Eiro's affinity with each of those elements, they were slowly losing size, with the largest one currently being the dark blue horn for water magic, presumably.

While the horns weren't spiraling together into one large horn on each side of Eiro's head, they were still somewhat intertwined with each other, but in a seemingly chaotic way. But that wasn't all, the shape of Eiro's face had changed just so slightly in minor ways. His nose wasn't just as stuby, his eyes seemed sharper, and he had a generally more angular face.

He seemed to have grown a little more, albeit not by much, and stood now at roughly 1.9 meters, just two or three fingers' widths taller than before. The patterns on Eiro's chest had spread out to now cover his whole body, and the only place they didn't reach was the upper half of Eiro's neck, so his face was completely free. The blue areas of his arms had spread up to his shoulders and groin area respectively.

But that wasn't really all that stuck out at the moment, especially once Eiro slowly turned around and stepped deeper into the room with steps that were almost silent. The demon now had two large bat-like wings on his back. Their base color was red, but even they had the blue patterns from Eiro's chest on them. Right now they were folded up and pressed against Eiro's back, but they were just so slightly twitching around, so everyone was able to see what exactly they would look like roughly when unfolded. They would definitely have an immense reach to them.

It was pretty much unnoticable compared to that huge change to Eiro's body, but it seemed like the demon's tail also changed. It was slightly thicker than before, and tip had changed into something like a scorpion's stinger. All of this just made Eiro look even more dangerous and demonic.

"It's time already?" Eiro asked. His voice became slightly deeper, albeit not by much. You would still recognize it to be him immediately.

Slowly pulled out of her trance-like state as she was staring at Eiro's new form, Jess nodded her head, "Y-Yeah, the Solstice is tomorrow, so we're here to pick you up like you asked us to. Just... erm, how're you going to hide those?" The young woman asked, pointing at Eiro's wings, and the demon lightly shrugged as he rubbed his eyes a bit.

"Because of how thin they are, as long as I infuse them with magic, I should be able to press them against my back. I'll do the same with my horns, they're just way too big for my regular hood now. I was thinking air magic, but it would be bothersome if they blew away my cloak, so I'll just deal with it using shadow magic stones for now. Or I'll get some kind of special ability to hide them once my evolution is complete." Eiro suggested, "It's just going to take another hour, so go ahead and sit down."

"You perfectly timed it, huh?" Krog asked with a laugh as he sat down on the couch placed against the wall, and Eiro just slightly shrugged, "I guess so. It was a bit of a coincidence, really." Eiro pointed out before flipping open one of his books and continuing to read it. It was quiet for a while, until James couldn't handle the awkwardness anymore.

"Alright, could you actually tell us why the fuck you locked yourself up like that?" He asked, and Eiro slowly raised his head, "Right, sorry. I'm kind of out of it at the moment. But for one, I simply spent the last two weeks infusing myself with magic out of magic stones as much as I can. I actually used up all of the nature and light magic stones and the majority of my shadow magic stones. And beside that... I was really, really pissed off back then. I didn't really get out of my rage until two days later. If any of you had been talking to me, I might have injured, or even killed you. And I didn't want that." Eiro explained.

"I really didn't leave this room as you noticed, but I still asked Rudy to bring me some food every once in a while. He did a great job, really." The demon pointed out, and Krog immediately added, "Fuck yeah, the kid's a genius chef!"

"I hope you told him that as well. He's always happy to be praised for his work. Who isn't?" Eiro quietly laughed as he returned back to his book, just to be interrupted by James again, "But was that really all? You could've at least left your room after your rage died down."

Eiro thought about it for a while before simply nodding his head, "True, I definitely could have. But I figured I should spend these two weeks training in any way possible. You heard it two weeks ago, my body was taking itself apart just to put itself back together. I used that fact and used my 'Memory of a Scholar' to train my techniques and moves as much as I could. And I did go out a handful of times, in the middle of the night, when I wanted to train freerunning. Basically, I tried to increase my leg strength by sprinting to town and back a couple of times. It helped my stamina as well, obviously."

"Eiro, you're insane..." Jess said with a wry smile, quietly laughing as she was doing so, and the demon in question simply shrugged, "Probably, but it was worth it. My muscles are definitely more defined and strengthened compared to how they used to be. I'll test the difference out once my evolution is properly over." Eiro explained.

After staring at Eiro for a while, Krog grumbled loudly. The demon turned his head toward him with a light frown, "Krog, even I don't understand you right now, could you speak up?" He asked, and Krog just stared back with a loud groan.

"I said that I'm kinda jealous of ya. You can super easily increase the strength of yer muscles in just two fuckin' weeks. I had to work for years to get these mountains." The heavy warrior exclaimed, pulling up his sleeve and flexing his actually impressive and superhuman arm.

Eiro slowly stepped up toward Krog and pressed his palm onto the center of Krog's chest, "Want me to show you what my training was like?" The Demon asked, and Krog just chuckled, "Sure, show me, dude."

Eiro huffed air out of his nose lightly, since it seemed like Krog was thinking that the demon would somehow magically transfer an image of how he was training into his mind, but the reality was very different. Slowly, Eiro pushed his mana into Krog's chest, using the torture skill to try and replicate the pain athat Eiro had been feeling over the past few weeks to an extent at least.

The moment that it spread through Krog's body, he arched his back and his whole body tensed up in pain, his eyes rolling into the back of his head. He basically jolted up through the pain despite not meaning to do so at all. Of course, Eiro immediately pulled his hand back.

"Are you alright? Sorry, I didn't mean to go that hard on you. Toward the end of evolutions, it's weirdly hard to control mana. It's kind of fluctuating all over the place, so it came out a bit less... stable than intended. But still, it should be around what I felt during my training." Eiro explained, trying to spread cold air around Krog using his ice magic so that he could cool him down a bit after this jolt of pain, and Krog slowly calmed down.

"Fuck off..." He muttered, "No way in hell did you feel that and train at the same time..."

"Oh, I did. But of course, it was a bit different for me. For one, it was a gradual increase, so it was easier to get used to it. But mostly, I think it's because I tried to use my torture skill on myself to create numerous types of painful sensations all over my body that were far exceeding what I was feeling at the time, and then reminded myself of them over and over again with my 'Memory of a Scholar'. Sometimes I felt it at 10% of the pain I made myself feel, and at the end at 100%, to increase how much I could tolerate mentally. Because of how my ability works, I managed to pretty effectively train myself against torture in a day or so. I still can't do anything against physical reactions to pain, though. I'll just be able to work against those reactions more easily because I can keep a relatively clear mind now."

"Of course you went through training that most people that need it have to work years to go through." James said with a wry smile, but Eiro quickly shook his head, "Don't worry, it's not at the same level as that. My abilities aren't able to cheat that much. I have the torture resistance skill, but it's just at beginner grade, around level 30."

"It took me a day to even get that skill." James sighed, and Eiro just slowly turned back toward his book with a small comment, "I see... You ever consider that being an assassin is the wrong path for you?"

"Of course it is your moron, I don't even take hits, the specialized stat growth and ability are just way too good to pass up."

And so, the group of four simply continued speaking for the next hour, until a small blue notification appeared in front of Eiro. He quickly placed his book away and took a closer look.

[Congratulations! You Evolved and became a Unique Species! You are now an Elemental Imp!]