Demon's Virtue

"Oh, what a surprise. Three of you weren't complete idiots." Eiro said with a genuinely interested tone in his voice, "But well, that matters quite little. It should still seep into your skin rather soon. You should already feel a tingling all over the place."

The three people in front of Eiro were all people that had been enslaved by the boss of this place. It seemed like either the boss was only able to give commands like that to three people at once, or these three were especially important to the boss somehow.

Either way, it mattered quite little as Eiro slowly started to step forward. He pulled the dagger that he had placed onto the sheath by his hip, as he had one in his treasury and had to keep the second one, the one with the hollow core that Eiro could fill with water or poison if he wanted to, and then quickly ran forward toward the first of the three people that were still standing.

Eiro immediately slid over the ground and sliced the dagger over the side of the first guy's body, before stabbing it into the abdomen of the second. The third was trying his best to swing at Eiro, but he quickly had the handle of Eiro's dagger smashed against his solar plexus. His body cramped up as he tried to gasp for air, but of course wasn't able to. Well, it was better this way, because otherwise he would have already breathed in the paralysis poison. But it didn't matter, since his mouth still opened, so Eiro quickly controlled the poison that he mixed with the air and pushed it into the cuts of the first two people while also pushing it into the open mouth of the last guy.

The three of them quickly fell to the ground, and Eiro soon removed all of the poison from the air before pushing it back into the glass bottle that he took it from in the first place. And as Eiro placed the bottle back into his satchel, he turned around and looked straight at his escort.

"Are you coming?" Eiro asked with a smile on his face, although it was hidden underneath his mask, and before turning away again and stepping over one of the numerous dead bodies in this room.

Somewhat nervously, Clark followed him as he was unsure what exactly just happened here, "Are they... all dead?"

"Nope. It was paralysis poison, not regular poison. Well... a couple of them died from an overdose of it, but most of them survived." Eiro pointed out as he continued through this large room to get to the other side, trying to reach the door that all the glowing threads within this room were connected to.

"Ah, and don't breath too heavily. I couldn't pull out every bit of the poison." The Demon explained to Clark as he placed his hand onto the doorhandle in front of him.

"...How do you have magic like this, but at the same time can move like... that?" With a confused expression, after watching everything that just happened with wide open eyes, Clark tried to figure out who he was actually escorting right now. And Eiro slowly turned around toward him with a smile, "Let's not talk about that. You'll probably see it soon enough anyway."

And without hesitation, Eiro tried to pull the door open, although it seemed to have been locked. With a deep sigh, Eiro just pressed his foot onto the lock of the door and with a strong press caused the locks to bend and simply shatter apart as the door slammed open.

And beyond this large door, Eiro could see something quite interesting. Interesting and rather infuriating at the same time. Beyond here was something that Eiro had never seen before in this capacity. Sure, he had been near the 'nest' of some Naiads before, but he hadn't seen it with his very own eyes. The center of the place that spirits inhabited were supposed to be incredible spaces, spaces that were directly connected to the chaotic elemental planes that were omnipresent, simply offset a slight bit.

These places were supposed to be like the entrance-places toward those planes that were opened up by mixing with the spirit realm. Of course, not every place where spirits lived you could find something like this, but wherever you could find something like this you would end up finding spirits.

And right here, it was a flaming hot circular field, with a 100 meter radius with heat that distorted the air above it. Flames were spiking up from the molten, magma ground. And inside of there, Eiro could see dozens over dozens of Salamanders, mature Fire Spirits, as well as Vulcani, their immature version, just floating around.

The whole area was encased in some sort of glass capsule with numerous glowing arcane runes carved onto them. This screamed just one thing. The organization.

Eiro slowly turned his head toward the place where all of the different glowing threads in the air were gathering. To the side of the large glass sphere encasing this 'spirit gateway', a group of people was surrounding a single man. The one that Eiro was looking for.

"Well, well, well. Look at what we have here. Two guys that think they are just so importa-"

"Cut the crap, fatass, and tell me how the fuck you can make it that people can keep their sanity despite having the Taboo skill. Once you do, I'll rip your head off quickly so that you don't have to suffer too much, take over this place, and protect those spirits that are in there." Eiro said bluntly, and the man in the center of the crowd, a heavily overweight man wearing a fine suit with disgustingly oily black hair.

"Hah, you think you can do that to me?! Well, who do you think you are?!" The man yelled out, and Eiro slowly slid his hand over to the side before a metallic tag appeared dangling inbetween his fingers.

"A member of the same organization a you are, Mister S." The Demon said bluntly, and the man opened his eyes wide, "Oh! Oh, interesting! But it seems like you're not even a letter... and you think you can beat me? How ridiculous!"

With a deep sigh, Eiro slowly put the tag away again as the fat man continued talking. It seemed like he suddenly grew rather confident and pushed his way out of the group that was surrounding him, "No need to worry. For a weakling like this, I don't even need you meat-shields to help me out." With a big, broad grin that revealed his yellow teeth, the fat man stepped forward, basically dragging his feet over the ground.

Sure, Eiro could tell that he was pretty strong, but... He wasn't insanely strong, "I guess 'strength in numbers' is also a thing, huh?" Eiro muttered quietly to himself as he kept looking around the room, "Pretty nice place you've got here. All that drug-money is treating you well, huh?"

" 'Well' is a slight understatement, dear intruder. It is treating me like a king. The sort of king that I deserve to be after I overthrow this country and take over that useless bastard Skyhart's throne."

In reaction to hearing the man speak like that about Solomon, Clark was gettng quite riled up. His heart-rate was speeding up and he started grinding his teeth while pressing his hand into a fist. But that didn't matter. Because Eiro felt quite similar, and that meant that it was already too late for the man.

Eiro pressed his foot into the ground and used the holding he got on it to push forward at an incredible speed. The Demon grabbed the man by the wrist and twisted it around behind his back, twisting it around until he nearly broke it.

"I'm going to ask again, how do you keep your sanity despite having the Taboo skill? In the end, this is just for a bit of convenience, I don't really care too much. I can find it out some other way if I wanted to. Shit, I don't know why I even want to know in the first place. So I'll give you the chance to-" Just as Eiro was speaking, he noticed something weird going on with the man whose arm he was grasping. His bones were turning soft, and his muscles stretched out in an unnatural way.

The man that Eiro was holding onto, the Letter S of the Organization, was slowly turning his own body into something different, although Eiro didn't particularly know why. And before Eiro knew it, the complete arm of the man was stretching out in length as he twisted his body around and tried to hit Eiro with his fist.

Of course he wasn't able to, considering that Eiro was able to predict everything that he was about to do. But that wasn't Eiro's focus right now, really. Instead, it was the fact that this man was able to change the very fundamental way that his own body worked just like that. It was interesting, and Eiro's curiosity was nearly taking over. And that was when the man started to laugh loudly, "Hahaha, you are surprised, are you not?! About my absolutely perfect body! I have full control over it, unlike anyone else in this world!"

"Really, now?" Eiro asked in a curious tone, and the man nodded his head as he swung his arm toward Eiro, "Of course!" With a loud yell, he swung it forward but Eiro simply jumped up with his dagger in hand, ready to slash through the incredibly soft flesh of this man.

But just as he did so, he noticed the man's body change once more. Instead of feeling his dagger slice through the man's skin, he felt incredible resistance from it as a loud 'clang' sounded out. Eiro quickly noticed what exactly happened.

The man changed the way his body worked once more. Instead of being soft and stretchy, the man's body was now hard and metallic. And the change happened basically instantly. It seemed like something that would be rather hard to deal with.

Eiro settled back down and looked at the man in front of him, "You're pretty interesting... How do you do that? What kind of magic is that? It's not infusion, right?"

"As I said, I simply have full control over my body. It's as simple as that."

"Aha..." Eiro replied quietly as he took a look around the room to figure out if there was something here that could give him a clue about this. And just a few moments later, Eiro came to a final conclusion.

"It doesn't actually matter, since you'll be dead in a few minutes anyway."