Demon's Virtue

Zaragon stood there, his suit covered in splatters of blood. With a deep glare, he waved one of his four hands over his body, and the suit was immediately cleaned perfectly. With a snap of his finger, the blood covering the floor, walls and ceiling also disappeared within the next few moments.

"Disgusting. Who do you think you are to come into my home and dirty it with the blood of those disgusting savages?" Zaragon asked, as he turned his head over toward the other three customers who were still completely overwhelmed by the situation.

With a wave of his hand, their throats were cut and their head fell to the ground. But they didn't actually land on the ground, instead, they fell through a hole that suddenly appeared in the floor together with their bodies.

Now that this place was decently cleaned up and readied for the battle, Eiro figured he should try and remind Zaragon of who him and James were. He held his hand forward and pulled something out of thin air. The golden, decorated card appeared inbetween his fingers, and Zaragon's two hearts began beating at a surreal speed. Something that would cause anyone else to have a heart attack at this point.

"You... you're that... that disgusting little Imp from back then?!"

"Ding, ding, ding, we have a winner! And your price is absolutely fucking nothing!" Eiro exclaimed as he made the card disappear in his treasury again. He turned around and pulled James toward him, "And I brought someone else with me, you should be able to remember him as well, eh?"

"...The child that got away back then? He jumped out of the giant hole in the wall, so sadly it was too much of a bother to chase after him. How wonderful that he returned to me on his own." Zaragon said, although he was clearly just trying to hold it together right now, taken aback by this situation.

"Too much of a bother? You mean that you were unable to chase after him, right? I know your kind. You're linked to one specific space at a time, and you can't leave it. Your focus was on this room, so your control is a lot higher than it should be, right?" Eiro pointed out, and Zaragon closed his eyes for a moment. He sighed somewhat as he placed his hands onto his back. A moment later, he disappeared into smoke.

Reacting immediately, Eiro pushed James to the side and placed his tail in front of Jess. He soon felt an impact, as Zaragon's hand hit his tail.

"Start." Eiro said in a cold voice, and Krog immediately began to swing his axes at Zaragon. The fight had already started now, after all. Zaragon turned part of his body into smoke to dodge the attack, and Jess activated the spell that she had been silently preparing. A strong gust of wind hit Zaragon, and the parts of him that were currently made of smoke were pushed away and spread out throughout the room.

Before Zaragon was able to properly react to what was going on, James already attacked him as well, stabbing his dagger through the enemy's head. Of course, Zaragon turned that part into smoke as well.

But at that point, Eiro held his hand toward that smoke before it turned back into Zaragon's flesh and compressed the air in that spot as much as he could.

Right now, what they were trying to do, was make Zaragon use as much of his mana as absolutely possible. He shouldn't be able to keep on doing this infinitely. Although, as was evident just a moment later, he really didn't have to. One of his three hands that hadn't been turned into smoke quickly snapped, and the room started to change its 'display' mode to another type of wares. It was completely empty earlier, but now, thick pillars rose out of the ground.

They began to twist around their vertical axis, when they slowly stopped. Now, their front was open. And inside was something that seemed like it would turn into quite a bother. They were old, most likely ancient even, but that didn't mean that they were broken. They were well-kept and probably had been repaired and enhanced through new methods of the current time.

They were... dolls. Similar in nature to the puppet Eiro trained with. Just that these were specially created to be actual weapons. They were far more advanced than the puppet. They... were artificial beings. They were alive, but also not. While the puppet was unable to do any particular point-damage, these ones were most likely acknowledged by the system. They were weapons that wielded themselves.

And there was a dozen of them. Each took a generic humanoid form. They were tall, with broad, strong builds. Each of them was about two meters tall, holding heavy weapons that would certainly hurt when they hit you.

The worst part, however, was that they were incredibly fast on top of that. The puppets, made of some kind of metal that Eiro didn't recognze, ran through the room and attacked them instantly. The first that was attacked, simply because of his position, was Krog. The puppet that attacked him swung a large, heavy sword down at him. Krog swung his axes over his head and stopped the attack, knowing that he wouldn't be able to evade it no matter what he did. He didn't have any particular speed going for him, after all.

Another one of the puppets, wearing gauntlets that made its hands look like huge hammers, hit Krog's side. The heavy warrior was thrown through the room as if he weighed nothing. But through the intense control Krog had over his own body, he was able to land on his feet. Two of his ribs were broken, but he didn't flinch at all. He just ran forward again, ready to attack.

There was an issue, though. Whatever metal the puppets and their weapons were made of were far stronger than even the best steel. After just that single impact right there, there were huge dents in Krog's axes. He would never be able to damage them like this, even when focusing on the joints like he should with these sorts of enemies.

But at the same time, that attack told Eiro something. Despite that metal being so clearly strong, the damage that Krog received... was anticlimactic. Eiro saw the damage notification in Krog's eyes, and the fact that only two of his ribs were broken despite that full-on hit against them? That meant that they didn't have as much force behind them as Eiro thought they would.

Of course they would still be extremely dangerous, especially considering their speed and number, but as long as they were able to find a way to defend against them somehow, they wouldn't be tough. Once they killed Zaragon, Eiro figured that they wouldn't be able to move. They were probably directly controlled by Zaragon, after all.

So, after finding his target, a puppet carrying a ridiculously huge tower shield, Eiro held his hand forward, using one of the magic skills that he finally learned over the past few weeks as he prepared for this trip.

He used gravity magic, and focused a spell that increased the gravity of an object on that one specific puppet. It became unable to move, as Eiro hoped, and the only way it was able to keep itself up was by pushing its body off the ground using the shield as a way to prop itself up.

"James!" Eiro exclaimed, but he was already on his way. He swiftly dodged the puppets with his fast and smooth movement, and hooked his foot onto the backside of the shield and pulled it toward himself. After pulling it away, the puppet fell to the ground and hat to let go of the shield, at which point James kicked the shield over toward Krog. Immediately understanding the plan, Krog ran over toward the shield and picked it up, letting go of his axes in the process. That puppet carrying the gauntlets once more hit Krog before he was able to pick it up, hitting the exact same spot as before. Now it was Eiro's turn to do something again.

He made the compressed ball of Zaragon's smoke explode outward to stop him from instantly forming again. Jess was casting fire spells with the help of Sarius, who Eiro had summoned again, to heat up specific parts of the puppets' bodies to weaken them and make it easier to destroy their bodies, all the whilst Eiro had both Gondos and Nelli do something else in preparation for the latter parts of this battle.

Nelli was spreading out an incredibly thin mist, while Gondos created super fine sand and tried to push it inbetween the mechanical joints of the puppets bit by bit.

The sound of sand crunching the more the puppets moved became louder as the battle went on. Soon, Eiro reached Krog again, fusing his body with a high amount of air magic to be able to avoid the puppets as easily as possible. When he was right in front of Krog, Eiro fused his left arm with water from a waterskin he carried on his hip, and pushed his open palm right onto Krog's ribs. The water-infusion caused ripples inside of Eiro's flesh, and he was able to push a sudden pulse of magic into Krog's body. It was clearly rather painful, but Eiro was able to set that parts of his companion's ribs perfectly into place again. That last attack from the puppet with the gauntlets displaced part of Krog's broken ribs, making them pierce his flesh right inside of his body.

Bit by bit, they were able to fight back against the puppets, and by the time that Zaragon's body had been able to form again, they had been able to easily fight back against the puppets. They weren't fully destroyed yet, but the puppets had received decent internal damge. If nothing else happened, they would soon be broken, something that even Zaragon knew to be fact.