Demon's Virtue

"Alright, how should we do this, now? It's going to take a while if we want to get rid of every single monster here in town." Eiro pointed out, "And if this is going to be our land, I don't particularly want to destroy every single structure on there."

After a bit of thought, James raised his brows, "Wait, do we even have to kill everything here?"

Eiro looked back surprised, "Elaborate." He said, and James scratched the back of his head, "Well, you've already got a village full of monsters... Depending on which monsters exactly are on here, couldn't you just keep some of them to expand the village?"

With a smile on his face, Eiro slowly nodded his head, "You know, that's actually a really good idea. It's just... I'm not sure if I can bring all of them, and we don't have Bavet with us, so sealing their monstrosity isn't possible either."

"Just trap them for now or somethin'. Like, this is a town, it has to have some prisons, right?" Krog added, while Eiro was healing him together with Nelli.

"If they haven't been destroyed yet, at least." Eiro agreed, "I guess for now, that means we should stay together. As far as I can tell, this city works in a pretty interesting way. At least around this bridge, the town is split up into different areas, as if each type of monster got its own designated area to roam around at. And in each area, there seems to be a noble monster in charge. My guess is that they're around... Viscount, maybe Earl levels? And there's some new structure in the center of the town as well, it was obviously built by monsters, there might be a high-noble monster that's in charge of the whole town in there."

"Ah, so... We make our way to the noble monsters, you trap them as well as some of the others, and then later when we go get Bavet, he can help you seal their monstrosity and then... we're good?" Jess asked, while Eiro started thinking, "I can probably make them sleep with some anesthetics, and then I can probably figure out a way to make them sleep indefinitely." He muttered, "That way, they won't be an issue. The nobles are the most important right now, actually. Let's say we save a couple dozen monsters from each type, maybe some more depending on how cooperative they are..."

"Right... Well, where are we going to first, then?" James asked, and Eiro turned around, looking at the end of the bridge, "At the start right over here is an area filled with more Trolls, so I guess they're a good target. They'll be the most bothersome for now anyway."

"Urgh..." Krog groaned loudly, really not wanting to deal with more Trolls like that one just now, but Eiro smiled at him, "Don't worry, compared to that one from just now, these should be relatively easy to deal with... At least those that we'll end up killing."

The party made their way into the city. The monsters that were approaching, a mix of Trolls, Lizardmen and different more plant-type monsters, had been quickly turned into their targets.

"Jess, go ahead and burn the plants away." The Demon said bluntly. He only needed one seed from them to cultivate a whole army of them, at the end of the day. So it was totally fine. In the meantime, while Jess was taking care of those mostly herself, Eiro, James and Krog fought the others. The Lizardmen were swiftly weakened as Eiro immensely cooled the whole area around them down. Lizards were cold blooded, after all, so they soon reacted and slowed down, making it easier for James and Krog to kill them.

And meanwhile, Eiro started to take care of the handfull of Trolls. He compressed some flames into a single point, and shot that compressed orb right into the chest of one of the Trolls. Once inside, Eiro kept feeding the flames a huge amount of mana, and the Trolls were losing health incredibly quickly. Their regeneration wasn't even able to fully keep up with it. But more importantly, they were simply in an extreme level of pain as their bodies were repeatedly repairing themselves before their flesh was burnt away again a moment later.

So, while the Trolls lost the ability to do much against the Demon, he chose to help out Jess in killing the plant-type monsters, so that they could all concentrate on taking out the Lizardmen, which had the highest number here in the first place.

While the closest area was still one controlled by the Trolls, there were simply far more Lizardmen compared to Trolls in the first place, so it made sense for there to be this many here. Either way, soon, the group managed to take care of all these monsters rather easily. And for now... the Demon wanted to try out something else for once as well.

Over the past few weeks, Eiro had mostly practiced on expanding on as many of his elemental affinities as possible, to further strengthen the magical abilities of whatever creature he would end up evolving into relatively soon. And once of the magical elements he kept practicing the use of was the death element. Another magic skill that he had been able to awaken.

He pressed his hand onto his chest and infused death into the chaos of his armor. The metallic parts became bone-like, while the leather parts simply dried out and darkened in color. Meanwhile, Eiro's body became a lot more pale than before as well, as he infused himself with the essence of death magic itself.

Now that he had awakened the skill, this infusion in itself looked rather different. Of course, Eiro's body became more like that of a corpse, but rather than looking like he had aged and been rotting for a while now, he just looked as if he died rather recently at his current physical age. His body was cold, maybe a little bit more stiff than normal, and he was incredibly pale. His heartbeat had also slowed down to a crawl. Actually, this would be perfect just if he wanted to somehow fake his death at some point... Although he didn't know when exactly something like that would come in handy.

Eiro took a deep breath and pushed his mana forward. He pressed it into the recently provided corpses, and used proper Necromancy for one of the first times. Eiro watched as the first creature stood up. One of the Lizardmen. It was one that had its heart pierced, so its body was able to move without issues. It pressed itself off the ground in an unnatural way, nearly ripping apart its muscles or breaking its bones in the process, but it soon stood there, extremely slumped over.

And another moment later, more undead Lizardmen stood next to it. And then, Eiro got to the trolls. The issue with these guys was that, since Eiro was heavily fighting against their fleshly regeneration, their bodies had been ripped apart in a way that their flesh would just end up being a detriment to their combat ability.

So, the Demon used a particular death spell as he made the undead Trolls walk over to a specific spot, a good bit away from where the party was currently standing. And then... All their flesh just started to rot off of them rapidly, as if melting away, until their bodies were only made up of bones.

As for those plant-type monsters... Eiro just chose to gather a seed from each different sort of plant, and put them away for now. He wanted to grow some of them later, but for now, it didn't matter.

"Alright, then let's keep going." Eiro said with a smile on his face as he looked at his party members, with a small group of undead right behind him. Confident that they would be able to get through this quickly, especially since Eiro could increase their numbers as they went on, the group continued further into the area of the trolls.

Eiro focused on the continuous, pressing damage for the Trolls, while the others did individual damage to them to speed things up a bit more. They managed to find a group of Troll children, that would probably end up growing to be adults within the next few weeks. These were the perfect monsters to keep alive, in Eiro's opinion. They were usually less 'monstrous', since their bodies were focusing on growth instead of combat ability, and it was easier to restrain them since their regenerative abilities didn't set in all that much yet either. Everything was slowly coming together bit by bit. And a bit further ahead was the leader of the trolls, hidden away in one of the old buildings. It was one of the few that seemed to be nearly fully intact at this point. The Troll was sitting in one of the rooms, just taking a long nap while her underlings were standing guard around her room. Just... that there was something rather surprisingly different about her. Trolls had a similar stature to normal Orcs, tall and fat with thick, log-like limbs. But this one... This Troll Noble was small, the size of a regular woman. Her limbs were slender and she certainly looked to be anything but a normal Troll.

Not that it mattered, since they were going to have to beat her up rather violently anyway, so that they could make sure she wouldn't be able to run away while they went to get Bavet later.