Demon's Virtue

Eiro pushed the carriage into the part of the stables reserved for it, and then brought the horses to the other side. When he stepped out of the stables, he slowly rubbed his hand over Lugo's snout, "Finally back, huh?" He said with a smile on his face, before starting to walk toward the manor's back door. The others already made their way inside to their rooms, but Eiro said that he would just take care of the carriage for now and then come in as well.

The Demon and the stag made their way inside, and they quietly walked through the building toward Eiro's study. Jess, James, Krog, and Bavet were already sitting inside, waiting for him. Eiro quickly helped the tired Lugo get through the door, before letting him lay down in the corner of the room.

"Alright, then I guess it's officially over now, huh?" Eiro said with a light smile, standing in front of his party, and they all slowly looked back at the demon. And then, James formed a broad smile on his face, "Yeah... it really is. Zaragon is dead, man... He's really dead..." James said in an excited tone. Eiro couldn't help himself but smile as he walked over toward one of the cabinets, taking out a bottle of liquor that he knew everyone here liked. He poured some into the glasses, and made sure to cool them down with a bit of ice magic.

After handing everyone here a cup, Eiro slowly sat down in the armchair in front of the small table, while the others were sitting on either of the two couches. Eiro raised his glass above and smiled at his friends, "To finally achieving a long-term goal."

"Hear, hear!" James said, and everyone quickly took a sip of their liquor. Eiro turned toward Jess and Krog with a smile, "Thank you two for coming along with us. You really didn't have anything to do with this revenge of ours, but you still helped us out throughout the whole thing."

"Don't worry, man, of course we'd help you two out. You're our friends." Krog pointed out, although his smile quickly turned wry, "And honestly, after all that training, I really didn't want that hell to be for nothing..."

"Speaking of... Do you think we have to keep going with that? You know... just stronger than before?" Jess asked nervously, a question that all three of them seemed to be asking themselves, but Eiro quickly shook his head, something that relieved them immensely.

"Right now, it would be useless if I just made you go through even more of that. Not to mention that with my current control over 'chaos', I'm not sure if I could even go much further than that right now. You leveled up a few times, so you should have slowly adjusted to the rapid changes in your body or mind now that your stats rose like that." Eiro explained, "Just try to keep leveling up for now, there's no directly imminent thing we need to do anytime soon anyway. We can just relax a little bit more until summer, I'd say. But do make sure not to stop training your bodies, although I'll just give you some training programs that have a bit more leisure to them. If you want, I can always increase how tough they are, though."

"Honestly, a bit of leisure does sound nice... I think we deserve a bit of a break after all that, right?" Jess pointed out, glancing over at Krog, "The two of us were actually thinking about going on a bit of a vacation... if you guys are alright with that."

"Hm? Wait, why'd you two go on vacation together?" Bavet asked confused, and everyone slowly turned their head toward the slime in slight disbelief, "Seriously? You can copy and construct the anatomy of beings that you either just glanced at or just read about in books, burt you can't see that those two are a couple?" James asked, and Bavet stared at Jess and Krog.

"What? Seriously now? That's a match-up you'd never expect..." Bavet muttered, before Krog laughed loudly, "You think that we're a weird matchup? Did you even see Eiro and Ariella?" He asked, before Eiro stared at the man sitting next to him.

"What do you mean? There's nothing going on between us..." Eiro pointed out, and Jess rolled her eyes, "Oh please, it's so obvious! You're all over her whenever she's around! Not that I can blame you though, Ariella is absolutely gorgeous!"

"...Well, I would be lying if I said I wasn't interested, but I doubt it would really work out. You know... Her being basically an angel, while I'm a demon? That's not really the best match-up." Eiro pointed out, actually somewhat embarrassed, "And I just want to make it clear again, I'm absolutely not interested in this sort of... physical love as you two have going on basically every night."

"Eiro! Are you listening in on us..?"

"Jess, on a quiet night, I can basically hear Solomon snore from here. What do you think?" Eiro laughed slihtly, and both Jess and Krog looked at each other somewhat nervously, before the Demon continued, "Anyway, as I said, there is nothing going on between her and I, and I doubt that anything will happen. I do think I have to admit that... I have feelings for her... but this is very, very new to me, so I just want things to happen slowly, if at all." Eiro explained to them, before he slowly turned his head to the side, "Ah... I think we woke Leon up... Or at the very least, he's kind of wandering around right now." The Demon pointed out.

However, a moment later, he could feel a hit to the side of his arm, "Eiro, if it's Leon... then I think..." Krog said, before quickly pointing at Bavet. Eiro turned his head and looked at the slime, whose body was... unstable, to describe it in simple terms.

His humanoid form was slowly falling apart, his skin turning into something of a sludge-like substance that was running down his body. Or rather, it was his body itself running down the rest of his body that was still able to keep up some kind of solid mass for a little while. Bavet was sitting there, unable to really move. It was clear that the control he had over his body was rather limited all of a sudden.

"Well, that's not good..." Eiro said, immediately spreading his awareness throughout the building. The monster servants within the manor were all starting to freak out, being pulled out of their sleep. Eiro sighed and quickly stood up, placing his cup of liquor onto the table in front of him. Immediately, he rushed out through the door and flapped his wings, catapulting himself through the hallways and hidden passages to reach Leon as quickly as possible.

Soon, the Demon stopped right in front of his son, and quickly embraced him with his arms and wings, "Don't worry Leon, everything is fine, everything is fine... Daddy is here..." Eiro said, trying to calm him down. But somehow, Leon didn't really react. It seemed like he was sleepwalking in front of Eiro right now, which might explain why his powers suddenly got out of control. If he couldn't control his body, the same being the case with abilities that took him a lot to restrain in the first place made sense.

Eiro knew that it wasn't always a good idea to wake up sleepwalkers, so instead, he chose to just try and calm him down instead. He kept holding his son, rubbing over his back, all the whilst speaking to him in a calm, gentle voice.

Whenever Leon was trying to walk somewhere, Eiro made sure to try and hold him in place in the most gentle way he could, and it didn't take long until his efforts worked out properly. Leon's body soon slumped down as he simply fell asleep again, and as far as Eiro could tell, the boy's influence on the monsters in the building was interrupted once more.

With a deep, relieved sigh, Eiro stood up, walking Leon back to his room, although he didn't make it far in the first place, and laid the boy down in his bed. His body really was changing. His hair grew a lot more than usual over the past few weeks, and his adult teeth were slowly pushing away his baby teeth. His canines were also slowly changing their shape properly, seeming a bit sharper, even though they were still behind Leon's old teeth. All of this obvious discomfort must have messed with Leon while he wasn't here.

"Huh?" A voice suddenly let out, and Eiro noticed that Arc was standing by the door. Eiro wasn't paying attention to the things imminently around him, so he seemed to have missed him somehow. The Demon placed his finger in front of his lips to tell Arc to be quiet, and then quickly rushed back out of the room.

"You're back?" Arc whispered, and Eiro quickly nodded his head, "Yeah, we just got back not too long ago." The Demon explained, "But what are you doing here? You should be sleeping as well by now."

"Ah, that… Leon's been sleepwalking a bit lately, so I just wanted to come check on him to see how he's doing. Did you catch him walking around?" Arc asked, before Eiro immediately nodded his head.

"Yeah, Bavet suddenly turned into a puddle, so it seemed like Leon's abilities were acting out as well."

"Really? That only happened like once or twice, and it never lasted too long…" Arc pointed out, "I figured it would be fine when you came back though, so let's hope for that."

"Yeah, let's… But Arc, would you want to come with me, and have a bit of a drink with all of us? Since you're awake, anyway?"