Demon's Virtue

Eiro looked at the page in front of him, curiously looking at it, "So, someone in his life broke a taboo, and that's why he's researching this..?" The Demon guessed, "If that's the case, then I should probably be able to talk to him about it." He said to himself. At first, he didn't want to directly talk to Noma about knowing that he could use flesh magic, since he didn't know if he would be able to make proper use of him without building up some form of trust. But now that Eiro knew that someone in Noma's life had broken a taboo, he could just use that fact to directly build up trust without having to directly manipulate Noma's mind.

This being the case, Eiro placed the notes back into the shelf, walking back through the wall as he had before. For now, he just chose to wait for Noma in here, even though that was something that greatly surprised Bavet, "What are you doing? Didn't you want to hide from him like some creepy stalker?"

"Well, that was the plan at first, but I'm changing my tactic." He explained quickly, "There's no need for me to be roundabout when it comes to this anymore."

"...What did you find in there?" Bavet asked, and Eiro smiled lightly, "You'll hear about it in a bit, Noma should be on his way back already. Either way, through this, I should be able to learn flesh magic relatively soon." He explained, before smiling somewhat awkardly, "And more importantly, I should be able to help Noma figure out a way through his issues. That wasn't my priority at first, but knowing that he's Rudy's friend... well, I should at the very least try and make sure he's not arrested for crimes against all people."

"You say what now? What kinda crazy bastard is this dude? Why'd you want him around Rudy?"

"No matter the situation, I'm pretty sure I've done much, much worse. And at the end of the day, if I decide that he's dangerous to Rudy, I'm not going to let him get away with it either." The Demon replied immediately, and chose to silently wait for Noma for now. It didn't take long until he was back in the building, and walking down the stairs to get to his relatively secluded research room. He unlocked the door with the key that he kept in his pocket and stepped into the room. The servant that Eiro created to follow Noma was still in the ground, nearly directly below him.

Eiro was using his stealth to fuse into the natural aura of the room, making it practically impossible for Noma to notice him until Eiro actively spoke to him. Noma sat down on a stool and closed his eyes for a moment, before pulling up his left arm's sleeve. Eiro had already noticed that he had scars covering his left arm, but he wasn't sure what had caused them, exactly. But now, he was finding out about the reason by simply watching that boy.

Noma pressed his right hand onto his lower arm, and started to run his palm over his own skin. Soon, it was like his skin became looser, stretching more and more along to his own touch. And then, Noma took in a deep breath, seeming as if he was trying to stretch this moment out as much as possible, as if he was dreading what was about to happen. The moment he let out the air he had sucked in, Noma pulled on the skin that he had loosened just a moment earlier. A mass of flesh from below his skin started bulging up, as he was clearly using flesh magic to increase the amount of flesh that he had underneath his skin right now. It looked as if another arm was about to grow on him. But before anything else happened, Noma buried his fingernails into his skin, trying to pinch off the extra flesh that he had just created on his arm, turning it into a scarred, disfigured sphere.

Blood started to drip down into his other hand, as Noma simply pulled this mass of excess flesh off himself. However, it didn't take long until that whole mass of flesh had been removed completely, and the wound that was left behind closed up soon, leaving behind nothing but scar-tissue. Eiro was confused, though.

"Hm, why aren't you healing those scars?" He asked, still keeping himself and his voice fused in with the natural aura of the room. Noma answered casually, without even noticing anything was wrong at first, "I'm not good enough at controlling this magic yet," he replied, "I've been focusing on magical power instead of fine-control."

"Fair enough. It's not like you have many chances to practice it," Eiro pointed out, "Although you should definitely consider learning more fine-control as well. After all, it's going to naturally increase your efficiency at using your magic, so it will naturally end up being easier to use more power while expending less mana." He said, looking at Noma's stiff back. It seemed like his conscious mind had finally caught up to the fact that he was speaking to someone right now, although there shouldn't be anyone in here besides himself at the moment. Slowly, Noma turned around, looking at the place where that voice came from. And there he saw him. Eiro Jura Daemonherz, the most famous man in the capital, no, the country.

"S-Sir, what are you doing here?" Noma asked, trying to hide the mass of flesh that he had just created out of his arm, and Eiro couldn't help but smile at him, "Don't worry, I already knew that you have flesh magic."

"But, but how?" Eiro continued his casual smile without answering Noma's question. He couldn't really answer that question. In part, it was simply because of scent, since mana tended to give off different scents depending on their affinities. And since that mana flowed completely through everyone's body, their natural body odor usually included a bit of their elemental affinities. However, it also had something to do with the fact that Eiro completely devoured a magic-analysis crystal. It was the kind that was used on Eiro's first day here to let the students measure their own affinities. He decided to eat one of those and make it part of his body, compressing that mass and making it the lense of his eye. It took him a while to adjust everything so that his sight in his left eye was normal again. But now, when he concentrated well enough, he was able to see the elemental aspects of pure mana, albeit only to an extent. Eiro was still practicing his ability to see mana in general, after all. He was getting better at it, but it was still only an incredibly light haze to him. Combining this new ability with his ability to read the scent of others increased his accuracy, and ability to distinguish between elements that he had never actually encountered before.

Seeing that Eiro wasn't answering him, Noma became nervous, "What are you going to do to me now...?" He asked, and Eiro raised his brow, "Nothing. Rather, I'm going to try and help you out a bit."

Noma looked back with a frown, "And why would you do that?"

"Because I'm your teacher. In the first place, a lot of people have a strong distaste toward flesh magic since it belongs to the field of necromancy, but it's an incredibly powerful and useful magical element. And in Skyhart, we don't usually discriminate against most things like this." Eiro explained, "We don't even discriminate against necromancy itself, we just try not to talk about it too much."

"...But I thought... this element is evil..?"

Eiro shook his head and scoffed, "Obviously it isn't. There is no 'evil' element. There certainly are evil people, and some elements can often appear a bit more sinister, but... well, I can just show you something."

The Demon walked up to Noma, looking at his arm. It was healed, but not fully. And he figured he could probably heal some parts of the scars as well. Without a moment's hesitation, Eiro pulled some flames from the elemental plane of fire, and placed a relatively compressed layer of them onto his palm, before pressing his hand onto Noma's arm. Of course, the boy flinched and tried to pull away in a panic, but it didn't take long until he realized that the fire didn't hurt him.

And of course, if this was normal fire, it would still burn Noma, but this was pure magic, so it was a bit different. Eiro could keep it in its highly-energized state, which it needed to be fire, while still cooling it down considerably, especially with the addition of a bit of ice magic to make things easier. Either way, Eiro quickly healed Noma's arm, using fire magic as a conduit. Eiro pulled his hand away a few moments later, showing that a lot of the wounds that had covered Noma's limb were simply gone.

He looked up at the man standing in front of him, "How did you-"

"It was taught to me by the Salamander King. You know, most Salamanders are quite... passionate. They're aggressive. But him? No, he was one of the most collected, calmest minds that I had ever met, comparable to the naiad queen. He healed my wounds using his flames, teaching me the same lesson I'm trying to teach you now." Eiro explained, "At the end of the day, only you decide how your own magic is used."