Demon's Virtue

Chapter 620: Visual Duplicate

Eiro finally stepped out of the chamber, still chewing on some compressed flesh. His stomach had been filled to the brim over and over again, until he finally reached the point that he wanted to get to.

[Apprentice Overeating Level 31]

The moment Eiro’s overeating skill reached apprentice grade, he could tell that his stomach fundamentally changed. His stomach acids were stronger, and the space within his stomach started to grow ever so slightly, that space increasing with every further level. He was sure that his skill level was going to increase even more once he reached the intermediate grade. There was a negative side-effect that came with it, though – he felt more hungry. And it wasn’t as if his body suddenly became worse at taking in the nutrients of the food he ate, that was the same as it was before, if not better because his stomach acid was able to break apart the food more efficiently. Obviously, it wasn’t like he struggled absorbing nutrients in the first place, but any bit helped. Either way, right now, for the first time in a while, Eiro actually felt hungry. It was a weird feeling to him, honestly, but luckily the hunger was quickly being subdued by his superior skill, the ‘Negative Effect Resistance’ skill.

It made sense that the overeating skill would make him hungry, since it was supposed to help him overeat. That was done by not only expanding his stomach so that he could physically eat more food without throwing it all up again, but also by simply making him crave food more easily. If he wasn’t careful, then the hunger would become a distraction, but with a skill that would suppress the negative effect, he wouldn’t have to bother thinking about that too much.

Eiro took a deep breath after swallowing the last bite of his own flesh and started to stretch. Outside, his own duplicate fell apart into a sludge that soon evaporated into the air, in the middle of his conversation with the others. Of course, he was soon replaced by the original, who had jumped out of the nearest window to get to the place they had all gathered.

“Alright, where was I?” Eiro asked bluntly, as if nothing had happened, still buttoning his shirt as he sat down. James slowly placed down the glass he had been drinking from, having been frozen in surprise ever since Eiro’s duplicate simply fell apart a few seconds ago. He slowly closed his eyes and took a deep breath, before opening them again and acting as if nothing happened, “I think you were talking about what you’ll be doing next after you have that new magic.”

“Right. I think the first thing I’ll do is get rid of my heart, probably,” Eiro said without a moment’s hesitation, crossing his legs as he placed his hand onto his chest, and his three companions looked at him as if they were listening to a crazy person.

“Erm… Eiro, I think even you need your heart…” Krog pointed out with a wry smile, “I mean, it’s a weakness even for you, right?”

“Yeah, exactly. Why would I keep around a weakness that has absolutely no benefits for me? It’s like wearing a big target and a sign that says, ‘aim here’, ” the Demon explained, “At the end of the day, the main function of the heart is to pump one’s blood through their body, right? In that sense, it’s already useless since I can just constantly use magic to make my blood flow however I want. Rather, I will be creating a specialized duplicate of my mind and severely cripple its own thought, and make it capable of only moving my blood through my body, and then I won’t have to worry anymore. Since I will be diffusing the Bloodstone throughout all my veins as well, there shouldn’t be an issue in creating a system that will overall replace my heart completely. Now, there is the aspect that the heart protects one’s magic core, but I’ll also be diffusing that throughout my body so that’s not going to be an issue either.”

Jess nervously looked at the man that was teaching her in the ways of the mind, worrying that she was going to become as crazy as him someday, “You said a few weird things there, but I’ll just accept the heart thing for now… You’re going to diffuse your core? How is that supposed to work? And rather, why would you do that?”

“Oh, I’m going to be doing that so that I can achieve completely instantaneous casting,” Eiro said as if it was obvious, “Right now, my mana still has to move through my body to get to a point where I can then use it for magic, but once I diffuse my core along all my mana veins, I’m going to be able to instantly access magic at any point in my body whenever I want.”

“Your magic is already nearly instant anyway, so why would you even need this?” Krog asked confused, and Eiro replied with a slight smile, “I’ve already fought enemies that can bring time to a crawl. The only reason I was able to react was because of my magic, and because the opponents were actually on the weak side without their time-based benefit. Now, if I fight someone that can halt time and is actually something of a threat to begin with? Well, that’s going to be an issue, unless I’m capable of using magic literally the instant the thought crosses my mind.”

“So, just for one specific instance of enemies, you want to do something that will most likely be completely irreversible to your core, something which is literally the source of the majority of your power?”

“Well, I’m plenty physically strong too,” Eiro replied to Jess with a slight smirk, before pushing his hands down onto the table as he stood up, “That being the case, I’ve got to meet with a certain dwarf to discuss the changes to my body a bit more.”

“Can’t you be a little bit more careful with that? It’s making me… feel weird…” Armodeus pointed out, looking at the Demon in his workshop as he was carefully taking apart a small white orb that was floating in front of him.

“Why is it making you feel weird? It’s literally my own eye,” Eiro replied, turning his head toward the Dwarf to reveal the hollow space that was his eye-socket. One benefit of flesh magic, combined with Eiro’s incredibly absorption abilities was that he could take off his own body parts and combine them back with his own body whenever he wanted. That made things like detailed surgery to his own body just so much easier.

“Urgh… I know, just… whatever, just keep going,” the elder dwarf groaned loudly, soon returning to his own portion of the work. While Eiro was taking apart his own eye to carefully remove his own eye’s lense, Armodeus was working on the replacement lense. He had taken a duplicate of the mirror of duplication as a base and broke it down, trying to keep its ability intact while turning the mirror’s reflective surface completely transparent. Rather, that was the easy part – the hard part was to then take part of this mirror and give it the exact size, shape, and curvature it needed to fit into the Demon’s eye without distorting his vision in any way.

Carefully, the dwarf held up the incredibly small lense toward Eiro, who gave it a quick glance. With a nod, he said, “That’s perfect,” and so, Armodeus made his way over toward Eiro, who was still carefully holding open his own eye, “Place it in.”

After closing his eyes and taking a deep breath, Armodeus lowered the lense into Eiro’s eye, where it seemed to fit perfectly. Instantly, Eiro got to work, and thin, ethereal threads of arcane magic started to flow out from Eiro’s fingertips. They properly fused the new lense into the Demon’s eye, before closing the intricate visual instrument again. The eye was properly healed and got to a point where it was impossible to see that it had ever been opened to begin with. And then, Eiro grabbed the orb and placed it back into his eye-socket. He blinked a few times, and the eye was moving around independently for a few moments, staring lifelessly into a random direction, before Eiro managed to link the eye’s nerves back up with himself, and just like that, Eiro had regained sight in his right eye.

“Hm… it’s a bit different to before, but that’s to be expected. There’s no distortion though, you have shaped this lense to perfection, Armodeus,” Eiro said immediately, and the elder dwarf sighed out of relief, “I’m glad to hear that. Now, can you show me what it is that you wanted to do this for?”

“Of course,” the Demon replied, and looked at the other side of the room. He focused his sight on a mug standing on the table. Eiro shaped his magic circuits in his eye so that they formed a specific spell which the Demon developed for this particular purpose, and quickly activated it. Eiro shifted his sight to a point about half a foot away from where the mug stood originally.

It looked as if a copy of the mug was simply pulled out of it, following the center of Eiro’s view. And now, since that mug was still a duplicate under Eiro’s control, he was able to manipulate its position with sight alone. That also meant that the mug could move as fast as Eiro could change where he looked. It only took as long as a blink, but Eiro looked down at his feet, and the mug suddenly shifted its position to that place. And then, it moved to a nearby shelf. When Eiro blinked, the duplicate blinked out of existence for that moment together with the Demon’s sight. And then, Eiro was able to simply unlink the duplicate from his direct visual control, and it was treated as any other duplicate would be.

Basically, this now meant that Eiro was able to control everything he saw however he wanted.