Demon's Virtue

The small pile of wood-scraps that Eiro carved off of the pieces of wood the he had was slowly growing bigger and bigger as he continued on going with this work. This had to be absolutely perfect... After all, this was something that could only be seen as proof of the fact that Eiro was Jura's student for these past five years.

The Demon had gathered incredible knowledge of the anatomy of a lot of different beings over the past few years, and when it came to hands, he knew an Imp's hand the best. After all, he had one himself. Every retraction of his muscles when he tensed up different parts of his hand, every bone that twisted in different manners depending on how you moved your hand, all of this was something that Eiro wanted to take into account.

He had seen Jura work on projects like this two or three times before, and those were the only projects he worked on at home anyway, really. Of course, beside the work that he did to give examples to Eiro while teaching him.

It would be an exact copy of what a hand would be like. Of what a hand should be like. It was something that allowed incredible control over an artificial limb. It was similar with Eiro's current hand. It wasn't completely solid like he thought it to be at the start, but the interior of the palm was partially hollowed out and filled with the pieces that let Eiro moves his fingers individually.

It didn't have any special power source of course, it was still simply 'fueled' by the mana of the one that had it on their body, meaning that a limb like this would naturally take a piece of the total amount of mana regeneration, which was a price that Eiro didn't mind to pay. Especially Jura's were always quite efficient after all.

Either way, soon, Eiro seemed to have finished the pieces that he would end up needing for the hand, and then slowly breathed out the air he had been keeping in his lungs for the past minute as he was finishing up the last part of his soon-to-be hand.

His hands were weirdly enough hurting a lot, especially his joints. It was probably because he was just more sensitive to such things now, with his new card. With a slight sigh, Eiro simply leaned back in his chair and looked at the pieces in front of him, simply choosing to take a little bit of a break.

Although, all of a sudden, he could hear the noise of water boiling from the next room over... As well as the footsteps of Avalin and Leon who were giving Sammy a tough time. He could smell the raw meat that Rudy was currently preparing, and heard Clementine and Arc as they were speaking to each other about how much food each of the animals had left.

It was a bit... surprising. He somehow didn't notice any of that while he was working, and then, all of it came rushing in when he stopped concentrating on that one thing. Maybe he was just noticing everything so strongly because he knew it was there at that very moment, or because he wasn't thinking about other things other than what he was perceiving.

"Could that be it..?" Eiro muttered quietly, as he slowly chose to switch exactly what he was paying attention to right now. He let everything else phase out, and then could only hear the sound of the water boiling, and smelled the scent of the metal the pot was made of. He had really just pushed everything away, and in turn, this one thing became so much stronger.

"Hmm..." The Demon whispered, before he slowly turned around and looked at the window next to the door. He could already see each and every speck of dirt and particle of dust that was covering the glass panes like this. It was somewhat distracting, if he had to be honest. So instead, Eiro slowly tried to ignore that dirt and dust, and instead concentrated on the crown of a tree in the distance.

And soon enough, it was as if that tree was the only thing in front of him. It even seemed as if his sight had... narrowed. He was only seeing that tree, and as if he was standing right in front of it as well. It did end up slightly hurting Eiro's eyes, so he quickly returned to his new 'normal' sight, but this was immense progress already.

He figured that his 'Concentration' skill was a big reason for why he was able to control it this well when he actually tried the right method, so Eiro was rather glad about that.

And with a smile on his face, weirdly excited, the Imp turned back to his work, and just tried to push all of his concentration onto them again, this time consciously. Again, it was like all that existed right now were these parts of the wooden hand he was about to make, and he slowly pushed his hand forward and picked the first piece up.

Somehow, it felt like this tiny piece had a fair amount of weight to it, although Eiro couldn't really describe his reasons for actually thinking so. That's just what it seemd like to him right now. He knew that it wasn't heavy in the slightest, but this weirdly made handling it somewhat easier.

And so, Eiro slowly started to put the whole wooden hand together, piece by piece, until he had the raw 'structure' of it laying in front of him. It's been a few hours since he started putting everything together, any now he really only had one step left... place the 'outer' parts on. And those 'outer' parts meant the panels that he would be using to cover everything up.

First, Eiro added the part for the palm and then the back of the hand. He tried his best to connect everything as tightly as he could without influecing the movability of the Hand's internal parts, but it was actually a little tougher to do that than he thought. Either way, soon enough, after fiddling around with it a bit, he managed to get it done properly and then moved on to the fingers.

With just a little glue, he managed to connect the rounded 'inside' part for the fingers with the flat 'outside' part, and even added some fingernails as extra pieces, although that only really had one reason. Like this, if he wanted to, he could maybe put some metal claws into these wooden fingers that he could use for fighting.

And after covering the joints as well, and then filling in any gaps with a slightly rubbery slime-like substance, which would dry and then make sure that nothing could get inside of the hand while not influencing the movability of the fingers and hand itself.

Just like that... Eiro had a pale blue wooden hand in front of him. With his new sight, he could quickly just look over the surface of the wood to make sure that everything was really perfect, because it should be a bit annoying to take it off again later.

Slowly, the Demon sat down on his chair while practically pulling his own body onto it with his feet as they twisted aroudn the chair-legs, before Eiro grabbed his wooden hand right at the base.

These limbs had a trick to being removed, and it wasn't necessarily comfortable. The reason that these fake limbs worked at all was that they had a part of the person's Life-Energy in them, so they could be seen as an actual part of the body. When it came to other beings, like animals, monsters, or people, this could only be done if you actually had the ability to control their Life Energy. That also meant that Eiro himself wasn't able to make movable limbs like these yet... He could make amazing Prosthetics otherwise, but they wouldn't be 'special' or 'magical' until he was able to make use of Life Energy to that extent.

But luckily, as he could control his own Life Energy pretty well at this point, that wasn't an issue. Sadly it wasn't possible for Eiro to go beyond the shape of this hand, and give him something like a twenty-fingered super-hand... The only reason this worked was because the 'Soul' of the person still recognized the missing limb as something that's supposed to be there, which was the reason why things like Phantom-Pain existed, so with the proper Prosthetic limb it was possible to trick the soul into believing it was their real limb... Otheriwse, Eiro would have already created a pair of giant wings for himself, or given himself an extra pair of arms or something like that.

Well, he could probably connect all that to his body, he just wouldn't be able to use them in the slightest.

Either way, for now, Eiro had to disconnect his current hand from his arm, which he did by slowly pulling on it while dragging out any and all Life-Energy that was in the Prosthetic.

Doing something like that to a real limb would usually kill it off near to instantly, but a fake limb like this would just stop being seen as a replacement... And then, it could be cut off.

After all, just because some life energy was in the Prosthetic didn't mean that it would magically float at the stump. No, the wood needed to basically merge with Eiro's flesh, and something like that couldn't really be undone that easily, meaning the simplest choice was to just cut it off.

Although, with the Demon's heightened sense of pain... That was a bit frightening even to him. So, he slowly bit down on a piece of wood he had laying next to him and then placed his, now limp, wooden hand down on the table, slowly cutting through his skin as tightly along the wood as he could.

It was incredibly painful, but luckily he could still control his blood properly using water magic, and like that could make sure that he wouldn't lose too much health.

Soon enough, the wooden hand just dropped off and Eiro sat there on his chair with teary eyes and a bloody stump, and Eiro sighed deeply as he kept holding his arm up and grabbed his new hand as he walked out of the hut and over to the main part of the house, slightly opening the door to get Nelli's attention, before she quickly floated over toward him to ask what was up.

"Everything alright? Why are you- Holy King and Queen, where's your hand?!" She asked in shock, and Eiro just looked at her with a wry smile. "Please don't yell that much, I just need you to heal my wound while I hold the wooden hand against it, alright?"

"Tsk, alright, I've done it a million times before, but... Did you just have to cut your hand off like that before telling me?" She asked with a sigh as she followed Eiro back into the hut, where the Demon just slightly turned over toward her and shrugged. "Sorry, seems I got a bit excited." The Demon said, and then did as he was saying before, holding the base of the wooden hand against his stump, before Nelli placed one of her small hands on Eiro's skin, the other on the pale blue wood, and water started seeping out of her body as she started muttered some spell, and the wound slowly closed down as it grew connected with the wooden hand Eiro made.

"My Healing is a lot weaker without being contracted... Sorry. For now don't connect it to your body and let me try to heal it over the next day or two, okay?" The Spirit suggested, and although Eiro was a bit hesitant, he slowly nodded his head as he grabbed some of the bandages he had ready in the shelf, quickly tying it around his hand and fingers properly before tying it to his arm, just to keep it tightly in place while it was healing, and then looked at the Spirit with a slight smile.

"Actually, about that... Nelli, do you want to form a contract with me?"