Demon's Virtue

Eiro and Clementine soon reached Rudy's room, where the young man was currently working on weaving strands of Avalin's hair into different pieces of cloth and string so that he could create something that may help Eiro with the Undead that he was set to fight.

"Is everything going alright?" Eiro asked, and Rudy slowly turned around and then nodded his head, "Yeah, everything is going pretty well, I'd say. It's a bit weird, but Avalin's hair is super strong despite how thin it is, and it's not dried-out or anything. It's basically perfect for this kind of thing."

The young man looked at his father with a smile on his face, and Eiro walked up behind him, just placing his hand onto his shoulder. On the table, Eiro could see some regular pieces of cloth that Rudy was weaving the hair into.

And while Rudy himself was doing that, there were his small 'Citizens' created through his 'Castle' ability on the table currently weaving some of the hair together with regular, strong thread. This was in order to create slightly thicker string that could be used for a few other things, like being integrated into items and weapons more easily.

"Those guys are pretty skilled themselves, huh?" Eiro asked, and Rudy turned his head back around with a smug expression, "Heh, hell yeah they are! I've been practicing a bit lately to get them to do different things that help me out. I can actually channel my 'buff' abilities through them to make the buffs a lot stronger as well. But for the most part, these guys can currently just do smaller things like this, or I can have them tie together loose ends when I'm sewing. Oh, wait, there's one more type of these guys, actually..." Rudy pointed out with a light smile.

He quickly grabbed his own spark-snapper that he had laying in the corner of the table and quickly created a small flame with his own fire magic. Unlike Arc's, Rudy's flames weren't useful for combat, but instead were incredible at other utilitarian things.

Rudy practically attached this small flame to the fingertip of his right index finger, and then held his left index finger toward the table surface. And out of that finger crawled another small figure, although it was different to the 'Civilians'.

"This is the first real specific kind that I created myself! I called them 'Court Magician'!" Rudy explained, and Eiro took a quick look. There were two main differences between this one and the civilians. While the Civilians were pure white humanoid figures, this specific 'Court Magician' had a slight red tint to it.

It walked up to the flame that Rudy was controlling with his finger and just grabbed a small piece of it. Rudy then made his own flame disappear while the 'Court Magician' kept the piece that he grabbed, and used it to walk over toward the string that the 'Civilians' were creating in order to singe the end of the string and fuse it together so that there weren't any real loose ends.

"Pretty neat, huh? And yes, I know that it's a bit useless, since I could just do this myself, but it's still kinda cool to play around with."

"Actually..." Eiro replied, "It's not all that useless at all. Sure, right now you may not see the use for it yet, but you will once you get stronger. It might make your life a lot easier if you can power these guys up individually or if you can increase the number of the Civilians and Court Magicians. So just keep at it. Amazing job with how far you brought these guys so far." The Demon smiled at Rudy, who just slightly embarrassedly, but still happily, looked back at the project in front of him.

"Urgh... Fatherly love, you're gonna make me sick." James groaned as he stood in the doorframe after having overheard some of the things that everyone was speaking about, and Eiro just laughed quietly.

"It's not my fault you have daddy-issues."

"Oh, I have daddy issues? Come on, Eiro, tell us about your father again, will you?"

"Touché." The Demon replied as he slowly turned around, "Is something up?"

James slowly shook his head as he came closer into the room, "Not really, just finished my gear-maintenance for the day, so I figured I'd come and tag along when I heard you guys walk past my room. But now that you mention it... Could you come with me for a second?"

Eiro slowly nodded his head and looked at his children with a smile, "I'll be right back." The Demon made his way over to James and followed him out of the room. Together, they chose to walk down the hallway so that they could speak with each other without the others hearing.

"So, you gonna tell us what this is all about?" James asked, and Eiro immediately nodded his head, "Of course, of course, don't worry. This is just a little hard to deal with at the moment. It's directly related to the situation with the Organization, and I don't know how much they know and control yet. I don't want to put all of you into danger, and especially I don't want to endanger my infiltration into the Organization." Eiro explained, and James just stayed silent for a few moments, although in the end, he seemed to understand Eiro's reasoning.

"Fine... But if you need us, then let us know. We've been training a lot lately, you know that. I don't want you to just treat us as if we were weak kids or something like that." James told Eiro, who just turned his head and smiled at the Light Elf.

"Of course not, don't worry. If I need you guys, I'll let you know somehow. I'm going to ask Rudy to reserve some of the string and cloth for you guys as well just in case you need it." The Demon suggested, and James slowly looked at him with a frown, "What are you actually fighting? Another Demon?"

With a deep sigh, Eiro shook his head, "Sadly not, otherwise this would be a lot easier. Then, I could just quickly stun him with some Holy Energy and then finish him off. No, it's an Undead. A pretty strong one at that."

"Urgh, Undead..." James groaned loudly, "Yeah, those guys are really horrible to fight sometimes. But it just gives you so much trouble that you have to prepare this much?"

Eiro slowly looked down at the ground and nodded his head in response, "If I'll have to be honest... He could have easily killed me when I met him. I don't know why he didn't, but one thing I know for sure is that I wasn't able to cause a single point of damage to him."

"What?" James sasked, stopping in his track as he stared at Eiro with a deep frown, "What do you mean you weren't able to do damage to him at all? Are you insane? Isn't he way stronger than you?"

Eiro sighed in response and nodded his head. "Yes, he is, but there's no unkillable enemy. If I have to, I'll use my Ace of Cups to kill him and get this over with." The Demon announced, and James slowly approached him, "Not only for your own good, I hope that you know what you're doing. If you leave these kids behind, I swear that I'm getting my hands on some bullshit necromancy spells and raise you from the dead myself if I have to, just to kick your ass for that."

"Oh? Well, I would actually kind of like to see you casting spells... Maybe I-"

"Eiro." James interrupted the Demon as he started to joke around a bit, "I'm serious."

Eiro looked back at James and slowly turned his head away, "I know. I'm not planning on dying, but as I mentioned, there's no unkillable enemy. That counts for me too. I know that you just said you'd kick my dead ass if it happened, but... If I end up dying, I want you three to protect the kids for me. I don't want anything to happen to them. They're more important to me than I myself."

James looked back at Eiro with a blank expression, not showing any sort of emotions in the slightest. It was obvious that he was unsure what he should say in this situation. But in the end, the Light Elf just closed his eyes and turned around, starting to walk down the hallway, "You got it. Let's hope it doesn't come to that. For now, head back over to them."

With a light smile on his face, Eiro turned around and made his way back toward the children. Despite his and James' differences, Eiro was really more than just happy to have someone like him that he could trust in. Someone that he could tell his secrets to, and someone that would just take care of things when he was gone.

"I'm kind of insulted you never asked us for anything like that." Nelli pointed out as she appeared around Eiro, practically slithering around the Demon's neck and floating closely in front of his face while Gondos appeared right next to her. The Demon sighed and waved his hand through the Water Spirit, pushing her out of the way and forcing her to reform herself in another location, "Right, right, as if I'd have to tell you to do that. I don't expect Gondos to do so, since he hasn't been around them that long, but there's no way that you'll just abandon them at this point, Nelli. You'd have to die yourself before that happens."

Noticing Nelli's light sigh, Eiro just smirked as he headed back to Rudy's room, where the young man had a few things to show Eiro by now. He stepped into the room and watched as Rudy quickly walked up to him.

"I have to measure your hands now. I want to make you a new pair of gloves out of this material." Rudy pointed out, and Eiro slightly raised his brows, "A new 'pair'? You know that I won't wear them on my left hand, right?"

"Hm? Oh, right, I forgot to tell you... This cloth is layered, the inside of the gloves won't have any of Avalin's hair in them, so you definitely won't come in contact with it. There might still be some residue Holy Energy though, so I get it..."

Eiro thought about it for a while, but in the end, he just shrugged, "Well, that's fair enough. I think it might be useful to be able to use both of my hands to damage him a bit more."

"Yup, that's what I thought."