Demon's Virtue

"A sacred flame that's always burning?" Nelli asked with a slightly curious expression on her face as she looked at the glass orb that Eiro was holding, and the Demon just nodded his head, "Yes, exactly. You see, the man that used to own this building before was not only a skilled Choromancer, but also an amazing Artificer. It's practically impossible to create such special hidden rooms and passages without that. They actually work in a very similar way to this 'Everburning Flame', as far as I understood."

Nelli looked at the glass orb in though, crossing her arms in thought, "So it's like... creating infinite fuel for the magic to use?"

"Well, in theory, that would work too, I guess. Just that it's impossible to create infinite fuel without literally making use of dead people's souls. Souls are the only thing that can produce mana. I've heard that there's some 'Vile Artificers' that do that, though. But no, what this does is actually much more impressive. This works by making fuel unnecessary." Eiro explained quickly, "It's a bit complicated and requires a lot of different runes and stuff... I honestly didn't figure it out yet, so I can't even start explaining to you how it works. Otherwise I might be able to quickly create one of these filled with a sacred flame already. I mean, I didn't even get the 'Artificing' skill yet. It might be far harder than I think it is, I don't know. Either way, I'll start working on this when I'm done with this."

The Demon explained, and the Naiad seemed to be fine with that suggestion, "Sounds fair enough. I mean, you'll probably be able to pick up on this kind of stuff pretty easily, right? There's no way you wouldn't, actually."

"Let's hope so, honestly." Eiro said as he took a deep breath. He placed the glass orb back into the closet and then closed it back down, before he focused back on the Sacred Flames that were floating a little distance away from him.

Eiro closed his eyes and squeezed his hand shut, immediately extinguishing the white flames. The Demon made sure that there was no spark somewhere around him that he would accidentally end up burning himself on, and then made his way back through the room. He continued making these small bone-powder packs and refilled Avalin's blood from the bottle into small glass vials that were able to really only hold a few drops.

Eiro could just push these vials into the small bags of bone-powder and keep them in there, and if he needed the sacred flames, all he needed to do was either throw the bag on the ground or control the blood inside of the vial to break the relatively thin glass.

Of course, until then, Eiro would keep these bags somewhere where they couldn't randomly break and kill him in his sleep or something.

And once Eiro used roughly three quarters of his bones, he figured this was enough for now. Eiro would keep the rest of the bones as a reserve, or for some other project, while he would try and use Avalin's blood as a weapon directly, like freezing it and shooting needles of it at the Collector.

Now, all that Eiro had to do after this was... improve his abilities. And that was meant in the area of magic, of course. He would spend all of today just preparing for this, and hopefully, he would be able to get the two new types of elemental magic skills that he wanted to have.

And so, Eiro made his way back into the room at the top of the tower, that he was capable of fully infusing with a particular element. He was fully unclothed again, and slowly pulled out one of the two magic stones that he wanted to make use of.

Sure, this room was somewhat 'broken', or 'unfinished', but that didn't change anything about the fact that it was able to enhance and basically increase the amount of elemental magic that was coursing through the area. If Eiro could basically actively pull it all toward himself and infuse it into him, then it wasn't an issue at all.

First things first, Eiro started with the Nature Element Magic Stone. He pulled it out of his treasury before pressing it down onto the center of the floor in this circular room. Eiro poured his mana inside, feeling the magic pouring into the runes. They started to glow with a dark green light, before the space around Eiro somewhat started to change.

Well, it didn't really. It didn't physically change, in the slightest. If there were things like small seeds in here, they would have rapidly grown already, but due to Eiro's 'relaxation session' from before, where he first cooled the room down and then heated it up, both to ranges that would kill most other living beings, anything that had the possibility to sprout here was already dead. Which was good, since Eiro didn't really want to deal with that.

No, the way that this room changed was mostly in the feeling that it gave off, the 'vibe' as Eiro liked to call this sort of feeling. Things that couldn't really be fully explained with words. These vibes took the form of emotions and raw ideas for the most part, instead of something proper and tangible.

And the 'raw idea' that poured into Eiro's head right now had a rather simple concept... If Eiro had to choose th cloest word that fit it, it would be 'Forest', although there was so much more to it than just that.

It was like Eiro was able to smell the air, feel the light breeze on his skin, and hear the rustling of the leaves above him. But in the end, all of that was just the Demon's imagination, and none of it was real in the slightest.

And then, Eiro finally got started. He could feel all this magic fill the room to the brim and grow more and more concentrated. And since this magic's source was technically Eiro's mana, he could control it, even if it was a bit harder than normal. But that was totally fine, it didn't need to be all that amazingly easily controllable. Eiro didn't want to use it for some kind of spell after all. He just needed it to infuse his body properly.

The Demon pulled the magic into his body in any way possible. Simply by absorbing it in through his skin, or by breathing it in, and anything else that came to mind right now.

Eiro would then infuse his body with that magic while pouring his mana out through the magic stone he was pressing down onto the ground. He felt his skin grow thicker again, like it did when Eiro did this kind of thing on top of the stone slab in the goblin village.

Eiro's skin became rigid and darkened a bit, as if it was just turning into bark. His horns, fingers, and toes were stretching out a bit and were moving around a bit more wildly, as if they were roots or branches stretching outward.

In the end, this was exactly what Eiro wanted, so it was fine. But combining this with the whole 'Forest' Vibe that Eiro was getting from this space that was filled to the brim with Nature Magic, a feeling stronger than what Eiro could feel from actual forests, it was really like Eiro had become a tree that was standing in the center of an ancient forest.

He felt the ground underneath him as his roots burrowed through it more and more, his branches swaying in the wind. Eiro could feel moss slowly climb up onto his body. But none of this was actually happening. Eiro wasn't actually a tree, he wasn't actually in a forest.

Weridly enough, it took a lot to make sure that Eiro really understood all of that completely and didn't forget about it midway through the whole infusion process. As if he deep down truly wanted to believe that it was as simple as that. That he didn't have to worry about anything anymore. That he didn't have to fear for his life constantly. That he didn't have to hide who he was to protect himself and his loved ones.

That he was amongst others that were truly like him. A tree in a forest was never alone. And while Eiro wasn't alone either, being surrounded by so many other people that he cared for and that in turn cared for him, it still wasn't the same. They weren't the same. Eiro was a being that seemed to be simply... unprecedented.

A Monster might be able to understand some of Eiro's troubles, but not even nearly enough.

A Monster in control of his monstrosity would be able to understand even more, although there were more things to it.

A Demon in control of his monstrosity on the other hand, was already quite close to what Eiro was, but it still wasn't just there.

There were many things you could add onto that without even going into things like personality or circumstance, just looking at what exactly the basis of Eiro was.

Eiro was an artificially-created Demon that was in control of his monstrosity while being capable of growing his Stats in a way that no other living being he knew of seemed to be. That's the basis of what Eiro was. Then you could add onto that the fact that Eiro was raising the one being that would be able to kill him instantly if she wanted to as his daughter, living amongst people that would all want to kill him, while being Blessed by the former Queen of Naiads and a current Nature Goddess, all the whilst also plotting to take both the title of Monster King and Hero onto himself.

Honestly, considering all that, who would be able to sympathize with him? Who would be able to understand him?

Compared to that, being a simple, boring tree in a forest of other trees that were exactly like him didn't sound all that bad.

Eiro just sat there for a while, dreaming of what a life like that, a life without troublesome parts to it, may be like. What it would feel like to be able to truly relax at all times, what it would feel like not to be concentrating on a one-kilometer area directly around you at all times in case someone was trying to kill you or your children.

Would Eiro be satisfied with that? Would he truly prefer a life like that over the life he was currently living?

Obviously, the answer to that was 'no'. He loved his children and he loved his friends and allies. He wouldn't want to change anything about the current situation.

Still, even an unprecedented being like Eiro had to indulge in escapism every once in a while.