Demon's Virtue
chapter-217

"Forces of nature...?" Jess repeated as she looked at Eiro, who was just standing there as still as rock, waiting for these three to answer him. She turned her head and looked up at James, expecting him to be making some kind of angry or startled expression. He had never really been all too emotional ever since she knew him, but since Eiro came along, she had seen him make all sorts of expressions.

But now, James was just staring back at Eiro without any sort of emotion on his face. This went on for a few more moments, before he suddenly pulled his foot over the ground, "Don't you dare make me regret this." James said, making his way over toward the stairs while Jess had her eyes fixated on the Light Elf's face. And when she turned around toward Eiro, he was just standing there with a light grin on his face.

"Yeah." He replied immediately, as if he had been expecting this answer from James, before Eiro turned toward Krog and Jess, "So, what about you two? Just because James is now my underling doesn't mean that you two have to-"

"Did you just fucking call me your underling, you lowlife Imp?" James asked with a loud growl, his cool air from just now completely dissipating. Eiro scratched his cheek with a puzzled expression and tried again, "Sorry, how about... Minion? Inferior? Subordinate? Sla-"

"I swear, if you don't shut the fuck up right now, I'll leave." The Light Elf pointed out with a glare, before slightly turning his head toward Jess and Krog while leaning against the wall next to the stairs, "But no matter how much this guy pisses me off, he's right. Just because I'm sticking around doesn't mean that you two have to. Obviously I'd like you to stay, but you have your own things to deal with and goals to achieve. This place might not be the best starting point for that."

Krog and Jess turned their heads toward each other for a moment, trying to figure out what the other was thinking, before Krog just groaned out loud, "Ah, fuck it! Count me in!" The heavy warrior exclaimed, and now, everyone was staring right at Jess, who was fiddling with her own fingers to try and figure out what she was supposed to do, before she slowly nodded her head.

"I'll... I'll st..." She started muttering, although she wasn't particularly sure if her words were the right choice, and Eiro interrupted her after noticing her thoughts, "You don't have to choose right now if you don't know what to do. You're still a member of the party like you always were, don't worry. Take your time, I don't want to force you." Eiro said, surprising the others, as they really didn't expect him to be as understanding as he ended up being.

While Jess slowly nodded her head and started following the others, someone else spoke up to make a choice, "If you're cool with it, can I leave?" The slime asked all of a sudden, and Eiro turned his head to look at the nearly translucent blob currently hanging onto his shoulders, "Of course not, Bavet. You're my pet."

"Oi, I'm not a fucking pet you...! Wait... What did you just say?" The slime started screaming, but his words ended up slowing down, and Eiro looked at him with a surprised expression, "'You're my pet'?"

"Fuck off, you know what I mean! What does 'Bavet' mean?! Is that some kind of insult?"

"Heh, of course not. I thought you'd have remembered my promise." Eiro pointed out, and all of a sudden, the slime's body hardened up and gained quite a bit of weight on top of that, "Y-Y-You mean that..."

"'Bavet' is the Ancient Language word for 'everything'. Quite a good fit, huh? You may technically be a 'Shapeless Slime', but it's more like you can turn into everything. Thus, 'Bavet'. A nice name, isn't it?"

"So that's... that's my name? D-Doesn't it sound kinda cool..? Like I'm omnipotent or something?" The slime, Bavet, muttered quietly, and Eiro turned toward him with his brows raised, "We can still change it to something else."

"No! No, I like this one!" Bavet exclaimed, and Eiro just shrugged, "Alright, then let's go with that one. Your name's 'Bavet' now, alright?"

"A-Alright..." The slime replied quietly, before the group continued to make their way through the mansion to get to the garden, where everyone was already sitting while looking at the Sky and the lights subtly moving around like waves.

Eiro turned toward Rudy to ask him if he could help, but it seemed like the young man had everything perfectly under control. He seemed to have practiced enough with his class ability, and was now able to have the tiny humanoids help him with things like seasoning everything, at the very least.

The demon sat down on an empty chair, before proceeding to take Avalin and Leon from Sammy so that she could properly relax a bit now as well.

"Hey, girly... Erm, Sammy, right?" Krog then said while Eiro helped the two tired kids onto his lap, and Sammy turned her head around to look at the heavy warrior, "Y-Yeah?"

"Next time when ya wanna get others' attention, do it with yer whole body. Your voice is pretty loud and strong enough as is, but if ya use your body together with your voice and have the proper technique for screamin', then ya can handle situations like today even better." Krog explained to her quickly, and Sammy looked at him a bit surprised. Krog may seem pretty intimidating on first glance, but he was actually pretty caring and liked to help others around him out.

Well, he did get pissed off pretty easily when it comes to people he didn't even know, as Eiro experienced first-hand back when he first met him, but usually he was pretty nice. Slightly confused, Sammy turned her head toward Eiro, who quickly explained.

"Ah, out of those three, Krog actually has the highest Charisma, believe it or not. Amongst other things of course, his role is to 'taunt' monsters into paying attention to him. That's why you can trust his advice, he knows what he's talking about." Eiro explained, and Krog just started to smirk smugly while Sammy turned her head toward him.

"Alright then... But how do I actually do that? How can I get others to pay attention to me properly?" Sammy asked. Today while she was trying to make others leave the streets because of how dangerous it was, she did really notice that there were many that simply didn't notice her. And if they didn't notice her, then her ability didn't really work either.

After a bit of thought, Krog simply explained, "Hm, since you're not an adventurer, I'd suggest... Wearin' bright colors. And then, ya just kinda need to move rapidly so that people turn their heads toward you. Yer voice should naturally get louder the more you practice for it, but I'd suggest not overdoin' it or you'll just lose your voice altogether for a day or two. When I was practicin', I'd usually drink some relaxing, hot tea with a bit of honey."

With a wry smile, Sammy looked up at the large man sitting next to her. Even now he seemed truly enormous, despite the fact that he was just sitting, "You really don't seem like a tea drinker..."

"Hah, I get what ya mean. Well, it be a habit I picked up from my mum." Krog explained, "She was a herbalist, so we drank more tea than even water when I was growin' up! Me ol' man never really took to it though, called me a wee lil' bitch more than just once, aye he did!"

"Krog, your dialect's peaking out again." James warned Krog with a smirk, who just turned his head over toward him, "Tsk... You always have to complain, don't ya?" Krog asked after fixing his tone a bit again, although Arc seemed pretty curious about this.

"Why'd you go and hide it, though? Doesn't seem like anything bad to me." The young man pointed out, and Krog simply shrugged, "It's not, but you never know who you meet, right? It's a deep Dwarvish Dialect. Not even that many dwarves speak it anymore, but my mum 'n gamps did it, so I took it on a bit."

"Wait, does that mean that you..." Arc asked with a wry smile, and Krog slowly nodded his head. "Hm? Ah, yeah, I'm quarter-dwarf. My nanna was a human, so my mum's half-human. My pop's a Goliath though, so I'm still bigger than most people around."

"Wait, what..?" Eiro muttered quietly as he looked over at the heavy warrior with a slight frown, "Half Goliath..? What are Goliaths like?"

"Ah, well, basically they're just bigger, stronger humans, I guess? They get like 7 or 8 feet tall. My mum was barely 5 feet tall... Ya must be able to imagine how-"

Immediately, Eiro stood up and had Avalin and Leon sit on the chair alone for a bit, while Eiro quickly pulled out his dagger out of his treasury and pressed the tip into Krog's arm to draw just a little bit of blood.

"Holy- The hell're you doing?" He exclaimed. It seemed like Eiro deliberately chose a point that would cause as little damage as possible, and he obviously didn't have the intent to attack Krog, but it was still weird so he was just looking at Eiro in confusion.

"Just got to test something..." The demon pointed out before he practically cleaned the tip of the dagger with his tongue, "I wasn't able to tell just through smell, so I figured taste might help..." Eiro pointed out as he slowly walked over toward Rudy while trying to keep the bit of Krog's blood on his tongue. He tried to compare Krog's scent and 'taste' with Rudy's scent, which Eiro knew basically perfectly already, and soon after just came to a simple conclusion.

"I figured it out..." Eiro muttered quietly, and Rudy looked at him with a deep stare, placing down the cooking utensils and stepping away from the fire and grill that he was cooking on, "You figured what out?" He asked, somewhat hopeful that it was what he thought it was.

"What you are. I'm sorry I was so insensitive before, but now I'm sure... Rudy, you're definitely a human. There's no doubt about that. And you're a full human as well, it's just that you're from a human clan." Eiro explained quickly, and Rudy slowly stared at Eiro, and at Krog sitting at the table behind him, "Wait, you mean that-"

"Yes. Rudy, you're a Goliath."