Demon's Virtue
chapter-286

Solomon sat fell down onto his couch, unable to respond in any way to what he was just told now that the group made their way back to the castle, where they were relatively safe from onlookers, at least compared to outside.

"A blessing... and you did... what exactly? You absorbed a Spirit Gateway?" The King asked, completely perplexed. After all, this sounded like nothing but a ridiculous joke to him at the moment. But when Eiro at the very least revealed the patterns that were being interwoven with the patterns of his already existing blessing on his chest, he understood that at least part of it was correct. And since he got the testimony of all three of them, Clark, Eiro and Sarius, there was no way that Solomon could just pass this off as a joke or a lie.

"You know what? Let us deal with this after you solved this memory-issue for us. After that, everything should make a lot more sense, right?" Solomon asked, and Eiro slowly nodded his head, "I assume so. You must know a lot of things about me that might make it easier to believe. Subtle things that are hard to put into words are the things that should help, mostly." The Demon replied, and Solomon slowly accepted this. What else was he supposed to do but that, right now?

"Now, what're you gonna do? Fuse with that guy and then look for that strong source of magic, right?" Clark asked with his hands placed behind the back of his head, and the Demon slowly turned his head toward Solomon, "Was that the plan?"

The King immediately nodded his head, "Of course that was the plan. I do not know how that fusion works, however. You did not explain it to me." Solomon pointed out. Eiro looked toward Sarius and then extended his hand toward the Salamander, who just looked back at Eiro a bit confused.

"What d'ya mean, you wanna fuse with me? Are you a dumbass?" Sarius asked, and Eiro slightly sighed, "No, I'm not." He said bluntly. He pushed his hand forward toward the Spirit and tried to pull Sarius into his hand as if he was trying to fuse with some regular magic, and then released that effect soon after.

Sarius flew backward a good bit and stared at Eiro with a startled expression, "The fuck was that?"

"We slightly fused right there. Come on, let's just do this. It's not an unpleasant feeling, if I remember correctly." The Demon explained, and Sarius groaned slightly as he floated over toward Eiro's chest. Even he was a little bit interested in what was about to happen. And with a quick push, Sarius pressed into the center of Eiro's chest, and the Demon could feel as the two of them fused together. Eiro's arms, legs and back became covered in scales. Some of them were a dark red, and others of them were a pale blue color, as if Eiro's scales were forming some form of pattern.

The rest of Eiro's skin became many shades darker, as if one had simply rubbed some charcoal on him and didn't wash it off properly. The Demon's horns started to wave around before igniting into flames, and were now burning on their own. Or rather, they were the flames themselves, each burning in a different color that corresponded to the colors of the horns themselves.

Eiro properly took off his cloak now that his body had transformed like this, and then spread out his wings. As he did so, they slowly changed and turned into a mass of flames. His bones were still there as a base, but the rest of Eiro's wings were replaced by fire. He wasn't sure if he would be able to fly like this, but he didn't want to try it out in this form.

For now, the Demon just gently wrapped his wings around his body as if to cover it up, in the same way that Sarius had been using his flame-cloak to loosely cover his body as if it was just an accessory.

Eiro was now able to see the flow of magic around him. The way that his own body, and especially the magically-created heat pushing off of him was just so slightly shifting the flow of the fine layer of ambient mana present everywhere.

It was something that Eiro didn't particularly remember ever noticing, but it was like every movement that anyone took slightly impacted this fine layer of mana. He wasn't sure if he actually even noticed this layer the last time he fused with a spirit, but he certainly did now. Eiro was able to see the slight muscle-twitchings of Solomon and Clark's bodies, he could see their heartbeats and their breathing, and all of that just through the subtle flows of the mana in this room.

And then, the Demon stepped over toward the window, looking out into the snowstorm that was ravaging there, as strong as ever. Eiro took a deep breath as he prepared himself. The Demon turned around and looked at the two people standing there, "Take care of that stag while I'm gone, will you? Let's hope we can end this all soon." The Demon said, and immediately proceeded to open the window up. Snow was pouring into the room, but Eiro didn't really care, even when Solomon started yelling at him.

The Demon climbed onto the windowsill and simply pushed himself off with as much force as he could. During the jump, Eiro started to flap his wings, and luckily, he was actually able to keep himself up in the air with these wings, although it really didn't look like it. Logically, he shouldn't have been able to fly like this.

Well, logically Eiro shouldn't be able to do a lot of things that he does with relative ease, so there was no reason try and be nit-picky about it.

Eiro started to fly through the air, through this heavy snowstorm. The heavy snow was melting before it even touched the Demon, and he was sure that if someone was down there, they would most likely have ended up seeing Eiro flying there. Although they probably wouldn't have seen who or what he is, so that wasn't really that big of an issue.

The Demon looked around the town, trying to find anything at all, but no matter how hard he tried he couldn't find any particularly large mass of mana. Sure, there were a few hotspots, but they were places where it was to be expected. Magic research-centers, nobles' homes where magic-tools were likely to be used, and of course inns where a lot of adventurers usually were. A lot of mages tend to practice their magic if they don't have anything else to do, and in this sort of weather, there was obviously nothing else they could do at all.

And on top of that, the disgusting magic that was fused with this storm itself was kind of blurring the sight that Eiro had of the magic in this town. As if it put a coating on his senses. He knew that he had to get back down onto the ground to properly find anything, even if it would take a lot longer than if he was able to just do it from up in the sky.

With an annoyed sigh, the Demon just let himself drop down onto the ground, and proceeded to swing his cloak over his body to hide himself again. Luckily, since his wings and horns became flames, Eiro was able to control them pretty easily, and basically just had to extinguish them a little to make sure he could wear his outfit properly.

The Demon fell toward the ground and quickly used magic to halt his fall just before impact, before he just stood there in the middle of the street for a few moments, "...What was I going to do again?" Eiro muttered to himself quietly, and he soon heard the thoughts of Sarius inside of his mind, 'Looking for that high-magic source for the spell-conductor. Concentrate, dumbass. And look at that fucking book already'.

With a deep breath, Eiro just stood there for a moment and tried to spread his awareness out toward any place around him that he could reach like this. He could feel the fluctuations in the ambient mana a bit more easily like this. It was still pretty tough because of the spell that was intertwined with the snowstorm, but overall it was still easier. And then, Eiro realized an espect about this he didn't even consider up until now.

He shouldn't try to look through the storm to see the town, but rather look at the storm directly. The thing that Eiro was looking for was the thing that was powering this strong spell in the first place. That meant that if he looked at the storm itself and the way that it flowed, Eiro should be able to figure out where exactly that mass amount of mana was entering the storm in the first place.

With such thoughts, Eiro quickly ran through the storm, along the flow of this uncomfortable magic fused into it. The Demon linked his thoughts with this flow, and let himself practically be carried by it. He tried to analyze it, figure out how it worked and what sort of magic this was in the first place, since it certainly was anything but pure. It was really quite disgustingly wicked, as far as Eiro was concerned.

Eiro followed along with the flow of the magic, and in the end, he managed to at the very least narrow the location of the 'power source' down to a specific area of the town. Well, to an area that was about 10% of the whole town right now. It was a lot smaller, but it was still quite large in the end.

The Demon tried to get into the center of that 10% area to spread his awareness out again. Maybe this time he would have some better luck. For this, Eiro just headed into some random bar and ordered something to drink for himself while waiting and just tried to spread his magic out from in here while Sarius did his best to keep the Demon in check. It wasn't his forté, but he tried his best nonetheless. He didn't want Eiro to mess up and be discovered to be a demon, after all.

But just as Eiro started his work, it seemed like he caught someone's attention. He was a relatively tall fellow, although shorter than Eiro still. He had really pale skin and seemed to be some sort of elf.

"Yo. What do you think you're doing?" He asked with a deep frown, and Eiro looked back at him, "Nothing much. Just practicing my magic. Can't do much else right now, can I? Did I bother you?" Eiro replied, and the elf scratched the back of his head.

"Ah, sorry, I guess. Just kind of on edge. This snowstorm's making me fuckin' crazy, there's something off about it. And then there's this fucking demon-report going around that I've gotta deal with..." The pretty much drunk elf pointed out as he sat down next to Eiro with a loud groan, "So? What's your name?" The Elf asked.

The Demon stretched his hand out toward him, but noticed that something was off. It was a prosthetic, as far as he could tell, but he moved it relatively well. Eiro didn't notice when it was just hanging down. He did notice a light limb just now though, and on top of that, he had a nasty scar on half of his body. Must have been some sort of accident.

"I'm Eiro. You seem sensitive to magic? Are you a high elf?" Eiro asked surprised, and the man slowly shook his head.

"Nah. Light Elf. Oh, the name's James, by the way."