Demon's Virtue
chapter-288

Eiro followed James toward the place that he mentioned and tried to figure out if the Conductor truly might be there somewhere. And sure, there was a relatively higher amount of raw magic in this specific area of town, but Eiro wasn't particularly sure if this was enough to say that the Conductor might be here.

Then again, he didn't have any clue as to what it might look like in the first place, so he should explore any possibilities that he came across.

"Yo, we're here. Been feelin' a lot of weird shit from here." James stated as he stopped in a narrow alley where him and Eiro were relatively safe from the heavy snowstorm going on around them. He pointed to the other side of the street toward a small bookshop, and Eiro concentrated his glare onto that place. He looked around and tried to see if the storm was moving in any particularly special way around here, and while their certainly did seem to be some fluctuations, Eiro didn't think that it was because there was a lot of magic power being pumped into the storm from here.

Rather, it was like there was something in that bookstore that was simply so powerful that it ended up passively interrupting part of the storm's magic.

Eiro stared at the store and certainly did see the highly-concentrated magic right in there. It was the best clue that he had, in the end. With a deep sigh, Eiro approached the door of that store and slowly pushed it open. Or at least, he tried. The store had been locked down because of the weather, but soon, someone came to the door and swiftly opened it up.

"Ah, excuse me. I don't get too many customers these days, so I locked up a bit earlier than usual... Come in, come in..." An elderly, weak, and frail man pointed out as he opened the door for Eiro and James. The Demon slowly nodded his head and stepped inside, and simply let the snow on him naturally melt due to the high amount of heat that his own body gave off due to his fusion with Sarius. He was trying his best to suppress it so that people didn't notice that something was off about him, but it came in useful in situations like this, at least.

And after quickly melting the snow on James' body as well, the two stepped into the bookstore. Eiro instnatly started to scan the books inside of this initial, cluttered room, trying to find the source of the large amount of magic in here. Quite soon, he found it.

Eiro approached the source and picked it up, but it was nothing but a small, dirty leatherbound book. As There didn't seem to be anything special about it externally, but it certainly had a lot of magic imbued into it. The nature of this magic seemed somewhat similar to that of this storm, so that was probably the reason why it ended up slightly causing the storm's magic to fluctuate.

"Any luck? Is that what you're looking for?" The Light Elf beside Eiro asked, and the Demon slowly flipped the book open just to double-check. But when he found that the pages were completely empty, he slowly shook his head, "It is not. It just seems to be a coincidental find." Eiro replied bluntly, and James scratched the back of his neck.

"Really? And I thought it seemed a bit similar."

"Oh, it certainly is similar. An aspect of this book is similar to that of the storm, and I already have a rough guess at what it might be." The Demon pointed out. And he didn't lie either, he really did have a pretty good guess. The magic that was basically seeping out of this small book was a quite invasive sort. One that would dive into your very being and take something from you. It did seem a little too weird to be in the hands of the owner of such a small bookstore.

"Old man. Why do you have something like this?" Eiro inquired immediately, and the man slowly looked into the Demon's direction, "It is a book, is it not? I sell books."

"Then you won't mind selling this to me?"

Immediately, the old man shook his head, and with a gentle smile on his face said, "Why would I mind?"

Eiro sighed and concluded that this old man didn't have any idea of why this book was here. Either he bought it without knowing what it was or someone planted it here for someone to randomly pick up and cause a bit of havoc. It seemed like it would be best if Eiro kept it for himself, so he quickly pulled out his pouch of money and bought it, before proceeding to place the small book into his treasury.

If this book had really been the conductor for the magic that fused with the storm outside, then something should have changed. And well, it did, but only in a subtle way. After all, this book had been slightly affecting the trajectory of the magic, so after that had been fixed, nothing else was changing.

Although Eiro soon grumbled to himself in annoyance when he realized that he was in the completely wrong part of town, and that this small book had affected his analysis to this extent.

"The hell did you do?" James asked with a light, surprised frown, and Eiro turned over toward him, slowly glancing down at his book to make sure he remembered everything about this situation. Since James was able to sense magic to an extent, he definitely would have noticed such a strong source of magic as this book indubitably was, suddenly disappear.

Eiro looked back at James and chose the simplest explanation that he should give at this time. He didn't want to spend too much time just having to explain something that he hoped James would remember soon anyway.

"It's an ability of mine." The Demon said bluntly as he slowly made his way back over toward the door, completely ignoring James' confused expression.

The two of them made their way outside again, and Eiro immediately started to try and figure out the patterns of this storm again. Somehow, it seemed like this book had a much larger influence on the storm than the Demon assumed at first. As if the small immediate effect it had over here just became stronger due to different chain-reactions and ended up slightly shifting the way that things worked.

That was an aspect that Eiro really didn't take into account so far, how the different magical objects in this town might affect the storm. Eiro thought about everything that might end up affecting the storm in any possible way. The few shops that actually sold magic items, all the artificial artifacts created by the organization in the slums, and of course all the research conducted in the Academy.

Eiro thought about everything and tried to figure it out, and soon managed to narrow the place down in a surprisingly accurate way.

"We have to get to the other side of the town. It's in the floral-exhibit in the park." Eiro pointed out, and James looked at him with a frown, "The floral-exhibit? It's winter, and we're in the middle of the probably strongest snowstorm of the century, the fuck do you mean the 'floral-exhibit'? There is none!" He exclaimed, and Eiro stopped in his track and turned around toward him, "There's something called a Greenhouse there, you know? Using magic, they can simulate the exact weather that different plants need. Access is usually restricted to Nobles due to how expensive the different plants there are, so that nobody may steal them."

James looked back at Eiro a bit surprised, and even the spirit that Eiro was fused with felt similarly surprised, 'You can't fucking remember that this guy is your friend but you can remember this random bullshit?'

'Shut it' Eiro immediately replied to Sarius, before the Demon proceeded to make his way through the town, while James quickly followed him toward that place as well. Since Eiro knew a quicker path that they could take, it didn't really take that long until the two of them made their way to that royal Floral Exhibit, and were soon let inside when Eiro showed the guards, the few of them that were still stationed here in this weather, the brooch he was given by Solomon a while ago.

And now that they were here, Eiro and James could relax a bit again, since it was quite warm and humid in here. The snow immediately started to drip down their bodies after melting, and pleasant scents travelled through the air.

"...This place is really just filled with goddamn flowers?" James asked with a wry smile, and Eiro slowly turned toward him, "Not exclusively flowers. All sorts of plants, really. Trees, mosses, herbs, and flowers as well, yes, but not exclusively."

After Eiro's brief explanation, he proceeded to look around. This place gave Eiro a lot of trouble with his perception as well. For one, his sense of smell was completely overwhelmed due to the extreme amount of different scnets that were filling the air here, although that was something that Eiro would grow used to soon.

The thing that caused the most issues to Eiro were the magical plants in here, as well as the magic that was used to keep this place running. One could argue that this floral-exhibit had the most focused and compressed magic in the whole town, hence why Eiro tried to ignore it in his search for a bit. He just didn't want to get distracted.

But now that he took a look at everything again, he noticed that this place really strongly affected the storm outside, probably mostly due to the weather-manipulating magic that was used to create artificial eco-systems in here. Either way, that was not the whole reason for this. It seemed like there was energy flowing out of here, although this fact became extremely obscured due to the very fact that this magic in here was messing with the magic out there.

As if something was deliberately placed here in the hope that all this magic would hide it pretty well. And it worked, even for someone with Eiro's abilities. Others most likely would have an incredibly hard time to figure all of this out. It was the perfect location to hide the conductor, as far as Eiro was concerned. Although, that fact alone should have led Eiro to suspect this place in the first place.

Either way, the Demon made his way further into the Exhibit to try and find where exactly the conductor was hidden.