Demon's Virtue
chapter-29

While continuing to eat his food, the Imp just stared at the children and then shrugged his shoulders, trying to tell them that there isn't much to explain about him or the child with him, but Arc quickly shook his head as he inerjoined his fingers behind his back.

"Come on, we've told you so much about us! So tell us a little about you! Like, what's your name, even?" Arc asked with a smile, but the Imp just tilted his head to the side confused. A name, huh? He never actually knew if he had any name or not, at least in his status it says 'None'.

"Imp no have name." He replied due to that, and Arc slowly turned toward the other children with a broad grin, "Oh, then do you want us to name you?" The boy asked rather excitedly, but the Imp just stared back at him and shook his head, but Arc didn't really accept that as an answer and huddled up together with the other children.

And while they were doing that, the Imp had to figure out a few other things. He didn't care much about what the children were doing right now, so the young Monster just sat down on the ground, his Dagger at the ready, before trying to do the thing with the strong breathing again, now that he felt like he wasn't all that tired anymore. Especially after eating, he felt just rejuvenated!

So, the Imp closed his eyes and concentrated on the heat in the center of his body again, because this interested him a little more than whatever these children were doing, and soon enough, the Imp started to breath out strongly again.

However, this time around, his mouth wasn't ripped open and he was able to release all of the air only through his nose. That was a strong victory for the Imp!

That meant that he was able to control that heat at least a little bit! He was a lot more tired than before though, so he couldn't play around with the heat any more than that for now. But at the very least, that 'Air Magic' Skill leveled up again, so that was a really good thing! The Imp really needed to get better at this, though, and this seemed like the type of thing that could be solved through these 'Stats', at least that's the feeling that he got when looking at them. So, he really needed to kill more things.

"Should we just call him Mister Breather?" Clementine suggested while the Imp was thinking, but Arc just chuckled and shook his head. "Better not laugh about that, when I did, he stabbed my leg." The boy said with a slight laugh, before the Imp just stared at them annoyedly and went back to thinking, before getting an idea after remembering something that the woman he killed mentioned when he first saw her.

"Monster repellant." The Imp said with a slight frown as he stepped up to the group of children, and Arc turned toward him. "Huh? That's the Orb thing in the carriage, right?" The boy asked the other children, and they just slowly nodded in response while the Imp stepped into the carriage to take a look around. It wasn't really hard to figure out what they meant, because the Imp had a very weird feeling coming from a certain spot. He was kind of reluctant to grab it, but after a little bit of convincing, the Imp slowly wrapped his fingers around the orb, even if it gave him a very, very weird feeling when he did so.

It was like he just wanted to immedately get rid of that because his whole body was starting to get scratchy and stuffy, so, the Imp quickly brought the Orb outside of the carriage and laid it down on the ground and relaxed from this weird feeling again.

"Ick..." The Imp muttered annoyedly, and then looked at the children. "I break?" He asked, but the children looked at him with confused, wide open eyes. "What, no! Of course not!" Sammy exclaimed immediately, although Arc stepped in with a curious expression.

"Why exactly do you want to break it?" He asked, and the Imp replied without hesitation, "Want monsters come here. Imp kill monsters, get stronger. Imp get stronger... Get smarter. Use hot better." The Imp explained in a clear voice, and Arc crossed his arms with a nod. "You know what, sure, let's do that! It sounds exciting!" The boy replied, before the other children looked at Arc confused.

"What do you mean, exciting? That's horrifying!" Rudy replied, but Arc just shook his head, "It shouldn't be an issue, especially for you. And look, Mister Imp made it through to us without issue, so it can probably only defend against weak ones anyway." The boy pointed out, and quickly turned back to the Imp.

"Go ahead and break it." Arc told the Imp, who swiftly grabbed his Dagger and stabbed it into the sphere on the ground in front of him. And even though the children beside Arc wanted to stop him, they weren't fast enough, and the orb slowly formed a crack and shattered in front of them. It gave out a small wave of heat around the Imp that seemed very similar to the heat that he felt in his body, though, so that was good in itself!

But either way, the icky feeling was completely gone now, so the Imp turned toward the children. "You in carriage." He told them, handing one of them the basket with the child in it, and they all quickly did as told, rushing into the carriage. The only one that didn't get nervous was Arc, which was exactly what the Imp expected.

And then, the boy made a suggestion, "How about we keep going for now, the horses should have properly rested." He told the Imp, who slowly nodded his head and sat down at the front of the carriage like before.

While the Imp was just sitting there, he took his large book out of his bag, the one where he first learned about the Ace of Cups. His whole goal for now was to try to control this heat to be able to activate the second card that he got, because it seemed like a useful weapon to him when he saw it. Maybe if he read about it in this book, he could find out about it. But then again, the Imp wasn't exactly sure which card it actually was. He thought that he read something about a 'Three of Swords' on the notification though, so that seemed like a good place to start. The Imp wanted to read through this whole book anyway, because if there were other useful cards, it would be good to know about them.

The story of the 'Three of Swords' was also a pretty interesting one. It was about a young child that grew up in something called a 'Circus', although the Imp didn't know what it was, and he was known as the 'Living Puppet'. In the shows he was part of, he was always connected to threads, and some other person would pretend to completely control him. Of course, the child itself wasn't really happy with all of that, but he continued on doing the same thing over and over again, until he got sick of threads and the man that was using them to dictate his life.

So, the child killed the man, using the very same threads that would always be connected to the rings placed around the child's hands. And after he took his first life, the Arcane Dealer appeared in front of him. Most of the threads that the child was holding snapped while he was pulling them around the man's neck, but with the card that the Arcane Dealer gave him, that didn't matter. The child was able to create new threads that could never break, with blades that were controlled by said threads.

But this new weapon of his wasn't something that could be easily controlled. It spread out inside of the child's body and slowly turned him mad, before he was completely taken over by the Three of Swords. For a while, the child was finally controlling the threads, but soon enough, the threads controlled him again.

The Imp thought about it for a while, and then remembered that he did notice these weird red lines running across the man's hands and arms when he was using the card, so maybe that was this 'spreading', but the Imp really wasn't sure what exactly this 'Madness' meant. Did the man act weird back then? It did seem like he was hurting the woman, but the Imp wasn't aware whether or not this was that madness or not. Either way, he was dead now, so it didn't matter in the slightest.

But despite his hopes, the Imp didn't get any closer to figuring out how to actually make that weapon appear. So after all, he had to figure out how to use this damn annoying heat! But it just made him so tired all the time, so the Imp really didn't want to use it too often.

It seemed like he really had to, though. He managed to control the air from his body and it didn't really help him much, so maybe he could try and use the water from his body instead? He had this 'Water Magic' skill is well. But exactly what kind of water could that mean?

There were three things that might be close enough to that, which the Imp could immediately think of. First, his piss. He didn't need to go right now though, so he had to wait for that for a little longer. Then, there was his spit. The Imp did already show his expertise in controlling his spit's trajectory back when he was with the Horde, but it was so far away from the heat in his body that he really wasn't sure if he could do that yet.

But the third type was the one that the Imp was sure he could try and control. His blood. He always had some of it in his body, and it was probably around the place with his heat as well! And after remembering back to how the Imp ate his brothers, he did know that there was one place with really a lot of blood right where the heat was gathering as well!

His heart! So, without further ado, the Imp tried to concentrate on that lump of meat by doing the same thing that he did before while Arc was starting to move the carriage again. The Imp slowly closed his eyes and put his hand to his chest, where he noticed a slight bumping every once in a while, which seemed to come from his heart as well.

So, the Imp concentrated on that place in his body, trying to focus on that continuous beating as he was doing so. And before he knew it, the Imp felt the heat slowly spread throughout his whole body. At first, it was just as if he was feeling cozily warm, as if sitting in front of a fire, but soon enough, the heat became burning hot as if he was pushed into the fire by someone.

It came so quickly that the Imp didn't know what he was supposed to do, and just grasped his chest as he was doing so, trying to hold out through the pain as much as he could. Slowly, the Imp hunched over, just glaring at the notifications that appeared in front of him.

[Your Mana Spread throughout your body]

[A Lesser Imp's Body is not supposed to handle mass amounts of mana. As long as this state is in effect, you will lose 1HP per second]