Demon's Virtue
chapter-312

Eiro twisted his body around and let go of his dagger. It fell toward his right foot, and the Demon kicked it up into the air as he grabbed the arm of the puppet to throw it over his shoulder. Using the momentum achieved from that, Eiro pulled himself forward and jumped into the air just as the wooden dagger fell down again.

The Demon kicked the dagger down onto the staggered puppet, pushing it toward the back of its neck at high speed. It was just a hand's width away from it when the puppet let its body drop to the side. It seemed like it made use of the fact that it was staggered as well as the momentum that led to this to dodge the approaching dagger.

It threw one of its own wooden daggers into the air with a swift flick of the wrist and used its free hand to quickly twist its own body around by pushing itself off the ground. Using this new, transformed momentum, the puppet slashed at Eiro, who was still mid-air.

Of course, Eiro tried to dodge this attack, but just as he did so, the dagger that the puppet just threw into the air had started falling down. Its tip his the back of Eiro's head perfectly, and the Demon had lost this round. If this was a normal dagger, it would have hit him well enough to cause quite a bit of damage, especially considering what was surely going to happen now.

The puppet was definitely planning on using the dagger it was still holding to keep slashing at Eiro, while kicking the other one onto his back again, now that it had bounced away from him a bit. Since Eiro was using neither his wings nor his tail for these fights, since there was no way to know if he could reveal them to the enemies that he was fighting at any moment, so that meant there was no way to defend against the puppet's attacks.

"I lost." The Demon said, and the puppet immediately stopped attacking. Instead, it let go of the dagger it was still holding and pressed one of its arms onto the ground while using the other one to help prop Eiro up, and the Demon flapped his wings quickly to help this out as well. At the same time, he of course pulled the puppet up with him, before using earth magic to push the wooden dagger on the ground up so that the puppet could catch it.

With a slight sigh, Eiro rubbed the back of his neck, "Hm, this is a bit bothersome. I didn't win against you at all yet." He muttered quietly as he stared at the puppet. He had tried to fight against it five times today, and while it was always close, the puppet had always won.

Well, to be fair, Eiro didn't take the time to fully analyze this sort of combat with his yet. Instead, he had just tried to copy it normally with the techniques he already knew to draw as many movements as possible out of the puppet for now. Considering all that, Eiro did pretty well, honestly.

"That... That's a pretty interesting way to fight..." Krog pointed out with a wry smile on his face. Eiro turned around and looked at him with a nod, "Mhm, it is. But I like it. This might as well become my main style of combat from now on. Not only does it let me level up my Hand-to-Hand Combat and Dagger Mastery skills at the same time, which is quite nice, but the versatility is a lot higher. And considering my 'Treasury', the ways I can properly apply this will rise quite immensely." Eiro pointed out.

He had stopped himself from using abilities like this, so that he could get a grasp for the basic style first and foremost, but he was pretty excited about the ways that he might be able to use this in fights in the future.

"...You really are cheating somehow, aren't you?" Jess asked in disbelief, "How can you even move so quickly? And how did you pick that style up after... 20 minutes, maybe? What kind of prodigy are you?"

"It doesn't have anything to do with being a prodigy. More than that, it's cause he already learned the styles that this one is combining." James pointed out, and Jess turned her head with a deep stare, "I get that. That means it's pretty similar to learning new moves of a style, right?"

Eiro crossed his arms in thought before nodding his head, "I guess it could be said like that, yeah."

"Alright, then James... How long does it take you to learn new moves for your style?" The mage asked, and the Light Elf looked back with an emotionless expression. He stared for a few moments, before looking into the other direction silently.

"Yup, that's enough of an answer..." Jess sighed, "Well, anyway... Eiro, can you help me practice spellcasting later on? I thought maybe you could use your new Counter-Spell Creation skill as well?"

Eiro turned toward her, and didn't have to think about it for too long either, "That's a pretty good idea, yes. Actually, that's a way that we should practice all the time when I'm back from my trip... You get skill-proficiency because the spell was activated, but it only uses minimal mana because the effect didn't go through. And it would allow us to stop concentrating on damage-control and searching for suitable practice-areas... It should definitely help with your casting-speed if we tried some rapid-repeat casting."

"...It took me a full day to figure that out as a practice method, and you did it in a second?" With a slight pout, Jess crossed her arms, "That's totally-"

"'Cheating', yes, we get it." Krog interrupted her, and the young mage turned her head toward the mountainous warrior with a deep glare, "Shut it, meat-shield!"

"Who're you calling a meat-shield, you twerp?" Krog replied with a glare. Eiro was about to interrupt them, but then he remembered that these two were fighting all the time like that. They didn't seem to hate each other, though, so Eiro figured it was just friendly banter.

Either way, for now, the Demon figured that he should go through the moves that he could remember from the puppet for now.

The first thing he did was simply look at them over and over again to pick out the basic movements out of everything that the puppet did. By using his knowledge of his other styles that had been ingrained in his body, Eiro was able to do this rather easily. After all, this style was a combination of the two, so after seeing the result, he should be able to see the pattern and figure out how all sorts of moves with this style should end up working.

And then, at that point, he might be able to lead the puppet toward having to fight with certain moves so that he can possibly fix the smaller mistkaes that the Demon might have made in his analysis. And after that, Eiro wanted to do something else as well. He wanted to try out a practice-method that would only work out on a minor scale, and would probably end up hurting him quite a bit in the process. Most likely, he would even do some damage to his own health, but that was worth it in the end, as far as Eiro was concerned.

It took Eiro a little while to analyse everything, but when he did, he was able to figure out the way that his muscles should be positioned and concentrated, as well as the specific way that they should preferably act. Of course, for the most part, Eiro's muscles had already changed in that way, but there were a few minor ways that he could improve upon that he only managed to figure out now that he saw this perfect combination of his two combat styles.

"Nelli." Eiro said as he got ready for this, stretching just to loosen his muscles up a bit, and the Naiad swiftly appeared right next to him, "Yup?" She asked.

Eiro quickly waved his hand to the side and pulled a large amount of snow from nearby toward him. He proceeded to melt it into water that he then moved over toward Nelli, "Could you maybe refine this a bit?"

"Hm, sure, but why exactly do you want me to do that?" Nelli asked, and Eiro just looked at her with a wry smile, "You'll see... If I tell you before trying it, you would want to stop me anyway." The Demon pointed out.

Nelli was a bit unsure about it after hearing this, but she trusted Eiro's judgment for now and proceeded to refine the water. Once it had turned rather pure, Eiro covered the palm of his right hand in a thin layer, making the rest float next to him as a reserve.

He slowly rubbed it onto part of his triceps and slowly absorbed the water into his skin with a sort of physical infusion, although it wasn't really that. He just wanted the water to practically flow in between every single one of his muscle-fibers... And then, the Demon got out a small bead out of his treasury, which he then used to infuse his whole body.

It was the Gravity Magic Stone, which Eiro used to increase his own weight considerably. Well, more specifically, he made it so that there was immense resistance to every single movement of his.

And then, he started to move his body in specific ways according to how he had analyzed through his memories. He manipulated the water that he had moved in between his muscle-fibers to cause more strain to them than usual to artificially accelerate the process of muscle-training.

"Nelli, start healing me now." The Demon said. And it seemed like Nelli understood exactly what he was talking about. While the Naiad was rather opposed to this sort of training, she understood why Eiro was doing it.

She started to heal his muscle-fibers through magic, and Eiro fine-tuned the healing magic to make sure that the muscle-fibers regenerated in the exact way that he wanted them to.

After a little while, Eiro managed to make sure that this training seemed to work to an extent. It wouldn't make him that much stronger, but it was enough in order to regenerate his muscles in specific ways to fine-tune them after violently ripping them apart at a microscopic scale.

Once he figured out that everything worked, Eiro extended it onto other parts of his body, and continued to rip himself apart to build himself back up afterward, to speed up his practice a bit more.