Demon's Virtue
chapter-467

Eiro stood in front of a large wooden door as he turned around to look at his companions, "Are you guys ready to go?" He asked, and they all quickly nodded their heads. They were properly prepared to start the attack on this building, which would be filled with the strongest trolls that they will have faced so far. Sure, there were a bunch of undead right beside them that would fight together with them to make things easier, but it would still be a rather tough battle.

The Demon held his foot in front of the door once he got the approval of his party members, and waited for a few seconds for the perfect moment. And then, Eiro kicked his foot against the door, using magic to make it fly forward faster, all the whilst pushing some flames onto it for later.

The door immediately shattered apart into pieces when it hit the first Troll that just walked past the door only a moment ago. Eiro made sure to keep his mana around the door, so that he could spread the flames out deeper into the wood. The burning hot splinters were quickly controlled by Eiro using the flames combined with air magic, and pressed them into the body of that Troll a moment later.

The large splinters of wood buried themselves in the Troll's body and practically fused with its flesh due to the flames, making it harder for it to push them out of its body while it started regenerating a moment later. And then, Eiro changed the focus of his mana into the wood instead, and tried to make it sprout out, burying itself deeper inside of the Troll's flesh. Soon, the wood had fully spread through the Troll's body in very specific areas, so that instead of pushing everything out, the Troll's body would choose to grow around the wood.

This was Eiro's first attempt at 'immobilizing' a Troll through these sorts of means instead of having to put anesthetics into their bodies... After all, the anesthetics probably wouldn't work unless Eiro somehow provided the trolls with a constant supply of them, and even then they would probably quickly build up a resistance.

Either way, the Troll's flesh bulged up as it healed around the wood, causing lumps to appear on its flesh. It was clearly in immense pain, and on top of that, the flesh and muscles growing in a displaced manner around the Troll's joints made it so that it was unable to move around in the slightest.

"Huh, perfect." Eiro said rather bluntly, watching as the Troll's body fell over backward, writhing in pain as it was trying to resist against this incredibly invasive sort of attack. And meanwhile, for now, Eiro marked that Troll so that he wouldn't be attacked by the others, and the group began to fight against the other Trolls that were attacking them all. It took a while to fight back against them in this smaller space, since they were a lot more restricted in what they could do compared to outside. But the good thing was that this place seemed to have been some kind of Inn before this city was taken over by the monsters, and this entrance area had decently high ceilings. Just when they would go deeper into the building would they have to deal with some more tight spaces.

The leader of the Trolls was in some kind of special room at the very top, the kind of room usually reserved for VIPs. She was clearly still just laying there, unbothered by what was happening around her, although all the other Trolls were freaking out and trying to figure out where the enemy was.

However, for now, they managed to fight back against the first wave, and this entrance area was cleared from living Trolls. To make sure the others didn't come to bother them for now, Eiro and Gondos closed off the doors with rock-walls, while the others rested for a short minute and Eiro created more undead soldiers out of the trolls.

And after he was done with that, Eiro took another look at the Troll whose body was restrained through the wood that the Demon had grown within its body. He pressed his palm onto its chest and pulled all the wood out. Its body practically collapsed onto itself for a moment, until the regeneration set in and fixed the Troll's body without any further ado.

"Perfect." Eiro said with a light grin on his face. If this was the case, then he should definitely be able to trap the Troll leader like this until they returned with Bavet. This was a surprisingly great way to deal with this... Maybe he should try and trap a few of the more unique Trolls they would come across here in the same manner as this.

"That's kinda brutal, isn't it?" James asked with a wry smile, looking at the bloody pile of thin wood that Eiro pulled out of this troll's body, but the Demon simply shrugged, "It's not particularly more brutal than what we have to do to kill them. And like this, they at least get to keep their lives." Eiro explained, as he began to smash the head of this Troll to bits again and again, until its body stopped properly regenerating so that it actually counted as fully dead, and so that Eiro would be able to turn it into one of his undead. Since the head wasn't really necessary for a skeletal undead to move around, since it reacted to things around it through magic instead of its senses, Eiro didn't really care about crushing its skull, no matter how many times he had to do it.

And once he was done with that and grew his small undead army by one more member, the group once more continued through this old, troll-infested Inn.

They ended up coming across some trolls that were actually worth keeping around, ones that could do things other than just flail heavy objects around at their enemies. Some that actually used weapons with a surprising amount of precision, those that used tactics instead of blindly rushing at those in front of them. And there was even a troll that could use magic on its own, surprisingly enough.

And of course, Eiro used some special seeds to grow roots within them that were as hard as steel, giving the trolls little to no chance of escaping, especially once their regeneration fully stopped even trying to push the roots out of them. Eiro gathered them in the storage of the Inn, and then, once every other troll had been cleared out, they approached the room of the troll leader, who didn't seem to particularly care about anything that was going on outside.

Eiro stepped into the room first, ahead of the others, with the seed in his hand. The troll leader slowly sat up, tiredly looking at Eiro. There was a large bottle of alcohol in her hand, and the alcohol itself seemed to be a specially made kind... It wasn't normal, at the very least. It was kind of similar to some kind of potion, and from the incredibly strong smell, Eiro figured that this alcohol was created to make people particularly drunk... Something fit for a troll that wouldn't be able to get drunk any other way.

Eiro looked at the female troll leader, who stared back at him as well, without any bloodlust toward him, "Do you understand my words?" Eiro asked, and the troll leader simply stayed silent. The Demon rolled his eyes as he looked within himself for a few moments, trying to remember certain aspects of what happened today. He heard some of the trolls speak at least a little bit. The language itself was surprisingly similar to Goblin-speech, it was just some form of slight variation in the pronunciation, and the meaning of some words would probably be different.

So, in an attempt to speak in the proper dialect, Eiro looked at the troll leader and said, "You can give up and become mine of your own free will, or you can fight and become mine by being forced to. Choose." The Demon said, and the troll leader looked back, seemingly somewhat surprised.

"You speak my language, demon?" She asked, "Not particularly well, but it is close, at least." The leader added, and Eiro slowly nodded his head in response.

"Somewhat. But make your choice, I'm impatient." Eiro said in a blunt voice, and the leader looked back with a grin, "If you can display your power for me, I will-" She replied, but Eiro already rolled his eyes as that point and jumped forward. He had concentrated some gravity magic on his fist for a particularly explosive, damaging attack focused on one point, and proceeded to hit the center of the troll leader's chest.

Within just an instant, her flesh was ripped away and her blood splattered onto the wall behind her, before she was even able to react. She flinched for a moment, but it was only like she was a bit startled, not much bothered by it otherwise. Her flesh healed within just another moment, and she looked back at Eiro with a stunned expression.

"You are strong... you are very strong..." The leader said, extending her arm toward Eiro. She was clearly not trying to attack him, so for now, Eiro let it happen. She seemed rather submissive right now, after all.

But what she did next was something that Eiro didn't expect. The blanket that had covered her nearly perfectly humanoid body, with the exception that her skin was a muddy gray-green and her long hair was a pale yellow-white, fell to the side as she pulled herself closer toward Eiro.

"You are strong, so I will become your bride..."