Demon's Virtue
chapter-472

Eiro looked at the figure in front of him, and slowly poured his mana into the Holy Energy Magic stone he was holding, before chucking it forward at the Imp that was running toward him. The Huge Imp simply grinned, "What are you trying to do now, throwing pebbles at me?!" He yelled out, hitting the magic stone away with little to no effort.

Just that instead of actually being able to do so, the Holy Energy magic stone buried itself in his flesh, due to the force combined with it simply being the Imp's bane. And nearly immediately, the Imp's body went into shock, like Eiro was expecting. He knew that he was a bit unique in that sense, even compared to other artificially created demons.

With a smile on his face, Eiro watched as the Imp's arm simply started melting away, as the magic stone fell to the ground. At some point, the Imp's flesh started being destroyed, and it instead healed itself, closing the wound off just a few inches underneath his elbow.

"What did you do to me?!" He yelled out loudly, now being able to move again, as Eiro shrugged a bit, "Nothing much. Just making use of our bane. Because, as it turns out, I'm actually so much more special than you, that my body doesn't even care about it anymore." He said bluntly, but the Imp was simply angry. Incredibly so. But Eiro didn't care. He just wanted to have a little bit of fun with all of this for now.

Since it was night, this room used things like lanterns and candles to keep itself alit instead of natural sunlight, meaning that there were plenty of shadows around Eiro right now. Shadows that he quickly infused himself with. So the moment that the Imp actually reached him and tried to attack him, Eiro's body simply fell apart into shadows, and he reappared a few steps behind his opponent.

"What, you thought I was going to let this be a 'fight'? Sorry, I'm just here to slaughter you, dear foolish brother." Eiro said, a sadistic grin forming on his face. The huge Imp once more stormed at Eiro, seemingly not really caring for what he was saying, and attacked him once more. This time, instead of trying to hit through him, he tried to squash Eiro down onto the ground, thinking that might work a bit better.

But when Eiro just dove back into the shadows underneath him, or rather when he came back out of them at another spot, he was surprised to see that the Imp had... destroyed the floor. With a single punch, he had been able to crush the floor into pieces that were now gathering on the ground below this room. Some of the treasure that had been gathered in this room slid down as well, something that the huge Imp seemed to be caring about a lot more than anything else.

"You made me destroy my treasure!" He exclaimed, and Eiro looked back at him with a wry smile, removing the shadows he was infused with from his face for a moment, "Are you kidding me? They're not even destroyed, those are metal coins, there's at most a handful that are even a little dented. Get over it already." The Demon said with a deep sigh, before he crossed his arm as he watched the Imp approach some of the people chained up along the walls.

"Wh-What is he- Please! Help us! He-" One of the men yelled out. His spirit had been broken until just earlier, much like many of the others here, but he was one of the few that had managed to see that there was a chance for them to be freed, considering that this huge Imp's hand had simply... disappeared, within nothing but a moment. He was struggling again, something that the huge Imp didn't like to see, which was probably the reason why he picked him instead of one of the other, possibly more suitable ones.

He grasped the man's body and ripped him away from the wall, breaking his arms, wrists and hands in the process, as the man was pulled out of the shackles on the wall. It was a rather gruesome sound, but... if Eiro got to him quickly, him and Nelli should be able to heal him somehow. Just that the huge Imp then proceeded to swing him around like he was nothing but a weapon.

Clearly, this man's body was being strained quite a bit. Eiro could see, and even hear, his skin slowly ripping apart. So, the Demon figured he should really do something more actively this time, instead of just playing around with this moron.

He spread out his wings, and infused his body with the air of this room. With a single flap, Eiro rushed forward without the huge Imp even being able to react to him. All the blades of his three of swords cut through the Imp's skin, muscles, bones, and even the thick carapace covering his back on the way through, without being obstructed in any major way.

And so, the huge Imp's arm quickyl fell to the ground, being removed all the way up to his shoulder. He screamed out loudly in pain, trying to grasp his arm with the hand that he had of course already lost not too long ago. Before the huge Imp's arm fell to the ground, Eiro caught it and pulled the heavily-injured man out of the tight hand. Swiftly, he brought the man over to a relatively safe spot, before quickly returning.

"You will pay for this!" The huge Imp exclaimed, glaring at Eiro angrily, but he just shrugged in response, "Eh, I doubt it. It looks like you already have more than enough money in the first place." He pointed out, and just a moment later, he could see that huge stinger, which was quite a bit larger than Eiro's head all in all, approach his face at a rapid pace. Well, for now, Eiro figured he would just let it happen. Simply because he knew that he was able to resist this without any issue.

The stinger pushed itself into Eiro' arm, and a huge amount of poison was let into his body. It felt like his arm was about to just rot off for a few moments, until Eiro took a deep breath and started to control the foreign liquid that had entered his body. He was able to keep it away from interacting with any part of his body, and simply slowly transported it through his veins for a few moments, bringing it all the way to his own tail.

There, the empty poison containers attacked to his armor were immediately filled up, because Eiro had been able to filter this guy's venom through his own venom gland. It did hurt him quite a bit though, but... for what followed, it was worth it.

When the stinger entered Eiro's flesh, he immediately tensed up the area around the entry-area as much as he could. Flexing his muscles by focusing all his strength-increasing abilities on that one specific muscle and layering it multiple times, and strengthening his skin with his Rock Skin ability to grow a thicker layer right around the stinger. And through all of that, the huge Imp was unable to pull the stinger out of Eiro's flesh.

In a panic, he tried to instead swing Eiro around, but the Demon had already increased his own weight through Gravity magic, while lightening his opponent's body. So instead of swinging Eiro around by rapidly moving his tail around... the huge Imp swung himself around, and was too dumb to notice what was going on for a few moments.

That was, until Eiro had properly filtered out the venom that had been pushed into his body. Slowly, he moved his own tail toward the huge Imp's, and pressed his stinger into the tip of the tail. Eiro used a venom of his own creation, one technically similar to this one that the huge Imp used, just many times more potent, since Eiro actually knew what he was doing and how he was supposed to use his body.

And the best part was – this particular concoction had a bit of Holy Energy mixed into it, since it was just freshly created with the help of a magic stone. It wasn't enough to injure Eiro in the slightest, but it would be enough to increase the potency of the venom when it attacked the huge Imp by many times again.

It was easy for Eiro's stinger to penetrate the huge Imp's carapace, and he injected his venom into his opponent's tail as he finally let go of his stinger. The Imp was thrown through the room, still affected by the relative weightlessness Eiro had put him under, and looked at his tail. The tip, the actual 'needle' like part, was still stuck in Eiro's arm, surprisingly. That was something that even Eiro hadn't anticipated. Of course, he just quickly pulled it out and that was that, but it would do for a nice souvenir.

Especially since it would have otherwise simply molten away, like the rest of the huge Imp's tail currently was. It was spreading slowly, but it was clear that the huge Imp was unable to do anything against what was happening to it.

"Wh-what are you doing to me?! This can't be!" The Imp exclaimed, and Eiro looked back with a broad grin on his face, "Are you sure about that?"

Slowly but surely he approached, able to finally see the fear in the eyes of the Imp in front of him.

"Don't worry, brother... Your death will be excruciatingly painful, just like you deserve it to be."