Demon's Virtue
chapter-655

Partax was quiet, eerily so. He had listened to Eiro's explanation, and was dumbstruck; his goals were ridiculously grand, and his motivations so utterly opposite to the scale he was working at. The man in front of him was someone that should be truly vile. A demon that enjoyed the slaughter of people, and that certainly seemed to be the case from all that he had learned about Eiro. But despite that, he held a sort of contrarian purity within his heart that was naught but admirable.

The elderly halfling closed his eyes and thought momentarily, before opening his mouth hesitantly, "I have something to give you."

Slowly, as though he was still hesitating, he pushed his hand into his jacket, and pulled something out of the inside pocket right in front of his heart. The moment Armodeus saw the rusted bronze, the flaking metal just barely revealing the lustering runic patterns hidden underneath, his eyes widened, "You're not..."

Staying quiet, Partax held the pair of scissors in his hands in front of him, and moved it through the air as if cutting space itself. And that was exactly what he did. Like a curtain, space seemed to fall to the ground, revealing a room that shouldn't be there. It was disorienting, as the area that Eiro perceived got larger by that 1000 square foot room in an instant. But what he noticed then was a literal treasure trove. Eiro's treasury ability couldn't compare to this. It was packed with numerous objects and projects and artifacts clearly of Partax's own creation, now explaining exactly how he always managed to get his hands on tools and materials that weren't here before.

"One of my abilities I received as I rose through the ranks of classes was that of a private space, hidden from all eyes. One that only I can view and step into, to use as I wish. It has become the place to guard my most valuable possessions... and some trinkets, tools and materials," Partax explained, as his metallic spider legs carried him into the room while beckoning Eiro to follow him. The Demon was confused, and stepped over the fabric-like surface that was space itself after folding and covering itself. He looked at the halfling's back and quickly asked, "But how can I be in here then? You said only you can access it... So how..?"

"Well... skills and abilities have strict rules. And if you know those rules, it's possible to break them," Partax explained quickly, "These scissors are an artifact of different origin to the ones you seek to collect. They're not of the arcane sort, but one simply too ancient for us to understand. Scissors with the ability to cut anything, whether it's paper or steel, no matter how sharp the blades actually are. And then, I simply took this artifact and adjusted it. Now, it can cut the space between here and there. The scissors lost their other abilities, but now it is possible for me to open the path to this space."

Eiro looked at the scissors still laying in Partax's hands. He modified an artifact? Even if it wasn't an arcane artifact, if it was acknowledged with the that title, then it should be nearly impossible to do something like that... or at least that should be the case, for anyone but a Master. If it could be done with those scissors, could it be done with the cards?

The Demon followed the Halfling, getting a closer look at the insides of the space. There was a wall lined completely in numerous flasks and bottles filled with liquids of all sorts, smelling of plants and extracts that Eiro knew he wouldn't be able to recognize no matter how hard he searched his memory. Orbs and tools and weapons and armors, each powerful enough to make anyone seeking power drool, were thrown onto piles as if they were useless or failed creations. Only one area was kept truly pristine, on the completely opposite side of the room. A few objects placed on pedestals without even a single grain of dust on any of them. Some bottles filled with potions, like displays of ornate wine. And most importantly, a single bookshelf filled with 36 books, which was what Partax was headed straight toward.

"These books were written by myself, collecting all of what I learned over the years in the most detailed ways possible. To anyone beside me they're mere gibberish at best, and the insane scribbles of a rambling madman at worst. I will... give these books to you."

Eiro looked at the bookshelf and at how incredibly high-quality these books were. They were something that the Demon hadn't even seen in the deepest parts of the royal library. If the tower's overseer got to see these, then there would be no doubt about just how worthy Partax was to enter that supreme library.

But the state of the books wasn't what shocked Armodeus; no, he was more surprised at another fact, "You're giving them away? Just like that? It tooks me years for you to let me even look at them from outside, and you're just going to... give them to him?"

Partax scoffed and nodded, "He's worthy of these books! And you're just a brutish fool!"

"I have the greatest dexterity in this world, so who are you calling a brute?" Armodeus barked back, but the halfling didn't seem to pay him any heed. Instead, he looked back at Eiro, "Take them, before I change my mind. Each of them is a gathering of a different discipline within the areas of Artificing and Alchemy I studied. Take your time and read them carefully."

The Demon raised a brow and approached the bookshelf. Partax visibly tensed up, but Eiro was too enthralled at what he would find in those books. He placed his fingertips on the leftmost book on the top shelf, and could immediately feel a certain flow of magic within it. There was a lot going on here, much more than just the written word. It was something he might be able to figure out if he fused with Gondos to see all the details of the magic, but even then Eiro might miss some important things. So instead, Eiro did something else.

The duplicate of Eiro in the plane of water's tower pushed himself through the halls, swimming until he reached his servant, Anura. Before he even reached him, the humanoid frog had already stopped reading and was ready to accept the command of its master. The Demon looked down at the creature and quickly placed his hand onto Anura's forehead, "It's finally time for you to give me part of what you owe. As much of your magic as you can spare."

"As you wish, my lord," the frog said with glee on his face. After reading many of these books over the past few weeks and gathering knowledge much faster than he had in the past, his dedication to the demon had just grown that much more. With pleasure, he poured as much magic out of his body into Eiro's hand as he could, and the Demon pulled it toward his core.

In the central material plane, the original Eiro pulled the magic out. He reserved part of it in a section of his chest and then infused his body with the rest. His skin turned pale and turned a paper-like texture, and his eyes seemed to become sharper somehow. The patterns of the blessings he received turned black, and it seemed like the slight wrinkles he had were deeper and darker as well, as if ink had seeped into them.

Partax and Armodeus both watched as this happened, before the Demon pulled the book out of the shelf, and flipped it open. He looked at the first page, then the second. Instead of flipping through it with speed as he normally did, leaving things to the mental duplicates, he chose to invest as much time into thinking about the content of the pages on his own as he could. He wanted to sense the secrets of this Master's writing.

For a while, Eiro just stood there, staring at the opened double pages, decyphering the wall of texts, sketches and runes, practically immediately lost in thought at the wondrous knowledge flowing into his very veins at just the first two pages of many.