Demon's Virtue
chapter-685

Eiro watched as Mislan explained the plan to the five people that were guided out of the village. It was kind of a pain to get Mislan over there, but it was probably the best solution for this situation.

Overall, you could divide Eiro's servants into three distinct groups, which he had dubbed the 'Watchers', the 'Workers', and the 'Named'.

Watchers were servants that Eiro spread around all over the place, so that they could act as his eyes and ears, alerting him should anything of note happen. If Eiro then commanded them to, they would attack the ones causing trouble or defend the ones that Eiro had pledged to protect. They were the most common type of servant he created.

Workers were ones that Eiro had simply assigned rudimentary tasks. Assisting in housework, gardening, or to an extent even some of the more complicated projects in the Monster Town. For them, Eiro would expend a bit more mana so that they could follow more complex commands and act on their own to a certain degree. There were some that were somewhat permanent, continuing to do their jobs throughout the day without Eiro having to be there, but Eiro also counted servants that he created for specific matters to this, even though those would usually end up being 'deleted' once their task was done. Generally, this was when Eiro was dealing with a large group of monsters that he didn't feel like dealing with himself, like exterminating a nest of giant ants.

And then, there were the most powerful and unique servants, the 'Named'. They were the ones that Eiro had literally bestowed a name on, giving them a certain degree of a 'self'. The servants that Eiro had left behind in his territory near Jura's hut where he had spent most his life. Anura, the Frogman from the plane of water that Eiro had turned into a servant, and Gobo, who would soon become one as well, were currently counted under this group too, though if he ended up creating more servants that weren't directly born from his own magic, then he might create a separate category for them. Either way, the named servant that Eiro interacted with the most, and it wasn't even close, was Mislan. He was like an extension of his own limbs, and would generally fetch things for him. He was a butler, an assistant that he didn't have to explain things to, since he could just mentally share instructions.

Of course, for more complex matters Eiro would use a duplicate, but that had its limits, particularly in regard to range. The further a duplicate was away from Eiro, the more their physical and mental faculties would decline, becoming weaker and dumber until they finally completely broke down and dissolved. And the drop-off was quite intense as well. He could probably send a duplicate to the royal castle from here, but it wouldn't be able to do much beside speaking a few simple sentences, and probably couldn't even defeat any of the knights patrolling the castle. The only duplicates that were an exception were the ones that Eiro now considered an 'Embodiment of the Spirit Gateways', since they were, technically, directly connected through the spirit gateways inside of Eiro's core.

Mislan though, and whether this was because Eiro supplied him with mana regularly, or because he interacted with and commanded him actively the most, had become vastly more intelligent and self-aware. He took care of things on his own, without Eiro having to even mention anything about it, and recently even showed off a certain sense of self, compassion, and a unique personality. For a being born from Eiro's mana, he had become its own entity extremely fast.

As such, Mislan had been sent out to oversee the 'rescue' of the people in the village. He was a servant that he could trust to take care of all the business, and being a shadow that came to life, he was able to hide easily too. Not only that, but there was a secondary effect. With Mislan being the one overseeing the process, the villagers would be convinced to leave more easily. They were incredibly willing to fight to take revenge for their loved ones, but Mislan helped dissuade them. Him telling them was enough to get a simple idea across. That this was beyond regular people. That some farmers would never be able to even glance at the fight.

And in the meantime, Eiro had left to prepare for the extraction on his side. At the monster town, a lot of research was being done on different technologies they could make use of. One of those was something to take advantage of that massive gravity magic stone sitting below the town, which was still leftover from when this island floated in the air. In order to expand the town better, Eiro had decided on leaving the town stationary in the valley he had placed it in. This had the secondary effect of allowing him to make use of the magic stones otherwise. It was one of the other reasons why he had brought Partax to the Monster Town, so that he could take a look at the systems and circuits that were used to manipulate the massive magic stone, allowing for a secondary application. Eiro was planning on making use of the near-inexhaustible magic stones to create merchant or general transport fleets in the future, or maybe create some new elevated housing for the harpies so that they didn't build nests directly on top of other buildings, so this was a good opportunity for a test-run.

Eiro walked into the backyard. Over the past few weeks, as a side-project, Eiro had been creating a wooden ship. The trees had been grown with special seeds that he had actually grown by encapsuling them in gravity magic stones. The resulting wood, while usually seeming like some normal, albeit high-quality, wood, they were incredibly useful when combined with gravity magic. It would increase the efficacy of gravity magic by nearly twice what it normally was, and that was just the first generation of trees too. Eiro was currently working on cross-breeding the seeds from the best-suited trees to increase the effect a lot more. But until then, this would do. More than anything, this process actually just acted as a test-run so that Eiro could learn a bit more about the process of creating ships. He wanted to instruct some monsters and have specific shipwrights at some point, so he had to know what he was talking about. And like this, he could also learn of some tricks to speed up the process, that he couldn't figure out by just reading books.

It might be a bit tight, but they should be able to fit all the people of the village onto the ship, together with some of their belongings. If they could take a few things with them, it would make the process a lot more painless. Eiro had already manipulated the magic stone for this ship plenty with the help of Armodeus and Partax. It was a sort of highly controlled decompression of the magic stone to maximize the efficiency of the stone compared to what it was actually needed for. It was then split up into multiple pieces and turned into 'batteries' that could be swapped out in the control-center of the ship when needed. Eiro placed one of the batteries into the slot needed for it, and then activated the circuitry of the ship. Magic flowed through the metal inlets on the wood, allowing for the magic to flow into the actual wood in a controlled manner. And then, Eiro looked at the ship's helm. Different to a regular ship, which only had to worry about horizontal movement, this ship needed to be controlled vertically as well. That was why, instead of a simple wheel, the helm was a levitating orb, that the captain had to move around its contained area to control the direction the ship would move on, and then rotate the orb to also rotate the ship in said direction.

Being a prototype, it was a bit rough to use for now, but Eiro figured he could just create a servant to take care of it for now. On the way back, Mislan should be able to take care of it. Eiro made the ship lift up into the sky, and then activated its secondary function. Since there were flying monsters that could cause problems, and since a flying ship could cause some unwanted rumors and attention, Eiro added a function to create an 'invisibility cloud'. The ship would create a mist around its underside, which was infused with a very small amount of the Invisibility Potion. That way, the ship was hidden from the attention of onwatchers, and by simply tweaking the amount of the invisibility potion used, it should even be enough to hide the ship from the Devil. And so, without him noticing, everyone in the village would simply... disappear.

The plan that Eiro had thought up was relatively simple. The five people that were already freed from the mark would gather everyone else in the village one by one, and Eiro's crows would remove the marks. Of course, usually the Devil would be able to notice what was going on, but together with Mislan, Eiro had sent a container of the invisibility potion to the village, having Mislan set up a magic circle around the whole place to obscure what was happening here. Since the Invisibility Potion was an artifact, even the Devil shouldn't be able to simply see through that spell. And so, for just a day, the Devil wouldn't even think about all those marked individuals that should be roaming around above his head. Not that Eiro thought the Devil had the ability to oversee them all at once anyway. Why would he? They were just his food anyway.