Demon's Virtue
chapter-689

Eiro viewed the village through the crows' eyes. The sun had just fully gone down, and the Demon senses an immense spike in magic not too far away. A carriage appeared on the road leading to the village, drawn by two hell-beasts. The carriage was moving much faster than before, as though the creature inside had already noticed that something was wrong.

As soon as the carriage came to a stop, the cloaked figure kicked the door open and rushed out, looking around nervously. It started running around the village frantically, forcing open some doors and ripping apart anything it came across. For about twenty minutes, it kept searching the village, but didn't find anything beside a few farm animals, which the villagers sadly had to leave behind as they fled.

The creature fell to its knee, grabbings head in terror. Tendrils of black were pouring out from underneath its cloak, as though it was losing control over its body. And then, a crow landed in front of it. It barely even noticed the bird, until four others appeared right by its side. Confused, the creature looked at the birds in front of it. It stretched out one of its arms, black tendrils heading right toward one of the crows. But then, a dim light started glowing out from underneath the crow's feathers. The creature pulled its tendrils back, before letting out a deep gurgled growl that sounded like a drowning animal.

Before the creature could react, the five crows flapped their wings and jumped at the creature, starting to pull at its cloak, as they all started letting off a bright light from within their bodies. The creature tried shoving them off, but when its tendrils came in contact with the light, they shrank back instantly. Soon, the creature's 'body' had become exposed. It was a mass of these living tendrils of darkness, like a massive knot made up of hundreds of deep black ropes. And the light was cutting through those ropes, making the knot fall apart.

This creature wasn't strong. It wasn't anything that could handle itself in a battle. It was a being whose whole purpose it was to bring food to the Devil. Something like that, which would only interact with people anyway, would be cheap and expendable. And then, attacking it with its bane? Of course it would fall apart without the opportunity to properly defend itself.

And that was the moment that Eiro glanced over at the map, seeing some movement on the glowing dot. Before now, it was quite literally stuck in the same place since yesterday, but now, it was different. The part that changed the most was the height that the needles were pointing toward. And immediately, the crows disappeared into a fog of the invisibility potion, quickly flying away so that the Devil wouldn't notice them.

A figure approached the now half-dead creature. He hadn't changed since Eiro had last seen him, still being just as well put-together and careful as he was before. Eiro let out a deep sigh, tapping his finger onto the armrest of his chair. Just glancing at the devil from afar, through eyes that weren't even his own, made him get heated up. If he still had a heart, it would be beating up to his throat right around now.

The Devil stood over the body of the creature that was supposed to serve him, and stretched out his hand. A flash of light appeared from the Devil's palm, and the creature simply disappeared in a cloud of smoke. With a slight movement of his hand, a crystal was pulled out from underneath the cloak. And then, the Devil stared into the air. It wasn't directly at Eiro or the crows, but the Devil had managed to look into their direction.

"Yeah, that's how it should be," Eiro grinned broadly, "If you couldn't do at least this much, you never would have been worth the effort."

The Devil turned around, disappearing into a spike of flames. Eiro looked at the ice needles floating next to him, seeing them spin around haphazardly, before soon settling into place again. With that, Eiro knew that it was time. Looking at the maps, he had moved to a place on basically the other side of the continent from where he was before. It was further away, but still within reach.

Eiro picked up the compass' box and the maps that were connected to it, quickly making his way outside. There, the others were already waiting for him. They would be taking the skyship to the Devil's new location. While Ariella and Eiro could fly there, Jess, James, and Krog obviously couldn't. Armodeus and Partax were standing outside next to the airship. They wouldn't end up joining themselves, as Eiro already knew beforehand, but they still wanted to support the group in what they were about to do.

Koperia was nearby as well. She hadn't shown herself openly, but Eiro could sense her, and she of course knew that he could, whispering him words of encouragement. She as well wouldn't join the fight, though her experience with necromancy and undeath was certainly helpful to allow Eiro to grow his strength.

Overall, he would have preferred to wait for the arrival of the other Masters, so that he may learn more from them, but with everything that the Devil had attempted recently, he knew that he couldn't wait too long anymore. Eiro made the skyship lift off the ground, as he looked at the four people in front of him.

"I want to remind you... We will be facing an army over these next few days. The Devil has access to quite a few artifacts as well, so this won't be a simple fight in any way," the Demon pointed out. James let out a scoff, "If you don't have the confidence we can do this, why even bring us?"

"I know you can do this, don't worry. You're much, much stronger than you used to be, I made sure of that. Your skillset is refined and strengthened. However, our enemies are powerful as well. In particular, we need to look out for some specific individuals," Eiro explained, and Ariella nodded her head.

"The crow, right?"

"That's the one I'm currently most weary of, yes," the Demon pointed out. The 'crow' was a bird monster that had been raised by the Devil, having been given the 'Ultimate Agility' card. It was the same kind as Eiro's 'Ultimate Perception' and Armodeus' 'Ultimate Dexterity'. Not only that, but from the ground up, it had been raised to already been an agile, fast monster. Even without that card, it would have been hard to fight. And frankly, if anyone beside Eiro faced that crow, he wasn't confident how well they would fare. Not to mention... the Devil had many other cards.

Having been the one to found and manipulate the 'organization', Eiro had a rough idea of some of the things he had. The 'Stopwatch', letting him freeze time, being by far the most dangerous that Eiro was currently aware of. He was able to speed up his own consciousness to keep up with the replicants, those rings that had been spread throughout the organization, but Eiro wasn't sure if he would be able to do the same later.

And of course, the Devil had hundreds of years to build up an incredible arsenal and servants, so if Eiro wasn't able to end this quickly... then things would become quite rough very quickly. The only real benefit that Eiro saw was that it would be impossible to gather all those servants, weapons, and tools in a single place all too quickly. Especially since the Devil didn't even know Eiro's plan. He would be able to guess, but going all-out in just one place, just in case he attacked there, would be absolutely stupid. Especially since the Devil tended to go for tricks and traps rather than all-out, direct conflicts.

Before long, the Skyship had arrived at its destination. In front of the group, a massive canyon stretched out as far as they could see. And in the middle of that canyon, on top of a lone plateau, stood a tower. But something about it was... weird. Eiro could sense the tower itself, and could hear the wind blow past it, and see the tiniest details on its surface... but he couldn't sense what was inside. Or rather, it was more like... everything was distorted. It was something that didn't make sense, and it certainly felt different to the effect of the invisibility potion. The space within the tower was definitely there, it was tangible to a degree, but it was like all of Eiro's senses were sucked in within the tower's enterior.

With a frown, Eiro thought about what it could be. And then, he finally caught a scent, "Ah..." Eiro muttered. The tower didn't give off any particular magic, so he hadn't noticed, but its scent was somewhat akin to the magic that he felt flow throughout his home; while it wasn't 'magic', it was 'spatial'.

It was the work of an artifact, and there was only one that really came to mind that would explain this. The people of a certain small town had to flee from their home, being persecuted and hunted to the end of the world. Before long, they found themselves in an old, underground salt mine, and made it their home. But even then, their pursuers found them. That was when the Arcane Dealer appeared, bestowing a gift upon the leader of the village. A map of the salt mines, that he was able to expand however he wished. With that, the salt mine was turned dozens of times larger than before.

It was the same artifact that the Devil must have used; The 'Dungeon Map'.