Demon's Virtue

Eiro walked around the royal castle, easily hiding himself from the guards and soldiers so that he could walk around without anyone bothering him in the slightest. Soon, he stood in front of Solomon's study, and inside together with him was Evelyn.

"Please, can you not just reconsider? That man, Eiro, is not someone that you want joining the hero's party..." She pleaded with the king, but was quickly shut down.

"Eiro is my dear friend. I trust him much more than I trust you, or anyone in your family. He has never kept a secret from me if it was something I truly needed to know. You, however, have spent nearly a decade trying to reach the peak of an organization attempting to overpower anyone else in this world." Solomon pointed out, "Why would I ever trust your advice?"

"...You know nothing about him, your majesty. Not really. You don't know of the things that he has done before my eyes... Just..." Evelyn muttered, "If I manage to beat him in this upcoming tournament, will you listen to me and banish him?" She asked, clearly genuine in her words. For some reason, she still believed Eiro to be the villain in all this, and herself to be the hero. She was utterly deluded from Eiro's perspective. Or maybe Eiro was the deluded one, and Evelyn truly was in the right in this situation, although the Demon highly doubted that.

Rolling his eyes, knowing that Solomon would never listen to her words, Eiro moved on forward and made his way back out of the castle. On his way, however, Eiro was placing some certain things into his mouth. They were thumb-nail sized chunks of metal that Armodeus had molten down for him so that Eiro could get used to one of his new abilities. 'Physical absorption'.

With this ability, he was able to absorb physical objects into his body, making them part of himself. That was the same effect that was robbing Bavet of some of his slime while the two were fused together. Theoretically, Eiro seemed capable of absorbing things through every part of his body, evident by the fact that this is even an issue right now, but the Demon still couldn't control this ability all too well, so he was using these metal chunks to practice properly.

Metal, iron in particular, was a substance surprisingly easily absorbed, and since it was something that shouldn't be found in his body in this amount, it was also easily split off of the rest of his body and put back out in some form.

The easiest way for Eiro to absorb things for now seemed to be to eat them. His teeth were more than strong enough to crush iron. Even as a lesser imp they were able to pulverize bones with ease, so as a lesser Arcanus with his level of stats, it made sense that he could do something like this. And then, once they made their way into Eiro's stomach, his stomach acids, which suddenly seemed capable of taking apart everything that he ate without exception, helped him absorb this metal into his body while Eiro was still inexperienced with this ability. It was very different compared to absorbing magic into his body, especially considering that this was something more permanent. If he wanted to absorb magic, he had to constantly hold it in himself, as if he was holding a tool in his hand with a steady grasp, but this was completely passive. He didn't have to do anything about it.

And then, there were of course the benefits that came with it. The more Eiro absorbed of a physical material, the more that material became part of his body. For example, by eating all this metal, his flesh, muscles and skin became far tougher, and if he kept eating it like this, his body would probably turn metallic as a base state.

Eiro took a deep breath after swallowing another piece of metal, as he stepped onto the ledge of the open window in front of him. Kicking off, Eiro quickly took off into the sky and made his way back over to his manor. He knew what Evelyn was at the castle for now, so there was little reason for him to stick around there for now. He just wanted to keep playing around with his new abilities to figure out the best tactic to create as great a gap in the tournament as possible.

The Demon landed in his gardens and quickly split off from Bavet. The slime's mass had decreased by roughly a third, so Eiro knew that he had absorbed more than he had wanted to. It was kind of a unique feeling, though. With all of that slime in his flesh, he could slightly change the color of his skin himself to be more like that of a person. He still couldn't just change the shape of his body in any way, but the color itself was still quite useful. In an emergency, that was something they should keep in mind.

For now, though, Eiro pressed the slime out of his skin and gathered it all in front of his palm, before giving it back to Bavet, "Urgh... thank you... Again, that was such a weird feeling..."

"I'm sure it was." Eiro chuckled, before looking at his hand, "Although, because your slime is so easy to control... it gave me some ideas." He explained, and slowly closed his eyes. He moved the iron in his body around and brought it all to one of his left hands. It had turned metallic to a large extent. It was similar to his metal skin ability, but still fundamentally different. His metal skin ability turned the outermost layer of his skin into metal, and then layered everything else on top of that. Right now, Eiro's hand was fully metal.

Slowly, the Demon moved the metal around even more, and focused it all on his bones. While they were strong, they were one of his greatest problems. His flesh and muscles could regenerate quickly, but his bones took a lot longer, so Eiro had to be careful when he tried to attack others in a straightforward way, or when he tried to block heavy attacks. He didn't do it often in the first place, but this gave him some more options. Considering that each action had an equal and opposite reaction, when he hit something with his full strength, and that object happened to be somehow capable of coping with that full strength, his own body would receive the same amount of damage as he gave out. That was one of the reasons why he liked his current hand to hand combat style, and didn't go for something with straightforward punches, since when he tried, he broke some of the bones in his hand and arm quite brutally.

Slowly, Eiro pulled a small bag out of his satchel, and grabbed an acorn out of it. With a flick of his wrist, the seed landed in the ground and was quickly buried in soft earth. Using nature magic, and his surreal amount of mana, Eiro proceeded to make the acorn grow into a large and thick oak tree.

He pressed his hand onto the surface and lightly smiled, "Alright, perfect." He muttered, really gathered all of the metal in his body on the bones that would be affected by this punch of his upper left hand, and then also added some layers of his metal skin ability onto his skin to protect himself some more.

Eiro took a deep breath, and tried to ignore Krog and James that were approaching him while taking a break from their training. He changed the flow of his life force to strengthen himself perfectly for this punch, and even tried using some earth magic in his arms, shoulders, and back to strengthen the attack even more.

Now, Eiro just thought about a perfect jab. He thought about his fellow teacher, Kristoph Garlings. His physical ability was one to be admired, considering his position in the organization that he got through his raw ability to fight.

Eiro remembered his movements, and tried to place himself in his position. But when that happened, Eiro could feel something about his body changing. His physique was adjusting, just like it did many times throughout the day.

"So memories work as well, huh?" He said with a broad grin on his face. He recollected everything that he could about Kristoph's techniques, and his muscles kept shifting for a few moments. Right when James and Krog reached Eiro, the changes were complete, and Eiro let out a deep breath as a slight mist rose from his body because of the heat produced by his sudden physical changes.

And then, in an instant, Eiro pushed his arm forward in a straight line. It was a simple punch, but the speed and strength was utterly surreal. At a speed where the whole punch was missed if someone blinked, Eiro showed his power off.

As if even the oak tree wasn't able to follow along, it seemed like it took a moment for that huge chunk of the thick tree to explode outward. Eiro pulled his arm back and watched the tree slowly fall away from him.

He waved his hand around, since some of his hand's muscles seemed to have ripped in response to that punch.

"Huh." Eiro muttered, "Neat."

He turned around, looking at the two people that had come over to him, and were now staring at him in disbelief, "Oh, hey. How's your guys' training going?"

After a few seconds, Krog turned around and said, "I... I'll keep lifting some weights...."