Demon's Virtue

Eiro took a step forward and quickly picked up the upper half of the oak tree, carrying it over to a part of the garden where they were planting vegetables, since Rudy asked if they could do that. He quickly made the oak tree rot away and then gave the nutrients to the field, before he turned around and made his way back over toward the tree's stump.

"Hey James, should I get rid of this, or should I turn it into a sitting-spot or something? It's a nice spot to sit and enjoy the sun, especially for things like meditation or something, you know?" The Demon pointed out, but James just looked back at him utterly baffled, "Can we kind of take a step back and talk about how you destroyed that tree with a simple punch? And then picked up said tree with ease?"

"...I mean, you know how strong I am, so... this shouldn't come as a surprise." Eiro said somewhat confused, but James looked back at him with a wry smile, "What do you mean, this 'shouldn't come as a surprise'. You obliterated that thing with a single punch."

"Fair enough, I guess that is kind of impressive. But you haven't seen the other things that went into it. I strengthened myself with magic and life force, of which I have more than half a million, by the way. That means that I can use a lot more at specific spots." Eiro explained, but James wasn't sure what exactly he was talking about.

"But isn't the ratio always the same no matter how much life force you have?"

"Not really. Let's say... you need 100 health points worth of life force in each limb as a minimum, but right now, I have around 100.000 points worth in my left arm, and before, I had 10.000 points in there. Before, I could use 9.900 points, and now I can use 99.900 points, so the ratio is a good bit more. And then there are also the aspects of minor life force crystalisation when you compress that much life force in one part of your body which strengthens you even more when you reach that level, so y'know."

"Wait..." James muttered, "What's life force crystalisation? The same thing as mana crystalisation, but with life force?" He asked, having heard this term for the first time today.

"Yup, I assume so. Koperia told me about it, although she only saw it a couple times herself. I'm sure you heard about it before as well though, I think they're the 'Monster Heart' gems that are used to make elixirs." Eiro pointed out, as he was cutting through the stump in front of him to turn it into a flat seating opportunity. Him and James spoke about this some more while Krog was lifting some weights by the training area, but it didn't take long until Eiro heard the flaps of large wings in the distance.

"Oh?" He said, turning around instantly, while James looked at him surprised, "What's wrong? Did something happen?"

"No, no, don't worry, Ariella is just on her way." Eiro explained with a light smile on his face, as he watched the nephilim come into view. She landed in front of Eiro, wearing a worried expression, "Nevermind, I think something might have happened... What's wrong?"

Ariella stepped up to Eiro and stopped right in front of him, with a nervous expression, "Erm... You told me about the town you 'lived' in, right? Something popped up around there..." She muttered, and Eiro raised his brows confused, "What do you mean?"

"They call it a new 'World Tree'... a tree that has grown so large that it can be seen from miles and miles away." Ariella explained, and Eiro raised his brows, "Well shit, I guess my evolution and advancement in mana did affect my tree after all, huh..? I meant to go visit it and feed it my purified essence in bulk, just in case, but... seriously, they're calling it a World Tree?"

"Apparently so, yeah..." She replied, but there was clearly something else beside this. This wasn't all too worrying, after all. If they believed it to be a world tree, then they would never cut it down, so her concern can't be directed at the tree itself. The only other thing could be...

"They found my old home, haven't they?" Eiro asked, and Ariella slowly nodded her head, "They did... and they figured out that it was Jura's old home as well... I heard they plan on burning it down..."

"They? Who are they? It certainly wouldn't be the townfolk, so... adventurers? If you heard about all this before me, then you must have heard it in town while they were talking about this kind of thing, right?"

Ariella quickly nodded her head, and Eiro spread out his wings with an anger-filled expression on his face. Rage was coursing through his veins, as he slowly looked up into the sky, "Tell the kids about what's going on, they'll understand." Eiro said, as he pressed his foot into the ground. With a single kick-off, Eiro lifted up into the ground, leaving behind Nelli to tell Ariella and James what he was about to do. Ariella may have wings, but she wasn't able to fly fast enough to catch up to Eiro.

The first stop that Eiro took was the royal castle. Of course, since he didn't have Bavet with him, he had to hide himself somehow, and just in case used a little bit of the ace of cups' liquid for that as well. He landed on the balcony of Solomon's study, where he was still talking to Evelyn.

Immediately, Eiro stepped into the room, pushing open the door without caring for the fact that he shattered the lock as he was at it. With a flick of his wrist, Eiro pressed his hand on Solomon's shoulder and froze time with the ring, that had less than half a minute left so that he didn't have to deal with Evelyn. He didn't have much time, after all.

"Solomon, I'm leaving the country for a day, two at most. Need to go back to my old home, I will explain when I'm back. Just trust me." Eiro said, and the king turned around utterly startled at what just happened, "Eiro! What are you-"

"I don't have much time to explain. They found my old home and are planning on burning it down. My personal tree turned world-tree level. I think it might have been what interrupted the ability between you and lognir to speak." Eiro said bluntly, and turned around, "Again, I will explain when I am back."

And so, Eiro turned around and let time proceed, before flying off into the distance, leaving behind a confused Solomon and a shocked Evelyn as the balcony door simply flew open without her noticing why.

Eiro fused his body with the air as much as he could, trying to speed up his travels as much as possible. He increased the concentration of air and air magic in his wings, trying to increase their size as much as possible so that he could have more air pushing him forward. Of course, he shrunk his wings down as much as he could while pulling them back up so that he didn't waste any time.

Eiro's body cut through the clouds, and a few explosions could be heard all the way down to the city as the sound barrier broke a few times. Eiro was travelling so fast that it was hard for him to even properly keep his body together fully while it was turned into air so much. Ever since he received the 'Absolute elemental fusion' ability, the extent to which his body changed was considerably different. He changed completely, now, as if he was an elemental himself.

It was a weird feeling, but he could still properly control his body, so it was fine. He just had to be more careful about a few things, like for example right now, keeping his body fully together while traveling at this speed.

But he didn't really care too much about what was happening to his body right now. If he let his old home be burnt down, he would never forgive himself. Quickly, Eiro travelled incredible distances, and it didn't even take Eiro half an hour to reach the area where he had spent most of his life.

And as he slowed down, splitting the air from his body, he could really see it. The 'World Tree'. It was towering above everything else in this forest, so it made sense why people considered it to be a world tree now. But even then, it was certainly Eiro's own tree. As he approached it, he could sense the rings of the tree. The outermost ring was just so incredibly thick that it was impossible for this tree to not have grown in a few months.

Eiro touched it with his hand, feeling a sort of familiar burning cold. The first thing that popped into his mind was something that happened long ago, when he first met Lugo.

"So... that tree I saw in that vision... was my own tree? But... how could that..?" The Demon muttered in disbelief. It simply didn't make any sense. Especially considering that despite the size of this tree, it was nothing but a sapling compared to that tree he saw then. It certainly felt the same in every conceivable way, but... it seemed like this tree would grow more and more in the future.

"But nevermind that... this is not what I'm here for." Eiro whispered, as he turned his head. And what he noticed was... infuriating.

Eiro flew forward, cutting through the air that was filled with the smell of smoke. He landed on top of the hill, and stepped up to the pile of scorched wood that was his home before.

The hut, the small barn... the tree... everything was destroyed, burnt to a crisp and smashed into pieces with anything that the perpetrators came across. But there was something even worse. There was the scent of burnt, rotten flesh. Of old bones that had cracked open in the heat of flames.

"Wh-Who did this..?" he muttered, pushing the wood to the side to find that which was buried underneath. The still-hot embers of the wood that were floating around him were scorching his clothes, making him look ragged. Soot covered his flesh as he finally found what he was looking for. He grabbed the object and held it in his hand. A crack had formed across the object, covering both of the large indents in the middle.

Eiro fell to his knees, tears of sorrow and rage streaming down his cheeks, as he looked at the desecrated grave and held the skull of his father in his four hands.