Demon's Virtue

661  Smile

Eiro ground his teeth as he stared at the revealed page of the book in Gobo's hands. He stared at the hobgoblin and took a few steps forward. He pulled the book from Gobo's hands and continued to flip through it, looking at all the pages. After practically absorbing the contents as soon as he laid eyes on them, he turned around and walked toward the other end of the large room they were in currently. There was a small space that used to be a storage closet, that was now an access for the molemen to enter. A tunnel had been built for them to enter through, and, even if not directly, it connected to the ant nest, and with that, the corpse of the Cavern Ant Queen.

"My Lord, where are you..?" Gobo asked concerned, quickly following behind him, but Eiro just stayed quiet. He glanced at Gondos. Without words, the Golem understood, and floated up to his chest. Quickly, the two fused together, "Just... wait here. I'll be back before long," the demon finally said, as he climbed into the hole.

Usually, it should have been much too small for him to get through; a moleman was able to fit into quite tight spaces, and they actually liked it that way. That was why their tunnels were just barely large enough for them to get through, meaning that someone Eiro's size would never usually be able to get through. That was, unless they were able to use Earth Magic in the way the Demon could.

He wrapped himself in his wings, and three of his hands were covered in thin layers of rock that he naturally turned into the shape of shovel-like claws. The only exception was his prosthetic hand, but that was fine, since he could use it to take closer control of his magic as he rushed through the tunnels.

And as such, with his whole body, Eiro squeezed himself into the burrowed tunnel, using his arms to push the rock and dirt out of the way with magic while pressing himself forward using his wings. Using his prosthetic hand, which was practically a wand, he quickly corrected the shape of the tunnel to make it return to what it was before he came through, so that the molement didn't have anything to complain about either.

And as such, Eiro practically flew, or swam, through the tunnels, gliding through the space as it contorted around him, just barely making the space to allow him to pass. He came by some molemen on his way, something that was of course unavoidable, in which case he expanded the tunnel just a little more, squeezing by their small body without even fully allowing the moleman in question to realize what had just happened.

Soon, Eiro reached the end of the line of the molemen's tunnels, and then finally entered the more spacious ant nest. He flapped his wings and immediately shot through the space, propelled by arms of dirt and rock that were extending from the walls and pushing him through, allowing him to move at high speed and dexterously despite the fact that his body weighed multiple times what it normally did, considering it was mostly made of solid rock at the moment. That being the case, Eiro started passing by the ants' corpses. He glared at them, and now that he was this close, combined with Gondos' incredible sensitivity to mana, he was able to tell. It was little, but all the ants did still have some of the Devil's mana flowing through them. It was passed onto them from their mother, the Cavern Ant Queen, after she had been branded with the Devil's marks. But not only that, Eiro could tell that their bodies didn't look like what they normally should look like.

He had seen plenty of illustrations of Cavern Ants, and while he didn't encounter them himself yet, he knew the ways that evolution worked in monsters by now, and how different matters could influence it. They were becoming more demonic in nature, just by that tiny amount of the Devil's mana in them. And then, not long after Eiro entered the nest, he found his way to the throne room, and saw the huge pile of ant corpses stacked up. There were multiple workers down here, busily taking them apart so that the corpses could be used in some way; the carapaces as armor, and the flesh either as food or as fertilizer when needed, or when the flesh started to rot.

The worker monsters were taken aback, and the guards stationed, in case some of the ants still happened to be alive after all, raised their weapons startled, but they soon stopped the moment Eiro exerted his influence. They weren't able to even blink, so of course they couldn't move or question what was going on.

Eiro looked at the mountain corpse of the ant queen. Her carapace was dyed in red, and had deep black patterns stretching out all across, starting from the three marks. One placed on the head, one on the mesomona, and one on the gaster, the three sections of the ant queen's body. Though, large parts of the patterns were obstructed due to the large wounds inflicted on her body through the battle in which she was killed. Her head had been completely ripped off, with what seemed to be brute force rather than a clean cut.

Eiro stepped up to the body, and got out his frost dagger, carefully placing its tip against the gaster's carapace. Cracks spread through it immediately, quickly surrounding the first mark, allowing that part of the carapace to simply fall off as a hand-sized slab. Eiro repeated this for the mesomona and head, and looked at the three marks, his eyes lingering particularly on the mark of wrath.

"You bastardous... What the fuck are you even doing?" Eiro groaned, and started to think. The Devil wasn't stupid. He must have known the exact details of how strong the monsters of the floating island town were, so he knew that they would never lose against even such a massive number of Cavern Ants, especially with Eiro's support and teachings supporting them and making them even more powerful, especially with their forces combined. The fact that not even a single monster of the city died comes to show just what the difference in the fighting forces were.

Before long, Eiro was so lost in thought that his influence over the monster workers and guards started to slipped, and one of the more capable ones managed to be able to move. Of course, due to the dim lighting of this place, Eiro's current form, and the guard's hazy mind due to the leftover pressure eminating from Eiro, he wasn't able to recognize the Demon as his lord.

He grasped his sword tightly and started to run at Eiro, trying to strike him down with the little power he managed to muster. However, Eiro didn't even have to do anything. The sword just shattered into pieces the moment Eiro was struck with it, due to how tough his body was. Eiro turned his head around and locked eyes with the monster, a young orc whose whole body was shivering, scared beyond belief by Eiro and his power. But the Demon couldn't blame him... he wasn't particularly happy right now.

"If you want to keep your limbs, step back," he growled with both of his mouths, his voices overlapping and making him sound even more monstrous.

It was too much for the orc, and he fell to the ground, cutting his hand on one of the shards of his own sword. The orc's blood soaked into the dirty floor, and Eiro groaned as he extended his hand forward to heal him, but before he could, he spotted a reaction of mana. The whole room was covered in splinters of the queen's carapace, including the place where the Orc had fallen. His blood touched one of the patterns of the carapace; the pattern which was practically the Devil's magic. And as Eiro knew quite well, the Devil, as any demon, had a close relationship with blood. Before Eiro was able to do much of anything, he noticed space contorting, bending light from the few torches placed around the walls. And before long, a figure appeared in front of Eiro.

A figure of a well-dressed man with slick black hair, two small, inconspicuous horns poking out through them, and skin as red as the blood pouring out from the Orc's hand.

"Oh? What a surprise to see you here. For someone who plays at being a human every day, you're looking more and more monstrous, dear little imp," the figure said, a subtle smirk forming on its lips.

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<nullb>[The Devil smiles at you]

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