Demon's Virtue

"Hm?" Bavet slowly woke up, blinking his eyes open slightly. The relaxing venom was so potent that the slime's transformation was actually undone to some degree, and he now looked like a shaved cat covered in a thick, translucent goo, "What happened?" he asked. Bavet slowly stood up, shaking his body like a dog trying to dry itself off, as the goo quickly turned back into fur.

Eiro stretched out his tail toward him, and the small white cat jumped on top of it as Eiro lifted him up onto his shoulders, "The Masters left. They're having a conversation on their own somewhere right now."

"What, and act like you can't just listen in on them?" Bavet asked, but Eiro shook his head.

"I can't, actually. Shimour covered them all in a veil. They're fully protected."

"Well, whatever. So what now? Are they going to train you?"

"I would imagine that's what they're currently discussing. Clearly Kassandra had something against me, but the others didn't seem to particularly mind. Considering that Partax told me he would still teach me beyond this all, I do think the chances are overall not too bad," Eiro explained, stepping out of the sitting room while walking down the hallway toward the library.

The slime on Eiro's shoulder leaned forward to get the chance to glance at the Demon's face, "You're not headed to rest?"

"In due time," he responded, "There's a few things I just need to take a look at first."

Though Bavet didn't know what it was Eiro meant, even the Demon wasn't entirely sure what he was going to be looking for. The... Devil suddenly appeared before him. It wasn't the real Devil, of course. That one was dead. Truly and wholly dead, and there was no other way around it.

Using necromancy, Eiro watched his soul be devoured and ripped apart by hell. The Devil was irreversably and forever dead.

So why was Eiro so... scared? Hallucinations weren't anything too troublesome to deal with. Eiro dealt with things affecting his mind plenty, but those were all forces from the outside, trying to overtake him. But this stemmed from inside, from something that Eiro had already made his own, the Devil's knowledge. Tucked inside, hidden away, was a fragment of the Devil's mind.

And who can say that there wouldn't be more than just the one that Eiro already slain, if that even worked properly in the first place?

So, Eiro felt like he just needed to check. To see if there was anything he could figure out about what just happened. He stepped through the library and entered the space hidden beyond, closing the door behind him. He hung up his cloak and jacket, and unbuttoned his shirt, folding them all and placing them onto the table beside him.

"Anything I can do to help?" Bavet asked, tilting his head curiously as Eiro pulled a golden card out of thin air.

"...Just keep me company, will you?"

Bavet seemed a bit surprised, but ended up just nodding his head in the end, "...Of course... Was... the fight against the Devil really that horrendous?"

Eiro thought about it for a moment, "It wasn't the worst fight I've been in. I barely took any damage at all, really. The fight against that speeding crow was much worse in that regard, to tell you the truth. But...

the fight against the devil took everything out of me in a way that I can't really explain," Eiro pointed out, looking at the golden key appear in his hand, "The Devil has been a beast lingering in the backmost shadows of my life. He was an insurmountable threat, and in the end, I... beat him so easily.

A simple trick that the greatest trickster of all wasn't even able to see through, simply because he couldn't comprehend a demon that wasn't bound to the rules of a pact. It was just..."

"Unsatisfying?"

"Is that a horrible thought to have? That I would have liked the fight to be a bit more exciting and unpredictable. More... fun," Eiro muttered, but Bavet scoffed and shook his feline head.

"You've always been a battle maniac, no matter how stoic you try to act. But for this one... seriously just be happy that you managed to solve it without a direct encounter. You said it yourself, but the royals are all incredibly strong. Taking out one of the most dangerous ones that easily is a good thing. You can enjoy yourself with the...

safer ones. As ridiculous as that sounds, when talking about beings akin to calamities."

Eiro smiled lightly, "You're right. Thank you," he let out a deep sigh as he turned the tip of the key toward his chest. In his skin, a keyhole appeared. Without further ado, Eiro pushed it into his skin and turned the key around. Though, as Eiro was just trying the key out for the time being, instead of opening up to the space inside of his soul, it opened up his body.

A slit appeared on the Demon's chest, as large flaps of his skin folded open. Not in a painful way, though, it was nothing but uncomfortable. But before long, Eiro's chest was opened up to him. His ribs and lungs and the two gemstones that existed right where his heart should usually be. However, this view also revealed a view that Bavet didn't know until now.

Being a shapeshifter, the slime was incredibly aware of the biology of practically every species he had ever come by. Rather, one of his abilities was related to exactly this. It came with its limits, of course, and one of those was that the stronger the invididual was, the less he could grasp from them.

And since Eiro was so ridiculously more powerful than him, Bavet hadn't been able to learn this until now. But Eiro's bones weren't made of... bone. Instead, they seemed more like glistening pillars of mystical gemstones similar to the Demon's horns. And not only that, but the veins that were wrapped around those gem-like bones and Eiro's internal organs like the roots of a vast, old tree...

they were glistening. They were practically giving off their own light as deep red blood flowed through them.

"You're so... weird, physically speaking," Bavet pointed out, and Eiro scoffed as he looked back at the slime.

"Oh shut up, you haven't seen anything yet. I'll be evolving soon, and I plan on getting even weirder in that time," Eiro pointed out, as he closed the flaps of his skin again. And then, he pushed the key into his chest one more time, but this time, trying to focus on entering Eiro's soul.

As his chest opened up, a lot more stiff this time as though his skin had really turned into the wood of a door, a small, quaint space was revealed.

It was Eiro's treasury, still that small chamber filled with nothing but hidden secrets, with trinkets and tools and weapons and books. Except that this time, instead of being filled with different 'aspects' of Eiro, it was completely empty. And so, Eiro made a decisio. He created a duplicate of himself, one that was much smaller than he himself, small enough to fit right into the space.

And small enough to walk right through that door at the back of the room in Eiro's soul.

As the duplicate stepped into the space, Eiro felt himself... shudder. It was an unusual feeling. He held himself within himself, like he had a sort of different awareness of what this duplicate was and how it moved, as if he was imagining it in his mind. But at the same time, since Eiro shared a consciousness with that duplicate, it went beyond the usual weirdness of creating duplicates of himself.

Like he was truly himself, and not a duplicate, walking through his soul.

Eiro looked around. It was like he was in a true, real space that contained his treasures. Picking them up, it seemed he would be able to use them properly as well. And in that locked safe built into the wall, Eiro could feel the power of Death and the Devil, just almost seeping out.

But none of this really mattered. If he wanted to, Eiro could explore the mechanic of this later. For now, he walked up to the door in front of him, and carefully pushed it open into the space beyond, hidden deeper in his soul.