Demon's Virtue

Eiro managed to catch up to the others pretty quickly. After all, they were just on a straight road toward the next wall right now so that they could get into the actual urban area of the town. Just getting through there would take roughly an hour just on foot, although it seemed like this group would manage to do it in just half an hour, luckily. Sure, they had a cart, but most of them were still travelling on foot nonetheless.

"What did you do back there?" James asked with a light frown once he saw the Demon run up netx to him, and Eiro just turned his head a little and smiled underneath his mask, "Nothing special, I just made sure to educate them a little. And don't worry, I didn't injure them any more than what you already saw."

"Right..." The Light Elf replied, and Eiro just looked forward again. It's not like he cared for James' opinion when it came to things like this, so he just ignored the obvious discontent that James seemingly had a hard time suppressing in his voice.

After a while, the group reached the next gate. There wasn't really that much trouble here, and this time Eiro had the chance to show Solomon's brooch before the guards made any insulting comments, so they were simply let through without any further issues.

The spiders were being a little annoying inside of their cages, but since Eiro specifically chose to take streets without many people on it, it was fine. Gobo was a bit bothersome as well though. He was obviously nervous, as if on edge. It might be that he was just scared of all these many people, or that it was the effect of the monster-repellant materials inside of the walls and the castle itself, but either way, the Hobgoblin managed to behave. Although Eiro still kept an extra eye on him the whole time.

Soon, the group managed to finally reach the adventurer's guild again. They pulled some of the materials off of the cart to carry them inside, already garnering quite a few surprised looks from other people due to the sheer amount of materials. They placed the cart somewhere where they wouldn't bother anyone and where they were hard to spot, but that still didn't mean that nobody saw them at all.

"You two. Better wait out here with the cart, who knows what might happen?" James pointed out before Eiro and James made their way into the Guild, carrying the large bags and nets filled with materials from the spiders. The living ones were a little to precious to hand in as a request, actually.

It didn't seem too busy at the moment, and as such, the two of them reached the counter rather quickly. And to Eiro's pleasant surprise, the receptionist that Eiro spoke to the first time he was here once more came to the front. It seemed like they wanted to make sure that people always had the same receptionist handling their cases, to make things a little easier to organize.

"How can I help you today?" The receptionist asked with a smile on his face, and without hesitation, James and Eiro placed the bags onto the counter, "I'd like to hand these materials in." Eiro explained. The receptionist slowly nodded his head and opened one of the bags up. He pulled the leg of a Night Stalker out of there and then turned back toward Eiro.

"Did you hunt these together?" The receptionist asked, and Eiro slowly shook his head, "No, actually. Those materials all come from monsters hunted by me alone." Eiro said. It might sound a little bit annoying to do it like this, and rather selfish to top it off, but this was the best way to do it for now. Eiro was still a D-Rank adventurer, so they all made the choice together to let Eiro hand in some of the materials he got alone on his own so that he could get to the top of D-Rank to take the promotion exam to C-Rank. It seemed like it wouldn't take too long, since it was just a test of strength, so he would quickly take it, officially join James, Jess and Krog's party, and then they would hand in some of the rest of the materials. Still not all of them, though.

"I see... Then please just let me process these mateirlas." The receptionist said and then took out the materials one by one. Some others came and helped him out to try and figure out the quality of the materials and what they were actually from, and soon, the receptionist returned with a light smile.

"As I am quite sure you are already aware, this is more than enough to show your validity as a D-Rank adventurer. If you wish, we can have you take the promotional examination while we prepare the monetary reward?" The receptionist suggested, doing a rather bad job at hiding his doubt, "I just need to inform you that if you fail the promotional examination, you will be banned from taking it for one month. And in the worst case, if it is found that you may not actually hold the strength to back up the fact that you brought us these materials, then you may receive a penalty, which could include Rank Demotion."

"Mhm." Eiro replied in a rather bored tone as he looked at James, "Then you wait here and keep the rest of the materials safe. And you can take the money in case it's ready before I come back."

"Sure. But hurry it up, I really need to take a proper nap." James replied as he stepped over to the side and sat down on a chair at a table right next to the counter, and Eiro just followed the guild receptionist.

He brought Eiro through the building to the back, to an open space. It was rather cool here, since the sun didn't reach in, but it was still relatively bright due to the large open space showing the sky at the roof of this area.

"As the first step of your promotional examinations, we need to gather a little information about you and your skillset. Don't worry, we are aware that skills are anyone's greatest weapon, we aren't actually using appraisal tools on you. We just need you to inform us of any skills and abilities that you make use of during combat, which will be tested today. Should you use any ability that you didn't inform us of, or we sense any sort of other deception in your description of an ability, it will lead to your disqualification this exam and you will be banned from taking it again for a month. Understood?" The receptionist asked, and Eiro slowly nodded his head in response.

"Mhm, I understand. In combat, I mostly make use of Hand-to-Hand combat and Dagger Mastery, with which I wield either one or two daggers depending on the situation." Eiro started, and the receptionist slowly nodded his head and noted this down, "A Rogue-type, I see... But wait, didn't you have two spirits accompanying you?"

"Yes, I wasn't done yet." Eiro replied with a light groan, "When it comes to magic, I make use of physical casting or magic-circle-based casting. I'm not a fan of chants, but I use them sometimes too. The elements I make use of are Air, Fire, Earth, Water and Ice. And as you mentioned, there is Spirit Magic as well." The demon explained swiftly, and the receptionist slowly noted all of this down, although he was more than just suspicious of this.

"Then this will be split into two. It is hard to demonstrate physical melee combat without a partner, so you will spar against one of our employees only making use of Hand-to-Hand combat and Dagger Mastery, please. For Magic, I ask that you try and copy spells that we will show you at a similar or higher level. If you don't know the spell, a similar one at the same strength will suffice. We sadly do not have an Ice Mage with us, but I hope that you will understand the rough level of magic strength we would like to see after the first four tries." The receptionist explaiend quickly.

Eiro slowly nodded his head. That shouldn't be too hard. This would most likely finish rather quickly, then.

"Alright, how are we starting?" Eiro asked, and the receptionist slowly looked up from the sheet of paper he was noting things down on, "You are positive you want to proceed? You do not want to make any edits to your statements?"

"I don't. Please, let's start." The Demon said, and with a deep sigh, the receptionist nodded and rubbed the bridge of his nose. He waved his hand toward one of the people standing at the side of this training area. It was seemingly a rogue that Eiro would be fighting against for now.

"C-Rank promotionals, I see?" The rogue asked with a rather cheeky grin, "Take that mask of and let's see what you can do, bud." He chuckled, but Eiro just shook his head without hesitation.

"Sorry, I won't be taking my mask off. But it shouldn't be an issue, I'm not restricted by this mask in the slightest."

"How can you say that?" With a light scoff, the rogue crossed his arms, "There aren't even any holes for your eyes in there. What, are ya blind?"

"Could we stop this? In literally a minute you will realize that this smack-talking had absolutely no affect on me. Now take up your stance, I want to get this over with. My kids are waiting at home." The Demon said with an annoyed tone, and the rogue just laughed and started taking up his stance.

There was just one peculiar thing about that stance. It was very, very similar to Eiro's own. It was too similar to be a coincidence, but there were obvious mistakes in there. This would be more interesting than Eiro thought.

But the moment that he took up his own stance with one dagger in his hand the other placed flat onto his own back, the receptionist already intervened.

"Lord Eiro, please, do not just imitate our-"

"Shut the fuck up, brat!" The rogue yelled out loudly, making the receptionist flinch immediately, "As I thought, you're fucking interesting. That name, the royal brooch, and now that stance! Who the fuck are you, huh?" The rogue asked with a mad grin on his face, and Eiro just looked back at him, "I'll tell you if you can beat me. In return, once I beat you, tell me about how you know about this style."

"Aye, deal." The rogue said, and without hesitation after the match started jumped forward toward Eiro. The Demon was a little annoyed, since he was shown just more and more mistakes in this imitation of a Master's Style. Eiro was a bit annoyed by this, actually. Without a moment's hesitation, within not even 20 seconds of the start of the match, Eiro threw the rogue to the ground and grappled onto him, combining his dagger mastery with his grapple-heavy hand-to-hand combat style, in which he enveloped the rogue's upper body with all of his limbs and pressed the tip of his dagger against the underside of his chin.

And with a deep sigh, he started thinking about what exactly he was supposed to do to calm this guy down, whose whole body was seemingly starting to get overtaken by anger and frustration completely.