Demon's Virtue

Eiro didn't manage to properly contain his broad grin. This was an amazing, extraordinary find. With a satisfied expression and mind, the Demon stepped along further into the room, just making the ice model of the magic circle that the hidden passages, rooms, and walls seemed to create completely disappear.

"So you think that the passages are part of a magic circle?" Nelli asked, "It doesn't really look like one, now does it?" The Naiad pointed out.

Eiro didn't have to think about it for a long time before he simply shook his head, "That's actually not true. It might seem chaotic at first, like basically everything here in this mansion, but there is a weird sense of order to it. There are patterns in this, the kind that I recognize from magic circles. I think I may be able to find out more things like that in here." Eiro looked around at the books, running his fingers over the leather of the old, or even ancient, scriptures placed into the bookshelves around him.

He wasn't sure if it was the scent of the paper or the slight bit of dust being pulled into his nose and mouth with every breath, but he felt like he was really completely enveloped in the books themselves.

If Eiro was able to stay awake again during his next evolution, he would really just spend most of his time in here, trying to take a look at all of these books.

But the books weren't everything that impressed Eiro. In particular, there was one thing that caught his attention. There was one monster that at first may seem rather inconspicuous, but was instead incredibly dangerous and kind at the same time. A special being. The monster that wasn't really a monster.

Hundreds of years ago, they first came into existence after a race of monster and a race of magic beast ended up in the same territory, mostly split off from the surrounding world. Why this happened was unsure, whether it was a spell or some natural disaster, but either way, after, presumably, a lot of either side was killed, they also started to breed with each other.

As both races were rather fruitful, the resulting creatures soon overtook their parents in numbers. And while those parents died out, the creatures continued to live. Contained inside of that rather small territory, they ended up killing each other to keep their numbers down, feeding on their brethren to keep themselves alive, while the rest were cared for with as much compassion as they could offer.

Then, at some point, the contained area was opened up. Again, whether this was through some magic spell or natural disaster was unknown to this day, but the creatures were able to escape. They spread through the continent, and due to their low numbers, soon were reduced to rather low numbers.

But the important thing was that these creatures had aspects of both Magic Beasts and Monsters. Every hundred levels, not only did they evolve, but their very being was strengthened on top of that. Very little beings had evolutions as abstract or extreme as them due to this.

The beings that were near to indistinguishable from the small, innocent, and rare magic beast known as Fairy Dragon turned into enormous, threatening, and kind magic dragons.

And past that, following that evolution copying dragons that just a few dozen of this special creature turned into, came another step. They shrunk down, as if compressing all that might into another new form.

They still had the form of a dragon, but were now merely the size of the average horse instead of a large building. Instead of scales, their bodies were covered in hardened fur. As far as Eiro heard and could tell looking at this being, if you turned the fur into cloth, you would be able to protect against numerous sword strikes from skilled individuals without even having to try.

And to top it off, the fur was said to be an incredible conductor for magic, meaning that it may end up increasing the strength of your magic and the speed of your mana recovery.

This legendary being that was said to only have existed 5 times to this stage of evolution, the Grandour, now stood in front of him in the form of a taxidermied corpse. It was rather beautiful, honestly, but Eiro was still craving the materials from this creature. Obviously, it would create incredible defensive equipments.

Eiro slowly ran his fingers over the Grandour's dead body, feeling its cold air seep into his very bones. With an excited and satisfied smile, Eiro took a step backward and took a look at the small book in front of the taxidermied body.

He flipped through it, and soon found not only the information that he already knew from different bestiaries about legendary or mythical beings, but also extra information that Eiro never even heard of before.

Detailed sketches of their internal and external structure on different levels, so muscle, bone, or organs, and anything else of importance. Even things that weren't actually important, at least not to Eiro himself. And there were seemingly a couple of possible ideas on what exactly caused the creation of the Grandour in the first place. In particular, the Choromancer that used to live here was seemingly thinking that it wasn't actually a coincidence that the Grandour came into existence.

That maybe some kind of superior being intervened and played god. It seemed like they were rather confident in this theory. Eiro didn't have much information besides what this book said, but there wasn't necessarily any reason to completely deny this possibility. Eiro himself knew about powerful beings making use of their abilities for experiments, even if it was just for fun or out of boredom.

For now, Eiro chose to take this book with him. It was pretty interesting, and if he would find some good ways to make proper use of the materials from the dead Grandour, it would be a good use of his time. There were a lot of other great things in here. Staffs, wands, gems, crystals, magic stones, even grimoires, basically a buffet of items that Eiro would love to indulge in using and studying.

But most importantly, behind an extra barrier that Eiro had no idea how to get through at the moment, the Demon could see a large tree just standing there. He couldn't find any sort of description, and whenever he tried to step through the barrier he would end up on the other side of the cylindrical space, as if anything contained by it was actually nonexistent. Eiro really, really wanted to figure out what this wood actually was... and he would love to make something out of it.

But knowing that he wasn't in a rush for now, Eiro made his way over toward the entrance of this hidden library again, climbing up the stairs. Once he was in the regular library again, he pushed his mana into the same book that he started the short 'unlocking sequence' with before and watched as the bookshelves behind him were raised up again, soon standing in the same place as they were before, without revealing the space that was beyond it.

Once more extremely excited to see all this happen, Eiro made his way to the entrance of the library, soon noticing his party members coming his way. Eiro turned into their direction and waited for them to come closer.

"Yes?" Eiro asked when they were close enough to hear him, and James crossed his arms when he stood there in front of the Demon, "What are we supposed to do with the spiders? We can't just leave them over there out in the open. It's a bit dangerous, right?"

"Of course it is. But we're not just keeping them there." The Demon pointed out, "There should be some space in one of the basement rooms."

"The basement rooms? Like, the cellar or something? Sure, when that guy from before showed us around, there was definitely enough space down there." Krog pointed out with a light grin, ready to turn around and get started immediately, but Eiro quickly stopped him.

"Wait, wait, that's not what I'm speaking of. I mean the dungeons, actually." Eiro explained, and Jess slightly tilted her head to the side confusedly, "I don't know what you're talking about, there weren't any dungeons in this mansion, were there?" She asked.

With a light grin, Eiro just shrugged, "Sure, if that's what you think. Well, it shouldn't really be something like a dungeon. I doubt it was really a prison, it probably was the same thing as we're going for. Like a place to keep monsters. But we definitely noticed something with cages going on, right, you two?" The Demon asked as he looked at his two spirits, both of which were quickly nodding their heads.

"Hm... Fine, I guess it should be just about time for me to show it to you guys anyway. I know that you won't spill my secrets by now, so it's fine." With that in mind, Eiro stepped through the hallway and pushed his foot against one of the bricks in the wall. It was pushed deeper in and then a simple hidden door opened up, showing a round staircase behind it that was leading straight to the basement.

"Then follow me, you four." Eiro said with a smile on his face, speaking to the three people as well as Gobo, who had just really been quietly following. He seemed to be somewhat intimidated in this environment, something that the demon didn't really expect from him. Eiro hoped that he would be able to train Gobo to be comfortable in any circumstance. If he was uncomfortable in places he wasn't used to, then not only would his combat ability dwindle, but so would his concentration in general. And depending on the situation, especially those that should make Gobo uncomfortable, that wouldn't be something that Gobo could really afford to happen.

Either way, once they got to the bottom of the stairs and made their way into the wine cellar, Eiro took a look around at the large barrels that were standing around here. They were large enough for everyone in this group to stand in comfortably at once. And so, the Demon simply placed his palm on one of the barrels and pushed his mana inside.

While telling the others to be quiet, Eiro just so slightly moved his hand around, twisting the lid of the of the barrel at the same time.

He always just twisted it just so slightly, as if he was trying to unlock some kind of code-lock on a safe. At some point, the things that would let Eiro know that he was doing the right thing nearly disappeared, making it harder for Eiro to properly know what he had to do, so he slowly glanced at Gondos.

The spirit once more dove into his body, showing off this fused Demon form to the members of Eiro's party for the first time ever. And now, Eiro was capable of unlocking this properly without any issues, since this was a sort of magical lock.

At different positions, Eiro pushed in the right amount of magic as he figured it would be according to the logic of the lock, and then continued. With a smile on his face, Eiro watched as the lid of the barrel started spinning around on its own. As if it was something being screwed down somewhere, the lid disappeared inside of the barrel, until it stopped at the point where the other lid should be. But instead of really stopping, it dropped forward into a room beyond it.

And so, Eiro turned around and extended his hand toward the room beyond the barrel.

"There we go, Lady and Gentlemen. This mansion's dungeons.." And Eiro just couldn't help but laugh at the confused expressions of James, Jess and Krog after Eiro fused with Gondos.