Demon's Virtue

Eiro sat in his library and was reading up on the Arcane Runes that James recognized the runes on the metal ball to be. The Demon hoped that he would be able to find some sort of clue toward what exactly the metal ball did. Luckily there was a book about these runes here in the library. The hidden one adjacent to this just had lots of books about spells and hidden history, as well as numerous notes on different monsters and organizations. The Demon would read through those in due time, but this kind of thing was more important at the moment.

"Hm..." He hummed lightly, comparing the runes that were sketched in this book with the ones he remembered from the rock slab, the light-activation plate from the Goblin Village, as well as this metal ball. He mentally connected all of this, and with his 'Quick Thought Processing' ability from reaching 300 Intelligence also helped with that quite a lot.

And just when Eiro thought he was putting everything somewhat together, he was interrupted, "Master. What this word?" Gobo asked, holding a children's book toward Eiro and pointing at the word 'Duck'.

With a slight sigh, Eiro looked back at the Hobgoblin while pulling out his notebook and quickly starting to sketch up a simple duck so that he could show it, because Eiro wasn't entirely sure if Gobo ever actually saw one of those, "This. It's a type of bird."

"Bird... So, duck food?" Gobo asked, and after a bit of thought, the Demon just shrugged, "Yeah, definitely. But don't go around trying to eat them, alright? In general, don't eat anything that I don't approve anymore. I could smell your spit on one of my books." Eiro growled lightly, and Gobo looked at the Demon with a bright smile.

"Book smell like food!" He exclaimed, and Eiro stared back while rubbing the bridge of his nose, "Slime."

"Yo." The shapeless slime quickly replied the next moment. He was currently in a human-like form, although he didn't really have any sort of details to him, it was just to make it easier to move around right now, and was flipping through a beastiary to find more forms to possibly take. Eiro looked at him and pointed at the Hobgoblin next to him.

"From now on, answer all his questions related to reading. Tell him about what the written words mean, and if he doesn't know it, show it to him." Eiro said, crossing his legs as he placed his notebook to the side and returned to the book about Arcane Runes.

"Eh? Why the fuck do I have to do that?" The Slime asked, and Eiro slowly glanced at him, "Because otherwise I'll kill you."

"Heh, you think those threats're still gonna work on me? You're gonna kill me one day either way, so why'd I let you use that to scare me into doing shit for you?" The slime asked with a smug tone of voice, and Eiro looked back at him with a sigh mixed with a groan, "The stick doesn't work, I see? Then let's try the carrot. If you do this for me, I'll finally give you a name."

"Huh?" The slime asked, immediately staring at Eiro confusedly, "A... A name..?" It muttered, seemingly rather flustered at the idea, and Eiro laughed a bit.

"Just get going already." He suggested, and the slime, trying not to show that he actually really wanted to be given a proper name, scuttered over and moved over right next to Gobo, "Oi, fuckin' dumbass, let's get this over with already. I was just gettin' to the part about unique slime evolutions."

Exactly that moment, Eiro ripped his eyes wide open, "Unique... evolutions..." The demon muttered. It was as if this was the last piece to the puzzle, and everything else fell into place. The book he was reading had a few common runic words written in it together with their translations, but not all too many. There were still a few missing that he needed to completely understand the slab, panel, and metal ball.

"That's it! That rune over here means 'intake'... then that one could mean 'mana'... Ooh, that's 'output' and then that means that the rune right next to it would be the 'Effect' of the output! The one with the slab apparently means 'Storage', and the one on the panel means 'Transfer'!" Eiro exclaimed, excitedly flipping through the book.

There was some sketch of another runic slab inside of the book, but it didn't have a perfect translation connected to it. One sentence was translated as 'Change will come about', but context-wise, as it was seemingly speaking about monsters, the rune that was translated as 'Change' most likely meant 'Evolution'.

If that's how it was, then Eiro just figured out what exactly this metal ball did. It wasn't that it had the effects of some specific card infused into it, but rather, that it had one basic effect of every card infused into it. This metal ball was an Evolution-Enhancer!

"That's it, it just makes sense! That's why the spider seemed so weird, it was a special evolution!" Eiro exclaimed with a bright smile on his face.

"This is just perfect!" With a broad smile on his face, Eiro jumped up and quickly made his way out of the room, "You two, stay here!"

With that, the Demon made his way through the mansion, basically just jumping through the easy-to-open hidden passages to save time, jumping down one that was basically completely vertical. A few moments later, Eiro reached the bottom of that hole and landed on the dining table down in the room below, where currently Jess, James and Krog were sitting and discussing something about possible requests to take in the future, now that they had Eiro.

"What the-" Krog exclaimed reflexively, "Dude, the fuck are you doing?" The warrior asked, and Eiro just smiled broadly, "I just need to ask James something. You sure you barely remember anything about Arcane Runes, right?"

After a slight sigh, James nodded his head and leaned back in his chair, "Yup. Why, you need my help after all?"

"Yes, I need you to confirm something for me." Eiro said with a grin on his face, and grabbed one of the blank pieces of paper laying on the table, before starting to write on it. He noted down all the important runes he hoped to have just figured out together with their translations, and then held it in front of the surprised Light Elf, "Can you tell me if this is correct?"

"Hmm... output, input... Wait, wasn't that one something else, not Evolution? It was 'change', right?" James asked. Eiro quickly nodded, "Yeah, it is. Evolution is a sort of change too, right? It might just be a term that changes meaning slightly depending on the situation." Eiro said, and James slowly looked at the metal ball that Eiro was holding in his hand and then formed a wry smile.

"Wait... you're not trying to suggest that that thing is something that helps you evolve, right...?"

With a broad grin, Eiro just looked at James with a broad smile, "You think so too, huh? That's good enough for me." The Demon waved his hand to the side, trying to open the screen about evolution options, and just stared at the sentence asking him if he wanted to go for a Unique Evolution.

"Yes." He said, and the next moment, some notifications appeared.

[Commencing Evolution. Evolution will be over in 13 Days, 23 Hours, 59 Minutes, 59 Seconds]

[You are unable to open your status during evolution]

After cutting through those with his fingers, Eiro looked at the metal ball in his hands and pushed his mana inside of it. It was simply supposed to take in mana for the effect, so it was clear either way that it wasn't some sort of 'emergency kill' system like Eiro thought it was. After all, it was constantly being supplied with mana by being inside of the queen spider's heart, and that would have been rather fatal if that had been the case.

That was really the only reason why he just straight-forwardly poured his mana inside of it instead of testing it out first.

[Monster Evolution detected. 1 Charge will be used to enhance evolution. 2 Charges left. Evolution can only be enhanced once]

With a broad grin on his face, Eiro stood back up, "You're looking for some requests to take, huh? Choose some extermination requests." The Demon said clearly, all the whilst his three party members were just looking up at him as he was still squatting on the middle of the table.

"What? At least tell us what happened first! You just poured your mana inside, right?" Jess asked, and Eiro quickly turned toward her with a smile, "Oh, yeah. I started my unique evolution and managed to further enhance it with this little one. But there's still two more in this place that need to evolve a little."

"So it really was an evolution enhancer? Really?" James asked, feeling weirdly proud that he was able to understand what Eiro was getting at when he showed James the sheet of paper, and the Demon just nodded, although Krog had something else to say, "Wait, nevermind that shit. Most importantly, are you saying you wanna use that ball to make the slime and goblin evolve into better things?"

"That's exactly it. I mean, what else are we gonna use it on? A monster's evolution means changing everything about it. For the most part, the basic stat value of every stat increases, and that is especially the case for rare or unique evolutions. So, we can make Gobo much, much smarter hopefully. And the slime's ability to transform will definitely increase as well. It's going to be really useful."

The moment that Eiro said this, the three others were looking at each other across the table, and soon after, James spoke up about something that they all seemingly wanted to know about.

"By the way... You keep saying how 'Useful' the Goblins are going to be to you in the future. But you never mentioned what exactly you want to use them for." The Light Elf pointed out, and Eiro started to look down at them.

He slightly glanced at Nelli and Gondos, who were both looking at him with expressions that said they were also somewhat waiting for him to answer it. The Demon figured that it wouldn't hurt to just say it out loud at this point. That would maybe strengthen his resolve about this a bit more as well.

"Hm... It's actually pretty simple if you think about it. Although, I guess it's not if you don't know about me that much... I'll just come out and say it.. I want to kill the Monster King."