Demon's Virtue

Quietly, Eiro just stared at the Stag and its child, the latter still being quite weak on its leg. While it was still larger than a normal fawn, considering the size of its father, it seemed just as helpless. Slowly, the Imp tried to stand up and looked across the river toward the Stag. The Imp really wasn't sure, but he felt like it was happy or grateful toward him just as it turned around. "You're leaving again?" Eiro asked quietly, and the Stag slowly turned around as it huffed some air out of its nose and a few times started to look back and forth inbetween the Imp and the forest behind the Stag.

"Do you want me to... follow you?" Nervously, the Imp stared forward at it, his heart beating so fast and loud that it seemed like he could hear it pump his blood through his body, and the Stag seemed to nod its head up and down before simply turning around and pushing its snout against the behind of the fawn to make it move.

While the Stag was actually just walking quite slowly, to Eiro it seemed like it was sprinting at a pace the Imp could never hope to catch up to. But at least, he had to try. The seed would be fine for another while, Eiro was sure of that, but his instincts were telling him that he had to follow behind the stag no matter what, or else he himself wouldn't be.

"W-Wait for me!" He exclaimed as he looked around himself to find a good path over the river, because he couldn't just swim through it like this. The river's water was moving insanely fast and it was so cold that it might freeze the moment it stopped moving.

Although, that might come to Eiro's benefit, now that he thought about it. Slowly, he kneeled down in front of the water and held his hand against it, slowly trying to push his mana out of the tips of his fingers right into the water. Now, he just had to do what he always did when manipulating water...

He made his mana and the water itself intertwine with each other and combine until even Eiro didn't know the difference between the two anymore. As if they were always a part of one another. And then, he simply tried to make the water slow down, although at that moment, another thought came to his mind.

As if channeling the cold he had been absorbing in his body the past week, the Demon simply wanted to make the water stop completely. It should stop flowing, stop moving, and simply become stagnant. Just like the flower in his pocket. The water should just stay the exact same way that it was, until Eiro didn't need it to anymore.

Extending from the places where his skin touched the cold water, nets of ice starting growing outward, taking over the whole area around his hand. The water kept flowing over the ice, but as soon as it got there, it started being frozen as well and built up onto the frozen pile until Eiro pulled his hand away.

The ice that he had formed was slowly being overflown by the river, and ended up being dragged away together with it. But surely, he just created Ice... And the notifications that appeared in front of him seemed to confirm that.

[Nature is bending to your will. Your Water Magic awaked into Ice Magic]

[Current Magic Skills will be retained]

[Beginner Ice Magic Skill Learned]

Eiro raised his head properly and then stood up straight, slowly running his fingers through the notification as the little bit of ice still stuck on them crumbled off.

After picking up his cloak and putting it over his body again, Eiro took a step forward into the water, trying to push as much of his mana into his feet as he could. And then bit by bit, and step by step, Eiro repeated what he had just done.

Out of the skin of his feet, he pressed his mana and attempted to turn the water into ice, and just slowly, it did. The surface of ice was wobbling underneath his step, however, so the Imp had to make it go as deep into the water as he could make it, to get it to be more stable.

Luckily it wasn't being pulled away by the river, for whatever reason, but it was still quite tough to do this with the river-water flowing over the ice, making it even harder to stand on that it was anyway.

But soon enough, the Imp just had to try his best, or he would seriously lose sight of the Stag and its child. And he didn't want to let that happen. He decided to follow them, so he would.

After feeling safe on one foot, he slowly raised his other one and tried to build up a balance on the ice, before bringing his foot forward and slowly setting his toes into the water, immediately making it freeze before any ripples could spread out. And so, Eiro placed the next spot to stand on. And then, the next, and the next, and the next, until he was close enough to the other side of the river to just jump over there.

Before he knew it, Eiro could hear the frozen snow crack underneath his body as he tried not to put his weight on his stump as he instinctively tried to catch his fall with both his hands.

But that wasn't important right now either way. The Imp jumped up as quickly as he could, and before even properly standing, sprinted forward in the direction of the stag to follow it. There was a reason why it kept coming back to him, a being that was so obviously strong that he could feel it in every single cell of his body. This Stag that was neither a spirit, nor a monster, nor a simple animal. It was something different, something vastly different.

If Eiro had to compare it to anything, then it would be the Lady of Winter. While the Daughters of Winter seemed to be spirits of sort, the Lady of Winter was something far, far beyond that. The same thing could be felt when the Imp stared at this stag.

But for some reason, nobody else could feel this. Usually, Jura would have at least hinted at the fact that he sensed the Stag at any point in time that it appeared around Eiro. Sometimes he thought he was just imagining it, but that was disproven when it was nearly killed by the Frozen Monstrosity a week ago.

Both Jura and the Lady of Winter reacted to it after actually having it in front of them, and Jura seemed to have noticed it even from the house at the time through the sounds it made or how it smelled, but neither of them noticed how... special, the Stag was.

The Lady of Winter merely called it a 'Creature', and Jura got mad at Eiro for 'caring for a half-dead deer'. How could they not... realize... what is this? Confused, the young Demon stared at the sight in front of him. He had no idea when, but at some point, the snow disappeared from underneath his feet, and plants grew wildly around him.

Birds were chirping, and Eiro could hear the howl of wolves in the distance. Right next to his ear a bee flew by and it filled his head with the sound of buzzing, although it seemed to have flown away too quickly for him to see it, because there was nothing there when he turned his head on reflex.

"What's going on?" Eiro asked himself as he looked around, but all of this was just too... weird. Whenever he tried to look at any specific point in particular, it seemed like the scenery would keep moving along around him without him doing anything. It was nauseatin and made the Imp dizzier the longer he tried to stay focused

Instead, he just closed his eyes for a moment and held his hand in front of them as he grasped literally anything that was around him. Or at least, he attempted to, and instead dropped right onto the floor. He could swear there was a tree right beside him.

Slowly, he opened his eyes and stared up into the sky, although luckily, that didn't seem to make him dizzy, so he figured he should just keep laying there for a moment. And just as he did so, a small, hairy snout covered his sight and breathed hot air into his face, just before a tongue was pulled across his forehead.

As fast as he could, Eiro tried to push his body away and turned around to be able to properly look at the creature there, and to his surprise, it was simply the fawn. "Hey there...?" Eiro muttered quietly as he looked at the young creature, "Where is your father?" He asked, and soon, the Imp felt something poke the center of his back.

"Well, that's good enough of an answer, I guess..." Eiro said quietly and looked forward at the stag that was simply staring at him. "Where did you bring me?" The Imp asked, trying to only look through a thin slit in his eyes to minimize how weird this place made him feel, and the Stag just turned around and kept walking, so the Imp did the same.

For a while, Eiro didn't actually know how long, he just followed behind it. It might have been an hour, a day, a week, or a year. Or it might have been a minute, for all Eiro knew. It was as if everything happened all at once anyway, so time seemed to have little meaning.

And then, all of a sudden, the Stag stopped. It just stood there in front of a large, truly giant tree. And if Eiro thought something was giant, that's what it was. It reached beyond even the clouds, the sky, and the stars. Along its bark were numerous structures, and right in front of them, a set of stairs.

Slowly, the Stag stepped up the steps and Eiro followed behind like always, while the fawn stood there next to him.

Soon, the Imp found himself on the path built outside the tree, which gave off a cold, freezing vibe, despite it actually being quite warm outside. And all around him, Eiro could hear voices speak as he passed these weird-looking structures that were set into the wood, although there was nobody to actually say the words he heard around him.

"Look! You can see the whole forest from here!" One of the voices exclaimed enthusiastically, but another one just laughed. "Dumbass, the sight from up there is way cooler."

"Mommy, mommy! Popsies!" A child then yelled out from somewhere else, but the voice belonging to its mother just laughed quietly, "There there, I'll get you one if you're a good girl until we reach the top, okay?"

"Oki!" The child replied quickly, while Eiro heard footsteps pass by his side, and another voice caught his attention.

"As many of you know, this place was the center of the 'Total Solnox', as it was dubbed back then. But do any of you know how long it has been since then? I'll give you a hint, it's a very special number!" A voice then said, and for some reason, it was far louder than any of the others, painfully so, and it sounded different as well. As if someone screamed through a wall, although it came from right next to Eiro.

And then, a voice in a regular tone replied to the first voice's question. "Here, here! It's been a thousand years!"

"Exactly right, we're just another half-year away from the thousand-year anniversary since then!"

Slowly, the more the voice spoke after that, the more it just faded out, until all of the voices disappeared. And not just the voices, any sound. There were no footsteps, and the smell of delicious food was also gone. Neither did Eiro even feel the weird mix of cold and hot air on his face anymore.

In the end, it seemed like the Imp heard what he had to hear, and felt what he had to feel, and so the stag, fawn, and Demon continued making their way up the tree, until they reached a place that was carved out of the giant tree's log.

It was an enormous hall, and it was even slightly tough to properly see the exit on the other side of it, but in the end, that wasn't the thing that he seemed to have to pay attention to. Instead, it was the thing right in the center of this hall, decorated with intricate blue-crystal patterns underneath Eiro's feet, while numerous pillars each made of differently colored crystals shot out from the center of the room and grew up to the ceiling of the hall like the branches of a tree.

Blue, Yellow, Green, or Red, those were the four colors that could be seen the most. But that didn't mean there weren't any other crystals. Purple, Orange, Brown, Black, and even White, and numerous other shades of all of these were there slinging themselves around the four main pillars. And the source of those pillars was a single point in the center of the room, although right underneath it was an infinitely deep hole that Eiro couldn't see the bottom of.

And it wasn't like he didn't try, he really did. He leaned over the edge, until he suddenly lost his balance and fell forward.

As his body fell down along the deep hole, Eiro could still see the Stag as if it was right in front of him, before his body turned downward and the darkness suddenly swallowed him whole.

Before he knew it, Eiro... lifted his face out of the snow and looked up after having fallen to the ground to jump the rest of the distance between the river and the frozen ground. And right in front of him simply staring him deep into his eyes, was the fawn from before. But the stag was nowhere to be seen.