Demon's Virtue

642 Fight Fire with Fire

Eiro arrived at home in the late afternoon. He had a lot to take care of in regard to the whole Zeke situation still. Talking to the other lecturers and trying to figure out what to do with him and the other students, all those sorts of things. Of course, he was the one that was given the role of dealing with Zeke himself, and the others split up the tasks of taking care of the other students in Zeke’s posse.

Though, Eiro still hid the fact that Richard bit Zeke’s hand. That would just cause a lot more trouble because it complicated the situation quite a bit. Biting a full chunk out of someone’s hand was something pretty insane to do, so that would draw a lot of attention to Richard’s actions again, but since Richard didn’t go out of his way to do troublesome things anymore, Eiro figured it would be better to just ignore those things. Not to mention, he wanted to hide the existence of the piece of flesh as much as possible; if he brought it up here, the other teachers might bring it up to Zeke or Richard somehow, and then the efforts he had done in making them forget that Eiro manipulated that chunk with Flesh Magic would be wasted.

He had quite some use for this, or rather, the aspect that was hidden within this flesh. Quickly, Eiro made his way into the library, and then into the space hidden behind the library. He had turned this area into a bit of an artificing area for himself, since there wasn’t any other space that he could use like this. There was the basement, but Armodeus mostly used it. This area already had a lot of other artificing tools just laying around, so he figured it was as good a place as any.

Eiro walked into the library, and quickly saw Jess sitting in one of the armchairs, intensely reading through one of the books that the Demon had recommended to her. She quickly raised her head and looked at Eiro with a smile, “Oh, you’re back! How was work?” she asked, and Eiro simply shrugged, “It was fine. There was some trouble, but I actually ended up with something quite useful.”

He slowly raised the small package in his hand. He had wrapped the piece of flesh in some cloth and then froze it with ice magic to make sure that it was going to stay as fresh as possible. The mass had grown to the size of a fist with the help of Eiro’s magic though, so there was plenty for him to make use of right now.

Jess looked at the frozen ball with a raised brow, slowly putting down the book that she was reading until now, “What’s that?” curiously, she inquired. Eiro opened the hidden door into the other room and smiled, “I’ll show you, come on.”

Quickly, Jess got up from her seat and followed Eiro into the other room. The Demon held the piece of flesh to the side and quickly had a mage hand hold it for him, while he took off his jacket. The suit that he had to wear while working in the academy looked good and all, but it was nothing but stuffy to him.

He split his arms in two and pulled a box out of his treasury, which he quickly placed on the table in front of him. He held one of his hands out toward a repurposed bookshelf, which was now filled with a number of wooden boards. With a tug of his wrist, one of the boards practically came shooting out of the shelf, and Eiro quickly caught it.

“Hmm, so what is it? Some sort of magic stone you want to play around with?” Jess asked, but Eiro quickly shook his head as the floating mage hand gave the piece of flesh back to him. He quickly unwrapped it, and Jess was taken aback, “That... did you visit a butcher on your way back from work?” she hoped that was the case, at least. But Eiro just laughed slightly.

.....

“No, that’s not it. I told you about that Zeke kid, right?”

“Uhm... The one that’s the descendant of the Devil, right?” Jess replied, as she looked at the piece of flesh, “Did you...”

“No, I didn’t kill him, don’t worry. Basically, because he started practicing unholy magic, his demon blood started making him more aggressive, and he started bullying some kids. One of them wasn’t an easy target, and bit a good chunk out of Zeke’s hand. I used magic to make that chunk grow a bit to make it more useful for me,” the Demon quickly explained, but Jess wasn’t entirely sure what he was talking about.

“Useful? What are you trying to do with it?”

“I’m going to try and pull out the ‘Demonic’ aspect out of this flesh,” Eiro explained. Jess was confused for a moment, but then thought about it more closely, “Okay, and how?”

Eiro opened the wooden box he had pulled out of his treasury, revealing his woodcarving tools. He quickly placed that special board in front of him and started carving a magic circle into it. That was just how artificing worked; it was a sort of magic cast through a physical medium, even if that was still a simple way to put it, “When monsters and people have children, most of the time, those kids don’t end up being particularly... stable. Many are sort of disfigured, or mutated, or just quickly turn sick and incredibly unhealthy. My guess is that it’s the system sort of trying to keep the aspects of the ‘Monster’ and the ‘Person’ away from each other.”

Jess seemed to understand, “And because that’s happening, instead of mixing, those aspects are preserved?”

“Exactly,” the Demon explained, as he carefully carved into the piece of wood, while he was already manipulating the piece of flesh laying in one of his hands, “I’m already trying to sort of separate it a bit. It’s pretty tough, but I’ve got practice with it now... Separating things from others, I mean. Ever since I became ‘The World’, I’ve been practicing with a lot of different materials, even the flesh of certain animals or monsters, and while that was particularly unpleasant, it still worked. And most importantly, I was able to separate it quite efficiently afterward too. Now, this mass isn’t my own flesh so I can’t do it to that degree, especially considering that this was mixed together through generations instead of just being forced together like with me.”

Slowly, the mass of flesh was bulging and wiggling as some parts of the flesh were dropping off, practically rotting away right away, something that Eiro was trying to do with Death magic.

Soon, Eiro was left with a fingernail-sized piece of flesh that he had separated. Jess looked at it with a slight frown, “Is that going to be enough for you to do... whatever you’re planning with it?”

“Hm? Oh yeah, definitely. I just need the tiniest amount, and then I can regrow it when I need to. It just takes a bit of time,” Eiro replied quickly, and placed the small chunk into the center of the magic circle that he had finished carving into the wood.

“So, what are you doing now?”

“Something that I’m not super sure will really work out, I guess,” Eiro explained, “This is Cursed Holly, basically just a Holly tree that was tainted with unholy magic. Since I don’t have unholy magic yet, I can’t make it myself right now, but it’s perfect for this sort of thing. It’s got some great alignment with demons, and from what I could smell, especially with the ‘Devil’.”

Jess sat down next to Eiro and listened to his explanation intensely, and Eiro quickly continued, “So what I’m doing right now is using sort of alchemical principles combined with this specific artificing technique, to use that quality of the Cursed Holly to draw out the rest of the ‘Devil’s aspect out of this.”

Slowly, the Demon activated the simple tool, filling out that carved magic circle with his mana. The small chunk of flesh started bulging and turning a dark red, as though all the blood that was left in it was pulled to its surface, though in reality, the flesh had simply ‘awakened’ into the flesh of a demon.

After a short while, no more changes seemed to occur, and Eiro grabbed the flesh off of the wooden board, looking at it with a grin, “Perfect. The Devil’s blood took over the rest of the human flesh. This right here is basically pure demonic flesh... if I brought this near Avalin, it would probably go up in flames immediately.”

Jess watched as Eiro brought the chunk of flesh over to another object that Eiro had constructed a while ago already; it was basically just a glass jar with inscriptions carved all over it. As he opened it up and dropped it inside, it quickly became clear that the jar was filled with some sort of liquid, even though it was far too clear to see, “Why are you putting it in water?”

“It’s not water, it’s compressed Arcane magic,” Eiro explained, “Well, sort of... usually, it should just crystalize, but I’m using a lot of artificing techniques to keep it as a fluid, it actually takes a lot of mana...” Eiro sighed.

“So... what exactly does it do?”

“Oh, nothing much. I’m just going to grow this mass of flesh like this to a point where it’s the size of a person, and then turn it into a servant,” Eiro explained in a simple tone, “That way, I can fight fire with fire. Or in this case, the devil with the devil.”