Demon's Virtue

Chapter 165 - Pleasant Surprise

Eiro waited for the Guild receptionist to bring the right form over to him, while trying his best to avoid pulling any sort of attention toward him. He was more than just positive that Krog and Jess saw him, as they were also whispering to each other about Eiro, trying to figure out if he really was who they thought he was.

While Eiro's clothes as well as his mask were completely different to what they saw him in before, they did see Lugo before as well, and he barely changed. Although, now that Eiro looked at him... It seemed like Lugo got a little fatter despite the fact they've been on the move for so long. Maybe the diet wouldn't actually be that much of a punishment after all... it would most likely end up helping him, after all.

"Sir?" The receptionist tried getting the Demon's attention, and Eiro quickly turned toward him, seeing that he was holding the form to send messages to other guilds, "Here you go, please fill out all the information in the required fields. I also need your guild card for processing, please."

Without hesitation, the Demon pushed his hand into his satchel to pretend as if he was pulling his guild card out of it, but instead just pulled it out of his treasury before handing it to the receptionist. Eiro quickly took the pen laying on the desk and wrote the recipient's information as well as the message, before returning the form to the receptionist.

A few moments later, the receptionist looked it over and seemed a little surprised, "Oh? You're sending a message home, I see? I heard there was a pretty big incident in that small town." He pointed out, and Eiro slowly nodded his head, "Yeah, I know. It's why I left. After... you know, that happened, I felt it was a bit too dangerous for my children."

"I completely understand that. Especially in small towns like that, something like that makes you rethink everything, huh?" The receptionist said with a rather unfitting smile on his face, "Now then, a G-Rank, I see? Would you like to take a request today as well?"

"Yes, please. Could you show me the highest extermination-requests I can take?" Eiro asked, and with a quick nod, the receptionist stepped up to the front of the desk, "Of course. Please follow me. In smaller towns, this may not be the case, but in larger places like these, you will see that the requests are displayed along the cork-boards here. They are sorted according to the suggested rank. The G-Rank requests are here." The receptionist explained, pointing at one of the cork boards with the largest amount of requests on it. Eiro had been an adventurer for a couple of years now, but since he always only worked on gathering and animal-hunting requests, his rank didn't get to rise above G-Rank at all, sadly enough. As

All these requests were just that as well. Requests to gather plants in safe areas and kill small animals like foxes or rabbits.

So, since it was all a bit easy, Eiro moved on and looked at the F-Rank requests. The hunting requests were still just for animals, just that they were along the lines of having to hunt wolves, or young peasant monsters.

The E-Rank requests were the ones that were starting to look a little interesting, where it was about hunting groups of wolves at once or fighting small groups of goblin-level monsters. But what Eiro first took an actual interest in were the D-Rank requests, where most requests were either about gathering rare or hard-to-get herbs or exterminating monsters that were either great in number or strength, at least compared to a normal person.

Eiro stretched his arm out and pulled down a request about hunting Swamp Slimes, although the receptionist quickly stopped him.

"Sir? The G-Rank requests stopped over here, that's a D-Rank request. It's many, many times harder than what we recommend you take." The receptionist explained, and the Demon looked at him with a light frown hidden behind his mask, "But that's just a recommendation, right?"

"Yes, and we ask that you take our recommendations seriously. If you take a request above your own rank and fail it, in the worst case, your guild membership will be revoked indefinitely. Of course, there may be worse problems than that. Especially a request about monster extermination can result in heavy injury or death."

"I'm aware." The Demon pointed out, "I just don't care. I want to take this request."

With a deep frown, the receptionist nodded his head, "Then please come with me, I will process it properly." He explained, and Eiro quickly followed him to the reception-desk.

As the receptionist was getting everything ready, someone stepped up behind the Demon, "Yo. We just heard all that." A man said. He was a little bit taller than Eiro was and was wearing heavily scratched-up metal armor together with a completely oversized metal sword hanging on his hip. Behind him were two more guys, one of them was seemingly an archer, and the other a scout with two daggers and a crossbow with him.

"So? Want me to congratulate you for having ears?" Eiro asked bluntly, and the man stared down at the demon annoyedly, "No, I would just prefer if you stopped fucking around. This is our job, ya know? It ain't fun seeing some kinda newbie taking it so lightly."

With a deep sigh, Eiro replied, "I've been an adventurer for close to five years, and I've completed 164 requests without failing a single one. They may have all been simple gathering and hunting requests for rabbits and the occasional boar, but that doesn't mean that I'm weak. The place that I lived at simply didn't require high-rank requests, which is why I couldn't advance. In no way am I taking this lightly, I'm simply confident in my ability." Eiro explained, and the warrior looked at him surprised.

"Huh..? I... I didn't expect that, not gonna lie. Sorry about that then, but let me give you a bit of a hint at least, amongst adventurers. Swamp slimes are super corrosive, they're gonna ruin any sort of weapon you have within seconds. They're super slow though, so if ya can, I'd try takin' a bit of a detour through the forest. If ya look long enough, you should find some good sturdy branches to get rid of their core in one fell swoop without any cost." He explained to Eiro, and the Demon looked up at him just as surprised as the man was just before.

Eiro really expected him to be more rude than he ended up being. That was actually pretty useful information, even if Eiro was already aware of it, "Thanks, I'll keep that in mind. Say, how long have you been here?"

With a light chuckle, the man crossed his arms smugly, "Born and raised, bud. Why, need a guide?"

"I might take you up on that sometime, but it's not why I'm asking. There's a party of adventurers here at this guild, two of them are here right now. Jess, Krog and James. What do you know about them?"

"Oh, those guys! Why'd you wanna know something about them?" He asked, and Eiro simply shrugged in response, "Old acquaintances, even if we haven't really been on good terms. I'd like to know how they're doing at the moment."

"Ah, that's nice of ya! Well, Jess is a cutie, but she usually doesn't go out too much, so I can't say much about her. Bookworm, mage, recently she's been kinda obsessed with monster socie... socio... sociol..."

"Sociology. She's been really interested in Monster Sociology, and she's been making the other two take a bunch of requests based around monster settlements and stuff." The Archer pointed out, "Krog usually was a really loud one and has always been up for fights a lot. Maybe he doesn't seem like it, but he's kind of a goody-two-shoes, as you should know. He would always start fights with people he didn't like, but for a while now, he's been trying to... well, talk with them?" He explained to the Demon.

"And then there's James." The scout added, "Barely changed ever since I've known him. A bit less broody, maybe, but he still hangs out at the bar over there every night and gets drunk beyond logic."

"Hm, I see. Then I'm glad they're doing well, at least." Eiro pointed out, although he wasn't entirely sure whether it was a lie or not.

Back then when everything with those guys happened, he was terribly angry at them. After all, they tried to attack Eiro and the children. But when Jura came out and stopped everything that was going on, they all just left and never did anything like send people there to get rid of Eiro either. Eiro wasn't sure if he should kill them, or if he should thank them.

He probably wouldn't mind the former, although he felt a bit conflicted about the latter option. It was obvious that at least Jess and Krog had been influenced by Eiro. Jess started looking into monster sociology to figure out if a case like Eiro was possible, and Krog started actually thinking about whether or not someone had reasons for their actions.

Maybe Eiro should try talking to them once to see if he had anything to worry about with them. Eiro wouldn't like it if they suddenly revealed the demon's identity, after all.

Eiro waited for a while and was then handed back his guild card and the request sheet, which he swiftly pushed into his satchel and inside of that satchel into his treasury.

"I'll speak a bit to those two, and then I'll head off. Thanks again for the tip, and nice to meet you three. I'm Eiro, by the way." Eiro explained, and the warrior smiled broadly in response, "The name's Donny. The archer here is Craig and the scout is Loyd. If ya ever need help somehow, let us now." Donny said with a smile, and Eiro quickly nodded his head. He was glad that these guys didn't turn out to be worth killing. It might be useful to have contacts in this place, if just for the information he could get through it.

But after he spoke to those three, he turned his head toward the stag next to him, "Lugo, come." Eiro said, and then stepped up through to the 'hangout' area where he had seen Jess and Krog before. He told Lugo to lay down on the ground near the wall where Eiro could make sure nobody was touching him, and then stepped up to the table where those two were sitting.

"Long time no see, you two.." Eiro said, and nervously, both Jess and Krog looked up at the Demon who just took a seat at their table.