Demon's Virtue

Chapter 459 - Return

Eiro was feeling a bit lightheaded. Probably because he literally just held as conversation with a god. It seemed rather surreal, but considering the kind of being that Eiro was, a demon born from a human soul, and someone that arcane beings also paid close attention to, maybe it made some form of sense for the gods to pay attention to him as well.

Or rather, it didn't seem to be completely 'out there'.

"Dude, are you alright?" James asked confused, somewhat nervously turning around as he saw the groups of guards running toward the cathedral. Eiro slowly nodded his head in response and continued walking forward, making sure that himself and his party were properly cloaked using the ace of cups.

"I'll explain it later. Don't worry, it's not going to influence what we're here to do today." Eiro explained quickly, but James, Jess and Krog looked at him with light frowns, noticing that something was definitely off.

Eiro let out an annoyed sigh and rolled his eyes, "Guys, I'm a demon that just prayed to the father of gods in the most holy church in this world, what do you expect?" The Demon told them with a wry smile, and at that point, the three of them figured they would just accept that as a reason. It wasn't like that was totally wrong anyway, Eiro did feel a bit affected by the holy energy inside of that structure. And inside of this castle as well. But at the very least, he knew that Zaragon's chambers wouldn't have any sort of holy energy of this level in them. Otherwise Eiro would have gone up in flames the moment he stepped through that door back then.

While they were walking up the stairs, getting rather close to what seemed to be the space Zaragon should be in, Eiro closed his eyes and for a moment checked up on what exactly was happening in the cathedral. Like Eiro had asked him to, Sarius made use of the special gemstone holding the holy spark to temporarily turn his body into holy flames instead of regular ones, so that he could pretend to be a holy spirit of some sort.

That did of course attract quite the attention in itself. But since Sarius quite liked the tone of his own voice, he was able to tell whoever approached him some form of bullshit, all the whilst slowly but surely burning down the whole cathedral.

And the best thing was... Anything that Eiro was doing in order to achieve his goals had practically been blessed by the greatest god in existence, meaning that he was safe from divine retribution for burning down that cathedral a little bit.

It wasn't like Eiro was trying to burn the whole place down completely, just a bit of the decorations, some of the seats... Enough to distract people so that they wouldn't cause any sort of trouble while the party of four was fighting against Zaragon.

Either way, to Eiro it seemed like they finally reached the right place. Or at the very least, this was where the room was supposed to be, but the door wasn't here.

"Wait, does that mean... Does Zaragon transport the whole door to different parts of the capital city?" James asked out loud, and in response, the startled Krog looked at the wall, "Does that mean we can't get inside now or something? Even after finally getting here?"

"Eh? What are you talking about?" Eiro replied with a wry smile, "Since when have doors been the only way to get into a room?"

"...Since forever?" Jess replied, and Eiro raised a brow in response as he placed his hand onto the wall. The blades of the three of swords slowly moved out of his gauntlet's claw-slots and pressed against the wall. They carved a quick pattern into the wallpaper, and Jess soon raised her brows as she understood what exactly Eiro was trying to do.

"Ah... But won't that attract a bit of attention..?" She asked somewhat nervously, but Eiro shook his head. Right now, it would seem like that, but Eiro wasn't finished yet. He quickly placed another layer onto the carved pattern, and then slowly placed his hand onto the center.

"It's going to just repair itself once I stop supplying mana to it. So there's nothing to worry about." Eiro explained to the others, before he looked at James.

"Are you ready? This is definitely Zaragon's space, since I can barely sense anything beyond this wall. As if there's something like a barrier placed around it." The Demon said, and waited for the others to fully get ready.

Eiro slowly placed his hand onto his own chest and manipulated the chaos to remove the holy effect, and instead left it in its neutral base mode for now, which actually didn't look that much different from the holy mode.

And then, Eiro let his mana flow into the carving on the wall. Without further ado, a hole opened up in that wall, large enough to let the four of them quickly rush inside. A moment later, the hole closed back up and basically trapped them inside of this space. Immediately, this room was familiar to Eiro, though. This was the entrance area, where one was supposed to leave their items and such before heading inside. It was also the place where Zaragon killed Avalin. It was practically unchanged from what it was like eight years ago. And that fact showed itself in Eiro's breathing. Even though Eiro was much, much stronger than he used to be, and much more intelligent and mature... This trauma was still ingrained inside of him, and he never had the chance to deal with it all that much.

If just this room made Eiro feel like this, he didn't really want to know what seeing Zaragon would do to him. But he would find that out soon enough. James as well, he was standing there, tightly clutching the handles of his daggers. Even with his prosthetic. After all, by now, it was a basic version of an improved prosthetic that could be used by him more easily than the version before.

The two of them looked at each other for a moment, realizing that the respectively other one was going through something at this point as well.

"Are you alright?" Eiro asked, and James slowly nodded his head.

"I will be, yeah... what about you?" James replied, and Eiro smiled somewhat, "Same with me."

"How wonderful a friendship this seems to be. That nearly warmed my black, cold hearts up." A voice suddenly said, and it certainly wasn't one of this group. It wasn't Bavet either, the only one who could change his own voice in such a convincing manner.

That meant only one thing, "There you are, Zaragon."

"Hm? Do we know each other? I thought this was just a random attempt at a robbery." Zaragon said, as Eiro slowly turned around. He saw that pure white being, with its pitch black teeth in a smile and the same-colored eye wide open while staring at them.

"A random attempt at a robbery, right. That's why we used the wall in the royal castle to enter, instead of the fucking door." Eiro replied, his heart starting to beat intensely as he saw this being in front of him. James as well was starting to freak out somewhat, but at least his breathing was under control.

Eiro stepped out of this room through the open door and looked at Zaragon as he stood there in this enclosed space. Through some pretty bad luck, there were a few other customers here at the moment, and Zaragon apparently instructed them to attack whoever came in here in his stead. Eiro swung his hand to the side just one, stretching out the Three of Swords and sticking the blades in the foreheads of the customers.

"Oops, seems like that didn't really work out." Eiro said with a slight sigh, as he watched the bodies of half the group of 6 simply drop down. The other three were of course startled at their friends dying so suddenly, and even Zaragon grimaced a bit. But from what Eiro knew about him, this wasn't because of the death of these people, but rather because their blood was pouring onto the ground.

The Demon pressed his foot onto the body of one of them, and let his mana flow into his body, draining all of the blood out of him. He moved the ball of blood inbetween himself and Zaragon and smiled softly, "Oops, seems like I accidentally gathered a bunch of blood... Would be too bad if it got all over the floor, walls, and ceiling." Eiro said with a light grin, while Zaragon became furious.

"Don't you dare, you disgusting little-"

"Too late, you dumb piece of shit." Eiro smirked, and made the ball of blood simply explode outward, splattering it onto literally everything except Eiro and his party. The Demon stood there with a smile on his face as he was expertly executing the first part of his plan. It was surprising that there were people here, since Eiro had just planned on using mud created by Gondos and Nelli's magics, but this was much better.

Blood had a bit of a nice meaning to it as well, on top of being incredibly hard to get out of literally everything it got on.

The three other people screamed loudly as they were covered in their companion's blood, and Eiro slowly turned around toward his party, who were also slightly horrified by this sight, "Shall we begin?" The Demon asked, with a broad, demonic grin on his face.