Demon's Virtue

Chapter 703: A Sense of Self

The duplicate Eiro pulled Nelly out from the spirit gateway in his chest. The moment she was here in this plane, her body was a lot larger than in the central material plane, but that wouldn't really change too many things for Eiro. He could still carry her without any issues.

Immediately, he held onto Nelly carefully, propping her up equally with all of his arms. He quickly flapped his wings. Though at this point, they had slowly shifted to being weirdly closer to fins, even if they were still technically on his back. They were just a lot more useful for swimming around, especially for certain smaller movements.

The Demon shot through this library and into the stairway to the floor below. He hurried through the tower of books' different floors until he reached the bottom.

Without even glancing at the overseer, Eiro pushed his way out of the tower. Now, the only thing he had to do was actually find the naiad queen. In general, that wasn't too hard, though. Since the naiad king and queen were royalty in this plane, there was a lot of information about each of them, and particularly where they liked to spend their time.

While there were cities in this plane, there wasn't directly a permanent 'capital'. However, wherever the naiad king and queen chose to settle was the place that particularly the spirits considered as the equivalent to a capital. And even if everything in this world shifted and moved like really everything did in water, there were still plenty of maps for Eiro to figure out where he had to go.

And basically all of the mental duplicates had been employed to figuring out the best route, so it was an easy matter to find where he had to go.

He hurried and swam through the currents of magical water, trying to speed his travels up as much as he could by both employing the natural flows of this world as well as his own water magic. But even so; this trip would take a while.

---

Meanwhile, the original Eiro stood up from the ground. The water that had dripped from Nelly's body was starting to dissipate quite quickly as well, being made of magic and all. Right now, there wasn't anything that he could do for Nelly. He just had to leave things to the duplicate, something that left a bitter taste in his mouth.

There was another side-effect of using the Ace of Cups, the Invisibility Potion. His connection to his duplicates was... severed, even if just for a short while. Eiro didn't know that this was going to happen, though he hadn't particularly worried about it too much either. The duplicates were 'perfect' duplicates.

They replicated Eiro to the highest degree, and while they were initially deeply connected, they were still their own physical beings. Just because the main body used the invisibility potion didn't mean that everything he was connected to would be affected just the same.

With that sort of logic, Lugo would also be affected by the ace of cups, which he obviously wasn't, at least not in the way that Eiro was.

As such, what happend with the duplicates was simple. They, unaffected by the potion, had lost their connection to the main body without even realizing it. Now that the potion's effect was over, they had looked back at what happened, and it was quite simple; they had forgotten who they themselves were.

'Eiro' as a concept had basically been fully erased from this world, and since the duplicates were 'Eiro' themselves, they lost that part of them for a while, leaving only the parts that were different. In the time that the duplicates existed in the other realms, they had started developing their own personalities. They acted different to the main body.

The duplicate in the elemental plane of fire was more on-edge, more aggressive and prideful. He was haughty, but honest. Meanwhile, the one in the elemental plane of water had become basically the opposite. He mellowed out, took his time with things a bit more, and let himself go with the flow a lot more.

Of course, while these changes were tangible to a degree, they weren't anything that Eiro was particularly worried about. But in a situation where the duplicates had only these aspects of their self? Where they were disconnected from who they were until then, and without even realizing it... that was a moment for severe confusion and emotional struggle for them.

That short amount of time that the potion was active, which Eiro had shortened as much as he could to hopefully mitigate some of the potion's side-effects, was enough for those minuscule parts of their personality to spark up. To grow and fester into something more. They were developing a proper sense of self.

At the end of the day, they were still Eiro. They acted the same, and would make the same decisions. They still shared the same mind, after all. But more and more, it was starting to feel like Eiro was sharing his mind with two other people, instead of being one person in three bodies.

It was something that was going to take some getting used to; and at the end of the day, Eiro was sure that there wouldn't be any major issues, but it was still a bit nerve-racking. Though at the end of the day, since they were still just duplicates, Eiro had a certain amount of control over them, and he was the one who the mental library belonged to.

He was the only one that could control the mental duplicates, and he had a different sense of power as the other two did. They really just had a single element they could make use of, and they didn't have access to the treasury either. The only real thing they had going for them were their minds, which were still the same as Eiro's as of now.

But he was going to keep watching the situation to make sure that this didn't suddenly change.

And for now, he could safely leave everything to that duplicate, and moved on. He waved his hand and pulled down the wall of rock that he had created to keep Jess safe. Though, it seemed that instead of running away, she had opted to taking out all those flesh-creatures, and even started a fight with the central one. Which of course, wasn't a bad idea at all.

If she could get control over the dungeon map, or maybe even gave that card to Eiro, their advantage in the fight against Merlin would have risen considerably. But of course, that wasn't needed anymore.

Eiro glanced at the spikes of stone that were piercing deep into the flesh-being's body as flames were eating away at it. The smell of burnt flesh was getting stronger by the second, "Are you alright? Did he do anything to you before I got here?" Eiro asked, but Jess quickly shook her head, "No, I'm alright... are you? You used the Ace of Cups, right?"

"Yeah, I did," Eiro sighed lightly. He glanced all over Jess' body, trying to make sure that she really wasn't injured, "But... Nelly wasn't so lucky. My duplicate is bringing her to the naiad queen right now, so we'll see how she's doing then, but... honestly, I'm quite scared for her..."

Jess face went pale in confusion, "Wait, Nelly? Did Merlin attack her? Does your healing magic not work on spirits?"

"It wasn't a physical attack... rather, it wasn't an attack at all, just a side-effect of powerful magic that had been cast long, long ago, that Nelly was affected by," Eiro explained, "I'll fill you in on everything later. Right now it's not important, I... don't think that Merlin is going to come back during our fight against the Devil."

Eiro frowned lightly. He didn't like this situation at all right now; it was so unpredictable that he was feeling uneasy, and honestly would prefer to just cancel the whole thing and try again some other time. But of course, that wasn't an option. The Demon turned his head, looking at that mass of living flesh struggling against the pain of being burnt alive.

He flicked his wrist and extinguished Jess' fire magic, approaching the injured creature and stabbing it with his flame dagger. Immediately, deep cracks and waves of flames shot over and through the creature, and notifications of him causing damage to it popped up in front of his eyes.

"Large abomination?" Eiro read the name given to the creature by the system, "Well, I guess that's fitting," he said with a wry smile, until finally the abomination died. And with that, another set of notifications appeared in front of Eiro.

---

[You killed another Card Owner, and have taken his card into your ownership yourself. You are now the Owner of the Seven of Wands]

[3/14 Cards of the Suit of Wands acquired]

[8/56 Cards of the Minor Arcana acquired]

[Aptitude with the Fire Element increased]

---

Eiro looked at the system windows. His collection was increasing. The collection aspect was something that the Arcane Dealer apparently added just to make people really look for the other cards, but Eiro didn't know what was going to happen when he completed one of the suits, let alone the whole minor arcana. It had never been done before, after all.

Whatever it may be, right now, Eiro had to concentrate on what was really in front of him. He walked over to the map floating in front of the wall. It was now his, so he could do whatever he wanted with it.