Demon's Virtue

"...What are you talking about..?" The young man in question asked with a wry smile as he just stepped into the hidden library through the open entrance. With a slight smirk, Solomon turned his head toward Arc, "Oh, your father was just telling me the "Flying Rabbits" story."

"..." With a wry smile, seemingly actually feeling a slight bit embarra.s.sed from this for at least a short moment, Arc turned his head away, "S-Seriously? Do you need to tell the literal king of this country that old story..?"

"Of course I do, it"s one of my favorites." Eiro replied bluntly, but seeing that this just embarra.s.sed Arc even more, Solomon chose to move the topic elsewhere, "Well, was there a specific reason why you came here?"

Slowly, Arc nodded his head and scratched the back of his head as he approached Eiro and Solomon before dropping himself down onto one of the free couches right next to them, "Nothin" specific, but the girls are changing into their uniforms, and I kind of already got mine a bit dirty, so Rudy said to leave him alone while he cleaned it. Thus, I"m here."

"Wait, what about Charles and Felix?" The Demon asked, since those two weren"t accounted for in that story, so Arc just shrugged, "I think Felix is showing Charles around a bit or something. Felix has been having trouble sleeping lately, so he"s been going on walks around the mansion in the middle of the night and found some neat spots apparently."

"And you weren"t allowed to join them?" Solomon asked, but Arc just shrugged, "Nah, I could"ve, but I think Felix is a little uncomfortable around me, so I figured I"d leave those two alone. Anyway, any interesting topic I can join in on?"

For a moment, Solomon and Eiro looked at each other, before the King seemed to get an idea, "Yes, actually! I was wondering about something, related to your unique skills. The timing may have been quite bad on their side, but what one of my men said on the day of the solstice wasn"t completely false. I think due to your unique skill you can easily keep your cool in any situation, something that is an important quality for a leader to have." Solomon explained, and Arc slowly sat up a bit more with a smug grin.

"Heh, am I really that awesome~? I mean, I kinda knew I were, but hearing it from a literal King feels kinda neat." The young man laughed, constantly keeping up that grin, while Solomon continued, "Yes, actually, you really are quite amazing. But that is not why I brought this up. At the academy, they offer special cla.s.ses to a select few who are known to take up leaders.h.i.+p positions within the royal army in the future, like the children of higher n.o.bles. Of course, I am not asking you to become part of the army, but it is still a valuable chance. They do teach leaders.h.i.+p in combat cla.s.ses when it comes to working together with others, but this is the only cla.s.s specifically meant for gaining knowledge about leaders.h.i.+p. Tactics, general conduct, the morals of a leader, and much more. No matter what path you take, whether in the army, as an adventurer, or simply as a laborer if you so wish, these are invaluable experiences you may never be able to get your hands on again."

After Solomon"s explanation, Arc slowly turned his head toward Eiro, who simply nodded to tell him that he also thought this may be a good idea. So, in the end, Arc just shrugged, "Sounds neat, I"m in."

"Haha, I am pleased to hear that." Solomon quietly laughed, before he slowly pushed himself off the chair that he was sitting on, "Well, I think it may be about time to return to the children. It is getting rather late, so Charles and I will have to leave soon."

Eiro quickly agreed with that and stood up as well, before pulling Arc off the couch, because he exactly knew that he wouldn"t stand up out of free will, but would try to stay inside here for whatever reason. Either way, the Demon made sure that this wouldn"t be the case, even if he had to drag Arc out of the hidden part of the library. Once they were all outside, Eiro closed the hidden door and then turned over toward Gondos, "Could you go get Charles and Felix. They"re in the east-tower right now." The Demon explained, before the Golem swiftly nodded, "Gladly." 

And so, Gondos floated right into the direction that he was asked to, while the ohters all quickly made their way back toward the place where the others were currently waiting. Eiro slowly pushed the door open and soon saw Rudy, Clementine and Sammy sitting there in their uniforms.

While they were certainly rather simple, they still had quite a pleasant, unique style to them that made it easy to recognize anyone that wore something like this as a student of the academy. Mostly, the bases of their outfits were the same, with the main colors being the colors of Skyhart"s flag, Sky-Blue and White. And then, the main things that were changed depending on the department that their specific course was part of were the accents, with small metal pins on the collar showing the main-course one was attending.

There were still a few differences between the uniforms, for example the materials that Rudy"s were made of were quite durable, hard to stain and breathed well, but they wasn"t materials that were a good fit for combat use simply due to the special properties of the beasts the leather parts came from as well as the plants that the cloth parts were woven from. It was easy to take off certain parts of the uniform, while it was designed that it would still keep its integrity even if every modifiable layer was removed, to make it easier to work in.

It seemed like Clementine"s uniform was specially made for those that attended a magic-based department, as it apparently helped with the flow of mana inside of one"s body.

And as for Sammy"s uniform, it was light, thin, easy to move in, but still quite durable, at least for the clear limitations put onto it due to the form it took. It seemed like each student"s uniform was custom-made depending on the courses one attended, so Sammy"s were great for her as an Archery student, on top of being great for her for her Music and Singing cla.s.ses.

Arc"s were probably made so that he could move with them easily while also helping the flow of his magic, since he did sign up for full physical- and magic-combat cla.s.ses.

Eiro was glad to see that these were such a good fit for everone just material-wise, although the children probably didn"t even notice that part of it yet. They mostly seemed to have focused on the way that the uniforms looked on them.

Soon, Gondos brought back Charles and Felix who had been wandering around the manor, and it seemed like the two young men were also only focusing on the way that the uniforms looked on Clementine and Sammy, so Eiro quickly threw small pebbles that he had Gondos create at their heads to make sure that they stopped staring at them like that.

"Arc, get into your uniform as well." Rudy suggested as he picked up the, now once more clean and folded, uniform laying next to him and handed it to his brother, and Arc just nodded and sighed a bit as he stepped into the hallway to change, although Rudy couldn"t help himself and add something as he was doing so, "This time, please don"t get it dirty right away, alright?" 

"Yup, you got it!" Arc replied before closing the door behind himself, "Ah, and Eiro..." Clementine started with a worried expression, "I"m not sure if those two are really doing alright... They seemed to be exaggerating a bit before, but now, I"m not so sure anymore." The young woman pointed out as she looked over at Gobo and Bavet, who were at this point just quietly sitting in the corner of the room.

Eiro had tried his best to somehow "phase them out" for a while because he didn"t want to listen to their constant whining no matter where he was in the manor, but now that he was closer and actually did take a look at them... Clementine was probably right.

Eiro stepped up to the two of them and squatted down. He pressed his palm onto Gobo"s head to lift the Hobgoblin"s head up so that Eiro could look into his eyes for a moment, to make sure that there was no emergency or damage notification there or something like that.

"Hm, sped-up heart-rate, high temperature... Yeah, I think Gobo definitely has a fever." Eiro sighed, "And Bavet..." The Demon turned his head to look at the formerly humanoid figure that had by now just turned into a flesh-colored blob with a few random other colors and textures sprinkled across Bavet"s surface.

"Well, it seems like the range of his control over his slime is much less than before. And the slime is slowly falling apart... Maybe it"s somewhat transforming into a wrong sort of substance..." Eiro whispered with a worried frown, and then pushed his hand onto the flesh-blob, "I"ll be grabbing your core again, so don"t be surprised."

The demon pushed his hand into Bavet"s body and grabbed his slime core, which was basically burning up as well. And when he said "burning up", he meant it. It seemed like they both had a sort of fever, and both of their temperatures were completely off the scales. Gobo was probably about ten degrees celsius hotter than he normally was, and Bavet could probably give someone actual physical burns, he was that hot right now.

It was obviously because of the evolution, seeing how they usually would both be dead already with such temperatures, "Yup... This is going to be an annoying three days." With a deep sigh, Eiro picked up Bavet"s slime using magic while holding Gobo up in both his arms and holding Bavet"s core in his hand, before he looked at the others.

"I"ll bring them somewhere where they can recover a bit. But they"ll probably be perfectly fine, don"t worry."