Demon's Virtue

For a good while, Clementine had been practically stuck in her room just trying to be alone. Eiro was obviously worried about her, but there were also other things that he needed to deal with. He was embarra.s.sed to admit that he didn"t pay that much attention to the children over the past little while.

"Come in..." Clementine said from inside the room with a loud groan as she sat up on her bed, and Eiro slowly pushed the door open, "Everything alright with you?" Eiro asked, and the girl slowly nodded her head.

"I"m good, yeah." With a light smile on her face, Clementine looked ack at Eiro, and the Demon slowly returned her smile, "That"s good, then."

Somehow, the tone of the room soon became rather awkward. It was something that Eiro had been trying to avoid as much as he possibly could, but in the end there were still situations like this that he found rather hard to avoid sometimes.

He grabbed one of the chairs as he made his way into the room and then pulled it up to the table. Eiro sat down on it so that he could look straight at Clementine.

"I think we need to talk a bit." Eiro suggested, and Clementine slowly raised her brows, "Weren"t you busy..? I overheard you and Arc heading to Rudy"s room so that you could ask him to help you with something?"

"Ah, yes... Well, those two said they would take care of it themselves for now. I"m good with carving, now with sewing, so..." Eiro looked back at Clementine and then rubbed the side of his neck. He didn"t really want to bring this up, because he still saw a bit of reluctance in giving Clementine an ability like that.

She was already an incredible healer, but if she suddenly gained the ability to use Life Magic, practically turning into a Zoemancer, Eiro wasn"t sure if he could still pa.s.s her off as just "a girl with a talent for healing magic". Eiro knew that she was more than just that, all of his children were special, he just didn"t really want others to know that.

The Demon sighed out deeply and then looked straight at Clementine, "We need to try out a special advanced element test. I already asked Bavet to fly over to Solomon disguised as a small bird to relay the message so that we can get the materials together."

"Hm?" Clementine asked surprised, "An advanced element test? What do you mean?" It seemed like Clementine was really rather surprised that this was really a thing, rather than being curious about what kind of element they would be testing for.

"Well, it"s what it sounds like. It"s a test to check for your advanced element. It"s basically just a "yes or no" answer, so you need specific materials that are pretty hard to come by to test for a specific sort of Element. In your case, it"s Burrow-root, Reddrop, and Almesian Morning Dew. They"re the materials needed to test for Life Magic."

Completely not expecting a sudden mention of Life Magic, Clementine leaned forward a bit, "Wait, what? You think I might have Life Magic?"

"I think it might be a possibility. But we"re just going to test for it, and we"ll hopefully end up doing that before school begins for you all, depending on how easy it is to get Almesian Morning Dew around here. And then, if you do have an affinity for that element, or rather the possibility to awaken it as an advanced element, you will get special private lessons to help you do so."

Eiro looked at Clementine, waiting for her reaction to all of this, and the girl stayed silent for a while. She just looked down at the ground inbetween her and Eiro"s feet, before looking back up and scratching her cheek with her index finger, "Ehm... What can you even do with Life Magic?"

Immediately, Eiro looked back at her and sighed a little bit, "Well, it"s actually pretty easily to explain. You know how I use Life Force a lot? Life Magic is very similar to that. While a lot of elements have an actual physical, tangible form to them, like Earth, Water, or even Light Magic, things like Life and Death magic works a bit different. In those, you"re imbuing the specific sort of magic into those physical, tangible things."

"Wait, Death Magic? Necromancy?" Clementine asked with a slight frown and nervous behavior, and Eiro slowly nodded his head, "Yes, exactly. Necromancy is more well-known compared to Zoemancy, which is Life Magic, but the principle is very similar at times, but completely polarizing at others. Necromancy deals with that which is dead. Spirits, Undead, there are even spells where Death Magic is used to create moving dolls out of things like dirt and rock. Life magic deals with that which is alive. Animals and Plants for example. Mostly, it could just be seen as a superior carrier for healing magic. You know why I don"t completely remove Life Force from places in my body, right?"

Clementine slowly looked down at Eiro"s hand and then slowly nodded her head, "Yeah... because then it"s just going to die off and even if Life Force is returned, it won"t... come back to life?"

"Mhm, that is exactly why. With Life Magic, however, you could return life to those places, to an extent, at least. It requires a lot of mana and ability, but powerful Zoemancers were capable of perfectly resurrecting people shortly after they died."

Immediately, Clementine opened her eyes wide and stood up, "Wait, does that mean I could-"

"No." Eiro interrupted her. He knew where she was trying to go, "You wouldn"t be able to heal my hand for me, and you most likely wouldn"t be able to heal Felix"s ears either. Healing Magic is mostly still restricted to healing things that may be capable of healing on their own. And even the sort of magic where you can end up healing full limbs, that can only happen before the outermost layer of the soul crumbles away. In my case, that layer crumbled before I even lost my hand. It"s why I lost all feeling in it and was just in complete pain. It would have started to rot sooner or later as well. It was practically already dead. And... as far as I can tell with Felix, the outermost layer of his soul has been warped instead of crumbling. Healing Magic may only make it worse, but it most likely won"t be able to make it better. Not even Zoemancy."

Clementine stood there for a few more moments and then sat back down on her bed with clear disappointment. Eiro wasn"t aware that she was really worried about this part of things. To him, the fact that he was missing a hand had become completely normal and natural, and he really didn"t mind it at all. His phantom pains were practically nonexistent at this point in time, and having such a powerful staff as his hand was something that became a really important part of how Eiro fought.

It didn"t even cross his mind to get his hand healed, even if it had been possible somehow. And that was something that he immediately explained to Clementine just like he thought about it. She seemed a bit surprised, and honestly confused by the fact that Eiro would rather live with a prosthetic instead of a real hand, but to him, it really wasn"t a big deal.

"I can move this hand however I wish, it can heal to an extent, and I might even be able to feel touch through it sooner or later again. At that point, this will just be a real hand that I can use to cast powerful spells. So really, don"t worry." Eiro said rea.s.suredly as he rubbed his hand over Clementine"s head, "However, there is something else you might become able to heal if you end up having a possible affinity for Life Magic. Charles" wounds."

Seeing that Clementine became excited again after hearing this, Eiro grumbled a little bit to himself at what this hinted at, and then looked back at her, "Yeah, Zoemantic Healing-Magic is incredibly powerful. It should be able to work for Charles" wounds as well. But honestly, that"s not even the most powerful part of Zoemancy. It"s the area where it opposes Necromancy the most, as Necromancy is capable of doing a lot of damage instead of healing, basically causing one to decay more quickly instead, but where Zoemancy itself s.h.i.+nes the most is in the ability to imbue life into things. I mentioned that Necromancers can use death magic to create dolls of rock and dirt somehow. They do so by manipulating the souls of the dead, pus.h.i.+ng them into those materials, and causing them to awaken as forms of Undead. Necromancers are masters of Undeath, while Zoemancers are masters of Unlife." Eiro explained.

"Undeath is Death, just not quite. Unlife is Life, just not quite. Obviously it is not a true form of life, there is much more connected to Life than just that, but it is very, very close. While Necromancers use souls to manipulate physical objects, you can simply imbue life into physical objects and command them. You are basically creating something like a Spirit, in a very loose sense. It is incredibly powerful, as you can basically create as many p.a.w.ns as you want at some point. It takes a lot of concentration and power, however, so don"t imagine you would be able to fight whole armies on your own. The extent that most Life Mages reach is... creating one or two beings with artificial life to fight for them or complete tasks for them at once."

With pure excitement in her eyes, Clementine looked at Eiro as she started to smile brightly, "That would be so cool! When can I start learning that?"

With a quiet laugh, Eiro stood up and rubbed his hand over the girl"s head, "Not so fast, we don"t even know if you have the possible affinity for the element yet. In a few days, we"ll know, don"t worry." Eiro said rea.s.suredly. He was a bit nervous about telling Clementine all this, although he himself didn"t even know how it might end up turning out, but in the end, Clementine regained her regular, bubbly personality for at least a little bit. Of course she was a bit disappointed about a few things Eiro said, but overall, she seemed to be in pretty high spirits.