Demon's Virtue

With a slow nod, Eiro replied, "That"s fine. I didn"t expect you to either. But as this is the case, I don"t think you would try to exploit these children for their own unique skills. I still think that it"s necessary for you to know so that you can make the proper arrangements within the Academy to make sure these skills aren"t publicly revealed."

"Of course, I"ll try my best. But what are their unique skills, then?" Solomon asked with a light smile. Eiro didn"t notice anything changing about Solomon"s heartrate, breathing, pupils, or anything else that might indicate deceit. So, Eiro turned toward the children with a nod to tell them to explain their skills.

Once all of them, except Leon, explained what their skills were and what they did, Solomon stared at Eiro with clear worry.

"A boy that can neither deal nor receive damage. Another one that can"t feel pain or suffering of any kind. A girl that has to inflict wounds onto herself by taking them from others so that she won"t starve. Someone whose any words will become another"s truth. Those are quite... extraordinary abilities." Solomon pointed out, and Eiro slowly nodded his head.

"You won"t have to worry about Rudy"s and Clementine"s abilities in the first place. Clementine knows not to use her ability publicly like that, and she can control her hunger a bit. But if anything happens during the day where her hunger becomes too strong, she needs to be sent home immediately so that we can take care of that hunger and heal her immediately. If I"m not at home, then send her to a trustworthy healer and call Arc over as well so that he can take over my role." Eiro started, and then looked over toward Rudy.

"And Rudy won"t be entering a combat division anyway, isn"t that right?" The Demon asked. With a slow nod, Rudy explained, "Yeah... Besides being a s.h.i.+eld for everyone, I"m useless in combat. So I want to train in other disciplines. Meaning I want to enter a crafting division."

"Exactly. The ones that you will, however, have to worry about the most is Arc. He"s going to enter a combat division, but he won"t know if he gets injured in things like mock-fights or spars. So there needs to be someone that can keep an eye on him. Because even if he gets red notifications, he often will confuse small scratches on his arm with gas.h.i.+ng wounds somewhere where he can"t look." Eiro explained with a light, annoyed glare directed at Arc, who just winked at Eiro and stuffed his mouth with a pastry.

"Then at last, there"s Sammy... Sorry, Samantha. I trust that she"s going to be able to control herself well enough not to cause any problems with her voice, and she"s smart enough to know how to easily get rid of any problems she causes, but her skill has only recently been unsealed. There might be parts about it that we don"t actually know about yet, so I think it"s necessary to prepare for that possibility." The Demon pointed out.

"I see... I will keep all of that in mind, of course. But if I may ask, do these two young ones also have special abilities, perchance?" Solomon asked, and Eiro slowly nodded his head, "They do, but neither of that is something I can currently reveal, sorry."

"Then..." Charles slowly spoke up, "Can you tell us what your unique skill is? You obviously must have something like that too, right?" He asked, and Eiro quietly chuckled and shook his head.

"Not at all, actually. I was born with above average mental stat values, but below average physical stat values. Other than that, I had to work toward all these abilities myself. Of course, I got lucky and had some of them practically handed to me. But if I had to say, besides my extraordinary perception, I have two special abilities. One that helps me remember things, and one that..." Eiro said and slowly pulled out a small magic stone out of his treasury, "...helps me keep things. Other than that, I"m not too special." The Demon explained.

Obviously there was more to him than that, but most of it was kind of hard to explain without revealing that he"s actually a monster that"s been artificially created by the Monster King. And to top it off, he already revealed a lot of things today. He trusted these people to keep it all secret, but it was still a risk nonetheless. He didn"t want to increase the risk by explaining what his abilities were piece by piece. Eiro was the last line of defense in front of the children, after all.

Either way, from then on, the conversation became a bit more peaceful, and just simply about different things regarding the actual capital. Like where the manor that Eiro and the children would live in would be, where some good bookstores were, where Eiro could buy things for food or materials like wood for his own personal work.

And that continued until Eiro heard something annoying going on outside by the stables. He pushed himself off the couch and rubbed the pastry-crumbs that Leon and Avalin dropped onto his cloak as they were sitting on his lap off of himself and started stepping toward the door.

"I think it"s about time for us to leave. Is the Manor ready to be moved into?" Eiro asked, and Solomon looked at him rather surprised, "Actually, it is not. I had a.s.sumed you would be staying here in the castle for a day or two, until it is ready to be moved into."

"Hm. Then did you give the order for our luggage to be unpacked?" The Demon asked, but the response was exactly what Eiro had expected it to be, "I did not. You said you did not want it to be touched by others, after all."

With a deep groan, Eiro opened the door up, "Everyone, come on. We"re getting some clothes out of the carriage then. Before they get covered in blood." Eiro said, "Solomon, you might want to come as well. There"s going to be some annoying things happening otherwise."

"I see... What is going on at the moment?" Solomon asked, nervous ever since Eiro just mentioned "blood", and the Demon scratched the back of his neck, "I"ll explain when we"re there." He said and stepped out the door, swiftly followed by the others.

It didn"t take long to find out that there was truly something going on outside, since there were a couple of guards moving toward the area the stables were in, "Guess we should hurry a bit as well." Eiro pointed out and quickly picked up the pace a bit. He rushed forward first ahead of the others to check the situation out first, quickly overtaking most of the guards that were also running toward the stables.

Soon, Eiro saw that there were guards surrounding the wooden puppet that Eiro always had protect the carriage when the others weren"t in there. It was obvious that they wouldn"t be able to actually damage it with the tokens that Eiro set into its chest, both of the combat-based ones, but it still was a little bit risky with so many people at once.

Either way, the Demon didn"t really have to worry too much anyway. In the end, he just jumped when he was close to one of the guards pointing his spears toward the puppet and proceeded to press both of his feet onto the guard"s back. Of course, Eiro did this with his life-force manipulated so that he could kick the guard as strongly as possible, and immediately pushed him to the ground while Eiro took the chance to step in front of the puppet.

"Well h.e.l.lo there. Can I help you somehow?" Eiro asked with a gentle tone of voice, despite being completely annoyed and p.i.s.sed off. And then, he turned his head toward the stableboy who was holding his chest in pain, most likely after being hit by the puppet, although Eiro was quickly met with a piece of metal held in front of his face.

"Is that thing yours?!" One of the guards yelled out, and the Demon just stared back at him before basically immediately grabbing the spear he was holding toward him.

"Yes it is." Eiro said, "And is this thing yours? It seems kind of dangerous, don"t you think? It could hurt someone." The Demon pointed out, before quickly proceeding to twist the spear along its length in a way that the guard that had been holding it lost his grip on it. Eiro then simply pushed the spear against the guard"s chest as hard as he could to push him back a bit.

"See? Pretty dangerous, right?" Eiro pointed out as he watched the guard try to keep his balance up while other guards pointed their spears toward Eiro as well, "By Lady Win- You"ve got to be f.u.c.king with me." The Demon groaned, "I know you don"t trust me, but I literally only had the puppet guard my property. The stableboy opened the carriage up without permission. The puppet literally can"t cause damage beyond the single-digit range. What is the problem here?"

"That you had a worker in the King"s vicinity attacked!" A guard exclaimed, and Eiro just closed his eyes and squatted down onto the ground annoyedly, "Hmm... This is tough, isn"t it? Who"s in the right here, and who"s in the wrong? Solomon, can you help be the tiebreaker?" Eiro asked in an annoyed tone before the King quickly proceeded to push the guards to the side to step up to the Demon.

"More than gladly." He replied, and instantaneously the Guards dropped their weapons and bowed down to Solomon as the King stepped up to Eiro, followed by the prince and Eiro"s children, as well as Felix.

"All of you, leave immediately. This man is my personal guest. Any offense directed at him is an offense directed at me." Solomon exclaimed, and the guards immediately did as told and left. The stableboy wanted to do the same, but both Nelli and Gondos swiftly chose to stop him from leaving.