Demon's Virtue

The three companions turned their heads and looked at each other. Certainly, all of them wanted to become stronger, and that as quickly as possible. However, if Eiro said that they could die, then he definitely meant it. He wouldn't lie about something like that.

After they gathered a bit of determination, they all looked straight at the demon and in unison nodded their heads, "We're prepared." James spoke for the other two. And he knew that it was the honest truth.

Eiro took a deep breath as he gathered his mana in a spot in his hand. He was manipulating his mana circuits for what was about to happen, since this should make it easier to do, and more importantly, to control.

The Demon took a few steps forward, and pressed his palm on James' chest. As the original leader of this group, he would go first, "I'm sorry about this. It's going to hurt quite a bit."

And just like that, Eiro manipulated the chaos that was naturally swirling around James.

Everybody had a certain force of chaos around them. Anything that lived and had a free will did. After all, there was an incredible anount of things that could possibly happen all of a sudden. And that was a concept that Eiro manipulated together with the use of the rest of the 'time stop' left in the artificial artifacts that he had with him.

The first thing he did was increase the chaos, empower it. That alone made James feel quite overwhelmed. The amount of possibilities that his body had going forward increased immediately, although it was bound to disappear the moment Eiro stopped controlling it. And then, Eiro brought order into that extreme chaos, after he managed to find the specific 'possibility' that he wanted to achieve.

But at the same as the control of 'truth' or 'order' hit the chaos, Eiro pushed the 'time stop' onto the Light Elf. However, Eiro didn't do so in the normal way. Instead, he intertwined the artifact's chaos with James'.

And then, Eiro took a step back, pulling his hand away. For a few moments, it seemed like James was perfectly fine, as if nothing happened, but then, he fell to his knees, gasping for air. At the same time, Eiro took of James' mask, but even though that was the case, James' breathing didn't improve, although it clearly should.

"This is something I tried out only a couple of times with some monsters roaming around outside of town. I manipulated the chaos to make it that your body is predetermined to increase the exact musculature and abilities that you require to increase your stamina to an extreme level. Of course, that would usually still only happen over a long period of time. The ring was used to stabilize it, 'trap' the chaos in time in the exact form that I wanted it to be. If you had gone through with the training as I told you to, this wouldn't have been so painful. Your body would have already gotten used to such changes. Sure, it would have still hurt, just not as much." Eiro explained, as he squatted down in front of James, "But now, you're not that lucky. This time around, you're going to have to deal with the pain, and potential death. Sure, your growth is going to be sped up considerably, but it's going to make you wish for death if you don't concentrate enough. You need to keep on working on your breathing and stamina if you don't want to die."

It was clear that James was having extreme issues. He would end up suffocating to death if he didn't pull himself together. And that was when James remembered what Eiro did just fifteen minutes earlier. And the Light Elf proceeded to hit his own chest, getting rid of any air left in his lungs as quickly as possible. Then, he could fill that void with fresh air, which he managed to do to an extent.

He was in pain. Pain that made it feel like he was going to die any moment now. But nonetheless, James pushed himself off the ground and stared Eiro deep into his eyes, while his own were deep red and bloodshot.

"Good. Now meditate, get used to this. Fix your breathing issues first, and then continue the training I assigned to you in the first place." Eiro told James, who without a moment's hesitation dropped down onto the ground and took some deep breaths as he started meditating. And then, Eiro turned over toward the next target. Krog.

He was already nervously taking steps backward as he looked at Eiro, "D-Does that mean that my whole body will..."

"Yes, your whole body will be in immense pain, every second of the day. James' is the most life-threatening, which is why I'm going to make sure to keep an extra eye on him. You will probably be the one who's the most in pain, while Jess... Might have other sort of issues to deal with, but it's not definite." Eiro explained, placing his hand onto Krog's chest, "Are you ready?"

"You just fucking told me I'd be in a shitton of pain, no I ain't fuckin' ready!" Krog exclaimed, his muscles clearly bulging out of nervosity, but it was too late. Eiro already started to manipulate the chaos around Krog, in a similar way as he controlled James'. Of course, instead of focusing on increasing Krog's stamina, the Demon focused it so that his muscles would develop more intensely. And since Krog had to improve the strength of muscles all over his body, he would be hurting practically everywhere. And a lot more intensely than normal. Probably even more than the time Eiro cut apart his own muscles and then healed them to speed up his own training.

Once Eiro was done, Krog's whole muscle tensed up. So much so that Eiro was genuinely scared he was about to break his own bones, but luckily Eiro was able to help him relax his muscles a bit.

"Now, start slow. Do regular things, and slowly increase your actions until you're at your regular training regime." The Demon said, and then looked at Jess. She was nervously holding her own arm already.

"And what's going to happen to me..?" She asked. Eiro thought about it for a moment, "Well, in your case, I'm directly influencing something in your mind, so... Extreme headaches, tiredness, short-term memory loss... Those kinds of things. You might be a bit more confused than normal while this is all happening, but while you're reading something, that shouldn't be an issue. So just keep reading as much as you can and don't think about much else, and you'll be fine."

"...Did you just say memory loss?" Jess asked with a wry smile, and Eiro nodded his head, "Yeah, but it shouldn't be too bad. And even if you lose any long-term memories, you should be able to get them back. I'll help you out with that, and if that doesn't work, I'll ask Lognir to help out a bit as well. So just don't worry. Oh, and just a tip, instead of specifically reading every word as you do now, just glance at everything. You'll end up registering it anyway."

"A-Alright... Alright, do it..." Jess said, and Eiro quickly nodded. He placed his hand onto Jess' head and manipulated her chaos, focused on her mind's ability to process and take in information. Once Eiro was done with that, Jess sight immediately became dazed, and she started holding her head in pain.

"Don't worry, everything's fine." Eiro said clearly, as Jess dropped down onto the ground, and the Demon proceeded to place an open book into her hand, "Calm down, and just read."

The Demon swiftly helped Jess stand back up, and turned toward James and Krog, "I'll bring her to the library. You guys stay here, I'll be right back."

Just like that, the Demon greatly increased the rate at which these three would become stronger, in return for them having to deal with immense pain in return. Although, the pain they were feeling right now was nothing compared to what they would feel after they actually started properly training. Eiro would definitely need to pay attention to them as much as possible.

"Was that really a good idea, Eiro? Aren't they just gonna hurt themselves? Something at that level could be rather dangerous to them long term, right?" Nelli asked nervously, and Eiro turned his head toward her, "Yes, and no. For the most part, they'll be fine. We'll keep on healing them, and like that nothing will happen. There won't be any damages to their body, really. While their advancement in those areas is increased, so is their recovery. It balances out, you know? The only thing we need to pay attention to is that they don't develop bad habits by slowly but surely messing things up." Eiro explained to the naiad, who was still not entirely convinced for now.

The Demon let out a deep sigh, "Don't worry, I'll check on them in the morning and whenever I have time after class is over for the day. If I notice even the slightest bit of physical damage that wasn't supposed to happen, I'll undo what I just did to them. So calm down, they chose this themselves."

"Fair enough." Nelli shurgged, "Still just a little worried, you know?"

"Of course I know, I'm also worried. Which is why I'll keep an eye on them, as I said. But if everything works out, which I assume it will, then those guys will become a lot stronger a lot quicker, especially once they've gotten used to their situation enough so that we can start hunting again."