Demon's Virtue

Eiro held his hand in front of him, holding his grimoire in the other. With the help of this special book, he was able to quickly draw the complex spell formation in the air in front of him. The spell activated, drawing in the content of the Ace of Cups into them.

"Perfect." The Demon muttered quietly, as he watched the spell created a dozen small masses of black. He then shot those pieces into different directions, where they would continue floating. Once they reached the right place, Eiro twisted his hand around and went into the next phase of the spell.

Those compressed bolts of the artifact's liquids spread thinner than paper and connected to each other, effectively creating a barrier around the whole campsite.

This spell was an altered version of an 'Arcane Barrier' spell with Eiro's 'Field' spell. Basically, he made sure to create a distinct difference between the 'inside' and the 'outside' of the barrier, so that he could place a specific effect onto the 'inside'. And that effect was for all which was 'inside' to be hidden, and for this field to not be approached by anyone that wasn't specifically looking for it right there in that place.

Even if someone was looking for Eiro and the others here in this general area, if they didn't already know the exact location, they would simply end up ignoring this area somehow without thinking about it. That way, even beings with abilities beyond what Eiro might know about would be unable to find them.

This let Eiro and the others avoid any sort of conflict in the first place, and the best thing was that it worked autonomously from Eiro's control. Meaning, that it would stay up even if Eiro didn't pay any sort of attention to it, and it would simply drain all the mana that it needed to keep itself up from him.

And once he was done setting this one up, Eiro dropped a few nuts onto the ground and started constructing one more spell. Meanwhile, he turned over toward the others who were currently unpacking the carriage.

"Ah, Krog, there's something stuck on Lugo's antler... do you mind..?" The Demon asked, and the heavy warrior turned toward the stag. He pulled off the thin branches that had somehow wrapped themselves around Lugo's antler, "You got it."

"Thanks." Eiro said, as he finished the construction of the magic circle. Eiro took a deep breath and let his magic flow into the magic circle, before the spell then affected the small nuts laying right there on the ground. They quickly sprouted and grew, burying their roots in the ground before turning into thin trees that stretched out in simple manners.

Four base pillars were created, before the trees started bending to connect the tops of all those pillars to each other. They were wrapping around each other in the center before thin branches started spreading out from there, covering the four pillars in a thin sheet of branches that then grew leaves. And just like that, Eiro had created a small, natural hut with the help of nature magic, that they could now all sleep in.

Mostly, this was just protection against rain for now, and it technically wasn't that great to sleep in yet, so Eiro got rid of the somewhat moist dirt and replaced it with rock that he pulled from deeper below. He cleaned it up, dried it, and then stepped to the side so that the others could continue. They placed the sleeping bags into the hut together with the boxes filled with whatever they would end up needing for the next few days.

Because this was the place where they would end up camping out in preparation of heading into the capital in a few days. There were a few things that everyone had to do in preparation for that first.

"Alright, I think we're basically finished for now." Eiro said with a smile on his face, before his three party members looked at him somewhat nervously, "That means..." Jess muttered, and Eiro nodded his head with a light smile.

"Yes, that's exactly what it means." Eiro replied to her, "I'm going to stop the manipulation of your personal chaos now." The Demon told them, and each of them nodded their heads nervously. But of course, Eiro had to prepare them properly.

"Now, there is one thing that all of you have to be aware of." The Demon said, "Everything is going to feel somewhat overwhelming in some ways once I do this. It's basically the opposite to what happened when I first manipulated your chaos, so you need to be especially careful. First, let's go with James."

"Urgh... So basically... It's going to feel like I can breathe too much?" James asked with a wry smile, and Eiro slowly nodded his head, "If you're not careful, you're going to pull too much air into your lungs. You will definitely feel rather light-headed, and you should be careful not to cut yourself anywhere, or else you might bleed out because it's going to be like your heart is pumping water through your body." Eiro explained to James, who groaned loudly in response.

"Right, start, then..." James replied, so Eiro looked at him with a light smile. He stretched his hand forward and pressed his palm onto the center of James' chest, before slowly but surely starting to manipulate his chaos again. Last time, he had basically pulled and compressed it onto particular areas, but now, Eiro just had to unravel all of that.

In one fell swoop, everything returned to what it was supposed to be like before, and James immediately felt overwhelmed, just like Eiro said that he would. He felt the air fill his lungs, he felt his blood flow through his veins, and he felt everything around him go white. James pressed his hand onto the ground to catch his balance.

"Careful, careful. Just be calm, take small, thin breaths. Close your eyes and lay down." Eiro told James, trying to help him figure out how he could get through this moment. For now, James simply felt overwhelmed, but soon, the pain would set in. It would be best if he was as relaxed as possible before that started happening, so that James could get through this as easy as possible.

"Alright, next, Krog." Eiro added, "You lay down before I even do this. Your muscles are going to feel rather painful immediately, I would assume at least. I can try and fill your body with anesthetics if you want, though."

"What?! And why couldn't you do that for me?!" James asked, before ending up in a deep, painful cough. Eiro rolled his eyes as he helped James calm down, "You want me to push a venom that will make it practically impossible for your muscles to function into your lungs? I don't think that's going to happen, bud." Eiro pointed out, although it seemed like the pain was slowly starting to set in for James, so he really wasn't paying any further attention.

"Anyway, are you ready?" Eiro asked as he looked at Krog, who slowly nodded his head in response, "Yup, just fucking do it, man..."

"Alright." Eiro said, and without a moment's hesitation, he unraveled the changes done to Krog's personal chaos as well. Immediately, Krog felt his muscles cramp up due to the slightest action, he felt everything that was happening in his body due to the oversensitivity he was experiencing right now.

Eiro moved his tail around his own body and pressed his stinger into different parts of Krog's body before pushing a bit of venom into each part. Krog's pain slowly subsided to an extent, and his spasming cooled down too. Happy that everything seemed to work out, Eiro turned his head to the side.

"Then the last person is Jess. Come on. Because your changes are based in your mind, you need to be completely calm and think about nothing if you want to be fine. Basically, start meditating right now. I'll help you out a bit to get you there, though." Eiro explained to Jess, who seemed to be nervous. She remembered the pain that she was feeling, and how she was simply unable to do anything at all beside gather new knowledge and think about what she just read, and only what she just read. Jess was feeling scared that something similar might happen again.

"Don't worry. You'll be fine after this." Eiro said, "It's just that you might end up overwhelmed with all the information around you if you take in anything. So just meditate, and slowly drift off into sleep from there if you can." The Demon suggested, helping Jess sit down with a proper posture for meditation.

Once she entered a proper meditative state, Eiro placed his hand onto her forehead and unraveled the chaos that he manipulated for her a while ago.

It didn't take long until it all came into effect, and Jess was clearly unable to fully keep up her meditation anymore. But Eiro tried to make sure he helped her while giving her as little information of what was going on around her as possible.

And so, Eiro was able to release these three from their training. Officially so. They had improved incredibly even before Eiro released the manipulation of their chaos, and that would be pushed higher and higher even more after this. Certainly, they were much closer to being able to stand by Eiro's side.

Meanwhile, Eiro stepped out of the hidden capsule and flew into the air. The Holy Empire's capital stretching out in the distance to Eiro's right, and a large, deep lake straight ahead.