Demon's Virtue

Eiro stood in the entrance of the cave, taking in the situation in front of him. This place seems to have been a hub for the minin operation, and a number of tunnels were leading into half a dozen different directions. And from each tunnel, except the one that Eiro came from, a large amount of monsters were flooding forward, each overcome with the destructive rage of the Mark of Wrath.

They were practically tearing each other apart, trying to get to the ones that had been designated as their targets.

But of course, the party was doing fairly well fighting against them. Since the main thing they had going for them were their numbers, the abilities of each of them worked quite well against them.

The swings of Krog's polearm took out heaps of them at once, and even if there were ones that managed to dodge, or were powerful enough to withstand the attacks, James quickly took them out with precise attacks. Meanwhile, Ariella was flying above the party, giving support by thinning out the horde with her arrows.

She was a versatile combatant, so she was able to adjust to whatever situation she was faced, whether melee or ranged.

But of course, these three were acting in a defensive manner, continuosly protecting the key member of the group; Jess. She was currently casting a large-range spell, and was gathering her mana while increasing the efficiency of the spell through the use of complex, multi-layered magic circles and deep, lengthy chants.

Of course, Jess' mana-pool wasn't low in any way whatsoever, but for most mages, there was still the issue of how much they were actually able to handle at once. And while Jess was talented, a human's body in particular was vastly limited in these ways.

A human's magic circuits simply weren't able to develop as quickly as they should, and wouldn't be able to hold as much mana compared to similar magic circuits of, for example, an elf. Eiro was actually trying to learn more about magic circuits to see if there was a way to artificially strengthen them somehow, but he didn't really want to treat Jess as a guinea-pig, so that would have to wait.

But nonetheless, Jess was able to prepare a fairly powerful spell. Eiro was actually feeling his own mana drained, since she was getting assistance from Sarius. Usually, spirits wouldn't assist others in this way without a contract, but the spirits that Eiro was contracted to didn't care about these sorts of things.

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But of course, since Sarius' only way of summoning the flames that were needed was by draining Eiro's mana, he was sort of getting involved here. For now, Eiro just watched on. Of course, if there was any need to, the Demon would intervene, but that didn't seem necessary in the first place.

It didn't take long until Jess finished the spell, pushing her staff into the ground. A wave of mana flowed through the room, igniting in waves of flames that burnt the monsters to a crisp. The almost explosive force of the flames pushed the monsters back into the tunnels, against their will. There were some stragglers, but they were being roasted by the fire as well.

And then, once they were in tunnels, Jess did Eiro proud. He had taught her a few tactics, and it seemed like she learned well. Without further ado, the five tunnels' ceiling plummeted down onto the monsters, completely crushing them under the weight of the world. It immediately extinguished the lives of the majority of the monsters.

Of course, that was only within a certain range, but at the very least, the now closed tunnels would also block any more monsters from coming through. As Jess recovered from casting the powerful spell, James, Krog, and Ariella took out the last few stragglers.

Frankly, it had only been about six minutes since they had split up. Eiro's fight against the crow monster didn't take that long, and it seemed like this battle was an easy victory for the party either. To be totally honest, it was to the extent of making Eiro uneasy. Things were going almost too well.

While the sins definitely affected the Devil's actions, it couldn't be to the extent that he completely underestimated the strength of his opponents, right? Someone as well-prepared as the devil, throwing away a horde of the size Eiro was seeing... something felt off. With a frown, Eiro pushed his mana into the floor, using earth magic to scout out the mineshafts as far as he could.

And that was when he realized something. With a wry smile, Eiro saw it.

Patterns of someone intervening in this space. Eiro was already wondering what the twist to this place was. While the replicated artifacts shouldn't be able to function anymore once Eiro took possession of the original ones, that didn't mean that the Devil couldn't make use of them for his own purposes beforehand.

And these mineshafts had been affected by the same artifact that had been active just above; the Dungeon Map. However, the replicated version didn't seem to be able to distort space in the same way, but the specific manner that it did end up working allowed for physical space to be manipulated to a degree nonetheless. These mineshafts had been altered, the tunnels shifted around.

All to form a very particular pattern. And since the physical space itself was changed, apparently it wasn't reset even if the replicated artifact used to create it became obsolete.

"Demonology?" Eiro muttered, surprised. It was a particular field of magic that dealt with unholy energy. It was practically the counterpart to Divine and Holy Magic. But, due to the nature of this magic, and the efforts of the Holy Empire, there weren't many traces of Demonology left anymore.

Eiro was actually trying extremely hard to be able to find anything he could about it, but the only things he could find were extremely biased, inaccurate retellings of when certain people from the Holy Empire encountered users of Demonology. These were basically propaganda pieces without any actual scientific worth to them.

But of course, the Devil knowing Demonology wasn't anything too far-fetched. He should definitely have a few tomes here and there... or even better, maybe Eiro could make use of the magic he absorbed from one of his newer servants, the frogman Anura from the plane of water. His magic was knowledge-based, allowing him to absorb information into a more tangible and comprehensive form.

The Devil would be the perfect first target for Eiro's version of this magic. Getting his hands on Demonology would be extremely useful, especially considering that the demon's predictions were clearly going to come true. Now that he could tell that the mineshafts had been formed into a massive Demonology sigil, the Devil's plans were even clearer.

Though, that being the case, it also seemed that Eiro underestimated the Devil a little bit.

"The monsters were sacrifices, huh?" he sighed loudly, starting to feel the flow of unholy energy flow through the air. Quickly, Eiro flew over toward the others, and particularly Ariella. Being a Nephilim, she was deeply intertwined with the concept of holiness.

It wasn't to the degree that she couldn't fight off against unholy energy at all, but being targeted by the amount of unholy energy that they were about to would be dangerous.

"Wait, are you done already?" James asked with a scoff, seeing Eiro land nearby. The Demon just nodded, not feeling like joking around right now, "Mhm. Listen, good job, but this played into the Devil's scheme from the beginning."

Taken aback, the party looked at Eiro, who quickly continued, "I doubt he was expecting us to get past Merlin, but the devil just isn't the kind not to have a plan B, or even a plan C. The life force from the monsters you all just killed was used as ingredients for-"

Before Eiro was able to finish speaking, he could tell that that sigil was being activated. Complete and utter unholiness flooded the space. Ariella's legs buckled under her weight, weakened by the altered environment. James, Krog and Jess also shivered and were just barely able to keep upright.

"This... are we in-" Jess muttered nervously, but Eiro shook his head.

"No, not yet. Connecting this whole area to hell would take a lot more energy than that... but the sigil is also still active, so it seems to be happening. But for now, the Devil summoned as much from hell into these tunnels as possible."