Demon's Virtue

Eiro waved his hand in front of him. He used the flow of nature magic that he had introduced into this part of hell to make some plants grow. In particular, he was using some nuts that he had in his seed-pouch, which he carried with him just in case, no matter where he went, to grow some trees and manipulate their shape into something that everyone could take a proper seed on.

The roots of the tree pushed out from under the ground and formed some chairs for everyone to sit on, with a thick layer of moss to act as a cushion. They would have to sit there and just wait for a little while anyway, so they might as well be comfortable in that time.

"So... why can't we leave yet?" Krog wondered, looking over at Eiro. Everyone was deeply exhausted, and even if this part of hell was certainly a lot more comfortable than others, stabbing a knife into your abdomen just an inch was also a lot more comfortable than stabbing a sword all the way through from your abdomen to your back.

"Oh, I don't have the slightest idea how to leave this place," Eiro pointed out bluntly, and the party looked at him confused.

"...what?" Jess asked with a pale face, "Does that mean... we're stuck?"

"Temporarily, I guess. I mean, technically we could try and leave through hell's maw, but I don't really know where we'll end up if we do. We might end up right in front of the steps to the manor. Or, we could end up in the center of an active volcanoe in the southern continent.

Either is literally just as likely as the other," the Demon explained, but the others were just too exhausted to even react anymore.

"What now? Why are you so relaxed then?" James looked at Eiro's face, and seeing that he still wore that light, subtle smile made it clear that the situation wasn't quite a perilous as he was letting on.

"Because toward the end, I absorbed the Devil's knowledge. You guys remember that I created duplicates in the elemental planes of fire and water, right? Well, one duplicate encountered a being that possessed a personal unique magic that allowed him to absorb knowledge and turn it into his own. I made him my servant and took that magic for myself.

And, when naturally boosted by my affinity for magic, it ended up being enough to take a dying man's memories.

I'm breaking it all down right now into something I can actually use, but before long, I'll have all of the devil's knowledge on demonology," Eiro explained with a smile on his face, "And I might not be the Devil myself, but I am a Lord of hell, so creating a connection to the central elemental plane should be easy enough."

The party quickly relaxed, but Ariella soon wondered about something, "So if you say you took his memories... how much of them do you really have?"

Eiro slowly wondered, "Hm, that's a good question. I can't really say directly, but it's certainly a massive amount of raw knowledge. And I don't think I'll be able to access his memories like I would my own, seeing scenes play out in front of me, but most of his more important knowledge should be in there.

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Right now I'm focusing on finding things related to demonology, but there'll be plenty of things about other matters as well. Everything he knows about the tarot. Both the minor and major arcana. Locations of the minor arcana cards, and the specific weaknesses of the current incarnations of the royals in possession of the major arcana cards.

His hideouts, the contacts he has, the organizations he meddled in. Probably not everything, and some information might be fragmented, but we'll see. Anything should be useful, really."

"And you're absolutely sure that you'll find out what you need to about demonology to get us out of here?" James wondered, and Eiro looked at the elf, slowly leaning back in his chair.

"Not 100% sure, I guess. There's always a possibility that all the information I need will be just... missing. But I doubt it. I should be able to figure something out even if I don't find a method to directly bring us back to the central material plane."

Jess looked at the demon with a nervous expression, "But... what if you don't? What then?"

"Then... Well, I'll probably create a safe place for you guys here and then travel through hell a bit until I find some intelligent demons. Amongst them should be a few that know about demonology. I'll have them 'volunteer' to teach me, or I'll 'borrow' their books about it. And worst-case, I'll try to find the tower of books here.

Though it's probably quite well-hidden," Eiro pointed out in a moment of contemplation, and both Jess and Ariella looked at him surprised.

"There's a tower here? In hell?"

"Of course. Every plane of existence has one. Every elemental or material plane. Even the astral planes have the towers. I don't know for sure, but the divine realm probably has one too."

"What even is the tower?" Krog asked with a scoff, "Who the hell built it?"

The party was silent for a few moments, and Eiro slowly tried to come up with a good response, "Who built it is probably the wrong question. We should think about what built it. They're all interlinked. They have immortal, incredibly powerful overseers that can instantaneously connect to each other through the planes. Even I can only do that because of the spirit gateways.

Not only that, but they gather every single piece of information that exists in each respective plane. But well, I know that the 'Librarian' is a role like Hero or Sage, so it's probably something left behind from when the gods were still able to walk the earth," Eiro suggested, but it was really just an educated guess. He hadn't found anything about what the towers were within those actual towers.

The overseer would stay silent at any question that would reveal actual 'knowledge' if answered as long as Eiro didn't already know the answer to that question.

Frankly, the tower of books, and with that most likely the librarian himself, was an entity of pure omniscience, and that really wasn't a fact that Eiro particularly enjoyed. While he liked learning about others, and even figuring out what was in their heads exactly... having it done to him felt humiliating, to say the least.

James let out a loud groan, "So what? Seriously, what does that even matter right now? Are we seriously just supposed to sit here and do nothing, hoping that Eiro is going to figure out how to get us out of literal hell?"

"...You got a better plan?" Krog replied, but James just looked to the side and clicked his tongue.

"No, I guess not," he muttered, before getting an idea after all, "At least show us the new cards you got. There were a few, right? He must have had at least a whole suit worth of cards for himself."

Eiro flicked his wrist, and three cards appeared in his hand, "Actually, he was only the owner of three of them. He probably gave the others to some servants or something that he could control, so that he didn't have to deal with the downsides himself. But I might figure out who has which card in a bit, so that should be solveable too.

If they were the devil's servants, they should be easy enough to deal with."

The three cards in Eiro's hand turned into small objects. Small, very mundane-looking objects, at first glance. A fountain-pen, a handheld watch, and a metal key. Of course, they were all very intricately decorated and seemed like extremely high-class items that would go for a lot of money at auctions.

But you definitely wouldn't think that they were artifacts that countries have gone to war over in the past.

Eiro held each item in one of his hands. He first glanced at the stopwatch. Currently, it was really just a simple clock that was showing the current time. However, it had a number of rings around the glass-pane protecting the intricate interior. One for seconds, one for minutes, and one for hours.

Eiro slowly twisted the ring for the seconds, bringing the small symbol at its top to the bottom of the clock. And then, he pushed in the small pin at the side of the clock.

Immediately, Eiro felt himself overcome with a wave of discomfort as time slowed to a crawl, and then finally just... stopped. The only thing that was still moving was the ring for seconds on the clock, showing that the countdown had started.

Of course, if Eiro wanted to, he could apparently change the time that was left in this frozen world by simply turning the rings now, increasing or decreasing it, but it was good to know that he could build in a time-limit. The world around Eiro seemed a bit hazy, similarly to when he used the invisibility potion, but it was a bit different than that still.

His friends were sitting in front of him, all completely frozen in a moment of curiosity, and Eiro sighed lightly. He got up from his seat and prepared a slight, small trick for them to show off the effect a bit without actually 'playing' with this artifact too much. And then, he waited for the clock's countdown to reach zero.

And as it did, the flow of time continued, and the people in front of him began to blink again. They were just staring at Eiro curiously. They had seen him press the button, but nothing happened from their point of view.

"So?" Jess asked, a bit confused, "Does it work?"

Eiro smiled lightly, tugging at his own right ear as he looked at her. Confused, Jess touched her hand to her own ear, feeling that she was wearing a different earring, and quickly spotted her own now on James' ear.