Demon's Virtue

Orion stabbed his dagger forward, and the ringing of metal hitting against metal sounded out as Eiro caught the attack. The demon quickly countered with a second dagger strike, but Orion slightly bent his body. Eiro stabbed through the dagger master's clothes, barely missing his skin.

With a quick slash, Orion created a deep cut in Eiro's arm, and as the blood flowed out, the master quickly flicked his wrist, throwing droplets of blood into Eiro's eyes. Usually, he would make those swerve out of the way with magic, but he wasn't allowed to use magic right now. The rules for this duel were simple.

Pure, unadulterated dagger combat. The only thing that was allowed was life force manipulation, since that was a large part of Orion's techniques. And Eiro watched closely as the dagger master manipulated said life force. It was... almost like a form of art. Ripples of energy flowing through that old man's body like raindrops hitting a still lake.

The ripples moved together and overlapped each other at the exact right points, creating grooves of emptiness where they were needed. Rather than adjusting the flow of his life force to the way that he moved, as Eiro did, it almost looked like his life force was the part making the choices, controlling the body that housed it.

This was the one part that the puppet hadn't been able to show to Eiro. It was able to perfectly copy the physical movements and a certain level of techniques of the masters, but it wasn't able to manipulate life force. Or well, it didn't need to. Life force wouldn't affect a puppet the same way it would a proper living being, after all.

That was why Eiro simply adjusted his life force the way that seemed natural. Supporting his attacks to improve how much damage he did, pulling back from impacts or cuts to reduce the damage he received. But how Orion did it, and Kassandra at that, albeit in a very different way, was far different. Like it wasn't just a simple way to strengthen the body, but... something more supernatural than that.

Actually, Eiro had read something like this in the tower in the realm of fire, though he hadn't analyzed the texts properly yet. He thought that it had something to do with the nature of those living there; every being there was magical in nature, and their bodies reacted to energies differently to those of non-magical beings.

That's why, he figured that the texts he found were more about a unique, physical application of magic.

Like, using mana to manipulate their own bodies and strengthen themselves. Their language didn't seem to have an equivalent term for 'life force', though that term was already not something widespread in the common language either. Only very few people knew the word, and even less knew and understood what it actually referred to.

There were some individuals, high-class warriors, that strengthened their body's physical qualities by manipulating the energies inside of them. However, instead of mana, those energies seemed to be life force, manipulated with specific techniques to cause special effects.

Just like Orion seemed to be doing. Eiro could smell the scent of water from him. It was powerful and distinct, and Eiro assumed that it was just the scent of his underlying affinity with the water element mixing with the unique scent that every 'master' seemed to have, but it seemed to be different than that.

As the dagger master's blade pressed up against Eiro's neck, the demon stared into the man's eyes, "You refined your life force to fit your techniques?"

Taken aback, Orion blinked a few times as he pulled his daggers away, "Uhm... yeah. You noticed?"

"Yeah, you infused the essence of water magic into your life force."

"Something like that. Actually, I just-"

"Right, you didn't infuse anything into your life force, but your life force itself is like that essence. You... refined the parts that you wanted, and let the parts that you didn't want wither. Of course, that seems a little...

risky," the demon pointed out, starting to think about the process a bit more, "No matter how slow and careful you are, life force is too volatile to simply change it away from what your personal essence defines for you. So the more effective method would be to do it a bit more rapidly and then focus on stabilizing it.

And then, once it became stable again, you went through another round of refining. Like growing the plants you want throughout generations of artificial selection."

Orion stared at Eiro, a bit taken aback, "I... It was actually a bit more of a mixture of either. In my day-to-day training, I would slowly refine my life force, and then when it became too unstable, I used that for my benefit. Like... letting it collapse into the shape that I wanted to get much more progress. But yes, the rest is as you said.

How did you... did Jura tell you about that? He always believed in the purity of life force. It was more benefitial to him."

Eiro slowly nodded his head, "Right... leaving the life force as is would make it easier for another to accept into their bodies. Jura wasn't a fighter; he could handle himself, sure, but he always thought about his work first for things like this."

"... Yeah, he sure did."

"But no, he didn't tell me about it. It's interesting, though. I never thought about refining my life force instead of my body itself," Eiro muttered, "Of course, I've been improving my control over it, but refining refining my life force felt wrong... maybe because I have been thinking like Jura. What a shame, that would have been a great improvement."

A bit confused, Orion looked back at him with a frown, "What do you mean? I thought you were going to ask me how to do it."

"Oh, no, of course not. As I just said, but refining my life force would make it easier for others to accept it. It needs to stay in its almost 'pure' form."

"... Did you follow in his footsteps? Are you a prosthetist?"

Eiro shrugged, "Yeah, I guess so. I mean... part-time, I guess. On short days at the academy, I take a tour through the poorer parts of town, and sometimes the city hospital. I end up at the adventurer's guild a lot too, there's a lot of injuries. Though usually I'm only there when they call me for help with someone that's crippled."

"Are you sure that you're a demon? Shouldn't you be doing a few more... sinful things than that?"

"Well, I'm the demon lord of sin and virtue. So... yeah. I've done a lot of rough things in my life, and I still do them as necessary. But through my children, and my father, I learned the value of life, and the importance of helping those that can't help themselves. As long as they don't try to mess with me, obviously."

Orion pulled back his dagger with a smile, "If that's your choice, then that's that. Though, I don't know what else to teach you beside my way of using life force."

"Maybe I can emulate it somehow. I could just try to fuse my life force with the essence of water magic. Since I have access to the elemental plane of water, I can pull out the purest version of it."

"That would be worth a try, at the very least," Orion nodded, tapping the tip of his dagger against his chin in thought, "I don't know much about magic, so if you say it could work, then... it might work. You look like you know a thing or two about magic."

"You could say that," the demon replied, "I'll have to head up and grab a bit of the essence then. The spirit gateway is in my core, which means it's in the main body. I'll have to grab a bit of essence."

"Sure," Orion replied, though Eiro noticed that he was clearly curious about something. He looked at the master with a smile.

"Do you have a question for me?"

Orion hesitated before finally nodding his head, "How does the spirit gateway thing work? Can ya just move through it whenever you want?"

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"No, of course not. Physical matter can't pass through it, only magic. Since spirits are basically magic come to life, they can move through without issues. I was able to move some duplicates through though, forming them around the other side of the gateway, so I am over there right now."

"Is that so? Well... what is it like over there?"

Eiro smiled, "Hold on, I'll grab some of the essence, and then I can try to show you."