Demon's Virtue

Chapter 604: Research

Back in the central elemental plane, the original Eiro closed the book in front of him. There was only a single section of books left for him to go through now, and then he was going to be done reading through this huge place. The Demon stretched a bit and then stood up, deciding to go for a bit of a walk on campus. It would take the doubles in the mental library a while to properly read through all the books in the first place. And beyond that, Eiro figured that he shouldn’t just read them, but actually think about the books a bit more closely, connecting different theories in different books, or trying to find some common parts between texts written on different fields to increase his general comprehension. And even though time in the mental library was sped up to an extent, it would take a while for all the writing in the library to be connected in that way. He also wanted to set up some sort of framework to make it easier to adapt everything that the duplicate Eiros were going to read in those two towers of books to everything else within the mental library, so that he didn’t just have a huge amount of useless information inside of his head at some point.

Soon, Eiro found himself outside of the library, taking in the fresh air. A few students were walking around outside. Even though summer vacation was still ongoing, a large amount of students was still on-campus since they lived in the dormitories, and weren’t able to go home during this time. A lot of students also stayed behind to do some independent research, or work on some more complex projects in general. Most of the things that the students were doing were on the more basic side, to the extent that Eiro felt practically bored with it, but every once in a while a few useful things stuck out. Like a production method unique to a certain part of the continent that was hard to know about if you weren’t actually from that specific area, for example. But currently, there was one student that Eiro was most interested in. And that was Noma. He was doing some independent research as well. Outwardly, he said that he was trying to create a new earth-elemental spell, but from what Eiro could tell, that was mostly just a front.

While all of the materials he got his hands on through the academy, as well as all the books that he read at or borrowed from the library seemed to correlate to what Noma was claiming to try, Eiro could see the weird patterns in all of what he was doing. Trying to get materials from specific parts of the continent, even though they might have been easier to get from other places, the seemingly coincidental similarities between the authors of certain books to each other, or even just the times that Noma was doing most of his research. All of it showed that Noma was trying to do research not on earth magic, but flesh magic instead. At least as far as Eiro was concerned, and he doubted that he was wrong.

It was an area that Eiro was quite interested in as well, especially ever since he had gotten the ability to fuse physical materials with his body. Usually, flesh magic concentrated on the manipulation, transfiguration, or transmutation of a being’s flesh, whether the subject was dead or alive. Most known people that used flesh magic were known to use it to create Chimeras for their own, usually sinister, goals, but there were also a handful of them that used it in the field of medicine. While flesh magic wasn’t capable of such intense healing as other elements, it was generally accepted that in specific fields, healing through flesh magic was amongst the most potent ways of doing things. Flesh magic was capable of removing basically any scar, and it was one of the few types of magic capable of completely getting rid of tumors. Certainly, flesh magic would be more than just useful for Eiro. Whether it was in helping him incorporate certain materials, or tools, into his own body in an elegant manner, or simply by helping him create a cleaner base when trying to attach adaptive prosthetics to someone’s body, or creating a healthy base for prosthetics that people could then put on and take off on their own. Of course, the ability to fully remove scars would be useful for his patients in other ways. Those like Charles, whose body was still riddled in numerous scars ever since the attack on the academy caused by Merlin, would definitely benefit from this sort of thing.

However, even though Eiro knew that Noma possessed flesh magic and was currently doing research on it, there weren’t many sources that he had access to that would help him figure out what exactly Noma was trying to do. That was only something he could figure out by watching that boy more closely. And it just so happened that Noma was a man of habit. He came out for a walk to clear his mind around the same time every day, and tended to be out and about for about half an hour every time.

Eiro looked at Noma from a distance, and slowly tapped the ground with his foot just once. A small rock detached itself from the ground, floating up to Eiro’s hand, “Wake up, and follow that child for me.” He whispered to the rock, before its small mass slowly seemed to shift around. A small impish creature, the size of a fist, appeared on his palm. Eiro dropped it to the ground, and watched as the creature burrowed into the ground, digging its way through the earth to follow Noma around, while the Demon himself made his way to the students’ research rooms. It didn’t take long until Eiro stood in front of Noma’s room, pressing his finger onto the lock. As if his flesh itself shifted, a small mass formed in front of his finger, “This seems somewhat creepy. Like you’re some kind of stalker…” Bavet complained to Eiro, as he was forming a key to open the door to the research room. Of course, Eiro didn’t particularly care about the slime’s opinion on this. Although, Bavet wasn’t actually wrong. What he was doing was definitely something akin to stalking.

“Just be quiet, I have to concentrate.”

“Hah, when did a conversation with me ever stop you from doing ten other things at the same time?” the slime asked, while Eiro grinned slightly, “Fair enough. Gondos, you come and take a look around as well. Officially, he’s supposed to be doing research on earth magic, after all.”

Before Eiro had to say anything else, the Golem formed right beside him, floating in the air, “Of course,” he replied without hesitation, already looking around the room to look for anything unique on the mana side of things. Meanwhile, Eiro himself looked at the physical things in here, like the notebook that was placed so openly on the desk in front of him. Without even having to think about it, Eiro picked the notebook up and started to flip through it.

“Hm, a decoy, it seems.” He muttered to himself. It was filled completely with random scribbles and notes to make it appear as if Noma was actually doing research on earth magic, just in case someone came in here to try and do exactly what Eiro was doing right now. The Demon placed the book back down onto the desk, and continued to search around. The biggest issue was that there were a lot of handwritten notes and such in here, and even he couldn’t ascertain the content of a book without actually flipping it open.

However, it didn’t seem like he even needed to. All these notes were most likely similar decoys. Instead, Eiro focused on something placed onto the shelf. It was subtle, but there was a thin magic circle carved into the side. It looked to be a flesh-magic circle with detection elements, “So it scans the flesh of the person touching it, and then gives a signal to something else depending on the result.” He guessed, quite impressed with the idea. However, Eiro could already tell what it led to. In the end, Noma was also an earth mage, and it seemed like he had used earth magic to create a false wall in this space, and that wall would be moved aside when the right person tried to access it. Too bad that Eiro wasn’t bothered by things like that.

He pushed Bavet’s slime out of his body, and quickly fused himself with earth magic. Eiro pushed his hand onto the wall, and could feel his magic-infused body practically melting into the wall’s rock, allowing Eiro to simply enter this mass to walk through it, as if it didn’t even exist. It was a bit uncomfortable, and more importantly, dark, but after just a single step, Eiro found himself in the small hidden section of this room, where all the actual, true research seemed to be hidden. It was nothing but a two meter by two meter section, with a shelf filled with books covering the back wall, but that was enough while Noma wasn’t here, it seemed.

Curiously, Eiro grabbed one of the books and flipped it open, finding Noma’s true research notes. He grabbed another book, seeing some more research in regard to its healing capabilities, or the extent to which one’s flesh could be manipulated. But then, Eiro found a research question he didn’t expect. It seemed to be Noma’s oldest research, and something that he was still working on. The Demon read it out loud to himself, “Can flesh magic be used to sate the cannibalistic cravings of someone that broke a taboo?”