Demon's Virtue

Chapter 628: Ministers

Eiro pushed open the door in front of him, walking into the office without a moment’s hesitation. He dropped down onto one of the couches and crossed his legs, grabbing one of the cookies that had been prepared by the maids for this meeting.

“Erm… Eiro?” Solomon let out with a wry expression. After all, those cookies, and this meeting, weren’t for Eiro.

“What? You’re done with the important stuff anyway, right?” Eiro replied, looking around at the number of ministers that were seated in this room. Solomon let out a deeply annoyed sigh, “That doesn’t mean you can just waltz in here…”

“The training ground for the beginner combat classes is close to here, so I’ve overheard most of it already anyway. And by the way, you’re wrong. The soil is too drained in the area around the southern gates, so you’ve got to relax it there a little bit. Or bury a few monster corpses in the area or something. But if you use that area for Potans, then you’ll just be wasting money anyway,” Eiro said bluntly, looking at the Minister of Agriculture, “Excuse me? Lord Daemonherz, you may be a fantastic mage and combatant, but please know when you’re overstepping your bounds,” the minister quickly retorted.

“Whatever, do what you want,” the Demon replied immediately, before turning toward Solomon, “You started talking about ‘Special Level Threats’, so I figured I might be needed in this conversation.”

“And what makes you think that?” The minister of war asked with a frown, and Eiro just looked at him with a blank expression, ” ‘Special Level Threat’ obviously means Monster Royalty.”

“That may be the case, and you may have experience with them, but that doesn’t mean that you can simply intrude here like that,” the minister replied, his thick eyebrows furrowing angrily. But Eiro didn’t bother with him, and simply turned back toward Solomon. The two of them held eye-contact for a few moments, before the king rubbed the bridge of his nose to get rid of his headache, “Which one is it?”

“The Devil.”

Solomon’s eyes widened as he jumped up from his seat, “The Devil? Is this a joke? Why him of all the royals?”

“You know I have history with him. Also, because of said history, he’s the most imminent threat right now. Both to me and to this kingdom,” Eiro explained. If the Devil decided to attack this country with his troops, then that would mean the utter destruction of all but a few select places.

The minister of war jumped up and hit the table, “Absolutely not! Your majesty, our troops aren’t prepared to take on the Devil yet, and you know that!”

Solomon slowly sat back down, placing his hand in front of his mouth as if he was about to throw up from nervosity, “…If Eiro is aiming for the Devil, we won’t be needing our troops anyway,” he pointed out, before locking eyes with the Demon again, “What do you need?”

Eiro quickly turned his head toward the Minister of Information; his department was in charge of trading information with other countries, gathering intel within and outside of Skyhart, and keeping track of the general flow of information related to Skyhart in any way. They also gathered information necessary for scouting particular individuals.

“I need the location of five individuals,” Eiro explained, writing down the names and specifics he knew about them on a piece of paper in front of him. He quickly handed it to the Minister of Information, who immediately asked, “Are these individuals pawns of the Devil that you wish to handle separately?”

“Nope,” Eiro replied immediately, “They’re… well, you could say they’re my teachers to an extent. And close friends and confidants of my father, at that.”

Solomon looked up from the desk in front of him, “You mean… you’re looking for five Masters?”

—

“Seriously, you could have just waited a bit longer… You didn’t have to make such a big deal out of everything in front of literally all of my ministers, Eiro,” Solomon complained loudly, while the Demon just shrugged, “I believe otherwise. Your oh-so-great ‘War Minister’ was going to bring up a plan to take down the next royal.”

“…How do you know that?” Solomon asked surprised. Even he wasn’t aware of this until now. But Eiro simply smiled, “You know how I gave out gifts to all the ministers when you promoted me to Viscount?”

“…Yeah?”

Eiro looked back at the king with a smile. Solomon didn’t quite understand yet, when he saw two white eyes blink from within Eiro’s shadow.

“You gave them your Servants as gifts?! Are you serious right now?” Solomon let out a loud groan, dropping down onto one of the couches, “You can’t just do something like that. It’s just not okay, Eiro…”

“…I’m not spying on their private lives. I don’t have any intention of blackmailing them or anything either. This is just so that I, as well as you, can know what’s going on behind the scenes. We both know that you’re not the most popular guy in certain factions of Skyhart’s higher nobility.”

Solomon glanced from under his hands, “If you promise to me that you won’t abuse the knowledge you’re getting, then fine. And don’t tell anything you learn to anyone beside me either. On top of that, report to me everything of notice that you find out, immediately,” the king quickly decided that there was no use fighting against it. Rather, just using Eiro’s tendencies was going to be better for him and this country in the long run anyway. And before Solomon even had to finish his sentence, a book was laying on the table in front of him, which Eiro had pulled out from his treasury. The cover simply read, ‘The Boy and the Wolf’, a simple novel that was written by a semi-known author. It was pretty popular right now, and Solomon had wanted to read it for a while, “What is this?”

“It’s your report, obviously. The Ink inside of it is a specialized servant I made, and then used it to write down all the information you need. It’s going to just be a normal book most of the time, but if you tell it to, the text is going to change,” Eiro explained, and Solomon curiously opened the book to a random point in the midlde, “Show me,” he said, and before his eyes, the ink started to shift into the form of a number of notes and sketches.

“Huh…” Solomon let out, “Interesting. So you knew that I would end up being okay with it?”

“Obviously,” Eiro replied, “You always let me do what I want anyway.”

“…About that. Are you sure you want to take out the Devil soon?”

“Well, ‘soon’ is relative. But yes, I’m starting the active preparation. I mean, it’s happening, whether I want to or not. One of the new kids at the academy is the Devil’s descendant. Grandchild, or great-grandchild, probably.”

“…What?” Solomon replied, since Eiro was saying it so casually. It seemed as though this wasn’t as big a deal as it seemed. Knowing that Solomon would worry about it, Eiro quickly started to explain the situation to the king, who soon managed to calm down at least a little, “So, the Devil’s descendant is a student at the academy…”

“Mhm. And that’s why I think it’s time to start aiming for him now. Hence why I’m looking for the masters that I know of. I’ve been able to narrow things down a good amount, but I figured I might as well let the ministry of information help me out a bit to fill in some of the gaps.”

“And what are you going to do once you found them?”

“You know I’ve been studying using their techniques, right? I’ve finished the tasks that Jura had given me through that puppet. And now that that’s the case, it’s time for me to learn from the real people. They know about me, and they know that this was going to happen sooner or later, so they most likely left some clues around that I can use to find them,” Eiro explained quickly, crossing his legs as a grin formed on his face, “Since the puppet can’t teach me anything new anymore, it’s time for me to start learning from the real masters.