Demon's Virtue

667  Improvement-Talk

Eiro twisted his hand counter-clockwise, pointing it at the small wooden cube in front of him. He was twisting the magic inside of it as per one of Partax's techniques, so that he could adjust some of its properties. Specifically, right now he was adjusting the wood's natural fire resistance, strengthening it in exchange for its general physical strength.

The reason he was doing this was quite simple; it was so that Eiro could gather experience simply doing different things, and interacting with different properties.

"Be careful, fire resistance is a fickle property. If you do it wrong, it's going to reverse and the wood will catch on fire from ambient temperature," Partax warned, but Eiro just continued doing what he already had been doing. That wasn't the first time that Partax had told him this, after all. According to the halfling, all of these properties had a different kind of 'feel' to them. Some properties felt heavier, others felt incredibly brittle. And in case of something like fire resistance, Partax called it 'fickle', which practically just meant that it was easy to go totally wrong. Like trying to balance things on your finger, it needed the exact right adjustments at the corrent points, or else it would all drop and mess up.

That being the case, Eiro was good with precise work like this, so it wasn't really something to worry about. He soon reached the right level of fire resistance that he wanted, and then slowly tightened his hand into a fist, practically 'squeezing' the mana inside of the cube tightly so that it would lock itself into its current state.

And then, Eiro held his palm over the wooden cube, quickly engulfing it in flames. At this temperature, the wood should have already caught fire a couple times over, but nothing at all was happening. The most that was happening was that it was releasing a bit of water-vapor, drying it out more. And then, as nearly all the water had been released, a crack formed in the surface of the wood. Like a chain-reaction, it spread out throughout the whole cube, and the whole thing fell apart into small pieces, practically crumbling under its own weight. But even so, it still wasn't burning, not even the small crumbs of wood that had split off from what used to be the cube. It really had just broken apart due to its physical weakness, which was the property that Eiro had exchanged for the wood's fire resistance.

He pulled away the flames and then carefully touched part of the crumbled wood, and it gave in under his touch as though it had been made of sand this whole time.

"Happy?" Eiro asked, looking at Partax, who slowly nodded his head. He scooped up some of the wood and rubbed it inbetween his hands, "Yes, more than happy. If you grind this wood down and mix it with other materials, you can increase their natural fire resistance quite a bit without really compromising their physical strength. But for that, the wood needs to be as fine as the finest of dust. To the point where it would be nigh impossible to split it into any further pieces."

"I see..." the demon replied, thinking about it for a moment. Using this, it should be possible to fortify the walls of some of the new buildings that were under construction in the city. That would be particularly helpful for the trolls, who were weak to fire. And of course, setting a fire was one of the easiest ways to attack a tightly-packed city like this, so if this sort of wood was mixed into the bricks holding the buildings together, then it should be possible to minimize such threats. Not to mention, that would just make it harder for fires to spread, which was always a good thing. There was also something else that Eiro was curious about. This country was quite far up north so the summers didn't get all too hot, but the threat of wildfires always existed, and not too long ago, a field close to his house had burnt down after some accident. He quickly went to extinguish the flames back then, but he wasn't always there to do that sort of thing.

"What would happen if we mixed this wood into fertilizer? After breaking down, would the plants take 11:41

on a bit of the fire resistance?" Eiro wondered out loud, and Partax thought about the idea for a moment, "That is an interesting question. That I do not know, though I assume that the mana will intertwine to a certain degree, so it's not impossible. However, any effect would probably be mostly minuscule. You're free to give it a try though, of course."

The Demon looked at the wood in front of him and nodded, "I think I will. But for now..." Eiro looked at Gondos, who quickly supplied him with some earth magic. Quickly, the Demon created two circular rock slabs. He placed the crumbling wood onto one of them, and then placed the other slab on top, before starting to rotate them, each in opposite directions, at a high speed, so that he could grind the wood down. He was also adjusting the rock's roughness to be finer and finer, so that he could gradually decrease the size of the wooden pieces, as though he were trying to grind down the edge of a blade with a grindstone.

 As this was happening, he looked back at Partax, "What now?"

Partax thought for a moment, walking around the room. His metallic legs quietly tapped the wooden floor, "I think it should be about time we consider how to improve this city using Artificing and Alchemy," the halfling explained, "That was the reason you agreed to bring me along with you in the first place, was it not?"

"It was. Do you have any ideas?" Eiro asked. He himself had already thought up a few things, but he still wanted to hear if Partax had any better ideas than him. And quickly, he showed his insight after just walking around the city a few times before now, "A couple. Though most of them aren't really in the area of defense, though that might be your priority at this moment."

"...It is, but I'm not sure if anything we can really come up with is going to be a huge amount of help, beside setting up a barrier around the area maybe. Other things would take too much time for now."

"Well, there's that, but also, I simply don't believe that it's largely necesary. The only real threats in the area for these monsters are weaker than them. There are of course the Devil and its forces, but those won't be swayed by simple defenses anyway," Partax pointed out, "So instead, I was thinking about ways to make this city more... livable."

Eiro raised a brow, "What do you mean?"

"What I mean? This city is filthy! Absolutely and utterly filthy, I say!" Partax exclaimed loudly, "Dirt and grime everywhere, monsters sleeping on the road, smelling as though they jumped into a pile of shit!"

"Tell me about it. But hygiene isn't particularly easy to teach to monsters, you know?" Eiro pointed out, but Partax sighed, "Then make it easier for them! At this rate, they'll never be able to live alongside people!"

The Demon was a little taken aback. He hadn't expected Partax to actually be in such support of the idea. And more importantly, "...you actually believe that it's possible?"

"For them to stop smelling like manure? I would hope so!"

"No, obviously I mean for them to live alongside people," Eiro sighed, and Partax shrugged, "Before I met these things, I would have laughed in your face, but now... I think it's possible. Hell, just the fact that so many of them speak common is something I believed to be practically impossible. So that's sign enough that I may have understimated these guys. So, make sure to give them whatever they need to make it happen!" The halfling exclaimed, "My ideas are simple! Canalization, perfume, and easy cleaning tools!"

"...Alright... that sounds reasonable. Since we're solidly in the ground and not floating above a lake, it makes sense to finally add a proper canalization. And perfuming the areas makes sense too, just making things artificially smell better. But what do you mean with 'easy cleaning tools'?" Eiro wondered curiously, and Partax crossed his arms, "Simply what it means!" he replied, and before Eiro could ask for further explanation, the Demon could hear the sound of dozens over dozens of tiny metal legs hitting the ground below Partax.

He had released another type of metallic bug onto the ground, who were hurrying around the room to wherever it was even slightly dirty. They would feed on the dirt that was brought in by workers, and even 'scrub' the ground clean from any leftovers stuck inbetween the grains of wood.

Eiro observed them closely, and from what he could tell, this process was simple. The metallic bugs were pushing the dirt into their 'mouths', and then it was broken apart using some sort of artificed process within their bodies. And then, the bugs rushed over to the nearest plants, and supplied them with what seemed to be fertilizer or soil created from the dirt they picked up.

"Obviously you won't be able to make things like this, it took me quite a while to create them and I'm not simply lending them to you either. However, it should be possible to transfer the idea to things like... brooms or mops," Partax suggested, and Eiro raised his brow curiously.

"Gobo!" Eiro said with a grin, and the Hobgoblin quickly came rushing over from the other side of the room, "Yes, my lord?"

"I'm sure you have the reports from the different jobs given to the monsters, right? Bring me some sort of summary from all the cleaners of the city, especially those that are talking about where they're struggling or need more help."