Demon's Virtue

"Seriously? Another Imp..? How likely is that?" James asked with a wry smile, and Eiro shrugged a bit in response, "Actually, not that unlikely. Especically compared to other monsters, Imps were always... you know, particularly brutal. So it's definitely possible that it just happened to enjoy killing a lot more than others, making it level up quicker than other monsters."

"...Great... So we have to fight a killing-machine demon, great."

"Don't worry, it's gonna be easy to fight against. I mean, I do have another vial of infinite holy flames here with me." Eiro explained, as he pushed his hand into his satchel and pulled that small vial out of there, "For one, I doubt it has any particular resistance to Holy Energy, and even if he does, these holy flames are strong enough to even injure me if I'm not careful. And there's no way that one has the level of Holy Energy resistance as the guy that spends his free-time cuddling with an extreme source of it."

Krog smirked a bit as he nodded his head, "Well, fair enough, man. Are we, like, taking care of that one first? Or some others?"

"Well... For now, I think we should figure out the others first, one by one. Rashi spoke of a lizard, bird, mole, dog, and fish. My guess is that they're Lizardmen, Harpies, Molemen, Blood Wolves, and... I don't actually know what exactly that fish one is yet, there's a lot of different monsters down there in the water." He told them with his arms crossed, "The closest ones right now are the Lizardmen, so we should just go for those for now. They shouldn't be a big deal. With my Ice magic, we should be able to take care of them rather easily."

"Oh yeah, those guys were super easy to fight because of that. They were just so... slow."

"Yup. And at the same time, it's a decently simple way for us to trap those guys if we want to." Eiro said with a smile on his face, "We just have to make them fall asleep because of the cold, and we'll be fine."

---

Eiro stood in the center of this area of town that had practically been turned into a swamp by the Lizardmen. The water was frozen, and the mud was hard as rock. And in front of him, the Demon saw the leader of the Lizardmen kneel in front of him.

She was probably twice as tall as Eiro, or all the other Lizardmen, but even so, she still couldn't do anything against the cold that Eiro was inflicting her with. Although Eiro wasn't able to understand her language, the two of them came to the rough understanding that Eiro was superior to her, although that mostly came from the fact that he was able to subdue her with just a snap of his finger.

Really, this area wasn't anything for Eiro to worry about in the slightest, but it was still a good place to get a bit of experience. Some literal experience that would let the group level up a bit, and of course, experience in leading an army of undead.

They were definitely incredibly useful. While the main advantage the undead had before was that they simply didn't feel any pain, and Eiro could use them until their bodies were completely destroyed, now there was another addition to the advantages. The living Lizardmen slowed down in the cold, but the moment they were killed and taken over by Eiro, they were able to move as if they were in their perfect habitat again. It made it obvious that the Lizardmen were never going to be able to beat this group, even to the Lizardman leader.

Different to Rashi, it seemed like her base hadn't been a humanoid race in particular, which turned out to be a little weird.

The thing with all these guys was that their souls were more perfectly integrated with their current bodies compared to Eiro's. Their soul wasn't directly mismatched, but since even the Monster King wasn't ale to perfectly 'clear' the memory of the soul, throughout some evolutions, the monster's body would always end up trying to become more like their original form.

This was clearer in cases where a humanoid monster got a humanoid soul, but in this case, a humanoid monster got a beast monster's soul. It was probably just a huge crocodile that the soul was taken from, which would explain how this Lizardman was able to grow to such size, on top of the fact that her head was shaped quite a bit differently to that of a normal Lizardman. She was standing there hunched over as well, as if her body had been trying to return back to a form where it could properly walk on four legs.

It did give this Lizardman a decent amount of mobility though, and it was able to swim a lot better than the others of its kind. But once it tried doing that, Eiro just froze the water around it, so it didn't really amount to much of an advantage.

Since Eiro couldn't speak to this Lizardman, due to the clear language barrier between them, he wasn't sure if he would be able to control it properly. So for now, Eiro made the Lizardman leader fall asleep by cooling their body down immensely, before tying up her and the other Lizardmen that Eiro thought to be worth keeping around with some roots.

And then, it was time to take a look at what the other monsters could do. Eiro flew into the sky a bit, and looked into the distance. He figured out the positions of all the important monster leaders by now. In the distance, Eiro could see the nest that had been built by the Harpies around the town's clocktower. He figured they might be a decent next prey. They were quite a bit more bothersome to deal with than the others, but since both Eiro and Jess had pretty good control over air magic, they could fight back pretty well.

And as it turned out, when the group actually made his way over there, they were able to figure out a pretty nice dynamic. Eiro and Jess manipulated the air in the area to make it harder for the harpies to fly, and James and Krog took them out as soon as they hit the ground.

Harpies weren't particularly strong monsters. They had a humanoid torso, while thier arms were replaced with wings and their legs were replaced with a bird's. They had a speed-advantage in the air, but when they were pulled out of the air, that really wasn't a big deal anymore. And since their torsos were completely naked, on top of having mostly regular, albeit slightly tougher than a human's, flesh and skin, with a few precise attacks, they were taken out incredibly easily.

Eiro managed to find a few nests filled with harpy eggs, so Eiro figured he should just take as many of them as he could and raise the harpies once they hatched, instead of having to deal with reforming all of these harpies. Most of these monsters were incredibly wild, which was extremely weird considering how civilized their leaders seemed to be every time. Not that Eiro cared too much... It just meant more experience for Eiro.

He would end up sparing any monster that didn't want to fight, but those that did attack him, he would kill without hesitation. And he figured that would be the vast majority of monters in this city.

Eiro took eggs from the harpies, killed the adults, and spared only a few that he thought to be particularly useful or intelligent. The ones that he thought he could reason with. The Harpy Leader seemed happy to comply, as long as Eiro didn't harm her legs, something that Eiro of course didn't do. He had no reason to, after all.

Then later, in the area of the Blood Wolves, things were a bit more straightforward. Being nothing but beasts, it was clear they couldn't be reasoned with for the most part. There were those that showed their bellies rather quickly, so Eiro just tied them up to take them along later, but most of them did try their hardest to attack the group no matter what.

And one of those was the leader of the group. Eiro would have liked to be able to reason with this one somehow as well, but it was nothing but a huge blood-red wolf. It was the strongest of this large pack, but it wasn't the smartest by far. In the end, the group had no choice but to forcefully subdue it, and might have to end up killing it. Since these beasts had little to no ability to reason, being practically nothing but wild animals, they would have a different status in the Monster Town back in Skyhart in the first place.

And then, they reached the Molemen, who Eiro was particularly interested in so that they could more easily expand the village. Molemen usually had an innate ability to use earth magic, and they were incredible at carving out space from within dirt or rock, which was a great asset for the town. They were stuck in a ravine right now, so they had little choice but to expand into the mountain.

Luckily, Molemen were... cowardly. Sure, being created by the Monster King, they had higher willpower than others, but they still usually tried to avoid combat if possible. It was probably the reason why they were the smallest group with a proper leader amongst all the monsters in this town. It also meant that they were able to convince more than half of the total Moleman population to come along with them. They had a rather small build as well, being about half a meter tall while the leader was a full meter tall, so they would be perfect for the town.

And then... There were only two proper groups to take care of.. Those 'fish' down in the water, although the Lord of the Lake would take care of them once Eiro freed him, and the Demons in the center of the town.

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