Demon's Virtue

Eiro could feel the mineshaft's tunnels be overcome with the disgusting scent of demonic blood. He furrowed his brow as the footsteps of numerous lesser demons started flooding out from a few particular areas of the demonology sigil, as though that was the point that they were actually summoned from.

It seemed as though hell was creeping toward them from the outside into the center of the sigil, where the party was currently stood, surrounding them without any hopes of escaping.

"...if at all possible, at least until we find the Devil, try to kill as little as possible. Focus on incapacitating them. Ariella, you in particular, use a little bit of holy energy to stun the Demons that will be coming now," Eiro explained to the others, and Krog looked at him with a pale expression.

The air in the room was filled with the feeling of anything bad, anything horrendous that existed in the world. A warrior as adept as Krog would pick up on that immediately, and became quickly affected by it, even if he was trying to fight back against it as much as possible.

"Why would we do that? From what you're sayin', it sounds like it's gonna be a lot... I'm not sure if we can afford to hold back that much," Krog pointed out, and while he still could, Eiro was preparing some defensive spells to place onto everyone in the party. If possible, he would use holy magic here, but he couldn't afford to do that right now.

After all, that was one of the few hidden cards he had up his sleeve, and he couldn't haphazardly reveal that he could use holy energy to the Devil.

The demon quickly explained, "Part of what the Devil prioritized at the beginning of his process of bringing this space into hell was to summon a massive amount of Demons. Frankly, they're not particularly strong, there's just so, so many of them... they're not necessarily supposed to actually kill us, though I'm sure if that were to happen, the Devil wouldn't mind, but...

they're acting as further sacrifices for the sigil."

Jess quickly looked at Eiro, "So the more we kill... the sooner we'll end up in hell?"

"...basically."

"So what," Krog clicked his tongue, "We can't kill any of them? Or maybe like, half?" he asked annoyed. It wasn't that he was exhausted or anything, but with how things were going, it didn't seem like this battle was going to end any time soon.

It was a lot easier to simply cut into something's body to kill them right away instead of aiming for non-vital areas specifically, or carefully cut off their arms. Especially for Krog, since it wasn't his specialty to be necessarily precise, but rather deliver powerful attacks especially in this crowd-based combat that was about to happen.

Eiro finished his spell, and everyone in the party was covered in a thin barrier that was going to protect them from a certain amount of damage as long as they were close enough to Eiro to let him supply the needed mana. At the same time, it seemed like Ariella had finally regained her full composure, preparing her holy magic as Eiro had suggested.

And then, the Demon continued, "Basically, if it's possible at all, try not to kill them. But if it's too much of a hassle, or too dangerous, just go all out. The sigil is continuing being active either way; killing those sacrifices is just going to make things go a bit faster. If things go well, we should be able to reach the Devil before things get too far."

"...If you say so," Krog replied, tightening his grip on his weapons. As the others were all preparing, Eiro was expanding his consciousness and trying to figure out where the Devil was currently hiding out. From the flow of unholy energy that was fairly distinctly filled with the Devil's own. With that, Eiro should be able to track the Devil's location somehow.

Currently, he was moving around his magic circuits in a way that would allow his whole body to become a massive sensor, so that Eiro may increase his sensory perception even further than normal. These mineshafts weren't at the regular scale that he expected; they were expanding outward for miles and miles. And then, he noticed a twinge of a 'vibe'.

Of something too closely related to the arcane to belong to anything beside an artifact.

The devil was doing something, and it was the exact thing that led to him being discovered right here. With a grin on his face, Eiro constructed a mental map of this space, and as the demons were still approaching, created the perfect route throughout this space.

After all, each distinct summoning hotspot in the massive underground sigil was seemingly pulling in different kinds of demons, as though they were coming from separate parts of hell. And since they were all different, they obviously also had different habits, and Eiro would be able to take advantage of that.

He turned his head toward the side, holding forward his hand, "I'm going to open up that passageway in 23 seconds. The moment I do, get ready to deal with the flood of monsters. Not just the demons, but the ones that Jess hadn't been able to kill as well. But we just need to hold on for about three minutes."

Without hesitation, the others nodded. They didn't know exactly what Eiro's plan was just yet, but they knew that if Eiro had planned it, it would work if they did their part exactly as intended. And since Eiro knew these four amazingly well at this point, he knew exactly how they were going to act naturally.

That meant that their regular reactions, habits and behaviour was built into the plan; there was no need to communicate about this in the first place.

Once the 23 seconds were up, Eiro pushed his hand to the right, as though he was scooping away the mass of rock blocking the part of the mines in front of him. From there, immediately, the leftover horde of monsters came running out through the opening.

Their limbs pushed into the sludge of flesh, blood and bone that was left behind after the crushing attack from Jess, and once as many of the monsters were touching it, Eiro executed another spell. He used that flesh and blood to wrap around as many monsters as he could, and then froze them solidly in place.

This was narrowing the passage that the monsters could take, since the ice was too hard for any of them to break too easily, so they would default to the path of least resistance. That way, the amount of monsters that the party had to deal with at once wasn't quite as massive at least. And before long, they all managed to act as Eiro expected they would.

Krog either cut off the limbs off as many monsters as he could or knocked them into unconsciousness with a light tap of a club. James cut through the monsters' tendons or paralyzed them with poison, while Jess tried her best to trap the monsters by wrapping them up in rock.

And Ariella, for now, continued to act as aerial support while preparing as much holy magic as she could gather at this time in preparation for the demons' arrival. Eiro as well was taking part in this. He couldn't use his daggers, as they were too distructive considering the efforts to not kill the monsters.

Instead, he was using hand-to-hand combat to incapacitate as many of the monsters as possible, breaking their spines in specific locations, ripping off their limbs, or simply poisoning them to knock them out for a while.

But of course, no matter how much they all tried, it was impossible to not kill any of them at all. Due to their sheer amount, most of the monsters ended up having to be killed. But luckily, they really just had to keep going for a maximum of three minutes. Because that was exactly when the demons arrived.

Especially in comparison to the other monsters, they were simply... grotesque. As though they were born from the nightmares of an imaginative, troubled child. Ghastly proportions, horrid scents, and of course a bloodlust that never had to be stirred up the Devil in the first place. And the moment they arrived, even just glancing at Eiro, they stopped.

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