《Demon’s Virtue》Demon's Virtue
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Chapter 109
“This is great . . . ” Rumia said suddenly, and Eiro slowly turned toward him with a frown, “What is? Were you suicidal this whole time?” The Demon asked with a slight laugh, before Rumia just shook his head with a broad grin on his face, “In a single day, I managed to get the support of four Nature Goddesses, get to kill the monstrous heretic that made my life a hell on earth this past year, and even get to become a Card Owner!” The man exclaimed, but Eiro just sighed deeply and shook his head disappointedly .
“Let’s see about that . ” Eiro said, and could then hear the sound of a blade being swung toward him, splitting through the air, from his back . But in the next moment, Eiro could hear that blade hitting the ground while slight steam rose as hot blood streamed over the cool ground .
[Bern Siegheim -1124 Damage]
[You stabbed Bern Siegheim through his throat . +25% Damage and Heavy Bleeding effect activated]
[You defended against a sneak attack . +5% Damage]
[Total Damage: 1461]
The moment that the blade strapped to Eiro’s tail pushed through the gap in the Soldier’s armor and into his throat, the Soldier dropped down onto the ground in pain, holding his hands around the source of the blood before staring up at the Demon, while the other soldiers stopped moving in response to this quick retaliation from the attack of one of their strongest men .
“Oh, what a surprise . You’re holding out pretty well . Seems like you have high constitution and resistance . . . ” The Demon muttered quietly, and then held his two hands behind his back, interlocking his fingers while the two blades he had strapped to his hands were slightly hitting against each other .
“That was a pretty good sneak attack as well . . . You know what, I’ll give you a deal, Bern . ” Eiro explained, and then swiftly turned back around toward the other soldiers, just showing the man a devilish smile, “If all of these others, except Rumia of course, die before you do, I’m letting you live . I’ll even heal you a bit! How does that sound? You’ll just have to do me a little favor afterward . ” He suggested, and the man stared up at the Imp with pure fear in his eyes .
Fear of Eiro himself, fear of dying, and fear of the blood that was leaving his body right now . Slowly, he nodded his head a minuscule amount, and the Demon started grinning broadly .
“Alright, then let’s get to work, shall we?” Eiro said quietly as he turned toward the soldiers that were unsure what to do before Rumia just continued laughing .
“Hah! Do you think we wouldn’t end up preparing to take you down?! We managed to get a Pyromancer from the Inner Circle! You won’t be able to use those Ice Tricks any further!” Rumia exclaimed, but Eiro just smiled back and slightly tilted his head to the side .
“Ice? Oh, I think you’re misunderstanding something, Rumia . ” The Demon pointed out as he took a few steps toward the nearest group of soldiers, extending his arms to the side in a vulnerable manner as he was doing so, “It’s been a while since I’ve taken a person’s life . You think I would let that go to waste by using petty tricks like that?” He asked with a wicked grin and a glare that overwhelmed Rumia’s .
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Just when the Baron wanted to call out a warning to his soldiers, it was too late, and they already took their chance to attack the Demon . As the first blade got close to his left arm, Eiro twisted his body around and slipped past the three others that were closing in on him as he stabbed his dagger into the first soldier’s neck, making his body immediately drop .
But as his armor was keeping his body rather stiff, it took a while for him to actually completely hit the ground . A time which was used by Eiro to step onto his back and use him as help to reach the next soldier . Since two of the four that attacked him were anything but a threat, he went for the one that seemed to actually be able to use a weapon and jumped over him, pushing his fingers into the slit that let the soldier look out of his helmet .
Of course, manipulating the swift blade to move around like a snake, he managed to push it into the helmet through that slit right through the soldier’s eye, and then once Eiro’s currently upside-down body flipped back over, he pulled the helmet off the soldier’s head and threw it toward the closest group of mages using wind magic to speed it up as much as he could manage .
And like that, Eiro soon heard the sound of bones breaking as the helmet hit one of the mages’ hands . Since it was the hand that was holding a staff, that dropped to the ground as well . From the smell, Eiro could tell that he was apparently a water mage, so the staff was probably built for that as well . And so, while covering his feet and hands with Ice, Eiro slid across the ground and then soon grabbed the staff, before holding its tip toward the mage that dropped it as Nelli appeared and floated across it .
Eiro poured his mana into the quite simple staff, which was basically just in the shape of a straight stick and had Nelli help him cover the blade in a large amount of water . Since a staff supported all sorts of magical abilities, it of course also supported Spirit Magic .
Once the water covered the staff, he slowly just made it freeze to the point where it gave off a slight cold mist while shaping it into a particular form .
“I-Is that a sword . . ?” One of the Soldiers asked confusedly, and Eiro just slightly smirked as he held the magical ice-blade in his hand . Obviously it was a blade, and a very specific kind as well . The one that he taught to Arc . Since, through that, he got two pretty useful skills as well .
-[Beginner Katana Mastery][Level – 31]
-[Beginner Wakizashi Mastery][Level – 24]
They really weren’t that high in level, and at Beginner Grade, the skill didn’t seem to show too much support, but at the very least Eiro knew how to roughly use a blade like this . He didn’t have a chance to properly try out how useful this sort of weapon was in combat, so Eiro figured he should at least do so before Arc had to fight with it .
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“This should be good for a couple of hits at least . . . ” Eiro pointed out, and then swiftly manipulated his Life Force into his legs and wrapped his body in Air Magic, swiftly jumping forward toward some of the other mages . With a single swift motion, he cut through the weak, thin neck of two of them, before the ice-blade got stuck in the throat of the third .
And before Eiro knew it, the blade already started melting, although it should have lasted a while longer . The reason for that was the mage clad completely in red that was now standing beside Rumia . Seemingly the Pyromancer that he mentioned . With a bit of disappointment, Eiro looked at the staff in his hand and sighed deeply .
“How bothersome . . . ” He muttered, and as he noticed some soldiers running toward him, he figured he should hurry up and turned back toward the mage whose throat was half-cut, “To hell with it . ” The Demon said, and with a quick motion hit the side of the mage’s head with the solid staff, immediately cracking it open and causing the mage to fall to the ground .
Quickly, Eiro then turned around toward the soldier now closest to him and slipped past his attack, stabbing one of the blades connected to his hands into his armpit while using the blade connected to his tail to stab through his knee, immediately disarming him as he dropped on his knees .
And so, Eiro pulled the soldier’s weakened arm behind his back and used him as a shield against the next attack that caused little blood to splatter around . It seemed like the other soldier managed to slow the attack down a bit and only cut slightly into the other’s stomach . Either way, it was enough, so Eiro pushed the injured soldier toward his attacker and then once that attacker stumbled backward, Eiro hit his palm onto the underside of his jaw to further incapacitate him for another few moments .
With a weakened stature, Eiro could then simply throw the soldier on his back by placing his foot behind the soldier’s legs . And once the soldier’s head closed in on the ground, it already had Eiro’s tail-blade waiting for it . Although not for much longer .
The moment that this soldier died, Eiro already turned around toward the next three soldiers, one of which came to attack Eiro with a spear .
The Demon swiftly dodged that spear and grabbed it mid-stab, pushing it inbetween the armor of the half-dead soldier laying behind him, for one putting that soldier in a condition where he couldn’t be saved anymore without strong healing magic, while also lodging the spear up .
And the moment that the soldier let go of the spear, Eiro grabbed his hand and swung him over his shoulder to get rid of this guy for now while he took care of the other two . . . something that was accomplished by swiftly blocking and diverting the two attacks made through their swords with the blades conected to Eiro’s hands, before then stabbing the Tail-dagger into one of the two’s heads through the bottom of his helmet, before pulling the other ones closer toward him and throwing him to the ground while punching his lower back . But due to the blade attached to his hand, that punch was actually a stab at the same time .
And then, already surrounded by a small mountain of corpses after killing half of the troupe within a minute or so, Eiro looked around at the others with a light smile as he wiped some blood off his face, although it blended in perfectly with his skin .
“How refreshing . ” The Demon said with a genuine smile, immediately making the other soldiers shudder in disgust and anger .
“Hey, you . The Pyromancer . ” Eiro said with a grin on his face, “After I get rid of these guys, it’s your Flames against my Ice, got it?” He told him, and then immediately started sprinting toward the closest soldier, immediately getting rid of him by throwing him to the ground, and stabbing him into the back if his neck . And then the next by pushing him onto another soldier’s blade, while cracking the neck of that one to make both of them fall to the ground at the same time .
Another one had his face smashed in by one of Eiro’s punches because he wasn’t wearing a helmet, and yet another one lost a hand and a leg before he knew it . Like that, nearly all the soldiers here died, the exception being the one that Eiro made his small ‘Deal’ with as well as three soldiers that simply gave up after seeing they couldn’t beat him . Of course they did so in hopes of being spared, but Eiro wasn’t kind enough for that, and simply slit their throats in a swift motion to let them bleed out .
Since he was going after the mages and priests next, nobody would be able to heal them, after all . There weren’t any healers in this town beside Eiro, after all . But the Mages and Priests were easy to deal with . Since Magic was something that required deep concentration to be able to properly use, they obviously weren’t able to cast any spells that quickly while seeing their comrades be slaughtered, and even if they did they were low in power and Eiro was able to quite easily dodge them .
Like that, the rest of the mages were taken out as well, and from Rumia’s troupe, only three men remained .
The lucky man who got his deal, the Pyromancer, and Rumia himself .
And to everyone in this town, Eiro was now nothing but a monster of slaughter .
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Sword System Academia
2/17 NOTICE: I'm putting this on hiatus, possibly permanently. I didn't want to spam with an "update chapter", so hopefully here and in the story blurb will get enough eyeballs. There are a couple reasons for ending SSA for now. 1) I wrote the next chapter but wasn't happy with it. I've been less and less satisfied with SSA's quality the more I thought about it. Part of the reason is... 2) I am seriously thinking about trying to publish some novels to help pay the bills, since I don't have my other source of income anymore. I have never asked for anything from SSA readers, no money, not even a review or rating. SSA is written for fun to amuse myself, primarily, and I would kind of feel bad actually charging someone money for something as unserious as that. I don't think it is good enough to ask anything in return. To use an analogy from music, SSA is more like a jam session with a bunch of friends. You're just chiling and having fun playing some music. I mean, if you are Mozart or even Eminem, your jam session is good enough to sell, but for an amateur beginner like myself, haha, no. If I want to publish something, I feel like I need to go the proper route of practice and rehearsals, which might be more similar to a classical concert performance. With SSA, I work from worldbuilding notes and a loose outline, but what you are essentially getting is the first draft with lots of so-called pantsing. Pushing out a web novel like this also means it is very difficult to go back and improve things without breaking everything else downstream. I wanted to try this "jamming" approach, as it was a good way to teach me about another aspect of writing, but to move forward, I think I need to hone my "classical" techniques, which emphasize rewriting, or at least, revising outlines. 3) While I intend to try to make $$$, my actual current goal is to "get gud". I've spent a lot of time recently trying to understand the self-publishing industry, and I'm pretty sure I can make some money by using short-term strategies with my current amateur skill level. But I've seen too many authors come and go/burnout, and really, the only way that I think I can enjoy writing and still make money on a long-term basis is to become a better writer. And the next step for me, which I haven't done much before, is to spend more time on rewriting and outlines. That is pretty much antithetical to the way SSA is developing. I've always been kind of 20/80 plotting/pantsing, but I want to spend a lot more time outlining before I even start writing. SSA jam sessions don't really fit my goal anymore. If you're curious about what's next, read on... Among other regrets, I regret not finishing SSA. It's the first story I've dropped, but then again, it's the first web novel I've attempted, so I suppose that's not a surprise. I don't think traditional web novel formats suit me that well. The whole SSA story I had loosely planned (beyond a first book or major arc) is way too large as well. Big story = good for neverending webnovel with Patreons, bad for penniless and fickle writer like me. I am currently outlining a complete trilogy to another story in great detail. I want the story to end concisely, and I also want the chance to really spend a lot of time on the full outline to spot pacing problems, character issues, lost themes, and so on. I'll still share this story on RR. What I intend to do is finish book 1, flash-publish the whole thing here for a few weeks, then publish on the big Zon. Repeat for books 2 and 3. The upcoming story will be about crafting heroes. The backdrop is an isekai-like setting, where elves will summon humans to their world as heroes, but the whole hero crafting business is still in its infancy. The elven mage researchers are figuring out how to imbue heroes with power, while the heroes are trying to figure out how to use the powers that they gain. Humans are the best hero templates because they are blank and have no intrinsic magic. Or at least that what the elves thought. The human MC has his own secrets... There will be some similarities with litrpgs, but I would call it more a progression fantasy or gamelit story. For example, the stats are very low, at least initially. Say we have a stat called Str. Going from Str = 1 to Str = 2 is a huge deal. Also, going from Dex = 0 to Dex = 1 is an even bigger deal. I guess you could call it a "low-stat litrpg", haha. Also, the heroes won't be gaining stats simply by killing things or leveling up. You can't increase stats arbitrarily, either. There will be rules to how stats can increase, and how they work with each other. The elven mages will be figuring out these rules in order to craft stronger and stronger heroes. Some inspiration will be from cultivation magic systems, but there won't be overt cultivation, at least for now. A theme I really want to explore is the idea of interactions. That includes things like hero crafter vs hero, tactics vs strategy, skill synergies, racial interactions (dwarves, elves, etc), and son. Yeah, so hero crafting. I'm super excited about this project and venturing into publishing. If you want to check out the upcoming story, you can follow my RR author profile to see when it drops here. Finally... THANK YOU TO EVERYONE! I'm very sorry that SSA is stopping, but I hope at least some of you will find the next story at least as enjoyable, if not more. Thanks to all the readers who gave SSA a shot. Big hug or solid fistbump to all of you, whichever you prefer! I hope this message is not a downer but an upper, because I am psyched!! -purlcray -------------- BLURB: Talen, youngest Master of the Koroi, makes his way to the Empire's capital to salvage his clan's fate. But the bustling city has few opportunities for the traditionalist. For the old sword clans are fading. With the rise of alchemy, gold can purchase strength that ordinarily took years of training to cultivate. Sword artists, once rare and accomplished, are quickly growing in number, especially among the wealthy noble class. Even with such alchemy, though, no one has advanced to the rank of Grandmaster in countless years. Talen's true dream is to walk the path of a sword artist to the very end while fulfilling his clan duties. And then the Swordgeists return, fabled founders of all sword arts, gods who had touched the world long ago and vanished. These myths turned into reality warn of a coming threat. Alongside this warning, they issue an invitation to the Sword System Academy, a path to power beyond the mortal realm. But first, they will hold an entrance exam... Story notes:Sword System Academia blends elements of western and asian fantasy such as xianxia and litrpg. I took parts from different genres I enjoyed and twisted them into my own creation. There will be an explicit system, both of the litrpg kind and the hard(ish) magic kind, but it is embedded within an academic structure that will develop over the course of the story. This is my attempt to design a unique type of system, the System Academia.
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