Demon's Virtue

Eiro glanced at the three ice needles floating in the air as he pulled out a large map, flicking his wrist as he made it float in the air.

The needles that were created by the spell in Eiro's grimoire were parts of a compass. Someone's essence was a special thing, and it was always somehow connected to one's soul. One's very being. That was why Eiro, for a long time now, searched for, and tried to develop, a spell that would allow him to take advantage of that fact. At some point, in the Elemental Realm of Water's book tower, the duplicate of Eiro placed within that realm found a spellbook. This in itself wasn't anything rare; all living beings in that realm were either magic beasts or 'magic people', a mix between people and magic beasts, so they were particularly close to magic as a concept. While many didn't end up using spells and instead just used their personal abilities, if even just a fraction of the people in that realm tried making use of spells and magic circles, they would be able to put together an immense collection of grimoires in a quite short time.

And similarly to how many regions had unique foods or plants and local specialties, there was a small village that had made use of a special magic to combat a specific problem. The vast majority of people in this world lived off fish, so fish farms were in high demand. However, they couldn't just be fenced in so easily as in other realms; after all, fish weren't constrained to the ground. Many villages of fish farmers as such made use of large nets or simply kept the fish in caves to make sure they couldn't swim away so easily. And then, there was a small village that used a different method. They simply let their fish swim freely in their large valley.

It being a valley that the fish were used to, they didn't tend to stray too far, but it was still sometimes tough to find the stragglers that decided to either go a bit further away, or were simply trying to hide between rocks, corals or plants. So, over some generations, they developed a spell that could allow them to track the fish. A compass spell.

Now, compass spells weren't rare; it was easy enough to track a specific mark that has been left on locations or people. However, for one reason or another, the way that the village developed the spell led to it being a 'soul compass' that just needed a small sample of the target's mana. Using the information behind the spell, and after taking it apart into its pieces and truly coming to understand it, Eiro managed to not only replicate it, but also improve on it.

The first version simply told you the direction, which, while useful, wasn't as much information as Eiro would have liked. So instead, he wanted to use a method to calculate the target's distance, so that he could end up calculating their exact current position. And with that, the current version of the spell was born, albeit after a lot of development that had to happen through not only Eiro himself, but plenty of mental duplicates that were working on the spell for a few weeks.

The older spell was more inaccurate and required a certain amount of control of the user. That was because it used regular mana, and not the essence. In the end it still targeted the essence within the mana, which made it vastly inefficient and overly complicated. In Eiro's version, he could fine-tune things to make it as accurate as it possibly could be, since the spell didn't have to waste any time finding the essence in the first place. And from there, Eiro expanded the spell further.

The first version simply told you the direction, which, while useful, wasn't as much information as Eiro would have liked. So instead, he wanted to use a method to calculate the target's distance, so that he could end up calculating their exact current position. And with that, the current version of the spell was born, albeit after a lot of development that had to happen through not only Eiro himself, but plenty of mental duplicates that were working on the spell for a few weeks.

Now, to say that the needles were pointing directly at the Devil was also wrong. The point that each needle was measuring at was about five hundreed feet into their respective directions. And with that, using the difference in degrees between each needle, Eiro could calculate the exact direction and distance of the target. And due to the accuracy of the spell, the Devil's location could be pin-pointed down to a ten-foot radius. With that information, Eiro looked at the map.

It was one of the most accurate maps that he could get his hands on. The Demon glanced over at the number values that were being displayed mid-air by each of the needles, describing their exact rotation. Using that, Eiro quickly moved along the map with his eyes, and soon landed on the current location of the Devil. Eiro marked the map with a tiny glowing dot, which he then linked to the compass spell. With this, the dot would move the moment that the Devil moved.

Eiro quickly did the same with a number of other regional maps, linking them all to the compass so that Eiro could have an accurate display of the Devil's current location that he could also more easily describe to the others that would be fighting alongside him. He himself had a massive map in his mental library, but others obviously couldn't access it. And just having a physical reference didn't hurt him either.

"What the hell is he doing out there?" Bavet asked with a confused frown. The compass pointed at basically the middle of nowhere. It was a small rural village in the center of a small country to the north of the continent.

"That's what I'm wondering as well, but either way, now it makes sense that I didn't find him," Eiro pointed out. The compass was just one of the methods that Eiro used to try and find the Devil. Another one had to do with his servants. Due to the nature of his abilities, and the ability-set of 'The World', Eiro was able to turn practically anything into a servant, as long as he was able to manipulate it with his own magic. And one of the things that he did with this was creating a massive network of shadow servants that he attached to coins. They were dormant most of the time, and as such, were basically impossible to be found by others. However, they were aware enough to follow a few simple commands. And one of them; if they detected Demonic energy, to come out of their dormancy and give information to Eiro. It had happened a few times until now, with roaming demons spread out across the continent. Most of the time they weren't a real threat, and didn't seem to have a connection to the Devil either, so after leaving some servants to follow them around, just in case, Eiro moved on. Considering that most rural villages didn't really have an active trading network, and instead just relied on bartering with each other instead of using coins, Eiro had mostly reached cities and towns, and a lot of small villages were still left untouched.

Eiro stood up and walked over to a cabinet in the wall. He opened its door and pulled out some boxes. This was something that he had worked on as part of his artificing practice. Since Partax was incredibly adept at creating automatons, that was something that Eiro had also grown into working on more as his practice. However, since Eiro was more of a mage than an artificer, a mage that was deeply connected to the elements, he adjusted the automatons to work with this. Instead of acting on their own, they were going to be strengthened bodies for certain servants of his. And right now, he had a set of five bird automatons sitting on his desk. To make them blend in, Eiro had carefully created them to make sure they were going to be as life-like as they possibly could be. Just like this, they looked like incredibly well-made taxidermy, but soon, Eiro infused them with a large amount of air magic. Their feathers ruffled and puffed up as Eiro compressed the air magic around the joints and into the parts of the circuitry they were supposed to get into, and then snapped his finger. With that, the automatons came to life as Air Servants. The reason why he created them like this in the first place was because now, he could equip them with certain gemstones and circuitry that allowed them to act as beacons for Eiro's magic. That way, he could use some spells so that he could gather information more directly, practically sharing their senses instead of just getting vague concepts sent to him from the servants. Not to mention, the birds' feathers were partially made of crystalizations of the Ace of Cups' liquid. The invisibility potion would make them not only blend into their environment more easily, but make people just naturally ignore them without even realizing it. They were perfect scouts like this.

Eiro opened the window and let the birds fly out, sending them toward the Devil's apparent current location, so that they could figure out what he was truly up to. With this, things were truly starting to be set into motion. The war with the Devil was not far away anymore. Eiro felt like he might not be prepared well enough, though against an enemy like the Devil, that was probably something that he couldn't get rid of even if he prepared for ten years.

Eiro looked at the map with a light smile, watching the dot slowly move from place to place. His greatest adversary so far would soon be no more.

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