Demon's Virtue

Eiro slightly twisted his hand around, and pushed the blood-ice-spear against Evelyn's body. Of course, she was trying to defend against it by freezing some of her blood. But of course, that didn't do much, considering that she was the one that had compressed this ice spear so much. There was no way that she was going to be able to do something like that. Or at least, that's what Eiro thought, but she actually seemed capable of doing surprisingly well.

With a raise of his brows, Eiro pulled the spear back, "Huh." He muttered with a straight face, before simply biting into the tip of his finger, "If you can defend against that, then how about this one?" He asked, and let an absolutely ridiculous amount of blood flow out of the small wound in his finger.

Blood loss usually took a relatively fixed amount of health from an individual, which of course depended on the amount of life force they possessed. But it didn't scale evenly. Let's say, if Eiro had 100 health, then a liter of blood would drain maybe 30 health. But now, with more than 700 thousand health, a liter of blood only drained 5 thousand health, which was of course also partially because of Eiro's demonic regenerative ability, which he could increase by concentrating his life force onto certain parts of his heart.

And so, Eiro had quite a lot of blood to spare, so much that it seemed to even rival the amount of blood that the bloodstone gave to Evelyn, at least to the unknowing audience. Eiro surrounded the ice spear in more and more blood, freezing it and compressing the whole thing further, until Eiro had created a spear that was about five times as large as before, and at the same level of compression. Of course, Eiro mixed a little bit of water from the plane of water in there to artificially increase the amount of 'blood' that he could use, but it was barely visible, so it was fine.

And then, when Eiro had that spear floating above his palm as if it was weightless, Eiro slowly formed a fist. The fact that he was able to compress that blood-ice so much with just raw control was insane to anyone that was able to use magic in the first place, but then, it went even further. That spear, larger in volume than Eiro's body at this point, shrunk further and further, down to the point where it was at the size of a small sewing needle.

"Alright, there we go." Eiro said with a smile on his face, as he casually snapped his finger. With ease, the needle pierced through Evelyn's shoulder. And then, it came back. And then went through again. And again, and again, and again. And soon, Evelyn's arm was simply loosely hanging by her side.

"Wh-What did you-" Evelyn asked, holding he shoulder in pain, as Eiro smiled at her, "I severed all the muscles in your shoulder that were keeping your arm in place. If you're not careful, it's going to pop out of its socket. At this point, you should still be able to heal it, so being careful might be better."

Evelyn looked back at Eiro with fear on her face, and immediately turned toward a referee, "I gi-", she exclaimed, but before her sentence finished, her voice simply disappeared.

"Sorry, I don't think we should do that." Eiro said with a soft smile on his face. He took more steps toward Evelyn, as he summoned water out of nowhere, without the intervention of a spirit. He created all that water to create more needles at a similar level to the blood-ice spear that he had controller just now.

Eiro stepped in front of Evelyn, with a light smile on his face, and made sure to use the needles to restrict her movement, as he slightly pressed the tips of his fingers onto his belly, "I think you should try to reinforce your back a little bit~." He said, giving genuine advice, as he turned his straight hand into a fist that he pushed into her stomach. Evelyn was immediately pushed to the other side of the arena, nearly breaking through the magically reinforced walls. Clearly, she was damaged quite a bit, but her bloodstone helped her heal and survive that attack.

Just that, as Eiro punched her, she was pushed through all those needles in a very specific manner, and quickly broke down onto the ground, unable to move any of her limbs anymore. She tried to manipulate her blood to control her body like that, something that was clearly incredibly painful.

Eiro saw that she clearly wanted to write something in the air with her blood, so he let out a deep sigh, as he pointed his hand toward her. He turned toward the referee, "She clearly lost, and is trying to give up. Are we good?"

One of the referees looked at Eiro confused, "H-Huh? Is this correct, Miss James?"

"Yes! Yes, of course I want to give up! Get me away from this- this thing!" She exclaimed, and the referees all looked at each other, as the decision was announced. And at that exact moment, Eiro completely healed Evelyn. He seemed like some kind of villain in this fight, especially with Evelyn pleading to 'get away from' him like that. So of course, he had to do something to not make people think too badly of him, which was to heal her instantly. It took quite a lot of mana, and Eiro had prepared all the magic that he needed for this sort of thing before the fight even began. The Holy Energy from the Holy Water he drank earlier actually helped quite a bit after he absorbed it into his body. And on top of that, it let him figure out that he could absorb things like magic into his body as well, which was a rather pleasant find.

As Eiro was announced the winner, he simply waved at the people, trying to somehow use his charisma to make people think as highly of him as possible, before he returned back to where the others were waiting.

And as he stepped into the room overlooking the arena the best, the eyes of everyone in here were obviously glued on him.

"What?" He asked with his head tilted to the side, and Solomon looked at his friend with a complicated expression, "Could you not have been a little gentler? Your children are even watching from the stages..."

"But it wasn't even that bad? She didn't even bleed that much. I mean, beyond what she wanted to, I guess." Eiro pointed out, and Solomon let out a deep sigh, "Alright, fine. But in the next fights, be more careful, alright?"

"Obviously, I don't need to prove much more in the next fights. I'm fighting some weakling in the next round anyway. See, I already forgot his name." Eiro pointed out with a light grin, and James stared at him annoyedly, "Fuck you."

"No thanks. Anyway, I think I have someone to talk to, but don't worry Krog, I'll be watching the whole thing from there." Eiro explained, as he walked back toward the door, knowing that a certain person was currently on his way over toward him. With a grin on his face, Krog grabbed his two adamantine battle axes and smugly made his way into the arena. And as the two next fighters were being introduced, Eiro once more met with Duke James.

Of course, quite angrily, the Duke practically ran at him, "You! You broke the contract!"

"Oh? Now did I?" Eiro asked with a soft smile on his face, and the Duke stared back at him, as a broad grin started to form, "Yeah, you did! Which means... which means, that you're basically my slave now, right? Hah... hahah... This might be even better, now that I think about it!"

But as the Duke stared at Eiro with a manic expression, the Demon simply grinned back at him, "Hm, about that~... In a contract, the wording is quite important, you know? Do you remember my exact wording when we spoke of the terms of the contract?"

"You said that you would lose against Evelyn!" Duke James exclaimed nervously, but Eiro placed his finger onto his lips, "Oh? Did I really?"

"Y-You... Yeah, you... you di-" The Duke muttered, as he finally remembered Eiro's exact words, "No, you didn't... you said that you would neither move... nor fight back... for five minutes..."

"Ah, so you remember after all!" Eiro said with a smile as he clapped his hands together, "And I fulfilled my part of the contract! I stood there, and simply took her attacks, never fighting back. The most I did was strengthen my body, which in itself can't be called fighting back in any way, and then I turned my head and smiled broadly at my kids. So... now that means it's your turn, right?"

The Duke fell to his knees in fear, unsure what Eiro would be asking of him now, "Fine... I will give you anything you want... What is it, then? Land? Money..? My... my daughter..?"

"Hah, right, all of that stuff is useless. I have plenty of land and money, and your daughter is nothing compared to the woman I love. What I rather want is... hm... a service, you could say..."

"Service..? Do you need my connections to other nobles..? But you have the King, don't you?"

"Of course, I don't need that stuff either." Eiro replied with a smile, "It's just a simple fetching request."

The Duke's face lit up with a broad smile, since it seemed like he got away much easier than he thought he would, "Yes, of course! Anything! What is it that you want me to ge-"

"The head and heart of the current Monster King. Obviously, detached from his body." Eiro said bluntly, and Duke James immediately froze up.

"H-Huh? B-But, you-"

"What?" Eiro asked, as he smiled at the man in front of him, leaning forward to lock eyes with him with a devilish grin on his face, "Are you saying that you can't fulfil your part of the contract?"