Demon's Virtue

"Gobo, look here. What was this part called?" Eiro asked while looking at the Hobgoblin, who leaned in closer and looked at the open, gaping wound that Eiro had opened up on John's hand. Gobo thought for a little while before looking down at this own hand, rubbing it with his fingers a bit.

"The... Trique... Triquetral bone?" Gobo asked nervously, but Eiro immediately shook his head, although he did have a smile on his face, "Close, but no! This is the 'Pisiform' bone. It's directly connected to the Triquetral, though, so I'll let that pass." The Demon said with a light smile on his face, and Gobo looked back at Eiro with a bright smile.

"Thank you, Master!" He exclaimed excitedly. Over the past little while, Gobo had become surprisingly good at Common, at an incredibly fast pace. Well, it was one of the main things he was trying to learn, and he still spoke like an idiot most of the time, mispronouncing words wrong, or simply using the wrong words. He had improved considerably, though. Possibly even faster than Eiro could have without the skill boost he was given by Avalin back then.

Either way, next, Eiro pushed one of his tools into the open wound in John's hand to swiftly remove both the Triquetral and Pisiform bones, which he then replaced with a special piece of magical wood that he specifically prepared for John. It probably wasn't a perfect fit like Eiro's hand was for himself, but it should still do the part. This was really just a bit of an experiment, after all.

"It... It hurts... Stop... just s-stop..." John stuttered quietly, with a weak voice, but Eiro just looked at him with a light smile, "Hm? Do you finally feel like telling me now?"

John slowly turned his eyes toward Eiro and just looked at him with a deep glare. It seemed like just looking at him infuriated him at the moment, so he was even more keen on not telling him about anything right now, "Fu..ck you..." He muttered. Eiro shrugged and continued putting the wooden bones into place. These two were the last ones that he needed to switch out in the hand that was leftover.

Really, Eiro just wanted to see how well this would work, and how stable these pieces of wood were compared to regular bones while inside of the body. Oh, and of course if there would be any change to the dexterity after the hands were properly healed.

For now, Eiro quickly changed the flow of John's life force and poured it into these two extra wooden bones before taking some of the highly-refined water that Nelli made for him and started to try and heal this wound.

Really, John's hand was completely covered in scars now, but for the most part everything had healed pretty well. "Alright! Seems like everything's done." The Demon pointed out, "C'mon, try and move your hand for me."

Eiro said and slowly let go of it, but for now, it simply hung down. With a slight sigh, Eiro grabbed John's wrist and slightly pressed down onto it in some parts, forcing the hand's muscles to tense up in specific places so that Eiro could see it was moving properly at least.

It apparently didn't hurt more than it should after just barely being healed a little bit, and the movements worked out properly. Eiro was a bit worried that there would be issues and certain parts would move around in ways that Eiro didn't want them to, but in the end it seemed pretty normal.

Eiro slightly sighed, so he moved on to the next step. The last step of this initial test. He got rid of the life force that he just put into the wooden bones a few moments ago. Usually, that would cause parts of one's body to simply die off, but these were never parts of his body in the first place. Since the body of a living being didn't move because of the bones, but through the retraction and extension of muscles, it shouldn't change the way the hand could move either, something that Eiro confirmed after pressing down onto the wrist again a few moments later. The main reason why he put Life Force into the wooden bones in the first place was so that the healing process would work properly, making sure that they were fixed into place even after the wounds were closed up magically.

Anyway, as Life Force didn't naturally flow into inanimate objects, they would end up completely lacking life force. And since they were such inanimate objects, Eiro could do something else. He pulled out his three of swords and combined the five blades with different wooden bones inside of the hand.

Luckily, the blades didn't cut up the flesh while this was happening, but simply combined with the wooden bones by just turning into something mist-like and gliding into the skin. And now, Eiro could freely control John's hand.

Sure, while the bones didn't usually control the movement of a living being's body, that was just because they had no way of actually moving on their own. If the bones were capable of moving, as long as the body didn't completely resist those movements, it was possible for the bones to move the body around.

Eiro actually just had a little bit of fun with this now.

While it was surely annoying that Eiro had to control every bone as it was now individually, that would change with practice. For example, there was one tool that Eiro had that could flip open. If he combined a single one of the three of swords' blades with it, he was now able to not only move the tool around, but also make the tool flip open.

That meant that if Eiro practiced enough, he should be able to at some point control this hand completely just by combining it with a single one of his blades. And if he scaled that up even more, he may be able to control a whole person's body perfectly like that, something that simply wasn't usually possible with any sort of magic. The only one that Eiro could think of that allowed such fine control was the type where you created an artificial form with magic itself and then specifically controlled it, but most other kinds were those where the body was moving on its own and was simply given commands. Like necromancy or charm magic, for example.

Like this, Eiro would be able to have people with these special bones walk around on their own, and then take control of them completely if he needed to. As he was able to manipulate the length of the three of swords' threads, as long as he concentrated on a single one, he should be able to control someone from a fair distance while Eiro was safely watching and trying to figure out a possibly dangerous enemy's skills and abilities.

Of course, Eiro was mainly planning on using this on monsters, and not really people, since beasts wouldn't even know that such a change happened if Eiro knocked them out, but it was harder to pretend with people, especially if they were warriors. They may notice at some point if their broken bones stopped healing. And of course, there were some nerve-based issues as well that they could figure out. So as long as Eiro didn't have a solution for that, it would be hard to figure out ways to use this on people. There probably wasn't anyone that would let Eiro do this kind of thing to them willingly.

Eiro already thought about creating different wooden puppets that he could freely control, but then there really wasn't any choice but to control them at all times. He couldn't just disconnect from them if he had to, so it would be bothersome and could only be used in specific situations.

Either way, for now, Eiro figured he had done enough to John for the day. He had practiced his mana-based torturing on him earlier in the day, so John was probably too exhausted to go on anyway. It would be boring if he ended up falling unconscious at some point.

And so, Eiro disconnected the three of swords from John's wooden bones again and then made his way out of the cell.

"Sleep well, Johnny." Eiro said with a light grin on his face before walking out of this hidden room and stretched out a bit, "This is actually getting a bit bothersome. He really won't speak no matter what I do. And he stopped screaming as much, so he seems to grow used to the pain."

"That, or he physically just cannot scream anymore because of how much he has already done it." Gondos suggested in response, but Eiro just shrugged, "Maybe, but his throat doesn't really seem too irritated at the moment, so I don't know. We'll have to see. His body seems to be reacting to his hunger at this point, he's looking pretty thin. It shouldn't take that much longer."

"Good... Those three corpses just reek like shit." Bavet complained, and Eiro turned his head toward him, "You think I don't know that? Obviously I know that, but it's part of the process. The way those bodies are decaying is irregular and particularly nasty because of how they've been experimented with. Since John constantly has to look at them when his eyes are open, which they usually are out of fear of what might be around him at this point, it's putting constant strain on him mentally even while I'm not there to actively hurt him. And eating rotten flesh increases the taboo skill's level even more quickly." Eiro pointed out, and Bavet stared at him intensely. Well, he didn't have eyes, but Eiro could just feel it.

"There's something else, isn't there?" He asked, and Eiro looked down at him with a slight laugh, "Heh, you know me too well at this point. Honestly, just imagining him eating that rotten, disgusting flesh makes me kind of happy." The Demon pointed out with a broad grin on his face, while Bavet just groaned loudly.

"You sure you don't feel lust? That sounds exactly like what a pervert would say."

"Haha, don't worry, this doesn't fulfill me sexually at all. It's more of a... spiritual experience." Eiro pointed out, "Anyway, speaking of experience, let's go out a bit again. The two of you are actually pretty close to evolving, so it would be a shame not to pursue that as quickly as possible. We can't really waste too much time on this whole thing after all. There's kind of a time limit on how long we can wait until the people at the organization think that John's dead. And if that happens, it's going to be hard to infiltrate the place. Before then, I would like you two to be a bit stronger."

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