Demon's Virtue

Eiro was seated outside, leaning onto the table next to him. One of his right hands was propping up his chin while he used another to hold a cup of tea, while one of his left hands was playing around with the 'Author's Pen'. It was much more comfortable and smooth to split up his arms after Eiro's latest evolution. Rather than a physical split where his arms fit together like some sort of complicated puzzle, it was more like his arms duplicated themselves. Though, different to what happened with the Mirror of Duplication, it was still a physical function. Like his new body was attempting to copy the arcane magic of that card through its own biological functions.

His body was generally just much more... convenient. When Eiro was still an imp, no matter how he liked to do things, he still had to work around the guidelines of the imp species that he wasn't able to circumvent, no matter how unique his race became. But now that he was his own species, he was the one creating the rules. Only now that he had this body was Eiro able to pinpoint a certain sense of uncanny discomfort, an eery feeling of wrongness that spread throughout every fiber of his being that most likely came from the fact that his soul wasn't originally that of an imp. Now, that wasn't a factor anymore. With this body, even just breating felt more right, somehow. It simply improved his mood quite a lot. It felt like there was less weight on his shoulders, though maybe part of that was the fact that the Devil was no longer a threat. Well, beside the part of the Devil that was lurking around inside of Eiro's mind. Whenever it popped up, Eiro purged it, but it would always return, like the Devil's roots were hidden somewhere he couldn't see. But it wasn't too big of an issue and didn't seem like something he had to worry about all too much for the time being, so he was able to ignore it well enough.

Either way, with his mood lifted as it was, Eiro felt like playing around a bit more. And his newest racial ability was the perfect thing for that. Using the Arcane Integration ability, Eiro was able to add new functionality to his personal system. The first function he created was the 'System Log'. Basically, it expanded on the general notifications that anyone could receive, giving not only much more detail, but even providing some new information. Things that should stay hidden from most people.

For one, every time a particular action was completed, an amount of experience was calculated and displayed. Of course, that didn't seem necessarily special or useful at first glance, but Eiro quickly realized what he could use this for. He was able to maximize his 'experience' gain, allowing him to try and take only the most efficient actions to speed up his system-based growth. However, that wasn't all. The system log also displayed whenever certain 'skill acquisition requirements' were fulfilled. They were generally quite broad, but sometimes there were requirements related to completing particular actions often enough. Since skill acquisition wasn't always something easy to see through, even for Eiro, having the precise conditions was perfect. That was especially true when you considered the fact that on the system's side, the conditions were probably the same for every person. There might be some multipliers that changed how fast you were able to complete particular conditions, but if Eiro was correct, he would be able to train others incredibly fast. He especially wanted to use this to increase the speed at which the monsters from town learned the common language comprehension skill.

Since the System Log was so incredibly useful, Eiro was trying to come up with other additions to the system, though that was a bit harder to do than he thought. The first time around, it was like his hand moved on its own, as if the System Log was something that was waiting to come out of him for a long time. It could have been a function that Morgan la Fey was supposed to receive, that the system administrator had to remove to stabilize Eiro's soul when Morgan was killed. But now? He had very few things to use as a base.

He of course had the patterns that he had drawn for the System Log that he could reference. They were completely unique, acting in a way that Eiro could not recognize from any system of magic he could think of. Though, he had seen it before. In the meeting with the administrator, the were still working on things while talking to him. And the different displays and messages were usually shown in patterns that seemed to follow the same rules. Basically, it was the 'language of the system'. Eiro had assumed that it was just some sort of application of the Ancient Language, considerings its deep connection to the arcane, but that didn't seem to be the case.

"Hm... I think I have an idea now..." Eiro muttered, placing the tip of the 'author's pen' onto the surface of the artificial system window he had created in front of him with arcane magic. There was another time when he had seen similar patterns; when he made the 'Dungeon Map' card combine with his splinter. It was like the card fell apart into what was used to build it. Like a sandcastle revealing the individual grains of sand.

After some surface-level analysis, Eiro was able to understand the meaning or use of at least a few of them. At least, he was able to pinpoint what should be the symbol for 'Card', specifically referring to the arcane cards. Slowly, Eiro drew the symbol onto the artificial system window, and as he started, his hand basically continued on its own, completing the pattern and adding in symbols that seemed to mean 'information', 'collection', and 'manifestation'. The pattern continued outward naturally until it covered the entire window. Soon, the symbols faded away and disappeared. And what Eiro saw now was something like a list. It was a grid of 56 slots total, split up into four sectors of 14 each.n/ô/vel/b//in dot c//om

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[New personal System function has been created – Card Binder]

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Most of the slots were empty, but some of them contained symbols that Eiro recognized quite well. They were the cards of the minor arcana, though only five of them. The six and seven of wands, meaning the bloodstone and the dungeon map, as well as the three, five, and page of pentacles, meaning the cards of ultimate agility, perception, and the domain of truth. Though, looking closer, while many were completely black, there were others that seemed to have some kind of outline of what the respective card was supposed to be.

The ones that had the outline were the ones that Eiro had already 'collected', while the ones that were fully displayed were the two cards that he had fused into himself in some way. The pentacle cards did so automatically when activated, but the dungeon map was done manually by Eiro. But the bloodstone? He had just fused the physical stone into his blood vessels. But maybe that was enough for it to fuse into his soul during his evolution.

Eiro carefully tapped one of the cards, the seven of wands. And before he knew it, more information on the card was displayed. Not only the original mythos connected to this card, but the day when Eiro acquired it, information about the former owners, and basically every piece of information Eiro had regarding this card. But that wasn't the end. Eiro tapped the card's image again, and it simply popped out of the system window. Though, Eiro had already fused it into himself... and the 'map room' that was created in response inside of the mental library was still there too, so it wasn't as though he had undone that process just now. It was like he could create a copy of the card to take out. Curiously, Eiro activated the card, and the original paper scroll that was the map's original form appeared.

"I see... this is like a system integration for the cards themselves. I can take them out again, activate them, and use their item form, while also absorbing their base abilities," Eiro muttered quietly, though slowly, a grin formed on his face, "In that case, there's something else to give a try."