Demon's Virtue

773  Blink (4)

"Hey, careful where you put me!" Krog yelled out, having fallen to the ground after his body was put back together by the 'Blink' spell. Earlier, while Eiro and James were testing out the spell together, Krog and Jess came out for their daily training as well and quickly joined in. n/ô/vel/b//in dot c//om

"Honey, calm down. When we're in the middle of battle, we can't always choose the best destination," Jess pointed out, patting the goliath on the back. Krog sighed as he stood back up.

"Right, but like, can't we at least know where we'll end up beforehand? Give us a marker or something."

Eiro raised his brow, looking at the warrior, "And let the enemy figure it out as well?"

"You're the genius! You figure something out," Krog grumbled, but Eiro just let out a long sigh. It was true that Krog and Jess struggled a lot more with the blink spell than James did, so trying to figure out a way to have them deal with the Blink spell in the middle of combat properly wasn't a bad idea.

The issue was that James' style of combat was based on speed and motion already. He had a far greater visual acuity than the other two, his reaction time was better and his instincts related to physical movement and his speed of adjusting to those things was superior as well. Meanwhile, Krog's combat was centered around being stationary, being a mountain of power that couldn't be budged whatsoever. He could move fast when he needed to, but that was more like a massive ship could move fast.

Jess, as a mage, had a much different baseline in the first place. Her physical abilities were above the average B rank fighters at the adventurer's guild, but that didn't mean it was easy for her to adjust to something like this. She mentally knew what she had to do, since she had the highest mental processing speed right after Eiro in this party, but that didn't mean she had the physical abilities to always follow up on what she consciously knew what to do.

"Well, there's a few things I could do. I could use magic to manipulate the ground of the places where you end up to make it more similar to the place you started at. I could change your position and momentum in a way where you're reset to default for a moment so you wouldn't fall down, or..." Eiro pointed out, crossing his arms in front of Krog, "You could just trust me and keep doing what you're doing. The reason why you're falling down is because you're overthinking it, because you feel like you need to change something about the way you're moving. I've been trying to adjust for that, but that keeps causing new issues. So, as long as you all can trust and just keep doing what you're doing, there's no real issue."

The goliath grumbled lightly, "Fine. Just run us through it again."

"Sure. But before then..." Eiro looked to the side, toward a spot near the wall, "Shimour, do you have something you want to say?"

With a click of his tongue, the stealth master appeared, as if fading into existence, "This is getting real annoying, you know?"

Eiro smirked, "Then do a better job at hiding. We both know you were hiding half-assedly just now."

"Sure, sure," Shimour replied, "So, tell me, what are you doing there? Everyone's presence has been all over the place for a while now."

The demon took a step toward Shimour, "I can show you if you want. It's a simple spell, it's perfectly safe, and it's a pretty unique sensation."

The stealth master thought about it for a few moments, "Sure. So, what is the spell?"

"I would describe it as a step down from true teleportation. Your body is broken apart by arcane magic and then reassembled, barely a fraction of a second later, at the destination."

"Oh? Alright, yes, let me give it a go," Shimour said curiously, and Eiro quickly tapped the stealth master, activating the blink spell. Shimour's body was immediately broken apart as he was 'blinked' a few steps away. Different to the others, he didn't have to adjust to the motion at all, but was still quite surprised and interested in what was going on.

"This... it's similar to Meshi's movement arts, correct?" he asked, and Eiro thought about the answer for a few moments.

"To an extent? It has a similar outcome, but the principle behind it is completely different."

"Interesting. Can you-"

"Nope."

"You don't even know what I was about to ask you."

"You were about to ask me if I can teach you. And the answer is 'no'."

Shimour raised a brow, "Why not? We're teaching you, should you not give us something in return?"

Eiro let out a long sigh, "I already explained the same thing to Meshi earlier, but it's not that I don't want to teach you; it's just that you can't learn it. You all can use magic to some degree, but not to the level where you can actually cast a spell like this. Not to mention, this is an arcane spell, and you don't seem to have the ability to even produce arcane magic at the moment."

"... That is a fair reason, I guess," Shimour replied, "So what, if we get to a point where we're capable of learning it, you would teach us?"

"Sure, why not?"

"Hm... do you think Partax could learn it?"

Eiro thought about it for a moment, "He's not the best at casting spells, to be totally frank. He might be able to create some magic items that work of this principle, though. But you'd have to ask him. I was actually going to ask him about that later as well, but the spell is still currently in the prototype stage."

"Prototype? So it's still not complete?" Shimour asked, not even subtly looking down at himself to check that all of his parts were still attached. But Eiro quickly tried to calm him down.

"Don't worry, it's complete, but I'm still trying to make it more efficient," Eiro explained, and Shimour's curiosity seemed to grow a bit.

"Do you think you're capable of combining that spell with aspects of stealth?"

Eiro slowly nodded, "I assume that I can. I have been playing around with elemental arcane magic for a while; basically, arcane magic that was infused with elemental aspects, and I was planning on doing the same with this spell soon. I meant to do so with physical elements at first, but fusing arcane magic with concepts like stealth and presence-manipulation is certainly doable."

"Alright. Well, work on that, I want to see it," Shimour said, turning around to get ready to leave. Eiro sighed a bit, but he figured he might as well. It was something he was considering in the first place, so if Shimour wanted to indulge his curiosities, then keeping him happy with that seemed like a good reason to prioritize it.

"By the way," Jess asked, curious about some things herself, "Do you have any other spells you've been working on?"

Eiro slowly nodded, "Yes, I have been trying to create a few new spells. But 'Blink' is the most directly useful at the moment, plus one of the first ones at this tier of magic that I've been able to complete."

"So? What other spells are on your list?"

Eiro smiled lightly, "A few things. One thing I'm working on is trying to use demonology to create long-range summoning circles that are focused directly on me, as a demon. I would imbue them into medallions and give them to the kids, so that they can call on me in the case of an emergency," he started, "Then I've got a few spells for large-scale construction or repair work. While travelling around, I've seen many places that were destroyed by monster attacks, so trying to upscale some 'Mending' spells seems like a decent enough way to use my time. Oh, and then there's some spells that could create temporary constructs to do things like manual labour, simple combat, or basically whatever you want them to do. Something akin to golemancy, but different in nature."

"Wow, that... how far along are you with those spells?"

"Not particularly far, but I have been trying to focus more of my time on them. I would say that by the time my evolution is over, they should be complete."