Chapter 608: Boredom
Since the duplicate on the elemental plane of fire still had to take care of the young man he wanted to turn into his servant before entering, the version of Eiro on the elemental plane of water was able to enter into the actual library first amongst the two. Swimming through the door, he followed behind the half-spirit into the large space beyond. Light shone through the windows, illuminating the clear water in bright rays. This was a sight you could only see on the central elemental plane if you happened to find a city sunken into the ocean. This alone made it worth it coming here, to an extent.
Eiro turned his body around toward the half-spirit, “I’m going to guess that, any space I can freely reach within here, is accessible to me?”
“Yes,” they replied immediately, “There is another gate blocking you from entering the next floor. As for the test to go there, you can ask me to take it whenever you wish. The tower places no limit on how often you can attempt either. After all, we are not here to punish one’s lack of knowledge, but help guide you through acquiring it.”
With a smile, Eiro looked at the large space in front of him, the first floor of the tower, “Don’t worry, I think I’ll only be taking it once. But it might take a while until then… I’ll have a lot to read, after all.” He explained, swimming closer toward the center of the floor, turning his head to look at what was above him. As the half-spirit explained, the first floor was actually split up into multiple, due to the sheer amount of books that had to be kept here. There were five more huge floors in here, overlooking the bottom that Eiro was now floating in, similar to balconies in some sense.
“…In that case, simply let me know when you require help.” The half-spirit explained, swimming over to what seemed to be a desk beside the entrance where a few books were laid out. Without further ado, the half-spirit started reading.
With a slight smile, the Demon cracked his knuckles, excited to be able to start reading this much. After a quick glance around, he already figured out a rough order for what he was going to read, not that it mattered much, considering that he would have read all of them before long anyway.
“So… how long do you think we’ll be in here?” Nelli asked, swimming up beside him. After thinking for a few moments, Eiro shrugged, “A few weeks, maybe? Even for me, it’s going to take a while. But at the very least, the original can reform part of my body every once in a while, so I won’t have to eat or rest. Not that I have to do that much anyway, since my body is mostly made of magic right now.”
Nelli shrugged, swimming a bit through the library, “In that case, I’ll just take a look around for now… Even with the original, I wouldn’t have much to do, so I might as well stay here for now.”
“Ah, if you’re bored, you can talk to that guy at the top. Although, he seems to be concentrating a lot right now.” Eiro pointed out, and Nelli turned around confused, “Heh? There’s someone else here?”
“Well, yeah. Did you expect that wouldn’t be the case? We were told that it ‘normally’ takes a lot longer. That means that we’re not the first ones that ever got here.” Eiro pointed out, swimming up until he was at the top of this floor’s space, looking at the figure squatting in front of one of the shelves. He had a humanoid body, at least to an extent. He was a humanoid frog with deep blue skin, as large as a twelve or thirteen year old boy. As far as Eiro could tell, he was similar to the other people of this world, a mixture of a magic beast and a person, albeit of a completely different race. Eiro had seen a few differences in the people of this world, but never to this extent.
He actually looked pretty interesting, especially since such a rare being was here in the tower of books. Glancing over the frog’s shoulder, Eiro noticed that he was about halfway through the book, reading at a relatively fast pace, when looking from a normal person’s standards at least. He should be done in three or four hours at most.
“Let’s just wait until then, and have a conversation with him when the time comes. For now, I’ll get started down there.” Eiro said, quickly swimming back to the bottom to get to the first shelf. Meanwhile, Nelli let out a slight sigh, leaning back in the water as if to just take a nap in the sun shining through the windows. Meanwhile, Eiro slowly moved his hands around, pulling out a book with each of them. By simply controlling the water around him, he flipped open all four books at once, trying to glance at each page before moving on to the next. This may not be as fast as the method that Eiro had developed to read through all the books in the academy’s library, but it was fast enough for his purposes. Here, Eiro had all the time that he needed to get through all these books.
—
“Huh, so it works like that..?” Eiro muttered to himself in the middle of combat training with James and Krog, and the two of them, with heavy breaths, looked back rather confused, “What works like what?” James asked, and the Demon swiftly replied, “Agriculture in the elemental plane of water. As expected, they’ve perfected a manner of growing crops underwater that is vastly different to the ways that you might see on this plane.”
“…Are we boring you that much that you’d rather think about farming..?” Krog asked with a wry smile, but Eiro simply shrugged, “It’s not that you’re really boring me in particular, but it’s impossible for me not to become bored by most things. It’s becoming rather hard to bring my mind to capacity, especially with things like this…”
James and Krog looked at each other, their annoyance growing after hearing what Eiro said, “Got it, so you’re just bragging now?”
“That wasn’t my intention either. Listen, the training of any techniques is basically useless to me, since my body changes accordingly far too quickly. And this is nothing but basic training, a repetition of movements we have all seen hundreds of times before. You can’t tell me that this takes up a lot of your thoughts either, it’s just that your body is being strained by our methods so much that you can’t be bothered to care.” Eiro pointed out bluntly, and neither of the two men in front of him could refute this either. James placed his hands onto his hips, and let out a deep breath, “You’ve got a point. The training methods you’ve come up with are effective but simple, so I’d be lying if I said I don’t get bored sometimes. But then again, you don’t let us do much else but train lately, so that’s, like, fully on you.”
“You’ve both had some decent breakthroughs lately, so it would be a waste not to take care of that momentum. And… yeah, let’s do it like this. It might make training a bit more fun for you guys too.” Eiro pointed out, before snapping his fingers. Black arms immediately rose out of his shadow, before a being came crawling out of it. He looked at the Greater Servant, Mislan, and smiled, “This is a good chnace for you as well. Do what we’ve been practicing, and make sure to give those guys a fight. But don’t hurt them too bad, alright?”
“…Huh? You want us to fight your magic butler?” Krog asked with a wry smile, and Eiro scoffed as he shook his head, “No, you won’t be fighting Mislan himself. You know, Greater Servants like him are supposed to take on special roles in a Royal’s ‘personal army’. Regular servants are foot-soldiers, while the Greater Servants are commanders.” He pointed out, “And so, I’ve trained Mislan to take care of that fact a bit more.”
Before long, the shadows of the trees around the training area started shaking, turning darker until they were pitch-black. Soon, they split into pieces, before rising up from the ground under Mislan’s control, turning into shadow-puppets.
“Individually, they’re not too tough, but there are a lot of things that cast a shadow around here, so… good luck. I’ll continue working on another project of mine.” Eiro chuckled slightly, turning around before making his way to the manor, while James and Krog were left behind, startled and nervous, as the shadow puppets started coming closer with the clear intention of fighting until their bodies were destroyed.
“Oi… kinda harsh, don’t’cha think?” Armodeus asked, sitting at the table at the top of the stairs overseeing the training area. The Demon shrugged, as he sat down on one of the empty seats, “They wanted something more interesting as well, so there it is. But more importantly, I noticed you came outside, and I’ve been wanting to discuss something with you anyway.”
“…Is it about my stay here? I know that I’ve been holing myself up in the workshop, but ya better be sure that the time spent will be worth it!” The craftsman exclaimed with a broad grin on his face, clearly excited about whatever it was that he was working on. At Armodeus’ request, the same as the personal rooms of the people living in the manor, his smithy had become a ‘sensory-restricted’ zone. It was always a bit of a bother to deal with, but now Eiro was able to use a minor duplicate of his mind to take care of these matters for him, so he could do whatever he wanted while those places were kept off-limit. Of course, they agreed to keep it to a point where Eiro could still be able to respond in an emergency, but for the most part, those rooms in the manor were like a complete void to Eiro compared to everything else. But either way, that wasn’t the issue.
“I’ve already told you, this is your home now as well. As long as this place stands, you will always be welcome to live here however long you want. And although I am curious about what you’ve been working on, this is something else. I want your opinion on a project on my own.”
“Hm… Ya wanna pick up other disciplines of craftsmanship than woodcarvin’?” The Elder Dwarf asked, but Eiro simply smiled, “No, it’s nothing like that. Rather, I want your opinion on my plans for body-modification.”
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