Chapter 297 - Countered

Eiro stood there, his body starting to absorb Holy Energy instead of being damaged by it. The penalties that would definitely soon come to screw him over were quite horrible, but at the very least this was the perfect was to truly get rid of the Ghost.

After all, while Eiro himself became completely immune to Holy Energy, and was actually strengthened by it, the same could not be said about the Ghost. He was still damaged by it, and was slowly being pushed away from Eiro's form.

"Wh-What, but how?!" He exclaimed in confusion, "It... it's that ability again, right? That skill, that legendary skill?!" 

"Mhm." Eiro replied bluntly without any sort of care as he simply squatted down in front of Avalin, while he could feel the Ghost pulling away from his body. He was being injured, giving off clear signs that this was the case as his body was slowly falling apart, while Eiro's body itself was being repaired.

Eiro watched with a pleasant feeling inside of him as the Ghost slowly disappeared into nothingness, and died a second time.

Eiro's Health was replenished rather quickly due to the sheer amount of Holy Energy that Avalin was giving off. And on top of that, Eiro really absorbed every last drop of Holy Energy that was around him, to the extent where that flesh-flower was no longer getting any of it.

And since its whole purpose was for it to absorb this Holy Energy, the moment that it stopped getting any of it because Eiro was blocking the path this special magic, it started to slowly become damaged itself. Soon, it would die, luckily.

Eiro slowly pulled his wings around the young girl protectively, making sure she wasn't going to be hit by any of the snow, or that she would no longer have to look at the flesh-flower.

The Demon embraced the young girl and rubbed her back, trying to calm her down as much as he could. Somehow, the Demon himself was put out of his state of wrath after the realization of what was going to happen soon. For a minute or two, this was all that Eiro was doing. His health was properly filled up, and when this happened, his mana was replenished instead.

And when it became full enough, Eiro slowly let go of the young girl, having Sarius float above her so that he could stop the snow from dropping onto her.

The Demon held his hand forward and gathered a mass amount of fire magic in front of him, while Sarius did still help him refine it for this as much as he could. Sarius wasn't particularly good at refinining elements, it seemed, so it wasn't like these flames were extremely pure, but at the very least he was able to refine a large amount of flames at once. 'Quantity before Quality', in this case.

But that was fine, as long as the flames were even a little better, Eiro would save some time and the probability of success increased considerably.

He gathered the flames properly and compressed them into a sphere, circling them it around. And then, the Demon started to form the proper magic circle right around this flame-orb. It was like the magic circle encased the orb in multiple layers. The array became more complex as Eiro created the magic circle that was supposed to represent Lugo himself, combined with the right magic circle to actually do something with that artificial magic, as well as the one that was meant to get rid of the storm itself.

Eiro just had a few more minutes, so he would hopefully get this done soon. And so, the Demon grabbed the flesh-flower, and did his best to integrate it into the spell. Basically, he placed the compressed orb of magic into the center of it and tried to fold the different parts of the flower back over it, as if trying to close it back up.

With a deep breath, the Demon looked at Avalin right behind him and smiled lightly as he slowly startedto flap his wings to take off. He had to get as close to the center of the storm as he could, which in this case, was right above the royal castle.

As quickly as absolutely possible, he flew over there and looked into the sky. He flew up and up and up, and just when he only had a single minute left during which Holy Energy couldn't affect him, he threw it up into the sky.

"Three." It started to slow down.

"Two." It peaked and stood still in the sky for just a moment.

"One." The special flower opened back up.

"Now." And the spell took effect. In a huge explosion that travelled through the whole Blizzard, shattering it apart into pieces, flames travelled outward. The actual force of the explosion caused Eiro to be pushed away rapidly. Anticipating this, he actually tried to use it to his advantage. There were a few small areas where there was no Holy Energy in the air right now, or at least close to none. He had to get there as quickly as possible and find a way to reach the manor. There were some places there that would surely end up being able to protect Eiro for a while, as far as he could tell from a distance. It was his safest bet, at least.

And so, while the Demon made his way over there, he pulled out a small piece of black wood out of his treasury and pressed it against his chest. His whole body turned into that exact wood as he finally reached the right area.

[Your body has been infused with an Unholy Material. Your body will directly repell all Holy Energy]

Eiro looked at the notification with a deep frown, nervous for what was about to happen. The Demon ran his fingers through the notification anxiously. He was staying afloat right here in this spot, waiting for the clock right next to him to count down to zero.

And there it was, right as the sky cleared up right above Eiro and the sun shone down onto him.

[The strengthened effect of has ended. Penalties will be applied]

[For 6 Days, 23 Hours, 59 Minutes, and 59 Seconds, your Skill will be replaced by ]

The Demon could feel the change happen around him. On his skin, in his lungs. The bit of Holy Energy that had still been in his body was completely removed after he fused himself with the unholy black wood in his hand. He didn't quite remember the name of it, but it did come in useful. Without it, he would definitely be dead already right now.

But there was an issue with this. Eiro couldn't stay like this forever. For a while, sure. Another day, maybe. But beyond that? Impossible. After all, he couldn't keep such transformations up while asleep, and it felt like he would fall forcefully fall unconscious if he stayed up for another day or two.

The issue with this was that this whole town was now completely, or at least largely, filled with Holy Energy due to the last little while of this snowstorm that had been infused with Holy Energy.

Eiro thought about what he was supposed to do... In this state he was in right now, he would probably be fine even if he was around Avalin for a little while. After all, this wood was specifically intended to counter her Holy Energy, so the Demon hoped that it would end up helping him out a little bit, so that he could at least make sure that everything went as planned. He wanted to make sure that everybody managed to remember Eiro properly.

And for that, the Demon first made his way to the person that he figured to be most likely to remember him first, before all others would. And since he was already right above the royal castle, that was perfect. He let himself drop down and clad himself in shadow magic to try and at least hide himself slightly as he climbed through the window of Solomon's study.

In there were three people, as well as Lugo of course. Lugo immediately jumped up and walked over toward Eiro, rubbing his head on the Demon's chest, "Hey, bud... Did everything work out?" He asked as he pulled a small notebook and a pen out of his treasury and quickly wrote down what just happened, so that he knew that he already fixed everything.

Right now, James was still laying on the couch unconscious, while even Solomon seemed to be a bit whoozy. But of course, for separate reasons to each other. James, because Eiro knocked him out on purpose, and Solomon because of the spell. Or so the Demon hoped. 

"That you, Eiro?" Clark asked with a deep frown on his face, looking at the pitch-black wooden figure that climbed through the window randomly. Of course, he nodded his head.

"I am." He replied. Solomon raised his head nad looked at him, before he pulled his eyes open wide, "Eiro!" The King exclaimed, "It worked! I remember you again!"

The moment that he heard Solomon say this, some weight dropped off of his shoulders. A lot of weight, really. Now, all that Eiro had to do was search for a place that had a complete absence of Holy Energy, wait out for a week, and then figure out how to get the memories that he lost back.

But before he could do that, Solomon rushed up to the Demon, and in a manner that Eiro had never seen from this usually so composed man, he chose to hug Eiro with a smile on his face, more than just happy to see that everything worked out properly.

"But what's going on, why do you look like this?" The King asked as he realized that Eiro didn't usually look pitch-black and as if he was made of wood. And so, the Demon just explained. He told Solomon what happened, and as he recited, noted everything down inside of the book that he was holding.

Eiro looked at the King, who just stared back perplexed, "So you did that? You just shot a spell into that storm, and that's what managed to destroy it?"

"Of course it wasn't any spell. It was one that I specially created for this. It even gave me the Counterspell Skill." Eiro explained, as he slowly turned back toward the window, "But excuse me, I'll be back when I made sure that everything worked out at the manor as well."

And with that, Eiro jumped out of the window and flew to meet his children.