Chapter 481: Hidden Island

"...Right... Wait, what? Come again..." Jess muttered with a wry smile, "The sage? You... you used to be... Wait no, you 'are' the sage..?"

"...Yes, and no." Eiro replied with a sigh, "It's complicated, I don't even know if it's really the case in the first place. It would... explain a few things, but mostly, this is just a guess. Either way, I know that something weird happened to the person that my soul comes from, and it certainly seems like my soul belonegd to some special person before. But effectively, it doesn't really matter in the slightest. I mean, I'm also going to become the Hero and Monster King at some point. If I wasn't convinced that it would rip my very being apart the moment I did so, I would even try to take the aspect that turns Avalin into the 'Holy Priestess'."

After Eiro's explanation, James couldn't help himself but laugh a bit, "Kinda funny, isn't it? That guy you fought before... That Merlin. He wanted to overcome the Sage, and as it turns out, the Sage doesn't really exist anymore." He pointed out, and Eiro raised his brows a bit, "I guess that is kind of funny... In a weird and sadistic way."

Eiro slowly sat back up, and looked at his friends, "I think I might just need to sleep for a while. Just to... get some of my energy back or something. Either way, I feel incredibly exhausted, and I don't want to suddenly lose control over the island while I'm controlling it. That would probably lead to a bit of a catastrophe." The Demon pointed out, slowly standing up from the chair he sat down on earlier, "Call for me if something happens."

"Alright... So we're staying another night, then?" Krog asked, and Eiro shrugged, "Yeah, I guess so. Make sure to prepare everything for those that want to leave already, and if they want to tell me something, they can wait until I wake back up. I'd appreciate it if you only wake me in case of an emergency." He explained, telling them what they should do in case some of the monster leaders came by. Since Eiro was the only one that could even slightly communicate with them, the others would probably have a bit of trouble dealing with them. 

Eiro walked up to one of the broken windows and climbed out, before quickly flapping his wings. With a storng gust of air left behind where he stood, he rose into the air before just sitting down on top of the castle's tallest tower. It had just so slightly collapsed in on itself, so there were some flat areas. Eiro spread out his wings and laid down on the roof, staring up into the sky. It's been a while since he felt like this. The last time he actively remembered was probably sometime during his last evolution. Since Eiro had the exhaustion resistance skill, he could go for days without feeling any sort of exhaustion. That didn't mean that his body wasn't somehow getting exhausted from what he did, sure, it happened more slowly, but at the end of the day Eiro's body would still get the repercussions for not sleeping.

His organ function would slow down considerably after about a week, and his movements would become incredibly sluggish, even if he barely felt tired at all. His body would start breaking down despite that skill. The skill was incredibly effective in holding back most of these things, but even though that was the case, after absorbing the second spirit gateway, his body simply ignored the existence of that skill. Rather, he felt even more exhausted than before.

The Demon took a deep breath, slowly helping out the smooth, calm flow of his blood in his veins and the air in his lungs. Eiro's muscles relaxed bit by bit and his wings were loosely laying on top of the tiles here on the roof.

Eiro enjoyed the fresh air, and chose to just sleep for a few hours.

--- 

It was early morning, and the light of the dawn's sun hit Eiro's body. With a loud groan, he sat up on the roof, his wings still laying somewhat flat on the tiles, as if they still wanted to keep laying down for a while longer.

But even though that was the case, Eiro had to really get up now. It seemed like everyone was ready to go, either to leave this place or to come along to Skyhart. While stretching his body, causing his bones to slightly pop in a satisfying manner, hte Demon leaned forward and dropped down the roof. His wings flattered above him, and only firmed up when Eiro was a few meters above the ground. He flapped his wings just once, creating an updraft strong enough to cancel out all of his movement perfectly when his feet were a few inches off the ground.

Once he stood there, Eiro folded his wings together and pressed them onto his back, walking into the building in front of him.

"Morning." Eiro groaned loudly as he walked into the room filled with all of these people, most of which immediately stopped what they were doing, just sitting down on the ground.

"...What are you doing?" The Demon asked with a frown, "Stand up and... keep doing what you were doing." He told them, a 'command' that they all followed without a moment's hesitation. Which made sense... they've been trained into this sort of behaviour for a few years now. Once he made sure that everything here was going alright, he started to make his way to to the town's four different bridges, where he quickly set up a few long-distance magic circles so that he could split off the connection of the island to those bridges all at once. On his way around town, he made sure to meet with some of the different monster leaders to make sure that they were fine, giving some food to the ones that had no way of feeding themselves right now.

Overall, this took just a few hours, which was long enough for everything else that needed to be prepared to be finished up. Eiro made sure to send the group of people that was leaving off with a carriage or two as well as some extra provisions. And while they were all traveling down one of the bridges, Eiro conjured a large mass of water in front of him, and poured out the content of the ace of cups into it as he was doing so.

He mixed everything together, trying to push as much of the ace of cups' liquid out of the chalice as he possibly could, until he finally had enough water to at least get started. Of course, he didn't have nearly enough to create a cloud large enough to cover the whole island. But he didn't have to, luckily. All he needed to do was make sure a layer of cloud stuck to the underside of the floating island, that was all. He would create some other clouds to add more thickness to everything, and he hoped that the base layer would be enough to cause the effect of hiding the floating island from the people of this world while it was floating through the sky. 

Once he was done, Eiro started flying around underneath the island, spreading out a thin film of mist in a way that was like creating a magic circle to make sure it stuck in place. And after that, Eiro spread streams of cold and hot air all around the island's underside as well, causing the actual cloud-patterns to form.

And then, Eiro quickly made his way into that crystal cave, which is where he hoped to connect the base part of this huge, albeit simple, magic circle to, to make sure that the clouds would keep sticking to the island.

Once he was inside, he activated this huge magic circle, and could feel more than half of his mana being drained out of his body all at once. It felt even worse than having his whole body covered in Holy Energy, since he felt just so... empty. It was a rather violent process, due to the mass amount of mana that was needed to activate and maintain this spell for now.

But once this was done, Eiro flew out of this cave again, and took a look at the island from afar. The barrier spell had worked, and a half-barrier was now surrounding the island, covering basically just its underside to conserve mana. If he had made a full barrier, he might be unconscious right now from how much mana he lost all at once.

And then, Eiro chose to just add more clouds onto the barrier, which Eiro created to pull this sort of configuration of liquid and air onto itself. It was a complex process to create this magic circle, but at the very least, all Eiro had to worry about was keeping this up right now for a few hours, and then he could get rid of the ace of cups' liquid, since they would be hiding amongst the ocean of clouds above them. That way, Eiro could just easily gather a mass of clouds around the island anyway, protecting them from being seen too easily. And by then, Armodeus might have been able to figure out the specifics of creating an artificial artifact for the ace of cups, so that he could produce enough liquid, even if it worked worse than right now, to cover the island more easily.

Now that Eiro was done hiding this island for now, there was only one thing left to do before he would try and steer the whole island away from this lake. He would say goodbye to the lonely naiad, and then blow up the bridges that currently held the island down.