Chapter 506: Splits and Fusions

Eiro slowly opened his eyes, looking at the ceiling of his bedroom. He slowly turned his head toward the side, looking at these new things that he had to bother with. He carefully stood up, but his shoulders were in so much pain that he had a tough time pushing himself off his mattress.

"Urgh... I really need to figure out a way to deal with these..." The Demon grumbled quietly, looking at his arm. He rubbed its underside a little bit, feeling it practically cave in in response to his touch, as if his arm simply turned hollow.

"This is so uncomfortable..." Eiro grumbled quietly, but Nelli quickly appeared next to him and tried to cheer him up a bit, "It's only been a month, I'm sure things are going to work out properly in the end!" She exclaimed, "And also, having those will definitely be useful, right?"

"I don't know, maybe? Either way, I'll have to adjust my martial arts, and I'll have to figure out new ways to hide them."

"I mean, can't some monsters hide extra limbs in their bodies? You said something was changing about your back similar to your arm, right? Maybe it just means that you can like, push shit in there?" Sarius suggested, and Eiro raised his brows in thought.

"...Maybe. I really don't know." The Demon sighed, as he slowly rubbed one of the extra limbs that were currently growing on his body. As it turned out, the changes to the musculature all over Eiro's upper torso weren't because something was happening to his wings, although they did change shape a little bit, but rather, the changes were happening in preparation for something completely different.

Eiro was growing two new arms. Directly underneath his armpit, the base of those new arms was currently forming. They were still quite thin and frail, but they were at least taking shape. To an extent, at least. There was something kind of wrong with the structure of the arm, on its upper side. Eiro was a bit worried that this evolution was somehow going wrong. It was initiated by that weird system window, after all. Maybe his arms were supposed to just grow stronger, and something went wrong and he grew two new arms, while all of them have this weird 'hollow' aspect to it that was clearly messing things up with the Demon's strength.

At the very least, there was one good thing about everything that was happening, though. Despite the fact that he was in so much horrendous pain at the moment, he never felt more calm. This was probably a thing because the Mark of the Devil and the Mark of Wrath were taken apart relatively quickly. He couldn't confirm whether it was truly gone yet, since he can't interact with the system during an evolution, but it certainly felt like it. Maybe part of it was just the sheer amount of exhaustion that this evolution was bringing onto Eiro.

The Demon took a deep breath and quickly got dressed. He tried to press his new arms onto the sides of his body as much as possible, and was wearing wide clothes to hide these new bulges on his torso. Bavet was able to transform them into other things to an extent, but he couldn't do that much. At the very least, he was able to turn Eiro's wings into something like a long trenchcoat that let Eiro cover everything up easily.

Soon after getting dressed, Eiro made his way to the sitting room that was mostly used, since it was near the manor's entrance, and took a seat on one of the couches. He only had a handful of classes to teach today. Luckily, it wasn't actually required by teachers to be all too active, otherwise this would be rather tough to deal with.

Eiro slowly touched his hand to his throat, trying to rub it a little bit. It was still feeling slightly uncomfortable, especially the more he ended up speeking with it. His voice didn't particularly change too much. It felt a bit cleaner, although it was quite raspy at the moment because of the irritation in Eiro's throat. Otherwise, Eiro had a much higher amount of control of his voice. His tongue had changed in structure as well, which made eating incredibly painful for a few days, letting him control it to a higher extent. Mostly, this meant that Eiro was able to produce more complex tones with his voice and mouth, and he was able to speak a lot quicker while still being clear in his pronunciation. This part will probably end up helping with the chanting of spells. The issue with that before now as that Eiro was simply unable to speed up his speech at all, and if he tried, the words would end up being slurred. But since a chant was required to be spoken clearly, it never worked out. However, now, that was different.

Eiro was able to pronounce things a lot more easily.

And also, when Eiro's voice-box was affected by his physical changes, the amount of vocal cords that he had changed quite a bit as well. Originally, one only had two vocal cords that actually produced sound. They would vibrate against each other as air passed through, creating the sound in question.

However, Eiro now had four vocal cords that he seemed to be able to produce sound with. He could control just one pair, like he did now, to produce normal sounds, or he could use both of them, making it practically sound as if two people were speaking at once. And most importantly, he could manipulate each pair of vocal cords separately from each other. So while one was producing a high-pitched sound, the other could produce an opposing low-pitched sound.

Eiro wasn't entirely sure what sort of purpose this change had, but it might end up being useful somehow... maybe the amount of vocal cords used in speech influenced how strong the effect of the charisma stat would work. But for now, it was really just a bit of a weird gimmick that he could play around with when he wanted to. Surely, a lot of other things were going to change about Eiro from now on, and everything would make a lot more sense.

--- 

"Yes." – "No." Eiro said. Both at the same time. He was saying two very different words at the same exact time. It has been two months since his evolution had begun, and a lot of things were now starting to make sense.

For one, Eiro's mouth had changed quite a bit. A week or so ago, his tongue suddenly split in half, and Eiro was able to manipulate each half like it was its own separate tongue. And then, the muscles around his mouth changed, allowing him to control the form of the left side and the right side at an incredible level of independence if he wanted to. Worst of all, the edge of his mouth split open far onto his cheeks, nearly reaching his ears. And now, as if it was a natural ability that he had in the first place, with just a single thought he could control the air in his mouth, creating a barrier of sorts between the two halves of his mouth, each keeping separate sounds in. Like this, Eiro had become able to say two different things at the exact same time.

Of course, many would say that Eiro now looked far more monstrous and horrifying than before, which was true to an extent, but luckily, another change of Eiro's body slowly ended up making sense.

Eiro's two new arms had fully grown in within the last month, and when they did, the underside of the upper arms and the upper side of the lower arms had become properly 'solid' again instead of hollow. At least for a little while. If Eiro wanted to, he could split open each of his arms, making them basically... fuse togehter. It was like someone ripped open his arms with long cuts, and was now trying to fit them together like a puzzle. Like this, his arms of course looked a lot thicker and muscular than before, but they seemed to nearly compress themselves to make them still look natural.

This same physical ability was something applied to Eiro's mouth and tongue. He could make the edges of his mouth and his tongue somewhat fuse together again to the extent where it was impossible to tell that something had changed about them.

His back seemed to be changing in a similar way, which would most likely allow Eiro to pull his wings and tail into his torso somehow. Most likely, this was an ability given as Eiro's body evolved along with the title of 'The World' being activated within him, giving his flesh the ability to fuse with itself.

However, there was one issue that came with this. Specifically, with his new right arm. The left side seemed to have evolved perfectly, and his lower left hand would just be pulled into Eiro's higher left hand, but on the right side this wasn't possible due to his prosthetic hand. Eiro had thought that maybe he would regrow his old right hand, but rather, the new hand that he was given on his lower right arm had a different form to the others when it split open.

Eiro's left hands basically just fused together, completing each other. But Eiro's new right hand simply opened up and swallowed Eiro's prosthetic like a glove. When this happened, Eiro was still able to cast spells through his prosthetic anyway, meaning that this part wouldn't change.

But there was one more thing that changed about his right hand. And this time, it was the prosthetic. He couldn't confirm it with his status, but it was as clear as day. Eiro's body had fully accepted the prosthetic as its true, new hand.