Chapter 548: Giant River Carp

Eiro was laying in his bed, when he suddenly got a signal from one of his servants in the middle of the night. He woke up and immediately jumped out of bed.

"H-Huh?" Ariella slowly woke up as well from the Demon's movement, and looked at him confused while half-asleep, "What's wrong? Did something happen?"

"No, not yet. There's just a bothersome monster ahead that I was just warned about, so I'll take care of it real quick and then I'll be right back." Eiro explained, as he swiftly walked out of the cabin. And of course, it was easy for him to hide himself in this dark ship, and even outside, since it was the middle of the night. Sure, there were some lanterns that were lighting up parts of the ship, but Eiro immediately travelled through the area by just diving into the darkness that existed there otherwise.

At a spot where nobody could see him, Eiro quickly jumped over the side of the deck and dove into the water. He spread his wings out and searched for the place where that bothersome monster could be found. From what Eiro could tell, it was just an oversized fish monster that had grown to this size by feeding on as many fish as it could. It probably wouldn't be that big of an issue even if it did attack the ship, but Eiro really didn't want anyone to worry. He wanted the others to think of this trip as something calm and relaxing, even if Eiro had to sacrifice a little bit of sleep for it.

The Demon shot through the water and soon found the monster in question. There were some other smaller of this monster's variety around, so Eiro figured the easiest way to deal with this was to just freeze part of the water that he was swimming in and create projectiles to shoot at these monsters. Soon, the water was stained in a deep red, and there were only a few fish monsters left. Eiro figured that, since he was awake right now anyway, he could just try to play around for a little bit.

Eiro, after he had taken out all the others, pulled the largest and most dangerous of the fish monsters toward him. He pressed his hand into the front of its head, and tried to turn this monster into a servant, although he only used a small amount of mana as a conduit. He wanted to make him into a 'lesser' servant. What he tried before with those humans right underneath his tree was trying to turn one of them into a 'normal' servant. He didn't adjust the base output of this new ability at all, so it quickly overwhelmed that human.

Slowly, the body of the fish monster started to shift and change. Its scales slowly turned more reflective and gemstone-like, while two small horns sprouted at the front of its head. Its two fins that were by the side of its body soon split up to give the fish four fins instead.

Generally, its color turned away from that orange-brown color that it had before, over to a red and blue pattern that was spreading all over its body.

[You have successfully turned the {Giant River Carp} into a servant]

Eiro lightly smiled, and slowly rubbed his hand over the monster's forehead, "Alright, I guess you won't be any trouble anymore. That should have powered you up quite a bit as well, so... Just follow the same command as those other guys. Follow the ship inconspicuously and fend off any monsters that might seem bothersome. If there is something that you won't be able to deal with easily, let me know." Eiro told his first actually living servant. As it quickly understood what Eiro was telling it, it started trying to swim down as deep toward the bottom of the river as possible. It seemed tough for it to move like that though, considering that it was just as large, if not slightly bigger, than Eiro himself. But as long as it felt like it could follow along, Eiro didn't care.

"Oh, and... hide yourself." The Demon said, trying something that he was curious about. Usually, Servants not only imitated their master's appearance, but also part of said master's abilities, specifically the ones inherited by the specific major arcana card that they possessed. And in this case, Eiro hoped that this carp received part of Eiro's stealth-oriented abilities, like fusing himself with the water around him to hide himself and move faster.

As soon as Eiro spoke the command, he could see that the color of the carp's scales changed. They weren't as shiny anymore either. They were now a matte, dulled brown that fit the surrounding mud. It didn't seem like the fish actually fused with anything, but this was good enough, Eiro figured. There were still plenty of fish here in the water anyway, so at least this guy wouldn't stick out anymore.

Since this issue had now been dealt with, the Demon quickly shot out of the water and dried himself off before he even touched the wood of the deck again. Casually, while hiding himself in the shadows on top of hiding his presence directly, he made his way back to his room.

Tired, and ready to immediately fall back asleep, Eiro dropped down next to Ariella.

"Everything go well?" She asked, not having been able to fall back asleep during the time that Eiro was gone, and the Demon simply looked back at her, "Yeah, it's fine. Just an oversized river carp. I turned it into a servant, so it's going to just follow the ship and take care of anything else in the water together with the other servants." Eiro replied, and Ariella slowly wrapped her arms around the Demon's neck.

"Hm, alright then... But you know..." She muttered, "Since we're both awake right now anyway..."

Eiro slightly smirked, as he wrapped his four arms around the woman laying next to him, and pulled her in for a kiss.

--- 

The next morning, Eiro and Ariella woke up and got ready for the day. Eiro quickly cleaned the both of them up with some water magic, and then they got dressed and made their way outside for breakfast.

However, while they were walking toward where they were going to eat, the Demon noticed something. One of the crewmembers was walking around quite nervously, as if something unexpected happened. Or... as if something expected didn't happen.

Eiro slightly glared at the man, trying to figure out what was going on. For now, he just went to meet the others anyway, since he could hear everything going on on this ship anyway on top of the fact that Eiro had shadow servants stashed inside of the shadows of every crew member here. While Eiro prepared breakfast, he listened in on the conversation that the nervous man had with another crew member.

"It's gone..." He muttered, and the other man whispered back, "What's gone?"

"The... the thing... it wasn't there, it was supposed to be there tonight."

"...What?"

"It was supposed to be there, right? Didn't that guy say it was supposed to be there?" 

"Were we... were we ripped off? Did he scam us or something?"

The conversation of the two crew members continued along those lines. Sooner or later, it became clear that they were speaking of the fish that Eiro had taken care of last night. Apparently, someone had the ability to manipulate it, and brought it to that specific point in the river probably to attack this ship. They were planning some sort of robbery or theft amongst the chaos that the monster carp was supposed to create.

"Don't they know who is on this ship right now..?" Eiro muttered with a wry smile, not understanding how they could be so careless. For now, Eiro really didn't want to bother with taking care of those two, since he didn't want his children to worry too much. He wanted them to be able to relax on this trip, without the fact that someone was trying to rob them distracting them. That asshole from last night already soured the mood enough anyway.

If those two were going to try something else during this trip, Eiro would take care of them then, but he wouldn't do anything right now. It was the last full day trip anyway, since they were going to reach Baram sometime during the night, so they really wouldn't have another good chance to try anything anyway.

As Eiro and his group were eating breakfast, and the crew members were eating their own rations, this time even more annoyed that they had to eat this since the captain's right hand man didn't allow them to eat anything but that food. And sometime during this, the captain made his way into this room, looking for a certain member of Eiro's group.

"You are Armodeus, the king of craftsmen, correct?" He asked, approaching the elder dwarf with a practically blank expression.

"That I am. Is that an issue?"

"Of course not." The Captain replied, "I was just wondering... I looked at the work you did on that young man's carriage, and I wanted to know if-"

"No." Armodeus replied immediately, and the Captain looked back at him confused, "I did not even finish my question."

"But I know that ya wanted to ask me to upgrade yer ship. And considering how ya treat your men, and how a certain one of your men treat us, I'm not goin' to even think about doing any work on this vessel."