Chapter 560: Handle

Eiro took on his proper combat stance, holding his dagger in one hand and leaving his other hand free, so that he could use the combination of the dagger combat style and the hand-to-hand combat styles that he had learned through the puppet.

He also of course quickly released all the things that he did in order to withstand that one attack from Tin, and instead moved everything around perfectly for a fight, concentrating his life force in a way that its shape itself seemed to imitate that of his muscles. Tin properly stood up and pressed the pillar, his weapon, into the ground with an annoyed expression.

"Alright, let's start." Once more, Tin rushed at Eiro, swinging his pillar at him once more. But this time, Eiro bent his body backward, letting the pillar pass by right above his head. The Demon quickly dropped himself down at the right moment, pressing his free palm onto the ground while kicking away at the pillar with both his feet.

This way, the momentum of the pillar was averted, away from what Tin had expected. While the Goliath was trying to slow the pillar down to make up for this avertion, Eiro jumped back onto his feet, practically gliding over the ground to reach his opponent. He was moving with an agility practically impossible for the sort of armor that he was wearing. Or at least, for the sort of armor that everyone thought he was wearing.

The dragon scales had a metallic tint to them, so it looked like Eiro was wearing just simple metal plate armor. However, despite that metallic tint, the scales were incredibly flexible, and the parts of said sclaes that had been turned into something leather-like by Armodeus were as easy to twist and stretch as a paper-thin sheet of rubber, so this armor didn't restrict Eiro's movement in the slightest. Rather, after fusing it with his body to an extent, it even supported the Demon's movement, helping him accelerate and decelerate by hardening and softening at specific times.

Eiro was already able to move his body in utterly unrealistic ways, and the armor made it appear even more ridiculous than before. The Demon twisted his body around Tin and carefully, but quickly, slid his dagger across his skin. It wasn't a deep wound, but Eiro's goal wasn't just to beat Tin immediately anyway.

The Goliath tried to turn around, jerking his arms back to try and hit Eiro with his elbows to at least get him away, but that only gave the Demon the chance to grapple onto the Goliath's arm. He slid his hand around his upper arm and jumped up, wrapping his legs around Tin's underarm. With some well-applied force, Eiro pulled on Tin's arm and pressed onto the joint where the arm met the shoulder from underneath, before slashing his dagger across a part of Tin's exposed shoulder. Immediately, Tin's arm went limp as his arm simply slid out of its socket, loosely hanging by the side of his body.

"What the-?!" Tin yelled out as Eiro jumped away from him, pushing off of the upper part of said injured arm.

And for this, Eiro took a step back, since he wanted to see Tin's reaction properly. The Goliath slammed his pillar into the ground between him and Eiro as a sort of shield, and grabbed his arm, ready to push it back into its socket. With a slight crackle and pop, it was back inside, but after just trying to slightly move said arm, it slipped back out again. Confused, Tin tried again, but the same thing happened.

"I would stop trying to do that, or else you're going to permanently use the ability to use that arm." Eiro chuckled slightly, and Tin looked at the Demon with a deep glare, "What did you do to my arm?!" 

"I cut a few specific strands of your muscles, fractured part of the bone around that arm's socket, and disformed part of the cartilage around there as well. It can be healed easily with even basic healing magic though, so don't worry. I mean, as long as you don't damage your arm too much." Eiro pointed out with a slight grin on his face, and Tin stared back confused, "You did that in just a moment?" He asked, before his smile slowly turned into a grin, "You're fucking insane, just like that friend of yours."

Eiro chuckled slightly, "Insane?" With a slight smirk, he locked eyes with Tin as the Goliath could feel goosebumps form all over his body, "You haven't seen anything yet, buddy."

In response to this, instead of becoming more angry like even Tin himself thought, he became excited. It was similar to why Hijar had become more infatuated with the Demon once their fight was over back then. These two were meatheads. They became angry quickly, they stuck to their values simply because their emotions told them to. But the moment that these emotions told them something else, their opinion would shift instantly. Eiro used to be like that as well, and he still was to a certain extent.

Due to the mark of wrath, Eiro became angry the moment something sparked that emotion up in the slightest. It was why Bavet even had to invent a way to distract him, to make sure Eiro didn't rampage upon the slightest disrespect.

But now that he got rid of that mark, Eiro had been trying to get rid of these habits. Of course, he was still a person that became angry rather quickly. He was a Demon of Wrath in the first place, after all. Amongst the seven sins, that was the one that could be found in him the most. But it was nothing that couldn't be changed with some mental fortitude and effort, especially now that there was nothing messing with his mind in that way all the time.

Back then, when Eiro saw someone as annoying, or as a threat, then he wouldn't really change his mind about others. But ever since he befriended Hijar and Biril, it became clear that this wasn't really the case anymore. He was trying to be more compassionate about things like this. Of course, if Eiro didn't find a way to make Tin look past those biases that he had developed throughout his lifetime, he wouldn't go easy on him, but it looked like that wasn't the case. Meatheads couldn't be reasoned with, but their opinions could still be changed. They could still grow. And as long as Eiro could make Tin be accepting of other Goliaths that were outside of the clan structure, then he would become a useful ally, or maybe just a tool, in the future. The fact that he could help Rudy learn some more things about goliaths was a good thing, after all.

Rudy was sold off when he was just seven years old, so there was no way that he was going to remember that much about the clan.

Either way, for now, Eiro had to make sure that Tin enjoyed himself. He looked at the Goliath, and threw him a belt from his treasury, "Here, use this to make sure that arm doesn't bother either of us anymore."

The Goliath grinned and picked the belt up, using it to tightly tie his arm to his torso, so that it wouldn't swing around in a bothersome way. But even then, he could still only use one arm to fight now. Not that he seemed to mind too much. Tin pushed his fingers into the grooves of the pillar and practically hooked them in, before he started swinging it around, just as easily as before.

"Lemme show you a nice trick there, small one!" the Goliath exclaimed, "This is something that I didn't want to show so early, but it's clear that you deserve to see it!" 

With a broad grin, Tin swung the pillar forward, but it was completely out of range. He twisted it around his body again and again, until suddenly, the speed of the pillar increased at an incredible speed, too fast for the regular person to even see. However... Tin wouldn't be able to hit Eiro with that from there. Was he planning on throwing it? No, that didn't seem to be the case at all. His fingers aren't twitching like he's about to let go. Rather-

Eiro's train of thought was interrupted as he realized something. A certain connection. The shape of the pillar. Something started to make sense.

The reason why Krog had awakened to his Giant Blood while hitting Tin. It was like some sort of ripple, because Tin had also awakened to the blood of his giant ancestors. And what he used to fight wasn't a specially-crafted pillar. It was a part of something much, much bigger. An object passed down generation by generation by the goliaths, something left over from the giants themselves. 

It was a handle. The handle of a sword wielded by one of the giants. Eiro could feel some power flowing through that object, and whta was about to happen became clear.

The Demon felt it on his skin, the air shifting around a large object that was approaching him. The whistle of the blade rushing toward him at a high speed. Immediately, Eiro twisted his body around. Infusing himself with air to that extent would be too slow and could end up having an adverse effect  with something at this size and speed, so he had to react physically, which was quite hard as well.

The slash was quick, not quick enough for Eiro's mind not to realize what was happening of course, but too quick for Eiro's regular physical reaction speed. The signals from his mind wouldn't reach his limps fast enough. So instead, Eiro manipulated his mana, something that he could do basically as fast as his mind could think.

Eiro had absorbed the magic of quite a few magic stones into his body, including that of the lightning element. If that blade hadn't suddenly moved so unrealistically quickly, then Eiro would have been able to do this all with ease, but now, he had to use lightning magic to signal every single muscle in his body separately to move in a specific way.

And just like that, Eiro jumped into the air just high enough to not be hit by the invisible blade created by Tin, twisting around through the air.

As the blade passed by, Eiro noticed some more aspects of this weapon. If he had been hit by it, it wouldn't have killed him, despite slicing right through him. It was there, but it also was not. It was a sort of magical attack, something that was going to get rid of a huge chunk of life force despite leaving Eiro's body mostly intact, except for a large cut that was going to form all around the cross-section where he would have been hit.

But even so, it was a crazy attack. As Eiro landed back on the ground, and Tin stopped the movement of his pillar, the two looked at each other for a few moments. They were the only two people here that really knew what had happened.

Sure, this was an attack that could have killed Eiro if he didn't have the amount of life force he had, but obviously Tin had a rough idea of how strong the Demon was, and as such expected him to be able to dodge, or to at least be able to defend against it somehow.

But even so... it was still an attack that nearly could have fatally injured Eiro. Slowly, Eiro could feel something happen to his own face. His light frown was turning into a broad smile.

It's been a while since he's had a fight as exciting as this.

Eiro touched his hand to his chest, and manipulated the chaos of his armor, as he spoke again, his voice clearly showing how much he wanted to continue this fight, "Sorry, I don't think I'll be able to hold back anymore..."