Eiro took a step forward. His willpower fought against his muscles, as his magic tried to restrain and move his body as much as it could so that Eiro didn't have to actually walk as he normally would. The card that he had just taken in earlier gave him ultimate agility; speed beyond anything that he could have dreamt of otherwise.
In general, this was perfect. With all of his abilities, the addition of that kind of speed was more than he could have ever asked for. However, as with the other cards of the pentacle suit, the side effect for this card was very direct. A direct overload.
When Eiro inherited the five of pentacles, the card of ultimate perception, from Jura, just listening to his own heartbeat was torturous. And at the time, his stats were still extremely low. Now, he had to deal with that massive boost to the value of his agility stat with the stats that he currently had.
Just a slightest movement was enough to rip his muscles due to the strained, extremely fast movement. Luckily, Eiro's body was highly adaptive, so with every step he took, he was growing and changing more and more into something that could handle the physical side effect of this card, but that didn't change just how much of a backlash there was.
The only reason why the crow was able to handle it was because it had been raised up from the ground with this card in mind, and had evolved multiple times growing along the route provided by it. The other cards of the pentacle suit had similar side effects. Jura, the bearer of the Two of Pentacles, the Ultimate Dexterity, had broken his fingers and torn the muscles around them many times.
Not to mention, dexterity didn't just affect the hands, even if that was the main effect. It also increased the control one had over their body in general. And so, when just walking, Armodeus had made his limbs pop out of their sockets multiple times, tearing sinews and ligaments around his joints.
After all, even if he had a heightened control over his body, that didn't mean that his muscles had suddenly changed. Before the dwarf was able to control his ability well enough, he accidentally stepped over the limits of his body many times, bending his arms and legs in ways that his body wasn't made to move.
But with the assistance of some healers, potions, and plenty of time, Armodeus was able to heal whenever anything happened and soon learned to live with this ability, and actually make use of it for his craftsmanship.
And it was very similar for Eiro. The ultimate agility card increased the speed at which signals travelled from his brain to the different parts of his bodies, and vastly increased the speed and explosive efficiency of his muscles.
They weren't stronger directly, but they were able to extend and retract at speeds and to degrees that they weren't able to before, doing so without Eiro being able to do much about it. The only way he had been able to avoid his muscles tearing too much was through flesh and blood magics.
Though, even if he didn't react in time, his demonic body combined with healing magic made him recover quite well.
That didn't change how hard it was to actually move though. With his muscles relieving massively explosive strength outside of what he could control at this moment, it was incredibly easy for Eiro to just fall over, even with the help of his magic. Step by step, moment by moment, Eiro moved through the manor's hallways.
He could hear some voices and snoring from other rooms throughout the building, so he really didn't want to make any noise on accident.
[Wisdom Stat has reached 600. <Instant Learning> Ability has become <Well of Knowledge>]
---
The moment that these abilities activated, Eiro felt waves run through his body. His muscles twitched and his body moved almost uncontrollably due to the influence of his heightened agility. Even if Agility was a stat that he hadn't changed directly, the massive boost in his Strength stat made it much harder to control his body.
Though, at the same time, he felt overcome with new life force pouring out of ever pore in his body, so it didn't actually cause a ton of damage to him. Eiro just tried to force himself to go limp as soon as he could so that he could recover from the damage he was causing to himself.
And, once the distraction of his body finally calmed down, Eiro was able to realize the changes to his mind. He was already vastly intelligent before this, but with that stat risen to the 500 mark, things changed quite strongly. The 'Multiple Thought Processing' ability did exactly what it was named after; Eiro was able to have multiple strands of thought.
Of course, that in itself wasn't new to Eiro. He had more than a dozen mental duplicates running through his mind, not to mention the two completely different entities that were the duplicates in the other planes. But even so, it was like Eiro's capacity for thought practically doubled in an instant.
His so incredibly busy mind seemed quiet compared to before, as if most of the water in an overflowing bucket simply evaporated in an instant.
And then, there was the 'Well of Knowledge' ability. Created by boosting his wisdom stat by nearly a quarter of his available points. Of course, with the abilities he held already, boosting his ability to remember things didn't seem the most useful right off the bat, but there was a quite massive change.
The mental library had immediately started adapting to the change of his mental capabilities, not only expanding in size, but the quality of the construction materials increased as well.
New lights were added too; instead of the large, bright candles and wisps of flame formerly lighting up the space, magical lamps were hanging off the walls and different pillars, their light reaching out into the every corner of the space. The wood was smoother and of a higher quality, and the air was filled with a sweet scent from that wood. But that wasn't all.
Every single book that represented a memory, instead of a real existing book, grew. Sometimes, it was just a few pages. But other times, it was whole chapters worth, as if his memories had retroactively become more detailed. And then, there were the changes that happened outside of the library's building.
Eiro could tell that something about the other buildings, the buildings of his past incarnations, had changed. Just glancing at them with his mind's eye, he could tell that they were simply in a bit less disrepair than they were before. Maybe Eiro should look into that later. Though, for the time being, his focus was beginning to be pulled to another place.
The large double door, about five meters tall and decorated in vast, ornate patterns, that appeared at the far end of the library.