Demon's Virtue

693  Living Rock

James slid over the ground, dodging the heavy slam of one of his opponents. Clicking his tongue, he stared at the figure in front of him, trying to keep track of the ones closing in from the other end of the hallway.

They were monsters of living rock. At first, he thought they were something like Golems or Automatons, but no; he could hear breathing, and they reacted differently to sudden attacks compared to the kind of beings that have a predetermined course of action placed into them. But even so, that didn't really change anything about the situation that he had found himself in.

All of a sudden, without any sort of warning, he found himself in this dome-like room. There were small openings all around where these rock monsters were rolling out of, before fully standing up. When rolled up, they barely reached up to his hip, but like this, they actually were comparable to Krog in size. The only saving grace was that they were slow, so James was able to get away from them well enough, but that also had its limits. There didn't seem to be a stop to them, so soon enough he'd have nowhere to run anymore.

These were practically the worst conditions he could ask for. Nothing to climb up onto and nothing to hide behind. And worst of all, he was surrounded by enemies that were possibly the worst match-up for him. Being made of stone, the usual tactic was to break them with heavy impacts; shield bashes, clubs, that sort of thing. Not only would they blunt, crack, or just shatter any blade that one used against them, but that blade would barely do any damage in the process. James was a speed-based, close- to mid-range attacker; his attacks were comparatively light, but many. In situations like this, he would usually be the one to get the attention from the enemies, while either Jess, with some earth magic, or Krog, with some general heavy attacks, would actually attack the enemies. But he was alone now; he had to figure something out.

One of the rock monsters swung its boulder-like fist at his face, while another was aiming at his back. A few more were acting as walls to his side. Usually, or rather, just a year ago, he would be dead now, but the current James was different. Bending backward with almost snake-like, liquid movements, James kicked off the ground to jump into a backflip. But just a moment after, he interrupted the backflip and placed his feet onto the rock monster that attacked him from the front, kicking off from there once again. At the same time, he also held onto the head of the monster behind him, flipping over the monster's head, starting to hold onto the ragged surface of its back while making himself as small as possible.

James hated to admit it, and he certainly would never say this in earshot of Eiro, which also meant that he has never said this out loud before in the first place, but Eiro's incredibly unusual method of training was insanely effective.

Eiro had everyone in the party take on different low-grade classes. Considering that the party was already somewhat capable, leveling them up was fast and painless, especially in the beginning when they were just low-grade classes adjacent to their main class, usually meaning delving into different beginner specialized classes. For example, Jess became an apprentice mage for different elements, and since she had already completed the path of a proper four-elemental mage, she rushed through those fairly easily. James took on earlier versions of classes like 'Tracker' or 'Cat Burglar'. These were fine, since they were already directly related to things that James was already good at in the first place. They only gave low stat benefits, only getting a new stat point ever few level-ups, if they were lucky, and even the class abilities were often quite useless. But they compounded. The speed at which they gained new stat points was faster than before, since they could rush through the levels incredibly fast. And the abilities which seemed useless at first ended up showing their worth as their effects gathered up.

And then, Eiro had them get seemingly random classes. Of course, they needed the talent for them to be able to get them in the first place, so they ended up being useful, but James had to spend a lot more time than he would have liked as an apprentice 'Acrobat' or 'Dancer'. However, these classes, even more so than those that directly related to the classes they were aiming for originally, boosted their strength considerably. James' flexibility, especially after learning Dance skills and styles, and starting to use these abilities more and more, became absolutely ridiculous. Even his prosthetics became easier to manipulate over time, as James' ability to control his own flesh and blood increased. It was to the point that James even forgot that he even had these prosthetics. Before, he had acted like they were good enough, just because he could move around properly again, but after Eiro came to him and told him that he was barely seeing what his prosthetics had to offer... he got serious about them.

 Over just half a year, through Eiro's ridiculous training methods, James had risen from a C-Rank to a true S-rank. And it wasn't just the class-abilities and related skills that made James stronger; just his raw muscle strength and flexibility was so much more than before. All his physical stat values skyrocketet. It was to the point that the current him was probably physically as strong or maybe even stronger than the Krog from before the training started, even if his own stats were the same as back then. With the muscles he had now... the muscles that the 'Chaos Manipulation' brought to him. He was unstoppable.

James kept waiting on the monster's back for a good opportunity, and he didn't have to wait for long either. Even if they weren't pre-programmed golems or automatons, they still weren't particularly smart. One of the rock monsters swungs its fist at James, who waited as long as he could to jump off the monster he was hanging onto. The monster struck and with that shattered part of the other's back, while at the same time shattering its own hand. And there, their 'insides' were revealed. But to James' surprise... what he saw inside was somewhat like the body of a goblin. It was covered in a thin layer of slime that seemed to have practically fused the stone to its body.

So this was why James had never heard about this monster before. It wasn't 'natural'. Eiro had warned the party that this was a possibility here; that the Devil had used the 'Key' to create new monsters altogether, taking a quality from one monster and giving it to another. And clearly, the Devil hadn't been lazy, considering how many there were.

James pulled out one of the vials attached to his belt, and a translucent, softly glowing mass of magic appeared above the cork. It formed a needle and stabbed into the bottle, as the liquid inside of it was pulled out. In just a second, James had created a dozen of these needles, and he quickly threw one at the exposed back of the monster in front of him, and then one at the newly-exposed hand of the monster that he had tricked into attacking its comrade.

Of course, the needles created from his unique ability hit and stabbed through their skin, falling apart after their contents were pushed inside of the goblins' bodies. Of course, the one whose back was hit collapsed first, but the other one quickly followed as well.

"It's Eiro's own creation, after all," James grinned. If it was like this, then he did have a chance to beat these guys after all. Tricking these monsters into taking each other down wasn't easy by any means. But if the base for them were goblins, then they weren't intelligent, and all their senses were incredibly restricted due to the rock that was covering them. They could probably just vaguely realize where things around them were, and maybe they hadn't even been able to tell that the other monsters were dying one by one. If they had, then even stupid monsters like these would have stopped at some point.

However, the problem was still their sheer amount. James had to move constantly, and barely had the opportunity to properly think and plan things out more thoroughly. He had to improvise, think on his feet, and constantly create new supplies of poisoned needles so that he could take the monsters down. Until the floor was completely covered in the dead monsters. At some point, there were none left alive. Whether it was because the entrances were now blocked by corpses, or because there were simply no more monsters to come at him, but James finally had the time to breathe. With a broad grin, James ran his hand through his sweat-drenched hair, "And that's how you do it."