"What"s up with you? You"ve been in such a good mood lately... We"ve, like, never seen you laugh this much." Arc pointed out with his chin placed onto the table, and Eiro simply looked up at them and shrugged. "Ah, I see, so you don"t want this Demon here to be happy?" He said with a sad expression and quickly looked away, pretending to be incredibly hurt, while Avalin looked at him with a purely worried expression before standing up on his lap and hugging his head tightly, while looking over toward Arc.

"Dummy! No be mean to daddy!" She exclaimed, while the young man himself just looked back with a wry smile. "Who the h.e.l.l taught you that, Eiro?" Arc inquired a bit confused, while Eiro just looked back and scratched his cheek. "That"s how Tom from the Guild teases his kids... It seemed fun, so..."

"Is such a s.a.d.i.s.tic sense of humor part of being a Demon, or part of being a Father?" Sammy asked as she dropped down onto a chair next to Eiro, while the Imp just shrugged.

"I remember my first ever action-based stat-gain being Intelligence... When I was walking in a group of Imps and wanted to spit on the one behind me with the help of wind for fun... So I can"t answer that." Eiro explained, and the others looked at him confused before Arc turned around and looked at Rudy with concern in his eyes.

"Yeah, is it too late to take the "Father" thing back now?" The boy asked, and Rudy just looked at him with a nervous chuckle as he placed the food down on the table, not answering, and Eiro turned over toward Arc again.

"Actually... Why do you all think of me as a father..? Didn"t I do a horrible thing to you back then? I basically kidnapped you, didn"t I?"

"And saved us from becoming War-tools for the Kingdom while you were at it, and then a couple of days after meeting us nearly died while saving us one after another from horrible beings. I think that makes up for it..." Sammy pointed out, and Eiro raised his brows with a slight smirk as he nodded his head.

"I... I see..." He muttered quietly, before slowly turning toward the food in front of him and looking down at Avalin. "Go on, sit down and eat, alright?"

"Okie!" She replied as Eiro placed her down onto the ground, and immediately rushed past her chair, while Leon had already been a good boy and sat down... although he was probably just too tired to really do anything else... Maybe Eiro should have him checked out for that sometime.

Either way, instead of sitting down on her chair, she ran right over toward Jura"s bed. "Grampie Jura, wakie wakie! Dinner time!" She exclaimed as she pulled on the blanket on top of him to somehow wake him up, and Eiro slowly placed his fork down and stood up, quickly walking up behind her to pick her up, although he did so with a quite bitter expression.

"Come on, Jura is tired... He"ll eat later, alright?" He said, and while Avalin looked at Eiro surprised, she soon nodded her head. "Okay..." She answered, looking back at Jura as he was just laying there, before the Imp sat her down inside of her chair and pushed it closer to the table.

"Eat now before it gets cold." He said and slowly stepped away as he rubbed his hand through Avalin"s hair for a moment, and then sat down on his own chair again, and just quietly started to eat. Although in the end, he really didn"t feel like eating in the slightest. After that, he felt more like throwing up everything that he had eaten over the past five years. Just make everything that happened in that time disappear, so that maybe he had some more time left to study under Jura.

But Eiro knew that he couldn"t just act like this again. He said it to Jess out there, he wouldn"t just leave the children behind, meaning that he also couldn"t leave them to deal with this alone. Eiro had to face this, and that started with not letting a situation that he couldn"t control, control him in turn.

And then, after Dinner, Eiro cleared the table and cleaned everything up, while the children went to bed a bit earlier than normal. It seemed like they were pretty exhausted. But Eiro didn"t join them, no, instead he just took one of the chairs from the table and set it down right next to Jura"s bed, before pulling out one of the books he was reading at the moment to keep going with it.

But in the end, he couldn"t really concentrate, and in the middle of the night, when he tried going over the same line for the fifth time after miserably failing, he just closed his book down and pushed it back into the invisible shelf in front of him.

"Status."

[Name - Eiro][Race - Ice Blue Collector Imp][Level - 9]

[Health - 24.250][Mana - 42.250]

[Strength - 50][Const.i.tution - 50][Resistance - 20]

[Agility - 64][Evasion - 50][Dexterity - 53]

[Intelligence - 90][Wisdom - 85]

[Perception - 90][Willpower - 30][Charisma - 20]

[0 Stat Points Available]

[Skills]

-[Intermediate Common Language Comprehension][Level - 4]

-[Apprentice Stealth][Level - 71]

-[Apprentice Butchering][Level - 89]

-[Apprentice Water Magic][Level - 99]

-[Apprentice Air Magic][Level - 67]

-[Apprentice Fire Magic][Level - 97]

-[Apprentice Holy Energy Resistance][Level - 24]

-[Apprentice Concentration][Level - 67]

-[Apprentice Meditation][Level - 78]

-[Apprentice Carving][Level - 99]

-[Apprentice Trapmaking][Level - 21]

-[Apprentice Trading][Level - 31]

-[Apprentice Botany][Level - 47]

-[Apprentice Dagger Mastery][Level - 94]

-[Apprentice Exhaustion Resistance][Level - 6]

-[Apprentice Ice Magic][Level - 36]

-[Apprentice Zoology][Level - 78]

-[Beginner Sickness Resistance][Level - 95]

-[Beginner Overeating][Level - 29]

-[Apprentice Cooking][Level - 12]

[Blessings]

-[Blessing of Winter"s Lonely Naiad]

"One more Level for Carving, and I actually won"t be an apprentice anymore, huh?" Eiro muttered quietly, and then just turned his head over toward Jura as he was peacefully laying there in his bed.

"Seems so..." A voice said as if out of nowhere, also Eiro knew who it was once the first few drops of water formed above Jura"s chest, "Let"s hope he"s still going be there to see it, huh?" Nelli asked as she was fully formed, just floating above Jura sadly.

"So he really is..?" Eiro asked quietly, and Nelli just quietly nodded her head, before the Imp formed a tight fist, "And you can"t do anything at all? Is there no way to somehow... Heal him back to his teenage years?" He asked, but Nelli just chuckled and shook her head.

"If there was, then this would be a very different world, wouldn"t it? No, Aging is neither injury nor disease... It"s simply a part of life." She explained, so Eiro just slowly nodded. "I figured so..." He whispered quietly, before he soon looked back at the Spirit.

"You... don"t age, do you?" Eiro asked, and Nelli quickly shook her head. "Not for the past 300 years, at least, no..." She pointed out, and the Imp looked at her with a slight frown, asking her a question with a serious expression as if it was the most important thing that anyone had ever been asked.

"Does it ever get easier? Seeing people you care for just die like this?" Eiro asked, and Nelli just looked back at him with a blank expression. "Does it get easier to kill?" She asked, and Eiro shook his head.

"It"s never been hard for me, so how can it get easier?" He pointed out, and the spirit just slightly laughed.

"Fair enough. But in the end, the answer is still the same... No. It doesn"t get easier." The Naiad explained, and Eiro just looked over toward Jura.

"Do you know how long he has left?"

"If he doesn"t wake up again, maybe a day or two. But if he does wake up... He won"t be sleeping anymore after that." Nelli said, "Just please stay here for him, alright? I know he never told you what he really thinks of you, but in the nearly fifty year I"ve been Contracted by him, I"ve never seen him take in any one person, not to mention seven people at one, six of them being children, and one of them an ignorant Demon."

Slowly, Eiro nodded his head in response, slowly standing up from his chair to go to the front door, before Nelli flew up right next to him in a panic.

"Wh-What are you doing? Didn"t I just ask you to stay with him?" She asked, and Eiro nodded his head with sad smile. "Don"t worry. Just in case he wakes up again, I want to have the Project he left me with done. I will be right in front of the door, so just get me if you need me."

"Oh... alright..." The Naiad replied, before the Imp pushed his feet into his shoes and quickly stepped out of the door. It wasn"t all that cold yet, but his breath did still form a slight mist in front of his face.

For now, however, Eiro just ignored everything that was going on around him, and simply stepped back up to the covered wooden statue, and swiftly started to continue working on it.

And that was really all that Eiro did for the rest of the night. He stood there in front of the wooden statue and continued to form the mist into an as realistic representation as he could, and when morning came, it seemed like was done.

But for some reason, it didn"t feel like that was enough. Not nearly enough, so he went over this wooden Zaragon"s body once more, improving on his skin some more, adding whatever he could to make it seem as realistic as possible.

It just had to be as neat as possible, as perfect as possible. Eiro constantly just explored those few minutes of memories that he had of Zaragon in his mind, and pushed whatever he could into this one representation. He made it eery, he made it creepy, and he made it horrifying, all packed into a neat, outwardly possibly harmless package.

The first set of sharp teeth hidden behind Zaragon"s just so slightly opened lips, that Eiro could only carve out using a set of special tools that he had never even really used before. And then there were of course details that one might not really notice on first glance, like the outline of a grinning, vertical mouth hidden underneath the suit, just pressing against the cloth waiting to be unleashed.

And then, Eiro finally came to the eyes.

Out of the same material that he created the mist, Eiro created thin, curved ovals out of it and placed them into the currently empty eyesockets, making sure they couldn"t budge at all. But even then, the eyes weren"t done. There was still that single white circle in the center of each eye. And they weren"t just any normal type of white, it was as if they were radiating, glowing. In a dark room without any source of light, those two circles would probably still stick out despite the impossibility of that situation. And there was little that could really do such a feeling justice. But there was one thing amongst them that he knew about, the thick, wood-like stem of a relatively rare flower that was growing around here. For some reason, it seemed like a quite fitting plant, as its name was called "Deathblossom".

Eiro had not the slightest clue why it was called this, but he did know that it simply fit, because to him, Zaragon was the personification of Death.

The list time he saw one was about a five minute walk from here... It would probably fine if he left for ten minutes, right? Just to be sure, he did go inside and let the others know where he was going, and even chose to ride on Lugo"s back to do so.

It really wasn"t that hard to find the flower, considering that it was pitch-black and grew around Birch trees. And after cutting some of the stem off, Eiro quickly chose to return on the back of his Familiar, glad that he would be able to finish up the Wooden Statue before Jura"s pa.s.sing.

And there it was in front of him. On his way here, Eiro had already finished up the two rings that he would place in the eyes, and he could tell it would turn out a simply perfect addition to this fake Zaragon.

As he took a step on the block of wood that he was using to actually properly reach this Statue"s head and placed the two rings into the eyes, he was actually overcome with a bit of a shudder at the aura this statue was giving off.

It was nearly as if he was really standing in front of Zaragon. Although there was one exception to that.

He couldn"t directly remember Zaragon"s head flying off its shoulders after being cut by the Dagger a masked stranger was holding in his hand.