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Chapter 284: Sudden Encounter

Eiro and Sarius were exchanging their mana with each other in order to form their contract, and a few moments later, the Demon and the Spirit finished this task up.

“Aight, so what’re we gonna do now? Will ya teach me right away?” Sarius asked as he slowly rubbed his scale-covered neck with his slight claws. Until now, Eiro really didn’t get a good look at him, or at least he didn’t really try to anyway.

He had a similarly charcoal colored skin as the Salamander King, although Sarius’ body was covered in a lot of red scales. His legs, arms, and back were all covered in them. Most of his torso was just that charcoal-skin, though. His body was constantly enveloped in some flames as if he was wearing them as a sort of cloak himself, and on top of his head he had flaming hair like the King. And then, in the center of his forehead, there was a single small horn poking outward.

After a bit of thought once Eiro got a proper look at Sarius’ body, the Demon looked down into his notebook while actually trying to figure out the next part of the plan, “Hmm… Not instantly, no. First, we need to get back up to the surface. We need to meet with Solomon and tell him about what happened. Right?” Eiro asked as he turned his head over toward Clark, who slowly nodded his head, “Mhm, I’d like to have a word with him as well. No offense, but I would have appreciated to be told that I was escorting a Demon.”

“Wait, aren’t escorts supposed to be stronger than the one they’re escorting? Or else they’d be useless? And I mean, you’re pretty useless, ain’t’cha?” Sarius asked with a light smirk as he floated over to Clark, who just grumbled quietly and crossed his arms, “No, an escort doesn’t have to be the stronger one. He just needs to make sure nothing happens to the escorted person and lead the way. If I hadn’t been here, I’m pretty sure Eiro would have just ended up destroying this whole underground space, and probably crushed everyone and everything. Including that Letter. So all those Vulcani would have died.” Clark pointed out as he slowly started turning around, “No need to thank me.” 

But Sarius just shrugged, “Cool, didn’t plan on it.”

“Sarius.” The Salamander King said in a clear tone, and the Spirit slowly turned around, “Yup?”

“Behave.” 

“Y-Yup…” Sarius replied nervously at the pressure he experienced from the King’s voice and glare alone, before the Salamander King turned toward Eiro again, “I must thank you. For many things. If you ever need my aid, I will do anything in my power to assist you.”

Eiro nodded his head, “Thanks. The same counts the other way around as well, but I doubt there is much that I can really do for you anymore.”

“That is not true. You are a powerful young man, with a bright future ahead of him. I am sure you will do great things, and reach great heights.” The Salamander King said, “I am positive that in the future, I will feel nothing but pride when I think of our meetings. But now, I must say farewell, until we meet once more.” Slowly, the King turned around and was clad in flames immediately after. And once those flames disappeared, so did the Salamander King.

And now, only Clark, Sarius and Eiro were left inside of this space. But somehow, Eiro still had a weird feeling hidden inside of him. As if he had completely forgotten about a small important detail that would end up making him regret something very, very soon.

Just as the Demon thought about this, the exit was violently broken open as a woman stepped into the room. For now, Eiro was able to recognize her. It was from that one time that Eiro was at the organization. She was the one that ended up giving Eiro his quests. And at that point, he realized that what happened to him must have also affected those at the organization. So they must have been informed of all this somehow, right?

“Ah, you are that… Exclamation mark from the organization, right?” The Demon asked surprised, and the woman frowned deeply as she stared back at him, “That I am. But I don’t know who or what you are, how a monster managed to enter the organization without our knowledge, and why you would dare break one of the few rules we set for you.” The woman pointed out. Eiro slightly tilted his head to the side in thought, but he couldn’t remember any sort of rule no matter how hard he tried to.

So, he simply asked, “What rule are you speaking about, exactly?”

With a deep sigh, the exclamation-mark explained, “Numbers may not blindly kill Letters. As you did so, you will now be exterminated.” The exclamation mark said as she stared at Eiro, simply snapping her finger without waiting for Eiro to do or say anything else. Her ring started to glow up a bit when all of a sudden everything around Eiro completely froze. The Demon had seen this before. Time had been stopped through an artificial artifact the organization created. If Eiro could get his hands on that… Then that would be more than just useful.

With a deep groan, the woman took a step forward toward Eiro, “Alright, let’s get this over with. But really, how did a Demon join the organization? And how does he know me…?” The Woman asked, and Eiro just looked back at her. He couldn’t really use any other part of his body though. On the other hand, he did figure out something else that he could make use of. Since somehow Eiro’s mind was unaffected, he was able to still make use of his mana, which he spread out to the part that he figured the exclamation-mark would touch in order to ‘exterminate’ him.

And just like he thought, she did just that, and placed her palm onto the Demon’s forehead. But right from there, Eiro was able to interact with the ring on her finger with his own mana to activate it as well. The moment he did, he pushed his hand forward at the quickest speed he could ever possibly manage. As this was completely unexpected for the exclamation-mark, she of course didn’t expect this. As she didn’t come here without other sorts of countermeasures, however, something like a small barrier was formed right where Eiro tried to hit her. Usually his hand would have shot straight through her and probably killed her by breaking her spine and ripping her organs apart, but now, she was just shot straight to the other side of the room and broke a few ribs.

“Could you not do that? I’m kind of busy, you know? If you’re fine with it, we can pretend this never happened. You let me work my way up within the organization, since my rank already increased after I killed that Letter anyway, and then I won’t kill you after I take over the organization’s top-ranks. How’d that sound?” The Demon suggested as the exclamation-mark slowly pushed herself off the ground while she couldn’t really catch up with what just happened.

“B-But… D-Don’t be ridiculous, I-“

“Ah… So you won’t? That’s fine too, I can just kill you right here then. I don’t mind. Your dumb way to enforce this silly rule seems to be something you guys added in the first place, so I can just end up killing whoever I want and work my way up the ladder nonetheless until you can’t do anything to me anymore. Right?”

The exclamation mark stared back at Eiro with a deep glare as she held her hand forward. It seemed like she was trying to cast a spell to shoot at the Demon, but Eiro didn’t really care. She was casting it through the ring on her hand, so it wasn’t affected by the time-stop at all.

But it didn’t matter. Exclamation-marks weren’t really all that strong compared to Letters. Rather, they were exclamation-marks because they were too weak to become letters, but too strong to be simple numbers. At least that’s what Eiro concluded so far.

And he was positive that he wouldn’t lose to someone that couldn’t even become a letter. He pushed his feet into the ground and pushed forward, and before the woman was able to cast her spell, the Demon hit her into the stomach again.

Once more, the barrier stopped the Demon’s rather blunt, simple attack. As the woman had already been standing with her back against the wall, she wasn’t really pushed back that much and Eiro could keep hitting her as the force travelled through her body and into the wall. It would most likely crack into pieces once time continued, considering how often Eiro was hitting this organization-member right here.

But no matter what he did, the barrier just wouldn’t break, even when the woman inside of that barrier became close to falling unconscious due to the blunt impacts of force that she still experienced despite not feeling the brunt of the attack.

“P-Please st-stop it…”

“No thank you.” Eiro replied bluntly as he continued to pummel the exclamation mark further and further. It was a bit troublesome that Eiro forgot about such an important rule… Otherwise he really would have let the Salamander King finish the Letter off. But on the other hand, there was really something weird going on, and Eiro didn’t know exactly what it was.

The tag that he had updated and gave him a higher rank after he killed the Letter. He was now actually Rank 2, and all that he had to do was kill the rank 1 to be able to become a Letter himself, officially at least.

But why did the tag even update if he broke a rule like that? Shouldn’t it have just bluntly kicked him out instantly? Why would they sent such a weak enforcer after someone that literally managed to kill a decently-ranked letter? Probably, they just never had to deal with this since Letters weren’t killed by Numbers all too often anyway, but the rule was still quite annoying. It just didn’t make sense to Eiro.

In the end, he thought about it over and over again, until he came to a conclusion that he figured made a fair amount of sense.

“Ah… The organization is nothing but a branch of something bigger, isn’t that right?” Eiro asked bluntly, and the exclamation mark stared up at him and shook her head, “Wh-What are you t-talking ab-about..?”

“Hm..? You don’t know..? Well, if I remember in a few days, I guess I’ll investigate this. For now…” Eiro started and stood up properly before placing his foot onto the woman’s head. He increased his force more and more, and the barrier was glowing underneath his soles. And the moment that the barrier shattered into pieces, so did the woman’s head as Eiro already forgot what exactly he was just doing. 

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