272 Gasping for air

Eiro turned his way toward his escort with a confused expression, "Well, I just want to get in there. How else do you think we do that?"

With a deep groan, Clark held his hand up to his face and rubbed the bridge of his nose as he pushed Eiro to the side. And without another word, he knocked on the wooden door. A few moments later, it opened up and someone came to the front.

"What'd'ya want?" The man that 'greeted' them asked in an annoyed tone, and Clark pulled a bundle of gold coins out of his bag and showed it to the man, "We're here for a business deal. What else do you think?"

"Hm... Aye, come in." With a light smile that appeared the moment he saw the light sparkle of the gold coins, the man stepped to the side and let Clark and Eiro inside, "Keep goin' till the end of the hallway. Someone's gonna ask you why yer there, so just tell 'im then."

"Thanks." Clark pulled another separate gold coin out of his bag and threw it toward the man, who accepted it with a grin, "No problemo."

And so, Clark and Eiro walked through the simple, carved-out tunnel. Clark turned his head toward Eiro, "This is how you deal with something like this. It's far less troublesome, right?"

"Huh? Oh, not really. I could have just kicked the door down and killed the guy in one fell swoop. We probably would be at the end of the tunnel by now." The Demon pointed out bluntly, "That, and we wouldn't have wasted a gold coin."

"Says the guy that gave a random junky a full bundle of small gold coins."

"I did?" Eiro asked surprised, "Doesn't sound like me."

"Really? To me, it sounds completely like you." Clark groaned as he kept leading the way. He now understood why exactly Solomon wanted an escort for Eiro. Otherwise, he would have already been killed by now, most likely.

And just as he was thinking that, they reached the end of the tunnel and found themselves in a rather large room. This was basically just like a hideout, with numerous members of some kind of gang, the one that was producing this drug in the first palce, sitting around here. But instead of looking at any of the members, Eiro's eyes were focused on a door in the back. The glowing threads were leading him that way, after all.

There were a few other people around here that had similar threads like that, but most of the people that were here were 'free' instead of being slaves.

And just a few moments later, a woman came up to them. She had pure white hair and red irises. Her skin was nearly as white as her hair. The woman looked at Eiro and Clark with a suspicious frown, "So? What're you here for?" She asked with her arms crossed and deep stare on her face, and Clark quickly started to speak, "We're just here for a big deal with you guys. We have money, and would like to work as external suppliers in another town. There any way we can meet the boss of this place?"

"...How much money we talki-" The woman said with an interested expression on her face. But before she could finish her sentence, her head blew up in numerous pieces that splattered around all over the floor, some of the other gang members, as well as Clark's face.

The escort took a step back in shock as he turned toward the Demon. But he already knew what he was about to be asked. Until now, Eiro always had a rather neutral look on his face and was speaking in a rather monotone, blunt manner. 

But now, it seemed like he was actually rather... angry. It came unexpected to the escort, so much so that even he had to take a step back. But then, Eiro took a deep breath and Clark was able to relax some.

"Sorry, I forgot that was a thing." The Demon pointed out, apologizing for the effects of \u003cThe Devil\u003e's mark that he managed to interrupt before they turned into a full-fledged status-change, "But well, let me put it blunt. I only wrote down all the memories I had of it before, so I can't say that I completely remember... but there are bits and pieces that were still left in my head. So I'm sure of it. Plenty of people in this place have the Taboo skill. I don't know how they have such control over themselves, but I am rather curious about it."

"T-Taboo?!" Clark exclaimed in confusion, "How can you-"

The moment that this whole situation was noticed by others, which actually took surprisingly long, everyone within this large space jumped up, ready to fight off the intruders.

With a smile on his face, Eiro turned around toward Clark, "Don't worry, I can deal with this myself." Eiro admitted. He held his hand forward and created a magic circle in the air, a rather complex one at that. He concentrated on every aspect of it as much as he could, and watched as it was created bit by bit within just a few moments.

"Luckily, I have this little grimoire of mine~." With a satisfied expression, Eiro squeezed the book he was holding in his left hand tightly. While he had still been able to remember this stuff, Eiro wrote down all the information that he needed for spellcasting and magic-circle creation in this notebook, together with a few examples of spells that Eiro personally thought to be rather useful in different situations. 

Of course, right now, the most useful spell would have been a combination of the spells 'Solidify Shadow' and 'Manipulate Shadow', through which Eiro could do numerous things via his enemies' own shadows.

He could turn their shadows into ropes to the them down, spikes to pierce their hearts, or simply small bumpbs on the ground that they would trip over and end up being inconvenienced. But sadly, Eiro's shadow magic wasn't powerful enough for that yet. Instead, he had to do something similar using other elements of his.

He turned the rocky ground uneven or turned parts of it into small spikes so that the enemies couldn't walk around well. Eiro manipulated the water in everyone's drinks and used them to slash at them. And of course, after slashing at them, he tried to freeze the liquids that were now covering them, if they weren't too injured to fight already anyway, to further stop them from moving around.

Of course, all these things were rather small actions, and nothing that could help Eiro finish the fight just like that, but at the very least they were helpful for the Demon.

A few people fell to the ground, some even died, and a notification appeared in front of Eiro.

[You have leveled up!]

[You have 100 unused stat points available]

For now, Eiro ignored this. He didn't really care about this. Not like he needed these extra stat points right now, so it was better to save them for when he knew how to use them properly. Eiro ran his fingers through his notification before continuing to think of a good plan of how he was supposed to kill everyone here.

"Oh, how dumb of me. I can just do this." Immediately, Eiro pushed his foot into the ground with a loud slam as cracks appeared all around him. Cracks that travelled through the ground and through the walls, and caused small rocks to drop off of those walls.

And soon, even from the ceiling, small rocks started to drop off. But every time, those rocks became bigger and bigger, until some of them dropped onto the heads of the myriad of enemies in front of Eiro. A handful were killed, once more, but Eiro soon noticed that the Escort was staring at him intensely, "Alright, I realize that you're powerful, but stop with this! Deal with this some other way, but if you keep doing this, you will cause a cave-in and we'll all die, you dumbass!" Clark exclaimed angrily, and Eiro slowly looked up at the ceiling, "Right. Forgot we were under the town."

"...That's not the problem. We'll be crushed."

"You mean that 'you' will be crushed. I have earth magic, I'll be fine." 

"Why are you like this?" Clark asked. During their conversation, nobody made the active choice to just stand there and let these two people speak like that, and they started to run toward Clark and the cloaked demon next to him.

Eiro raised his hand and prepared for another spell, but before he could, Clark pushed his hand underneath his own cloak and then rapidly pulled it back out. Eiro could see what was happening, but nobody else was able to, probably. Clark pulled out a number of thin but long metallic needles and proceeded to throw them straight at the attackers.

They pierced the center of their foreheads, and the people just fell straight onto their face after dying, considering they just had their brains pierced. It seemed like something else was happening as well, but Eiro couldn't tell what exactly it was. Maybe Clark filled the needles with mana and had it expelled when it hit the brain to really disrupt everything? After all, it didn't seem like all the needles really pierced all the way through everyone's skull, but even the big, tough guys fell to the ground just the same as all the others that were hit.

It was an interesting way to fight for sure, but Eiro didn't have much time to think about this as he continued casting his spells. But right as he was casting, he glanced at his open book and read something else that would come in useful.

"Ah... Sorry, erm... Clark, right? I forgot that I had a better way to do this. Step back into the tunnel for a bit and hold some cloth in front of your face, alright?" Eiro inquired. Clark was a bit nervous, but he did as he was told, quickly pulling his cloak in front of his mouth and nose like he was being instructed to.

Immediately, Eiro pulled out a certain small bottle out of his satchel and then started to cast a rather complex spell. The moment it was activated, with a sudden gust, all the air in the room was pulled toward the center of the magic circle. Some pieces of paper and even some bags were slightly pulled toward him for a moment, as everyone suddenly stopped and tried to gasp for air while a small ball of dust twirled around above Eiro's hand.

He pulled all the air in the room toward him just now. But not only that, Eiro was trying something else as well, and quickly poured the bottle of paralysis poison into the ball of wind, turning it into a gas that mixed in well with the compressed air. 

And then, without a moment's hesitation, Eiro pushed the mixture of air and paralysis gas back into the room. Everyone, as they had suddenly lost air without knowing about it, was completely unprepared for this event and reflexively gasped for air to recover properly. But with that, they breathed in the paralysis gas. And so, everyone but five people fell to the ground in one fell swoop. The only ones left standing where Eiro, Clark, and three enemies that had remembered to keep holding their breath for as long as possible.