Eiro sat down in front of these four Hobgoblins with Leon on his lap. The young boy was currently practicing to only extend one of his two auras outward, the 'Love' aura. Of course, this practice also included weakening the aura. Surprisingly, Leon was able to control this incredibly easy, a little too easy as far as Eiro could tell.
"You're a little genius, aren't you?" The demon concluded, and Leon just looked up at him with a broad smile, "Hehe." He laughed, and Eiro looked forward at the Hobgoblins who were completely and utterly focused on Eiro and Leon due to the boy's aura.
The Demon pointed at himself and said "Eiro." multiple times, trying to make the Hobgoblins say what he did. Surprisingly, it actually worked out pretty well, and the four of them soon said Eiro's name. Whether or not they understood what it meant and that it really was Eiro's name was to be debated, but at least this was a start. Then, Eiro pointed at the Hobgoblins one by one and made them say their own names until they seemingly made the actual mental connections and one after another learned the 'Beginner Common Language Comprehension' skill.
Of course, the last amongst the bunch was Clypt, the one who Eiro expected to be something of a meathead amongst them. It would probably turn out to be a slight bit of a bother to teach him especially. Either way, now that Eiro knew a few more words in the goblin language, he could finally get started properly. One by one, Eiro repeated the words he had been reading in the Goblins' notification whose actual meaning Eiro knew by now. First, he wanted to make them understand what their status said, so he went ahead with that.
At first, Eiro wasn't entirely sure if this would be as easy as he hoped it would be, but as heard Gobo speak a couple of times already, he was able to somewhat learn the pronounciation of the Goblin-Language's Letters.
He made the Hobgoblins repeat the words in their language once first, and then in the common language. They would do this a couple of times before moving on to the next word. And soon enough, rather after the first word, a notification appeared in front of the Demon as well.
[Beginner Goblin Language Comprehension Skill learned!]
With satisfaction, Eiro ran his fingers through the notification to make it disappear again, and then continued on teaching the goblins. The speed at which the notifications telling Eiro about the fact that this Language Comprehension skill leveled up was actually rather annoying if Eiro had to be completely honest.
Either way, for now, Eiro just continued teaching these Hobgoblins how to speak. It took a while to get them to even get the gist of it, but their levels all rose relatively quickly. It seemed like because they knew the Goblin Language Comprehension skill, they were able to learn the common language pretty quickly as well. After all, a lot of parts of a language could just be transferred knowledge-wise, so it might have been easier for them to learn than Eiro expected.
The same seemed to be the case with Eiro himself, as his Goblin Language Comprehension skill level rose very quickly. Of course not as quick as his Common Language Comprehension skill level did after Avalin used that 'skill boost' on him. Actually, that did remind Eiro of something.
"James." The Demon exclaimed as he slightly turned around, and the Light Elf came back out of the cave a few moments later, "Mhm?" He asked with a slightly annoyed tone, and Eiro just looked at him curiously.
"Back then, where did you get that Spell Tome? The one that you, Thomas and Avalin bought together? The skill boost from that was pretty useful." Eiro pointed out, and Jess looked at the Demon confusedly.
"Wait, skill boost? You got your hands on a spell tome with the skill boost spell in it? How?" Jess asked as she moved her sight over toward James, and the Light-Elf shrugged.
"Bought it at Zaragon's. That piece of shi-..." James started, although he soon saw Leon sitting on Eiro's lap and then sighed annoyedly, "Eh, sorry... But well, that guy did have pretty useful things like that. It was technically illegal to buy stuff from him, but it didn't only happen once that we ran into guards or nobles that were also looking for Zaragon's door. And not to 'arrest' Zaragon or something." James explained, and Eiro sighed out annoyedly. It would be bothersome if that place was the only one you could find a tome like that. It would definitely be more than just useful to get his hands on more skill boosts.
But then, Eiro remembered something important, "Wait, the things that Zaragon had didn't fit a theme or anything like that... Did he just pick up random things to sell them?"
"Not really, I heard that he can't ever leave the room he's in. Apparently he has a basically infinite amount of money on him at all times or something, so he could just always buy up anything that people had to offer." James explained, and Eiro slightly sighed.
"I get the situation. It makes finding and killing Zaragon a bit more bothersome, but at least there's good news in there. It should be possible to find spell tomes like that, or at least someone that can make spell tomes with skill boost spells in them." Eiro pointed out.
It seemed like James was a little confused at what Eiro meant. Of course the second part made sense, but the first part didn't really, "What do you mean it's going ot be a bit more bothersome to find and kill him?"
"Well..." The demon started, "When [The Sun] attacked the capital and we were caught up in it, part of the building was completely obliterated. I remember the view from back then. Everything after that is a bit hazy because that's just how it is when you use the ace of cups, but I still remember the rough position of the room itself. The door led me back to where we entered, but... Zaragon's room or domain or whatever was inside of the castle, I'm pretty sure. It seemed like some kind of side-tower, so it wasn't hit by the attack directly, but it was still hit by the attack a little at least."
After a bit of thought, James seemd to want to try and remember the view from back then as well, but actually miserably failed to do so. Whenever he tried to remember what happened then, he just started to panic and lost control of his breathing.
"Eiro, listen, I-"
"Don't." The demon said immediately, "You've had that expression every single time while you've been somewhat reminded of that time. You keep looking at me similarly anyway, but it's unbearable when you're like that. If you want to say something, do it after you calm down." Eiro said with a light glare.
And so, James simply quietly turned around, leaving Eiro quite annoyed. Honestly, he didn't want to hear it. He didn't want to hear any sort of 'apology' from James. Sure, he didn't necessarily have a grudge against James from back then. They surely had their reasons to sell Eiro, and especially James seemed to have reasons to hate him like that. But even then, Eiro was positive that he would get absolutely pissed off the moment that James tried to apologize for acting the way he did, which he surely wanted to do just there.
He didn't know why, maybe it was because of the mark of wrath, or he just had some kind of grudge that he didn't want to admit. Either way, if Eiro were to accept any sort of apology, it wouldn't be one that was voiced out of a mixture of panic, fear and guilt. Rather, Eiro would prefer it to have the apology wait until he could actually trust that James was genuine about it.
In order to ignore the awkward stares from Jess, Eiro just looked forward at the Hobgoblins to keep teaching them a bit of common. Vent, the soon-to-be wind mage, in particular learned rather quickly. It seemed like he would overtake Gobo pretty soon, actually. It kind of made sense, since Gobo most likely wasn't directly taught like this, but just picked up parts of common after being around his owners for a while.
Eiro was a special case, not everyone would be able to make such connections as quickly as he did. Either way, Eiro tried to bring their commong language comprehension to a similar place as Gobo's for now. They were still at roughly a third of Gobo's skill's level, so they would have to keep going for a day or two more to properly get to the same point Gobo was at.
Luckily, the Hobgoblin's attention didn't wane in the slighest due to Leon's 'Love' aura, and Eiro could keep teaching them for the whole day like this. But his plan wasn't to just teach them language. At some point, they were able to understand Eiro to an extent, so he could get started with teaching them how to use their weapons tomorrow. Eiro had been working on simple wooden training weapons while he was teaching them the common language. A large sword and tower-shield for Clypt, a bow for Sagit, as well as a regular sword for Glat. The biggest issue was what he was supposed to give Vent and Gobo.
With Vent, Eiro just chose to make a simple small wand with a wind magic stone set into it that Vent could practice with. Eiro didn't have a lot of wood that could be used for staffs or wands with him, so he didn't want to use too much of it.
And when it came to Gobo, it was simply that Eiro wasn't entirely sure what he should make him. Just judging from Gobo's size compared to other Hobgoblins, it was obvious that he wasn't supposed to have talent for being an assassin or scout, which one might expect from someone with affinity for the darkness element.
Rather, to Eiro it seemed like Gobo would simply become capable of being a rather unique combatist as long as he properly made use of his darkness ability. And just to play around with the idea, Eiro made a combat-pole for Gobo. He would probably make a few more different weapons to see which Gobo had the most innate talent for, and then they would see if they could figure anything out.
In the end, while Eiro was gone, these five had to take up the role of protecting the Demon's precious magic stone mine, after all.
