"What the fuck just was that?" Krog asked without a moment's hesitation, while James and Jess were still just staring at Eiro and his rock skin. With a light smirk, the demon just started to explained, "Another ability of mine, that's what. I can fuse with spirits. Pretty neat, huh?"
"Pretty neat? Pretty. Neat?" Jess started, "It's insane, it's absolutely, completely insane! Eiro, how can you actually do all these crazy, impossible things?" The young woman asked, trying not to go mad over what she was seeing in front of her, and Eiro simply smiled as he crossed his arms and had Gondos move out of his body again.
"I don't know if I can tell you why exactly I can do this just yet, but I'll tell you as soon as I feel like I can. It's just an important ability to me that I will make use of a lot in the future, so there's no way to really avoid having you guys find out about it." Eiro started, and then stepped into the large wooden barrel in front of him, which had been basically completely ignored by the others the whole time until now.
Seemingly rather confused still, the others just followed Eiro into the large space beyond the barrel, the size of which even surprised Eiro. That was far beyond what the demon expected. There were cages everywhere, and Eiro really wasn't sure if this was a prison or a zoo. There seemed to be cages for both people and monsters, at least.
Luckily, there were more than enough places to keep monsters of any size, so all the spiders should have a nice spot here. It was a little dark and cold here, but that wasn't that big an issue as far as Eiro could tell. It wasn't like he wanted to give the spiders 5 star service. Because why would he? They probably didn't even care whether or not they sat on tiny needles or wool.
The others that were mindlessly following Eiro were really just staring at the demon and the two spirits next to him, too busy to actually process what this space was.
"Good, I think we should be able to use this place. I'll clean up a bit, you four go get the cages." Eiro said with a satisfied expression, and while Gobo immediately started making his way back through the barrel to grab the cages from upstairs, the others didn't really listen to Eiro at all.
"You guys?" Eiro asked with a light frown, "Snap out of it." He told them all, pushing some wind magic into each of their faces to get them to wake up a little.
"Hm?" Jess asked, and Eiro pointed at the barrel, "Come on, grab the cages. I'll clean up here." The Demon said, and the mage slowly looked back at Eiro, before she started actually processing the space around them.
Cages with bones and parts of formerly living creatures that were so rotten it was barely possible to even acknowledge them as anything that every lived at this point in time. And of course, there was the mere scale of this place, because this room was roughly as large as the ball room of this mansion. If Eiro wanted to, he would probably be able to capture every inhabitant of the Goblin village in here without any worries.
And soo, James and Krog also started noticing what this place was, although it was still hard to accept it. Eiro explained his theory about what this mansion actually was at its deepest level, a magic circle most likely meant to support all of the spatial spells that were obviously the most important things in here.
And at the end, James closed his eyes in thought and crossed his arms, "So you're trying to say that this room here isn't just some underground room that was skillfully hidden from people outside, but instead a space created by a Choromancer?" James asked, and Eiro quickly nodded his head, "Yeah, that's exactly what it is. This space is impossibly large, and the same should be the case with all the other extra hidden rooms." The Demon explained.
"But again, just go ahead and grab the cages, please. I'm going to clean up here, and I don't think it will be all too pleasant for you to be in here while I do that." Eiro added. He swung his hand around a little and used Air magic to increase the strength of the gust, causing thick dust to cloud up and cover the sight of everyone.
"Holy shit-" Krog exclaimed immediately, holding his arm in front of his face, and Eiro sighed lightly. He pulled the air over to the side and made the stirred-up dust follow behind, "Sorry about that." Eiro said with a light smirk on his face, but Krog just stared at Eiro with a light glare, "Oh, you're not sorry at all, are you?" He pointed out with a bit of a growl, and Eiro simply shrugged, "Who knows?"
And then, the others finally chose to do it like Eiro suggested, leaving through the large wooden barrel again to go get the cages with the spiders. The moment they were all actually gone, Eiro started pushing out deep breaths of air infused with magic out of his body to create strong gusts that Eiro could easily take control of.
He twirled and twisted the air magic around the room, making it pick up any sort of dust that was there, whether it was inside or outside of the cages, or rather, cells. After he picked up enough of it, Eiro pulled all the dust toward him, trying to make the air magic compress the dust into a small ball that Eiro just pushed into the corner of the room for now.
After he got rid of all the dust, Eiro stepped into the first cage to get rid of the remains of whatever was in here before. The scent was really disgusting, and the grubs digging through the little bits of leftover flesh weren't all too pleasant to look at or listen to either. For now, Eiro just scooped it up using water magic and brought it along with him. The same thing with the other monster or human remains. There were parts that Eiro took a little bit of interest in, like some of the monster parts that didn't decay over time, like claws and horns and such, although the bones weren't really that interesting to him.
Eiro brought everything but the things that he was interested in with him using water magic and put the actual parts that he was interest in onto one of the tables after cleaning them up, and then stepped outside of this hidden room as well. Meanwhile, the others came with the first few cages, nearly gagging at the sight of all the rotten meat and bones floating in front of them, while Eiro just sighed and made his way through one of the hidden passages to get to the ground floor.
He brought the flesh outside into the gardens and placed them down onto the ground on an extra layer of rock so that he wouldn't mess up the grass, and then tried to remove all the extra water that he just pushed into this rotten. Eiro looked at the now more dry flesh and pulled out his spark snapper before creating large flames that he pushed right onto the flesh.
Eiro proceeded to just burn it up until literally nothing was left, trying to magically increase the heat as much as he could while keeping full focus on every part of the flesh. It only took around twenty to thirty minutes until everything turned into dust, and Eiro quickly burried the rest of the dust and things that didn't really burn up that well right in front of him under the soil.
The Demon turned back around and made his way inside again, and on his way back to the basement grabbed the last cage that still stood there. He stepped into the hidden room and saw that everyone was waitingfor him.
"Alright, perfect. Let's just set these guys free inside of the bigger cages here. They don't seem to be hostile to each other, so we can probably keep each kind in a cage together." Eiro pointed out, "Oh, the only exception is this little guy." Eiro said, picking off the small wooden birdcage that the Rust Eater was sitting inside of. This one was the only one that Eiro wanted to keep with him for a little longer so that he could make it get used to him properly. And so that the slime could figure out a way to seal its monstrosity more easily. Once he managed to figure out a way for any of these spiders, it probably wouldn't be hard to do it for the other spiders either. But Eiro really just wanted to make use of the metallic thread that the Rust Eater made after being fed metal, so that's also why he wanted to keep this guy with him.
Eiro and the others started carrying the cages over to the cell-like ones and then released them into those cells.
With a satisfied mind and expression, Eiro looked at all these spiders, glad that he now had a proper place to keep them, "This is working out pretty well." The Demon said, and James lightly scoffed at the rather casual way that Eiro spoke, "Yeah, you could say that. This is mostly just insane, isn't it? I mean, how lucky are you, to have such an already giant mansion just given to you, and to top it off, it's probably like twice the size it was said to be because the guy that used to live here was a fucking Choromancer."
"Exactly, how fucking lucky are you?" Krog added, and Jess slowly squinted her eyes as she looked at the Demon.
"If there was a Luck stat, you'd probably have it maxed out..." Jess sighed, and Eiro just slightly laughed in response, "I get what you mean, really." Eiro replied, and the Demon looked at the people in front of him before crossing his arms.
"And either way, don't push it all onto luck. I did actually work for what I did a little, you know?" Eiro pointed out, stepping back through the barrel, swiftly followed by the others, "Well, either way, for now let's just take a look around at some of the other hidden rooms. I'd like to see what other useful facilities I have in here." Eiro pointed out. He went ahead and made his way over toward the stairs on the other side of the room, since this time, they were actually the quickest way to get to the nearest magically hidden room.
And Eiro just started looking through the whole house one more time, looking for these extra, magical spaces.
