Soon, the sun went down beyond the horizon and the forest where the daughter of winter would arrive came closer and closer as Lugo crushed the snow underneath his feet while in full sprint.
Eiro was able to start hearing the soldiers that were accompanying Solomon in the distance inside of that forest. It seemed like most of them were just lazing around somehow. The demon was a bit annoyed at seeing that, noticing how they were crushing the special plants underneath their feet or equipment. But it didn't matter much anyway, since Eiro soon made his way over toward where Solomon was. He quickly just had to show the brooch to the soldiers so that they would let him through, so it didn't take too long with the help of Lugo's running speed.
Once Eiro was able to see the King, he jumped off the Stag's back and chose to approach Solomon on foot for the rest of the way.
And of course, Solomon wasn't alone there either. Together with more soldiers, there was one person there that nearly pissed Eiro off enough to go into rage again just by them standing there. Evelyn was standing there, next to Solomon, just casually speaking to him.
"Ah, Eiro!" Solomon exclaimed, "How are you? I haven't heard of you in a while, is everything alright?" The King asked with a bright smile, and Eiro simply nodded his head in response, "Of course, I'm feeling great. More than great, really." Eiro pointed out as he slightly turned his head to the side to glare at Evelyn through his mask, while the Bloodstone Sorceress was just standing there smirking at him.
With a satisfied expression, Solomon clapped his hands together, "Alright, so, what next? What are we supposed to do? Summon the Daughter of Winter?"
"Hm? No, we'll just be waiting. She could arrive at any moment during the day. It's usually pretty late, but sometimes the ladies would come in the morning or shortly after midnight already. It's rare, but it can happen. If it does, we'll have to entertain the daughter for a while until it's time to leave." Eiro explained, and Solomon looked at the Demon surprised.
"Oh? Interesting. Then this will take quite some time, won't it?" Solomon asked. Eiro simply shrugged and looked toward the clearing where the daughter would arrive, "Yes, it will. And I suggest that your soldiers take their leave before midnight, the Ladies and their daughters are never too keen on seeing things like weapons."
Hearing Eiro say this, Evelyn looked at the Demon with an intrigued expression, "I see, so you wish to be alone with the King of this country for a whole day? I think that may be a bit... risky, wouldn't you say, Mister Chief Guard?" The sorceress asked as she turned toward the man in heavy plate armor standing behind Solomon, who was just glaring at Eiro with a slow nod.
"I must agree, your Highness, we cannot allow this. I am aware that you may trust him, but we cannot simply abandon you in such a situation." The guard said, and Eiro lightly shrugged, "That's fine, as long as you don't carry any weapons on you and don't directly approach the Daughter yourselves, I may be able to convince her." Eiro pointed out, "But I really do suggest that you don't touch your weapons after midnight. If our guest is anything like her mother, then you'll be frozen to death before you know it."
The Guard slightly ground his teeth, and Eiro just looked back at him with a blank expression. He didn't want to bother with those guys. They were just too annoying right now.
"Do what he says. After midnight, I do not wish to see any sort of staffs, swords, or other weapons from any of you." Solomon said in a commanding tone, and the chief guard slowly nodded his head, "Yes, your Highness." He replied reluctantly, and Eiro simply turned around and slowly squatted down onto the ground with a smooth, quick motion.
"Excuse me, then. I'll go ahead and take a look to see if I can find some extra offerings we need." Eiro suggested, and slowly let his mana seep into the snow to use his sensory abilities to see if he could find it. But seeing that, Solomon slowly squatted down next to Eiro as well, and with a slight laugh said, "And how are you going to do that while sitting down like that? Come on, don't be lazy, Eiro. We don't have too much time, now do-"
"Found them." Eiro replied immediately and pushed his body back off the ground, "I wasn't lazing around, Solomon. It's a special technique. If you'll excuse me. Please take care of my idiot for a while." The demon asked of them, and Solomon slowly looked past Eiro to see who he was talking about. Meanwhile, Eiro could just hear Lugo bellow smugly behind him while side-eyeing Gondos, but the Demon just pat the stag's back as he made his way into the direction of the first offering.
"I was talking about you, moron." Eiro pointed out, and slowly pushed his foot into the snow blow him. He pressed the snow together with a bit of a cracking sound, as Eiro was used to from snow, but now he quickly froze it to give himself a good enough footing for this. Once he had that footing he was looking for, Eiro took a deep breath through his mask and second-step infused, or 'essence infused' how Eiro came to call it over the past two weeks, his body with air magic.
Of course, he was making use of some snow that stuck to his cloak through the very light snow on his way here to make sure that the strong winds wouldn't make the cloak float around like that. And with Eiro's incredibly light body, the Demon dashed away faster than most here could actually properly realize. It seemed like even Evelyn was kind of surprised, something that Eiro was more than just glad to see.
The demon made his way deeper into this relatively small forest and swung his three of swords around him, quickly gathering all the roots, mosses, and flowers that he needed as offerings for the daughter of winter.
It didn't take long until he found everything that he needed, but just when he did, something else bothersome happened. It was pretty small, goblin-sized, but a Frozen Monstrosity appeared. "Ah... Back home, it's basically impossible to get through a solstice or equinox without a Monstrosity or two appearing, but really? Even now?" Eiro groaned loudly, and quickly turned around again.
He ran into the direction where he sensed the Winter Monstrosity, which luckily was right on the other side of where all the soldiers had gathered. Like this, Eiro could just deposit all of the offerings he gathered with Solomon.
Without Solomon or even Evelyn actually noticing, Eiro jumped over their heads and used air magic, combined with ice magic to make the snow fluffier, to catch the drop of the materials. Then, the demon swung across the branches and the logs of the trees and their wet, frozen surfaces and soon reached the place where the monstrosity currently was.
But it seemeed like he wasn't the only one that noticed it.
"Monster!" one of the soldiers exclaimed and pointed his spear toward it. They were completely outside of the town, so they had to be prepared for monsters in the first place. It seemed like they didn't even notice that this was a special sort of monster. And as such, Eiro figured this would be a good chance to observe the current state of this town's guards and soldiers, and just squatted down on one of the branches.
Eiro didn't want to trouble Solomon, so he would jump in before anything actually happened to them, but for now this should be a pretty good way to pass some of the inevitable downtime. As far as Eiro could tell, this one was a smaller version of the first Monstrosity that Eiro encountered and killed. It had white fur on its back, two small white horns on the top of its head, and was somewhat ape-like.
But it really wasn't any larger than a goblin, so it probably wouldn't be an issue. At least that's what Eiro thought at first. But then, the Monstrosity sloppily swung its fist toward the spearhead pointed at it. Without even touching it, the metal froze up and shattered the moment there was any sort of contact, due to the sudden extreme change in temperature and most probably strong blow directed against it.
The demon really hadn't expected something like this to happen.
"It's a lot stronger than the ones I was used to, huh?" Eiro muttered quietly, and Nelli slowly stared down at the monstrosity, "Yeah, it definitely is. Which doesn't really make sense, since it's just a daughter of winter here. Although..." Nelli looked at the figure of the magically-occuring monster with a light glare before remembering something.
"Ah, I think it happened once before! There was one of them that was really extremely fast one year. Jura wasn't able to catch it in time, and it disappeared together with the Lady of Summer again. Then the year after that, the same one came back. It still had a scar that Jura gave it on its body. But it was a bit stronger, according to Jura... It might be that they simply get stronger over the years if they aren't exterminated."
"Well, that would explain it. It seems like these guys know nothing about this." Eiro groaned lightly, and then jumped down the tree. It was obvious that these guards wouldn't be able to handle this, so he had to intervene.
The monstrosity just slightly punched one of the soldiers and sent him flying a couple of meters away. Eiro of course skillfully dodged the body and made sure that the soldier really survived before looking at the figure of the monster in front of him.
"Oh... It looks kind of cute up close like this." Eiro pointed out and slightly leaned forward toward it. It swung its fist once more, but Eiro simply caught it with ease.
The onlooking soldiers and guards, who saw their colleague being thrown away like he was a pebble, simply stared at Eiro in astonishment. Eiro slowly squatted down and looked at the figure of the monster with a light smile underneath his mask, all the whilst slowly crushing its fist in his hand.
"Ah..." The demon laughed, "Your horns are going to be a good addition to my collection." He muttered, the effect of his voice strengthened by his Charisma stat-ability. Not only the onlookers got shivers, but even this monster did. It was far weaker than Eiro was, after all. And it knew that.
And so, Eiro let go of this monster's crushed fist, and then slowly pulled out his dagger, pressing it into the basically petrified monster's chest with ease.
