Eiro was holding a book in his hand and was reading through it, just like he normally was whenever he didn't have anything else to do, before he slowly turned his head over toward the side to his bed, where Gobo was currently resting with his incredibly high fever that should have already killed him long ago.
Bavet had to lay in a special container because he ended up becoming hotter than even boiling water. Eiro noticed that his own temperature had risen relatively high during the time of his evolution this time around as well, just that it still wasn't this bad. It was probably a natural result of the boosted evolution, then. Both Gobo and Bavet were physically weaker than Eiro, so they were most likely more easily affected byt things like this.
But that didn't matter, since the two of them were already cooling down again. The three days were nearly over now too, and it would only be a few more hours until then.
"It's been a while since you've just been able to sit around like this without doing anything major, right? Even while you locked yourself away during your evolution you were constantly meditating to try and make use of your changing body." With a relaxed tone of voice, Nelli appeared right next to Eiro. The Demon flipped the page over to continue reading.
"So?" He asked, and Nelli just shrugged, "Hey, I'm not complaining. I'm used to things being slow like this anyway."
"Fair enough. Jura was never the kind of person to do all too exciting things all the time."
With a qucik nod, Nelli agreed with Eiro, "Exactly, so all the things that we've been through over the past little while is more than enough for me. You can stop causing a ruckus everywhere you go now."
"It would honestly be great if I could, Nelli. But the both of us know that that is not really the case." Eiro smirked slightly, and Nelli loudly groaned while rolling her eyes, despite the fact that Eiro could obviously very well see her right now. Well, that was probably the exact reason why she chose to do so in the end, just to annoy Eiro a ltitle bit.
For the next few hours as well, there was not much happening. Thinking that he should try and get everything that he needed to do before infiltrating the organization over with, Eiro made his way into the basement. Gobo and Bavet were already doing a little bit better than they were before, and they probably wouldn't die from this anyway.
On the other hand, the one that Eiro was going to visit now may be dying quite soon, or at least he should be pretty close to dying. Eiro stepped into the dungeons and made his way over toward the cell that John Hawley, Eiro's prisoner and torture-victim was in.
Over the past few days, Eiro had done his best to speed the process of extreme hunger up as much as possible. One, he gave him just the absolute minimum amount of water that he needed to survive. Well, a little less than that. He just gave him enough so that he wouldn't die of thirst before going mad of hunger. Eiro tried his best to somehow put some of John's organs into a state where they would be working too much instead of practically shutting down to use as little energy as possible, because in this way Eiro could make John's body use as much energy as it could and make John more hungry even quicker.
Within the first day, John's organs were about to fail because he didn't have enough energy to keep them running. Then, Eiro let them slow down and fed John just the tiniest bit while manipulating his mana and life force to make sure he was still extremely hungry, but not dying just yet.as
And since then, Eiro made sure to keep him in a state that was practically bordering on death, while trying to continuosly convince him to just eat the flesh.
When Eiro left him be yesterday it seemed to be working pretty well, but now he just had to make sure that it really did work out completely. Of course, Eiro also made sure that he couldn't suddenly start eating his own cheeks or tongue or something. And in a pretty simple way, at that.
For one, Eiro pulled all of John's sharp teeth that he could use to cut into his tongue and scratch flesh off them and his lips. And besides that, Eiro also added some neat little pieces to John's jaw, replacing some others with wood just like with his hands, to make sure that he couldn't move his jaw in any way while Eiro was gone and somehow crush his cheeks and tongue with his other teeth.
It was somewhat unlikely that he would resort to that, but you never knew what might happen. And so, Eiro slowly made his way into the cell and pushed his three of swords into the wooden parts of John's jaw, practically taking subtle control of it. That way, Eiro could stop him whenever he noticed any sort of intention of John trying to hurt himself. Of course, so that John could properly speak, and eat if he intended to, Eiro also pushed some wooden teeth he made into the small 'sockets' he already prepared inside of John's jaw, so that he could easily put them in and take them out.
"Johnny, Johnny, what will I do with you? You're breaking my heart, Johnny? Do you think I genuinely enjoy this?" Eiro asked with a bitter tone in his voice, while John just stared back at Eiro with exhausted, practically dead eyes.
With a bad attempt at creating any sort of tone to come out of his throat, John started to speak. If Eiro didn't have his special hearing, he may not even have heard that John even tried to say something.
"Hung... hungry... I need... need food... water... so... thirsty... hungry..." John muttered quietly while staring at Eiro, and soon proceeded to try and push his wooden teeth into his tongue. Eiro would have tried to stop him, but it seemed like he didn't even have the strength left to do something like that.
"Guess I worried needlessly." The Demon sighed, and soon stood up to turn around. Slowly, the Demon approached the three corpses laying in front of the cell, which have been rotting in completely uneven ways. The organs, which were barely alive in the first place and partially rotting already, were basically already a mush and were filling the insides of the corpses with gas that was making their bodies bloat and disgusting scents pour out of every orphase of their bodies.
Slowly, the Demon ran a knife over the skin of their legs to get especially big, juicy pieces of their flesh off of them, and then brought it over to John.
Eiro squatted down in front of the starved young man and held the flesh right in front of his mouth. If Eiro really wanted to give John the Taboo skill, then John had to eat the flesh himself. If he was forced to, then it was something different.
Honestly, Eiro was pretty glad that this kind of situation apparently didn't count as 'forced', weirdly enough, at least according to what Eiro read about that special skill. As far as Eiro was concerned, the gods may just have the kind of mindset of 'if you were really devoted, you would rather die than sin'. And that honestly came in quite handy for Eiro.
Especially now that John was seemingly going for it. He leaned forward a bit, at least the amount that he could with the way his head was chained to the wall behind him, and tried to scrape away a bit of the human flesh Eiro was holding toward him. To just help him out a little bit more, Eiro increased the concentration of life force in John's jaw. And so, the Demon watched as John started to chew up the rotting human flesh.
He was about to throw up from this, but luckily he didn't have anything to throw up, so he could continue eating it. And so, the human flesh started slowly gliding down John's throat. For a few moments, Eiro waited for something to happen, before he did really notice something. It wasn't a notification in John's eyes, but rather, they became alive again. It seemed like John was becoming more energetic after finally having eaten a little bit again. After the first taste, it was seemingly not so bad after all.
Just like that, John just continued vigorously feeding on the human flesh that Eiro was giving him. More and more, he just kept eating, so much so that Eiro had to even get more from the dead bodies.
And then, soon, a notification did appear in John's sight, and the horrow grew on the young man for just a moment as he sat there basically petrified.
[You have abandoned the gods, so they have done the same to you]
[Beginner Taboo Skill learned]
There weren't any immediate changes to John just yet, but at the very least it seemed like they would be coming soon.
And so, Eiro started to smile a bit as he picked up one of the three bodies, one of the two men. He would save the woman for when John satisfied his hunger a little bit. After all, the 'Taboo' skill was one that heavily amplified any sort of 'Taboo' desire, which included necrophilia. Eiro did find something like a weak ambrosium inside one of the hidden rooms here, although it was just a discarded experiment by the former owner of the manor as he was trying to find a way to easily control monsters for different purposes.
And so, if Eiro wanted to, after John couldn't continue eating, he could make him increase his taboo skill's level in another way than just cannibalism. But for now, that was good enough for Eiro, and he slowly placed the body he was carrying down in front of John, before somewhat loosening his restraints up. And before Eiro knew it, John knelt in front of the body and slowly dug his remaining hand's nails into the flesh, before ripping part of it away and stuffing it into his mouth.
Slowly but surely, it seemed like John's taboo skill was leveling up and taking over John's mind more and more, until he basically just pushed his teeth into the corpse like some beast.
For now, Eiro sat down in front of the cell and continued to watch John as he slowly turned into something that wasn't quite human anymore.
