The Crow looked at Eiro with a slightly excited expression, one that the Demon couldn't help but return. It looked him up and down, before plucking one of the feathers off of its jacket. The crow held the feather between its fingers, before simply flicking its hand forward.
The speed at which this feather travelled was completely uncomparable to the feather before this. So much so that Eiro was unable to react to it in the slightest. But at this point, Eiro realized something. As the feather scr.a.p.ed across his cheek, causing blood to flow down his skin, he kept staring at the Crow intensely, until he noticed a sliver of a familiar 'vibe' from it.
"You're a Card-Holder? How were you able to hide that from me?" The Demon asked. The monster in front of Eiro looked back a bit surprised, "You could tell? I thought I had supressed that properly..." The Crow muttered confusedly, trying to figure out where it went wrong exactly.
And meanwhile, Eiro figured out that this fight may be a bit harder than he thought it would be initially. While Eiro was rather powerful physically as well, the majority of Eiro's abilities were based around things that happened within him. Memory, processing-ability, and even magic. The fact that Eiro's ability-focus was on these was what would make it practically impossible for him to beat the Crow in a head-on fight.
Considering that Eiro figured the Crow's card was the Two of Pentacles, giving him ultimate agility. And since Agility meant speed, this Crow was possibly one of the fastest beings in existence, or at least one of the fastest beings Eiro had ever seen before.
There was only one thing that he could do. Eiro tried to push his mana into his ring again. Time once more slowed down, but when Eiro focused on the world around him again, he was met with the Crow staring right at him. From about an inch away. In this tiniest fraction of a moment, the Crow had approached Eiro without the Demon noticing at all.
How was that even possible? Eiro didn't really care too much for now, since he had to focus on something else instead. Eiro had to use the rest of the time that he had left to make sure he would be able to kill this Crow. He pulled out the dagger out of the sheath at the side of his body and proceeded to stab it deep into the Crow's chest. Or so he tried, the Dagger didn't really go through the Crow's skin, since it wasn't possible for it to really split up yet. Eiro just had to make sure to stab at this spot over and over again and push the dagger against the crow's chest as quickly as possible before making time resume.
Beside that, Eiro tried something else as well. He pushed his hand into his satchel and got out a small pouch. It was filled with crumbs of Magic Stones, leftovers from the mine down in the village that couldn't be used for anything in particular.
Eiro wanted to try and use if for some magic-fusion experiments, but this was more important right now. Eiro poured out the contents of the bag, and the small crystal crumbs started floating in the air right in front of the Crow's face.
The Demon spread these crumbs around every part of the Crow's head, from the top, bottom, front, or back, anywhere there was space. And then, he filled them with as much mana as possible to try and make them overflow.
To possibly trigger some sort of other magic reaction, Eiro even made sure to spread these crumbs in a way that they formed a magic circle that would hopefully help to focus the power onto the head itself instead of outward.
And then, Eiro proceeded to try and push that elderly orc toward a safe place together with his spirits. He wasn't entirely sure how big the impact would be, but it seemed like it would be quite intense.
The Demon turned around once he was done, staring at the notification telling him that he had less than thirty seconds left. He had wasted so much of the time leftover within this artifact, but it was worth it if he was able to kill this Crow... With the speed he would receive from that, by using the Two of Pentacles, Eiro would gain an immense benefit.
And so, while Eiro turned around, he made time flow properly again. But in that instant, Eiro noticed something he should have paid attention to earlier.
The position of the Crow's eyes were different.
The moment that time continued to flow, an explosion unfolded right around the Crow's head. It was much larger than Eiro anticipated, incredibly so, and a lot of dust covered the, presumably dead, body of the Crow.
But to Eiro's horror, there was nothing there. There was no dead body, or even blood splattered around. Eiro was confused at what was going on, until he felt a gentle touch on his shoulder, "Hm... And here I thought you'd be fun to fight against." The Crow's voice said right next to Eiro's head, "Sure, you're fast, but that's just because of that artifact on your hand. I really dislike being tricked like this."
The next moment, Eiro felt a strong force on his back as all air disappeared from his lungs, as if forced out of it. The Demon was pushed forward quite a bit, nearly reaching the edge of this platform.
[-4102 Health]
"..Huh..?" Eiro muttered as he started being able to breathe again. That... was not a lot of damage. Not as much as he expected, at least. And then, Eiro realized something else. Something that would allow him to possibly compete against the Crow in a fight after all.
"You're really weak, aren't you?" The Demon asked with a grin on his face, "Fast, sure, but weak... Your body can't take it when you attack someone at high speeds because you aren't physically strong, so you can't attack as quickly then either... Hahh... Talk about being tricked." Eiro smirked and started to think. He realized that the Crow would be unable to be properly killed through attacks if Eiro froze time.
It seemed like it made use of its superior speed to get rid of any sort of damage it might experience. It caught the dagger just now, somehow managed to switch the positions of a few of the magic stone crumbs, and seemed to even just quickly snap its head back to counter the sudden damage of the punches Eiro attacked him with.
That most likely also lessened the Damage from the pebbles to an extent.
"I don't need to be strong. With my speed, I can just slash at you a couple of times and you'll be dead in a second. I still have your dagger, remember?" The Crow pointed out, but Eiro just smirked, "For now you do, yeah. But that's going to change in a few moments."
Immediately, Eiro started to make use of another small trick that he wasn't entirely sure about for now. He tried to 'remember' what was currently going on. With his , Eiro was able to see the world of his memories in numerous different ways. He could speed a single moment down to last him a year until it passed, while nothing but an instant actually passed outside of Eiro's mind.
If he made use of this fact, trying to 'remember' the current moment while he was going through it, Eiro was able to at least think at a speed that was superior to what he was capable of before. Just like this Eiro was not only able to roughly see the Crow approach, but he was able to see it do so as if the time had stopped again. And just like that, Eiro could make use of this situation in another way. He analyzed everything, taking in consideration the few things that he knew about the Crow until now, including that it had to slow down to actually attack him.
Mentally, and with his mana, Eiro tried to prepare as quickly as he could for everything, forming it into a ball in his right hand's palm. He twisted his torso as far to the left as he could and pointed his feet a bit more toward each other. Or at least, he was starting with these actions. The muscle-twitches were starting to happen, but of course Eiro couldn't go at a speed like that. But he didn't need to. Eiro knew how fast his body was and how it reacted to things. All of this was perfectly planned out.
The moment that Eiro let his mind run normally again, the crow was already right next to him. But due to a small indent that was formed in the Demon's side due to him twisting his torso in just the right way, the Dagger missed and only cut through his cloak. The Demon turned all of the mana gathering at his palm into wind magic and pushed his whole body around.
The Crow had continued moving at this point, of course, trying to keep slashing at Eiro. But no matter what the Crow did, Eiro predicted everything down to the smallest detail and dodged every single cut that the Crow was trying to attack Eiro with.
Eiro twisted his body around, jumped, moved things out of his treasury in specific spots around his body, put other things into his treasury. He used magic to make himself heavier or lighter depending on his movements and what he needed to happen. And despite the fact that the Crow was so much faster than Eiro, it was unable to land a hit on him.
That was, until it decided to stop slashing and instead stabbing at Eiro out of annoyance. But that was what Eiro was waiting for. Using the cut-up parts of his own cloak, Eiro wrapped up his hand thickly and proceeded to fill it with ice magic. His hand was already on the way down toward the blade. It was unavoidable. The freezing cloth touched the special blade and the tiny holes inside of it opened up as the Demon's grip tightened just so slightly. And as the cloth shattered into frozen shards of itself due to the sudden impact, the Crow was hit by one of those shards. And due to the speed of its own body, it even cut its arm a bit.
And that was more than enough for Eiro for now. After all, what was inside of the dagger wasn't water, but poison. Posion that splashed around, somewhat manipulated by the magic Eiro spread through the air beforehand, and then dropped right onto the crow's small cut.
Obviously it wasn't enough to kill it, that wasn't Eiro's goal for now. Instead, what was his goal was the fact that the Crow's attention slipped together with the strength of its grip as Eiro managed to slightly pull the dagger away from it, so that it softly landed in his other hand.
