"Huh, probably the fastest being I have ever seen in my whole life, but you can't even hit this simple, young Demon?" Eiro asked with a grin on his face. But behind that grin, Eiro hid his real thoughts and his worries.
What he was doing right now may be incredibly useful, but he wouldn't be able to use it for too long. Eiro was controlling parts of his body in intricate ways, and sometimes he made himself move in incredibly unnatural manners. It drained his stamina incredibly quickly, and he could already tell that he wouldn't be able to keep this up for too much longer.
In the first place, this was just possible because the crow seemed to be a complete idiot that didn't know the first thing about tactics or technique. He was a brute that could only move fast, and that was it. Although, from what Eiro could tell, he was rather adept at throwing things. The feathers that the crow threw at Eiro were moving in very specific ways. Whether in a straight line or in a curve, it seemed like the crow was able to throw them however he wanted.
As far as Eiro could tell, the wound in the elderly Orc's stomach also came from a feather that the crow had thrown in a way that it would carve into the Orc's flesh and then come back out. At the very least, Eiro spotted a bloody feather together with some chunks of flesh hidden between some bushes.
Now that Eiro was continuosly dodging all of the Crow's attacks and even got his dagger back, the Crow seemed to finally take the Demon seriously.
"You're so slow... but why can't I hit you? Why can't I? Why? Why?!" The Crow asked with clear anger mixed with a werid sense of excitement written on his face. It slowly placed its hand onto the jacket made up of pitch-black feathers and pulled a handful of them out, just to have the feathers literally grow back on the jacket itself.
At this point, Eiro really knew that things were going to become serious. He pulled out his Three of Swords out of his treasury and quickly activated it. Three rings appeared on each of Eiro's hands. The middle one on his right hand held the hollow dagger filled with some poison, and the middle one on his left hand held Eiro's regular, flame-based dagger. Like this, Eiro was able to instantly disconnect the daggers and hold them in either of his hands depending on what exactly it was that he wanted to do combat-wise.
But that wasn't all that Eiro prepared for himself. Beside that, the Demon pushed his foot into the ground and made four slabs of rock jump up, each of which Eiro combined with one of the Three of Swords' blades. This not only turned them into extra, rather large weapons, but also into shields that were hopefully going to help Eiro defend against the feathers.
Beside this, Eiro made sure to activate his Rock Skin ability as well as prepare the Gravity Magic stone he still had with him by placing it into his mouth, where it would be safe from falling onto the ground or something.
And just like that, Eiro had properly prepared for what was to come. For some reason, the Crow seemed to have waited for Eiro to finish, as if it was some sort of combat-maniac that wanted to have a full-on fight against Eiro.
Before Eiro knew it, basically the moment that he properly prepared and the Crow took notice of this fact, it threw the feathers it was holding toward Eiro. Truly, 'Throwing' was the perfect compliment for the Crow's abilities. Whether these strengthened, regrowing feathers were a feature it gained after training in 'Throwing' and then evolving, or whether it was an ability in coincidentally had, the Crow's whole body seemed to be perfectly made for this sort of thing.
Beside Agility, its highest stat seemed to be Dexterity. These two stats in combination made it so that one's body became incredibly flexible, particularly when it came to fine-tuned things that maybe required your hands or feet. Hence, the Crow's body was perfect for throwing things with incredible accuracy.
Not only that, but due to the fact that these feathers were disposable weapons, the Crow didn't have to worry about them breaking, because it simply didn't matter. The feathers could go at full speed without slowing down for impact, different to the Crow's melee attacks.
Due to that, the moment that the feathers were thrown at Eiro, he tried to react. He analyzed the situation and twisted his body in a way that he would be damaged as little as possible. At this point, it was impossible to completely avoid being hit like that. However, due to all the different precautions that Eiro took, he managed to bend out of the way of some of them, but most of them still hit him to an extent. Mostly they were just scraping over his skin, damage that didn't really do much to Eiro due to his rock skin. But some of them managed to get an angle on Eiro that they did push through the rock skin a bit, damaging Eiro.
Luckily, the Demon had moved some of the Life Force away from the places where he was hit to minimize the damage. But even then, this time around, Eiro wasn't able to avoid taking damage.
Obviously he was still able to predict all of these sort of things, but at the end of the day, just because you know that something is coming doesn't mean you are capable of completely stopping it. The only thing you can do is try to minimize the damage to the best of your ability. If that means you can stop it, great. If that means you can't, then at least you tried your best.
After the damage was done, Eiro tried to focus some of his Life Force around those wounds to accelerate their regeneration even more than normal, before preparing for the next batch of attacks. This time around, the Crow didn't just throw them from one direction. Rather, it apparently tried to first test Eiro a little before starting its proper attack.
The Crow started to run around Eiro in circles, so quickly that some of the dust on the ground started twirling around in a bit of a spiral. Luckily, this worked to Eiro's advantage. From all around the Demon, numerous feathers were thrown at him at high speeds. This made it much, much harder to properly dodge everything, and Eiro started to take quite a bit of damage. Each singular attack wasn't actually too damaging, and most actually only did damage in the three-digit range at best since Eiro managed to dodge a large sum of them, but the fact that there were so many feathers coming at Eiro slightly undid all of that.
But luckily, Eiro had slowly become aware of another weakness of the Crow's ability. Due to its sheer speed, it was hard for it to truly breathe constantly. Hence, it had to slow down every once in a while in order to do that. It always took incredibly deep breaths during that time. This made it possible for Eiro to make use of a small trick he was planning this whole time.
He had been gathering an anesthetic in his stinger and started to slowly push it out, using a combination of water and air magic to turn it into some sort of mist. Mist that Eiro was able to hide between the small clouds of dust and bring toward the place that Eiro predicted the Crow would take its next breath.
This was something that Eiro did for a good while until he noticed the Crow visibly slow down. The accuracy of the feathers started to decrease, although Eiro still wasn't able to fully dodge all of them, because even Eiro had to slow down a bit, since he was getting rather exhausted at this point in time.
However, more and more, Eiro was able to deflect the feathers with his blades or the slabs of rock that Eiro combined with his Three of Swords. Soon, the Crow itself noticed that it was slowing down, although it wasn't able to tell exactly how this happened. Eiro hid it pretty well, after all.
That was the perfect moment for Eiro to attack. The Crow still managed to dodge Eiro rather easily, but at the very least, the Demon was now capable of actually approaching it, forcing it to get into melee combat sometimes.
"Something wrong? You feeling woozy?" Eiro asked with a grin on his face. Due to the obviously rather low intelligence of the Crow, this question seemed to have a lot of impact. As if it was barely able to figure out that Eiro was the one behind it, but not mentally resistant enough to not let it affect it.
"What did you do? What? What?!" The Crow asked with a deep glare directed at Eiro, and the Demon simply shrugged with a broad grin on his face, "I wonder~!"
Eiro continued to spread the anesthetic thinly through the air so that the Crow had no choice but to slowly breathe it in. Eiro's Toxin Resistance was enough to make it possible for him to defend against the bit that was able to slip through the Air Magic barrier he placed in front of his mouth to filter the anesthetic out.
And so, the Crow went for another tactic instead. It quickly ran up to Eiro holding the feathers in its hands, throwing them at the Demon at a point-blank distance, thinking that this would help it kill Eiro practically immediately. However, that was absolutely not the case.
Eiro pushed his hand forward in just the right spot at the right time, managing to hit the Crow's arm and send a small pulse of mana into it, making use of his torture-methods. The Crow's body cramped up and its movements stopped for just a split-second, enough for Eiro to swing the stone slabs at it and push it against the nearest rock-wall at full force.
Eiro immediately tried to it. But the moment that the Demon pressed his arm against its throat and pressed one of its daggers against its chest while the four rock slabs floated around its head, Eiro had a bad feeling.
After all, this was not the most likely way he had figured this would go. Rather, it was one of the less likely, but still probable, ways that Eiro figured out.
And there was a reason for that, it seemed. The Crow was staring at the horizon and in an emotionless voice said, "Ah... Sorry, I don't have time to play with you anymore... I have to go."
