Lucas had read quite a few books in Zoria’s library, some of which touched on the subject of bloodlines. The information was broad and general, never specifying exactly what they were, apart from saying they were something that enhanced someone’s power and could be inherited from parent to child.

One book mentioned that a bloodline could, at its best, keep a family in power over a country or planet for generations. That, of course, depended on the usefulness of the bloodline, among other factors.

From what he understood, bloodlines differed from special constitutions in that a special constitution couldn’t normally be inherited from parent to child, although they could sometimes be transmissible through other methods.

Among those books, one type of bloodline in special that caught Lucas’ attention was eye-bloodlines. The book didn’t provide a lengthy explanation about the topic, most books in Zoria’s library—the more Lucas thought about it, the more it seemed to be done intentionally—only touched on the topic briefly. However, Lucas gathered that people with this type of bloodline could do things that would otherwise be impossible.

As he looked into the mind mage’s dead eyes, he had only one thought: This has to be it. What else could enable someone at only level 13 to perform such advanced illusions? Granted, Lucas didn’t know much about illusions, but he knew enough about level limitations to recognize when something exceeded them.

His life and death auras served as examples of abilities that could surpass level limitations and do otherwise impossible things, but the comparisons stopped there. Lucas wouldn’t even regard his blades at such a level. Despite their usefulness, they were still sharp pieces of glass in the end.

And though his auras could somewhat surpass level limitations and reach even greater heights in the future, at the moment they were nowhere near as effective or versatile as the man’s illusions. The mind-mage could potentially trap someone in their own minds forever and do who knows what else. Lucas suspected that the little exhibition he had witnessed was not the extent of the mage’s abilities.

Naturally, greed was reflected in Lucas’ eyes as someone who had gotten used to taking advantage of everything that could give him an edge over his peers. But there was also doubt and a tinge of fear. The question of whether he could even take that power for himself was the least of his concerns at the moment.

The three feelings revolved in Lucas’s mind as he observed the mesmerizing purple eyes for a few minutes. The greed was due to the power it represented; the doubt related to the nature of that power, which involved deceit and torture; and the fear was a by-product of the latter. Would he remain the same person if he started using such methods?

For some reason, the decision before him seemed more important than whether he could actually acquire the power. It was a decision about the type of person he wanted to be from now on.

After racking his brain over this subject, Lucas reached a temporary compromise. First, he would see if he could actually obtain the power, and then he would decide if he wanted it. Thanks to Faruk’s teachings, he wasn’t helpless in this regard and had a few ideas about what to do next as he approached the severed head.

As gruesome as it was, his most immediate idea was to replace his eyes with the mind mage’s. If it worked, he would gain a new, shiny bloodline in a matter of minutes. If it hadn’t, he would have plucked out his eye for nothing and would probably have to go through the rest of the floor with only one eye, depending on how long it took to regenerate after taking a health potion.

Before proceeding with this insanity, Lucas decided to check the man’s ring, finding nothing really special apart from a few bottles of what he judged to be poison, as there weren’t any potions he recognized. But then again, he didn’t know a lot about this world, and they could just be regular potions he was unaware of. In either case, he decided to take the ring with him, adding to his recently started collection.

Then it was time to deal with the eyes. Partially for practical reasons and partially to delay the process, after he felt well enough, Lucas took the head with him as he left the building. The place where he had left the beheaded corpse barely had a roof and wasn’t optimal for a long stay. So he headed to a more conserved and secluded spot, keeping a sharp eye and ear for any dangers.

After a little walk, he finally reached a suitable place that seemed to have been an apartment complex. Finding a good apartment for his endeavor after two flights of stairs and some browsing, Lucas finally sat on a dusty couch and regarded the head he had been holding, feeling the dread and anxiety from what he was about to do pile up.

…

“This isn’t about thinking; it’s about doing!” Lucas said to himself, ten minutes after sitting on that couch.

For the life of him, he couldn’t bring himself to do it. Yes, he had done pretty stupid things to his body before, such as breaking his own arm and almost exploding half his body, but that was by far the most challenging one so far.

Stolen from Royal Road, this story should be reported if encountered on Amazon.

Removing the mage’s eyes was a piece of cake; he had done it in a matter of seconds. He had done similar things before, after all. But as he held a piece of glass in front of his face in one hand and watched his terrified expression in the small mirror that was placed on the living room table, he found it almost impossible to complete the task.

The eyes were simply sacred; you never even interacted with them if you could prevent it. To stick a piece of glass practically into his own eye activated every trace of instinctual self-preservation he had, and it took him another ten minutes before he finally gathered enough courage to do it.

“AAAAHHH!” he yelled in a frenzy, filled with a sense of craziness the task involved, while the glass slowly worked its way through his soft skin. Fortunately, he didn’t need to be gentle, so he did it as fast as he could. Aided by the mirror’s reflection, he saw the moment he managed to scoop out his eye and couldn’t help but vomit at the sight all over the apartment’s floor.

Not wanting to lose courage now, Lucas quickly placed the mage’s eye into his own eye socket and proceeded to the next part of his plan, ignoring the mind-numbing pain as best he could. The life aura soon began to do its job.

For this he had naturally taken the stamina potion required to replenish his pool, and his plan was simple. Since his natural regeneration could patch up and maybe produce pieces of his bones to heal his injuries, he assumed that if he simply replaced his eye for that of the mage in his eye socket, then his body, along with his life aura, would do the rest of the job of connecting all the required nerves and whatnot.

His life aura worked fast, and in a matter of a few minutes, his eye was back to full function. The transplant had been a success. There was only one problem: the purple color particular to the mage’s eye disappeared as the eye healed, and when the process was fully finished, it was no different from his other eye.

“Fuck!” Lucas couldn’t help but curse at this. In a sense, this outcome went against all his expectations, standing in the middle ground between a good thing and a bad thing.

On the one hand, he hadn’t lost his eye and wasn’t forced to spend the rest of his stay on the fourth floor one-eyed. On the other hand, all his sacrifice had been for nothing as the result seemed obvious: he had merely replaced one eye with another, gaining nothing from this painful and traumatizing experience.

After a few minutes of multiple hushed curses to the air, Lucas sighed. “I knew it wouldn’t be this simple,” he muttered, resigned to his failed attempt.

He wasn’t through with it yet, however. He still had one thing he wanted to try before giving up on the matter. Searching through the abandoned apartment, he found what he was looking for: a simple string was all he needed.

Removing the other eye from the mage’s skull, Lucas carefully wrapped the eye in the string, making a knot at the other end. The whole process didn’t take more than a couple of minutes.

Crossing his fingers, he used identify, anxious for the answer that could define his future.

Eye Necklace

“Yes!” Lucas yelled, laughing with happiness. There was no description, but he didn’t mind. The fact that he was able to identify it as a different object already proved that he had succeeded. He even stored it in his ring to make sure he could keep it, and as expected, the necklace disappeared from his hand and appeared inside the ring.

Lucas tried to interact with it to see if something would happen, but there was no response. It was like that eye had always been an inanimate object, but Lucas didn’t feel disheartened.

The fact that he could bring the necklace with him after he left the tower gave him enough hope. He still wasn’t too confident about this plan, even with that partial success, but it was still a step forward. He was hopeful that things such as bloodlines could be acquired as well as inherited, so there was still a possibility, even if, at the moment, he wasn’t sure how.

His main concern now was the state of the eye. It was still an organ, after all. Wouldn’t it start to rot after some time? Earth’s logic told him yes. He didn’t have any ice to place the eye on, and he doubted that even if he had, it would last very long. His ring wasn’t resistant to the passage of time, after all.

In the end, he decided there was no point fretting about this, the system’s logic followed another set of rules, and he had already done his best to ensure his success. This issue was simply out of his hands by this point.

That whole process now seemed crazy to him. If you had told him a couple of months ago that he would be taking the eye from a decapitated head and placing it in his own eye socket, he would have laughed at you and called you crazy. However, only moments ago, he didn’t hesitate for long after considering the possibility.

A part of that was due to his recent failure on the third floor. He realized he was beginning to hate the feeling of impotence more and more as time passed, and he felt it again when those illusions started. In the end, he managed to figure out a way to escape his predicament, but what if he hadn’t been able to?

Deep down, he knew that the more powerful he became, the less this feeling of impotence would taunt him. Despite knowing little about eye bloodlines or bloodlines in general, he knew how powerful they could be.

That fighting style—involving illusions and such—really didn’t suit him at the moment, and it raises some doubts whether he even wanted it. However, he knew his battle techniques were in constant growth. Just a few days ago, he had no real option for long-range combat, and now he does. He simply couldn’t depend solely on his blades anymore, not if he wanted to compete with others, especially after he entered the wider multiverse.

In the end, he was glad that wasn’t a decision he would have to make right now. There was still plenty of time for him to figure out how to actually acquire that bloodline—if it was possible at all—and given that the eye didn’t rot in his ring.

Satisfied with his gains, Lucas stored the peculiar necklace for one last time and checked his status, happy to see he had gained a level after killing the mind mage.

Status:

Lvl: 14

Name: Lucas Romano

Race: Human

Class: Glass Warrior

Health Points (HP): 450/450

Mana Points (MP): 360/360

Stamina: 210/230

Stats:

Strength: 43

Agility: 55

Toughness: 10*

Perception: 29

Vitality: 38*

Magic: 20

Distributable points: 3