"Yes..." The System reacted with Siderius’ mind. He didn’t need to say it to start the mutation. But he did it as a ceremony. His low, hoarse voice emitted in the woods.
The steel bracer lit up in complex patterns. An Alchemy Seal appeared in Siderius’s left palm. It floated slightly above his skin.
Siderius dropped the two bloody eyeballs onto the Seal. Instantly, the bracer bit into his veins. He could feel a dense liquid crawling inside him and slowly filling up the veins of his left hand.
The bright yellow Alchemy Seal changed its color. It suddenly had an opaque purple shade. Mercury was slowly leaking out from the pores of Siderius’ left palm.
The mercury elevated from his skin, going through the purple Seal and then reached the bloody pair of eyeballs. It moved like it was conscious and alive.
The mercury swallowed the eyeballs.
The liquid metal went through every crevice of the eyes, learning its very being and properties. Then, it fused with the pair of eyes.
Every single tissue, every blood vein, and every cell was merged together with the mercury.
In Alchemy, Sulfur was the avatar of the soul, combustion, and separation.
Salt was the representative of the body, formation, and crystallization.
Mercury did not belong to either side or anything in between, instead it acted as a symbol of transformation. It was the fluidity and flexibility of all things.
And with spirit, you can mend, bend, and fuse anything together. Including another part that did not belong to you.
Witch Hunter lived on this principle. They made use of the transformative ability of the spirit to become the ’perfect’ being.
The living mercury crystallized into two solid spheres. They hovered slightly inside the Alchemy Seal.
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Strix for owls. a more formal name for its genus.
Siderius lifted his left arm slowly. The surface of the spheres moved gently. It almost seemed like there were tiny ocean waves on it.
"In me vivunt Vagus, et Perditus, et Voluntas Aeterna." Siderius whispered the creed of the witch hunter.
It meant ’Within me live the Wanderer, the Cursed, and the Eternal Will.’
The Wanderer was how a witch hunter lived his life. He travelled from place to place, killing monsters and extinguishing chaos to preserve the kingdom of man. For a witch hunter, everywhere was his home and nowhere was his destination.
The Cursed was a precise portrait of a witch hunter. He who had combined with so many beasts was hardly a man anymore. And so he was cursed. But a witch hunter should never betray his curses. He must wear it like a badge of honor. Because his curses were also his strength.
The life of a witch hunter was hard and lonely and full of pain. The only thing that could help him walk this path was his own Eternal Will. The unrelenting, uncompromising part of his soul. His will was what was most important above all.
Without it, the curses would consume him and the road shall blind his eyes.
Only by embracing the Wanderer, the Cursed and the Eternal Will, shall a witch hunter be invincible.
Siderius’ right arm was still holding the knife. With two precise cuts, Siderius sliced open his two eyeballs. Blood gushed out from his eye socket and flooded his face.
The pain was unimaginable.
The cornea holds the densest layer of nerve fibers in the human body.
This makes even a tiny strand of hair feel like a sharp needle in the eye. One could only imagine how excruciating it would be to cut your own eyes.
But Siderius stayed calm. He controlled his breathing, preventing the body from going into shock.
And then he shoved the spheres into his eye sockets.
The spheres shot out of the Seal like it was alive. They climbed into the slits that Siderius had opened. The pain was even more overwhelming. Itching, burning, scorching, it felt like dipping your eyes into acid.
But Siderius did not falter. He didn’t even flinch. Only his body reacted instinctively. The hair on his body stood up due to the stimulation. The follicles produced sweat intensely, trying to cool off the heat.
Siderius had gone through uncountable mutations. This was nothing but a scratch to him.
[GRAFTING IN PROCESS...]
[MUTATION IS COMPLETE]
[HUNTER HAS ACHIEVED A NEW RANK: OCULUS EXTIMA I]
Siderius let out a long breath. His eyes cried mercury tears, replacing the blood from before. This was not his doing but a reaction purely made by the body integrating the mutation.
All mutations need time to settle.
He wiped his face with his left hand. All the residual mercury got absorbed back into his pores. They climbed via his blood veins and returned to the system.
The grafting procedure was a success, but it was not completed. The newly mutated organs needed time to fully merge with his body. In time, it would become a part of him.
And in time, not only would he receive the power of the eyes but also the essence of the owl.
[USER: Siderius ’Snow’ Satterblade]
[WITCH HUNTER RANK: OCULUS EXTIMA I]
[ALCHEMIST RANK: NONE]
[MERCURY EXTRACT: 53/100]
[PSYCHOSIS LEVEL: 73/100]
Flashes of images jumped into his mind. A gnarly hunger took hold of Siderius. Suddenly rodents felt so delicious. He wanted to catch a rat and swallow it whole.
Side effects of Witch Hunter mutation. You are what you graft. The organs of the grafted animal would affect the witch hunter’s mind.
But gradually, this manic would be conquered by him too.
Siderius snapped those animalistic thoughts out of his head and opened his eyes. The wound was gone and there only laid a perfect pair of black eyes. All the white parts surrounding the eyeballs were gone.
He was no longer seeing the world through the eyes of a human but the eyes of a nocturnal bird of prey.
The world lost its color. Now it consisted of black, white, and grey. A perfect pair of night vision goggles.
However, these new eyes did not fix the problem of the original body. The far objects were blurred, creating a mix of black and white. The circus boy was shortsighted, so this weakness carried over even after the mutation.
This was reflected in the System examination of Snow via attributes. His was merely two.
Siderius stood up and stretched. Whatever weaknesses this body had, he would fix it. He would make this body become the most dangerous weapon in this world. A killing machine of witches.
Psychosis was a very important part of a witch hunter biological system. It measured the health of their mind and also the amount of which it could be strained.
Every mutation caused damage to their psychosis. Naturally, the witch hunters needed a way to combat it.
One of them was meditation.
There were many developed meditation techniques. This aspect of the witch hunter wasn’t focused on by Siderius, but rather his colleagues.
Next, Siderius carefully chose a technique that best suited him.