Jane looked at the eye he was holding. The eye looked back at him.
'Come to think of it, how exactly did her eyes work? I didn't really come up with a process to recreate them.'
[This idiot...]
Jane pondered his situation for a bit. No matter how he looked at it, he had definitely ripped out his eye for no reason. Feeling ashamed, he put the eyeball back in with a squelching sound and healed the nerves until he could see with it again.
After recovering from his mistake, Jane began trying different methods to achieve the same effect he saw earlier. The dependency on 'Pinch' made it a lot easier to brainstorm, though.
'Isn't it just this?'
Right in front of his eye, Jane cast a 'Pinch' acting on 'Light' inside of a 'Project' facing outwards. His vision briefly became blurry, but when he aligned his pupil with the spell, everything in his eye's focus became ridiculously clear.
[You still need to get the metal required for the passive effect, but yes.]
Jane played around with his new ability for a bit, and eventually decided that he needed to complete it. He still clearly remembered just how convenient it was to have eyes like before, so he was itching to get them back.
'That reminds me. I have to go appease Melinda's father. But how?'
[They should be holding a fairly large competition soon, so why not join and win?]
'I don't really have any magic that doesn't kill, though.'
He contemplated for a second over how he would need to fight. Using swordsmanship would be a dead giveaway of his identity, and it didn't fit in with his persona, so it was out. When it came to mage-on-mage combat, all of his mainstay moves inflicted fatal injuries unfit for competition.
[It's totally fine to attack with killing intent during the competition. It wouldn't be so prestigious otherwise.]
'So I'll just behead all of my opponents. Sounds good enough.'
Without telling anyone, Jane ran off in the general direction of the stadium.
---
Since the competition was in the format of a tournament, the first few rounds were easy. At first, all Jane had to do was decapitate his opponent. By the time he reached the finals, he had to follow up by kicking the head away. His opponents tended not to die, but would also lose without room for question.
'These guys really suck at fighting, don't they?'
[No, you're just a crazy bastard.]
Just before the finals started, a few of his family's servants tracked him down and tried to bring him home. However, with his skills, it was a trivial task to simply run away until the matches started.
The first round of the finals went much like before. Jane opened by slicing his opponent's neck in two, then dashed forwards and punched their head off. While the disembodied head still unleashed some spells, after being kicked around for a while, it admitted defeat.
In the second round of the finals, his opponent died. Having seen Jane's strategy, they tried to duck under the attack, but ended up having their head sliced in two. He was desensitsed to killing at this point, but Jane still felt a little bad.
In the third round of the finals, directly preceding the last match, Jane had to try a little. His opponent was much smarter this time, and defended their neck with powerful reinforcement and defense. In response, Jane simply cut their limbs off one by one. When his limbless opponent started to run low on mana, they surrendered immediately.
'I guess that's almost it, then?'
Jane had been fairly relaxed throughout the entire competition, so he was curious to see if his next opponent would give him a good challenge. After showing so much of his brutality, there was no way that the other finalist wouldn't make plans to counter it. He waited in his preparation area for a while, then waltzed onto the grounds. From a similar gate, his opponent approached with a grim expression.
[Isn't that—]
The ringing of a bell signified the start of the match. The moment it sounded out, his opponent's eyes went unfocused as the man crumpled. The audience, which was looking forwards to an interesting match, went silent.
"W-Winner! Adam Hortich!"
Jane stared at the corpse of the man in front of him. Despite having killed another one of his tournament opponents, this time, he felt absolutely no remorse.
'This guy was in the Magical Research Tower.'
In fact, he was the one performing surgery on the two restrained women. Jane was not an altruist by any means, but he was confident in his choice to kill that mage. Proud, even.
[Good work.]
Jane left the arena expressionlessly, having no reason to remain now that he had won. Killing his opponent on purpose was definitely going to lower Count Predio's opinion of him, but it didn't matter. If he had a choice, then there would be no mercy for mages who experimented on other humans.
---
Even without using runes to strengthen his body, Jane had already far surpassed the limits of a human. He had chosen to compress his muscles as well, although at a certain point, they began to explode. Jane stopped just short of that point, resulting in the same bulk but many times the strength. In consideration, he increased the size of both his heart and lungs. He had a vague feeling that he was becoming some kind of abomination, but the illusory self he created still looked scrawny and like a normal human.
Jane could easily jump the entire height of a building, although he would need to reinforce his organs to do so safely. He tended not to get tired, either, but would get hungry inordinately quickly. He soon found himself being unable to digest food as quickly as he needed to turn it into energy. To combat this problem, he gave himself a second stomach, and doubled the length of his intestines.
[God, how will you approach Melinda looking like this?]
'I'm sure that I look fine. I'm just a little heavier than the average.'
When he was not using 'Force' runes to support himself, every footstep he took would shake the ground, sometimes even cracking it. He was several times heavier than a normal human, after all. Jane grabbed a piece of metal, and began bending it into the shape of a rune.
Once it took the desired form, Jane infused some mana into it, and watched water flow out from it's center. Not wishing to dirty his bedroom any further, he quickly withdrew his mana and crushed the metal into a ball.
'Now, time to get started.'
Jane reinforced just his eyeball, then ripped it out.