Honkai Impact: My Power Grows When Valkyries Fall For Me — Chapter 10

Chapter 10: The Price of Curiosity

Once Siegfried had departed, a deep silence reclaimed the apartment.

Lucian stood alone before the bathroom mirror, his gaze fixed on his right eye, where it remained for a long, quiet time. The complex golden pattern that had bloomed within the iris was now gone, having vanished as mysteriously as it appeared. The vivid purple had receded, leaving the pupil to return to its usual, unremarkable shade.

His fingertips drifted up, unconsciously tracing the curve of his eye socket. Beneath the thin skin, he felt the faintest pulse from the eyeball, a phantom sensation that brought with it a ghost of searing heat.

His mind drifted back to Otto’s words, spoken in the sterile white of a hospital ward just after he’d woken up, his eye freshly injured.

—

“Your right eye has been severely eroded by Honkai Energy,” Otto had said, his voice calm and clinical. “It has, for all intents and purposes, lost its visual function. Fortunately, your left eye is perfectly fine.”

He paused, his fingers tapping a light, rhythmic beat against the metal armrest of the hospital bed. The rhythmic clicking filled the silence. He had looked at Lucian then with that familiar, unsettling gaze—a mixture of playful curiosity and deep depth, as if he were observing a fascinating new specimen.

“You’re quite lucky, you know. The Honkai Energy corrosion stopped its advance just before reaching your cranial nerves. However, I must insist you avoid any and all contact with Honkai Energy in the future.”

Otto’s tone was placid, yet it carried an obvious weight of authority. “After all…”

“Next time,” he had finished, a faint smile playing on his lips, “it might not be so… ‘obedient’.”

At the time, Lucian had only just clawed his way back to consciousness from a deep coma. His right eye was swathed in layers of thick gauze, and a searing pain throbbed behind it, feeling as though a red-hot poker were being stirred directly into the socket. He had dismissed the comment as a simple warning from a concerned guardian after a near-death experience.

Until today.

—

‘Obedient’?

Lucian stared at his reflection, a helpless, wry smile tugging at the corner of his mouth. That old fox Otto had probably known something was fundamentally wrong—or different—with his eye from the very beginning. And yet, his only advice had been to stay away from Honkai Energy.

So, what exactly was he hiding?

He drew in a slow, deep breath, trying to quell the storm of chaotic thoughts. Now wasn’t the time to obsess over Otto’s cryptic games. The immediate priority was to understand what, precisely, was going on with his own right eye.

As much as Lucian wanted to believe this was some kind of heaven-sent ‘cheat’ or power-up, he couldn’t shake the embarrassing possibility that he was overthinking it. What if, after all this, the eye was useless for anything beyond looking cool, like a fancy, built-in RGB light?

He walked back into the living room, his gaze immediately falling upon the pair of silver-white dual pistols resting on the coffee table. A evident, scorching aura radiated from them in silent waves.

The Judgment of Shamash. Siegfried had left them behind after all.

Otto’s concealment, Siegfried’s stark warning, and the golden, diamond-shaped sigils that only manifested in the presence of high-density Honkai Energy… every clue pointed to the same conclusion: his right eye was anything but simple.

Lucian reached out, his fingertips hovering just above the metal of the guns. Even without direct contact, he could feel the blistering fluctuations of power rolling off them. A familiar, stinging pain began to prickle at his right eye in response.

‘My body is instinctively resisting it…?’He pulled his hand back, his fingers trembling slightly. Closing his eyes, he took another deep breath, then let it out in a long, slow sigh.’But I’ve always been a stubborn mule. I have to try.’

His eyes snapped open. All hesitation was gone. He reached out again, his fingers decisively closing around the grip of one of the Shamash pistols.

A violent, explosive pain erupted from his palm, and a muffled groan escaped his lips. It was as if he had grabbed a fistful of burning charcoal. In the same instant, he could clearly feel the corrosive Honkai Energy from the Divine Key surging up his arm, an invading tide of pure destruction.

The expected agony arrived right on schedule, but the anticipated miracle did not.

His right eye merely throbbed with a steady, stinging ache. No surge of protective energy was released, no mysterious power was absorbed, and no ethereal circuit formed to ‘manage’ the Honkai Energy.

The hostile power climbed the meridians of his arm, meeting no resistance. His entire limb felt like it was on fire, the pain so intense it felt as though his muscle fibers were being torn apart, one by one.

“Ah…!”

Lucian abruptly let go. The Judgment of Shamash fell, clattering against the glass coffee table with a sharp, brittle crack that sounded painfully final.

Through the glass surface, he could see his reflection. The golden, diamond-shaped pattern had once again blazed to life in his right eye, just as it had before. But no miracle occurred. No protection manifested. There were no unusual energy fluctuations to speak of.

The searing pain in his arm didn’t fade. Instead, it settled into a deeper, bone-weary ache that made the limb tremble uncontrollably. His muscles spasmed as if they were being shocked by an electric current.

“No effect…”

Lucian shook his head, a wave of helplessness washing over him.

He had thought, or perhaps hoped, that his eye possessed some special ability waiting to be awakened. It seemed he was wrong.

Or maybe he really was just overthinking things, and this eye of his was nothing more than a biological light strip.

After a quick and painful disinfection, Lucian retrieved the first-aid kit and began the clumsy process of bandaging his own hand. Every touch of the gauze against the cracked, blistered skin sent a fresh spike of sharp, stinging pain through his arm.

The most frustrating part was that he had nearly cooked his own hand just by touching the Divine Key.

‘Now I have to figure out how to explain this to Kiana tomorrow…’ he thought, wincing as he tightened the dressing.

He definitely couldn’t tell her the truth. Could he really say, “Oh, this? I was bored last night, so I decided to play with your dad’s super-powerful, god-slaying weapon and nearly incinerated my own hand”? That wouldn’t fly, no matter how he spun it.

Lucian sighed, looking down at his heavily bandaged right hand. He finally settled on a simple excuse, one that hopefully wouldn’t invite any follow-up questions.

“I’ll just say… I wasn’t paying attention while making dinner and got splashed by hot oil.”

He nodded to himself. It would have to do. After carefully putting the Judgment of Shamash away, he noted how late it had gotten. The pain in his right hand had subsided into a constant, dull throb. He washed up as best he could and collapsed into bed, the lingering ache making it difficult to find sleep.

The gentle morning sun woke Lucian. When he opened his eyes, the first thing he felt was the faint warmth of light on his face.

‘I must have forgotten to close the curtains last night…’

He sat up in bed and instinctively began to stretch, but a jolt of memory about his injured arm stopped him cold. He subconsciously glanced down at his right hand and froze.

The bandages he had so carefully wrapped the night before were scattered across the bedsheets, the bloodstains on them long since dried to a dark brown.

But his arm… his arm was healed. The skin was flawless, smooth and unmarred, glowing with a healthy vitality in the morning light.

“Huh…?”

Lucian bolted upright, staring blankly at his right arm. He flexed his fingers. The skin felt smooth and completely normal, no different than it had been before the injury. It was as if the burn had been carefully, impossibly erased.

“Something’s not right…”

He scrambled out of bed and rushed to the bathroom, his heart pounding. He stared at his own shocked expression in the mirror.

His right eye wasn’t glowing, not this time. But the golden diamond was clearly visible, a permanent emblem embedded deep within his pupil, stark and obvious in the bright morning light.

Lucian held his breath. He leaned closer to the mirror, staring intently at the impossible pattern. He could feel a deep, almost alien connection to it now, a sense of awareness that hadn’t been there before. It felt less like a part of him and more like a foreign entity that had taken up residence in his skull, possessing its own quiet, independent existence.

Driven by a sudden impulse, Lucian closed his left eye, attempting to see the world solely through the right one—the one with the golden sigil.

His vision was pitch black.