Revive Rome: Wait! Why not make the empress fall in love with me first?
Chapter 363 - 161 Bloodline Completion

Chapter 363: Chapter 161 Bloodline Completion

"What exactly is this drug?"

"It’s a new drug from the Life School, capable of greatly enhancing the strength and constitution of your soldiers. It makes them fierce, unafraid of death, craving carnage, and able to heal quickly from fatal injuries."

"What’s the catch? I may not understand you Transcendents, but a drug that grants such power must have a price... otherwise, your Life School would have taken over the world long ago."

"Your insight is profound, Count. In fact, the drug works by stimulating the body’s internal potential, significantly increasing physical power. The price is that it needs to absorb life force from the outside."

"Life force?"

"Normally, just increasing the amount of daily food intake would suffice; however, if someone is severely injured on the battlefield and needs a large amount of life force in a short period, they would have to resort to devouring and plundering."

"Please, continue."

"Devouring living beings is a relatively simple method. For example, plants, livestock, and even prisoners of war can serve as sources of life force."

"That sounds somewhat sacrilegious..."

"Of course, Count. If power were so easily obtained, your enemies would have exploited it long ago."

"You do have a point. However, let’s first experiment with a few individuals. Down in the dungeons below my castle, there are a few death-row prisoners..."

...

In Fire Island, Aske carefully poured the last bottle of "Tactics II" into his mouth.

The surrounding girls were all on high alert, about to witness the first Lv.10 in their team.

After swallowing the drug, Aske quickly threw the bottle away and shouted, "Nora!"

Nora immediately pressed her hand to his back and sensed that Aske’s body was plunging into immense chaos.

His life body seemed to be burning, his life force almost boiling over, visible as tangible flames above his head; his spiritual body appeared as if melting, slowly undergoing some strange, unknown transformation.

As previously instructed and practiced, Nora simultaneously activated her "Life" and "Spiritual Body" abilities to help maintain cellular stability in Aske’s body, gather the life force, and accelerate the transformation of the spiritual body.

As the digestion of the Magic Potion continued, the girls all held their breaths. Because Aske was visibly growing taller, his muscles slowly bulging and becoming streamlined, his skin started wrinkling and shedding a translucent gelatinous layer, like a snake moulting its skin.

Nora, helping to stabilize Aske’s physical and spiritual powers, observed more meticulously and was immensely shocked.

His lower spine was densifying, his esophagus and trachea diverging, his appendix regressing, his retina inverting, and his laryngeal nerve decomposing along the aortic arch before reconnecting, his temples thickening... within Aske’s body, many organs and tissues characteristic of humans were undergoing a mysterious and remarkable mutant transformation.

"Completing the Bloodline Path means officially becoming a non-human." Nora’s previous thoughts resurfaced in her mind, and now she had a profound and direct understanding of those words.

After an indeterminate amount of time, Aske finally opened his eyes.

Lv.10.

A complete transformation, Bloodline Completion.

He slowly stood up, feeling every cell in his body refreshed, filled with immense physical power, while his spirituality was deep and reserved like the ocean.

With both life and spirituality greatly increased, it also meant he had evolved into a creature beyond humans. From now, he and those ordinary humans, as well as low-rank Transcendents below Lv.10, would be forever reproductively isolated.

(Note: Strictly speaking, this "reproductive isolation" from normal humans is not insurmountable. For example, historical records of the Achilles family show that their reproductive isolation from ordinary people is only about 50%; and Transcendents of sequences like "Desire," "Flesh," "Life," can temporarily restore their reproductive capabilities with their abilities.)

"How do you feel?" Nora, noticing he had completed his Bloodline Synthesis, asked with a smile.

"My feelings?" Aske pondered, then covered his face with one hand and said solemnly, "Human capabilities really do have limits."

"In my brief life, I’ve learned that the more a person engages in conspiracies, the more they slip up in unexpected situations."

"To become an existence beyond humans!"

Girls: ???

Aske: ...

According to the tradition of players on the forums, after advancing to Lv.10, one should perform the ’I refuse to be human anymore’ promotion chant, a traditional art among the players of "Song of Iron and Fire."

However, playing this meme in front of a bunch of girls who didn’t get it was really no fun.

"I know what you’re trying to say," Medea revealed Dior’s signature enigmatic smile, "I refuse to be human anymore! JOJO!"

"Am I right?"

"Mind reading takes the fun out of it," Aske waved dismissively. "This kind of gag should be performed for those who already know, so they can share a knowing smile."

"I’m sorry, Squad Leader, I haven’t seen that piece," Medea said.

"What are you guys talking about?" Nora asked curiously. In Aske’s surface thoughts, she only saw a man holding a stone mask, laughing maniacally, and it seemed to be in the style of a comic.

The rest of the girls were even more confused and bewildered.

While enjoying the gag, Aske didn’t feel the need to forcibly explain and quickly assessed his current physical condition.

Level 10, Weapon Master Bloodline, composed of Sharp Weapon I + Blunt Weapon I + Throwing I + Evasion I + Block I + Tactics II + Intuition II + Perfect Physique X, Physical Power and Spiritual Power roughly around 10:7, possessing a rather balanced Bloodline of physical and magical properties.

Among the laws he could condense, the weaker ones included "Cutting" and "Smashing," while stronger ones were "Violence" and "Slaughter." Of course, ninety-nine out of a hundred players who chose the Weapon Master Bloodline aimed for the "War Law."

Aske was no exception.

Condensing the War Law required completing a series of rituals. However, as the current Magic Tide Level limit was only Level 10, he couldn’t yet sense the corresponding rituals needed for condensing laws through the power in his Bloodline.

So that part could be put on hold.

Another aspect that urgently needed improvement was the Middle Three Styles of the Star Nine Forms.

Life Destruction: Attacks the Life Body, ignoring defense percentage reduction in health.

Soul Shattering: Cuts off the enemy’s Spirituality, causing Extraordinary Abilities to malfunction or lose control.

Burning Heart: Executes the enemy’s will, causing them to lose the will to fight.

(The above descriptions are for reference only; actual effects depend on the user’s performance level.)

The nine moves of GM had added three more techniques, pushing Aske’s capabilities further into an even more formidable direction.

In previous games, although the Star Nine Forms was overpowered, it wasn’t invincible.

Players, through a lot of observation, summary, and personal experiments, had already developed strategies on how to counter the Star Nine Forms.

For instance, Life Destruction’s effect required directly hitting a Life Body, which led players to deduce countless methods of "not getting hit in the Life Body," achievable through various Extraordinary Abilities...

However, in this world, let alone methods to counter the Star Nine Forms, most people didn’t even know what the "Star Nine Forms" was.

That meant, at least in the foreseeable short term, as long as he mastered these "Middle Three Styles," Aske would be unbeatable among those of the same Law rank. Even when facing a fully-powered Demigod, he would still have a basic ability to protect himself.

As for how to learn the Middle Three Styles, that was even simpler.

As a hardcore game, Song of Iron and Fire’s skills followed the players, not the game characters. Whether you learned it or not depended on whether your brain worked efficiently, not some rigid system judgment.

Like calculus and coding, once you learned these skills, you wouldn’t forget them regardless of whose body your soul transmigrated into, unless that body was inherently incompetent.

"Come here, Sigrdrifa," Aske waved.

"What for?" Sigrdrifa immediately became defensively suspicious.

"Attack me," Aske said.

"No," Sigrdrifa quickly shook her head, her golden ponytail swaying—she had been growing her hair long recently, and although she still looked as heroic, she was increasingly resembling a beautiful girl.

"I promise I won’t hit back," Aske said. "I just want to try out a new swordsmanship skill I learned, which is purely defensive and won’t harm you."

"Really?" Sigrdrifa expressed doubt.

The girls were puzzled; when did their Squad Leader learn a new swordsmanship? Only the observant Thira remembered that the fourth to sixth forms of the Star Nine Forms, he had mentioned, seemed unlockable at Level 10.

"Okay," Sigrdrifa dropped her axe to the ground and clenched her fists. "But you can’t trick me, or else I won’t talk to you anymore."

Aske couldn’t help but smile wryly: "Come on, come on."

So Sigrdrifa clenched her fists and struck towards Aske’s chest with a force that was neither too light nor too heavy. Even if he changed his mind at the last moment, her posture allowed her to quickly retract her fists, cover her head, squat down, and emit a terrifying scream.

Instead, Aske drew his sword with one hand, gave a slight flick, and Sigrdrifa’s fist stopped mid-air, her expression suddenly bewildered.

Eh, what was I planning to do?

It seems he told me to attack him, but then... what happened to me?

"Okay, you can go now," Aske waved a big hand, declaring her role as a tool-person over.

Star Nine Forms, sixth form, Burning Heart, successfully learned.