I Found a Door to the Elven Realm

Chapter 192: Lovely Eyes Evolve

The strangler almost killed him.

He was crossing a gap between two thick-trunked trees when something slammed into his back from above and wrapped around his torso before he could turn his head. His body twisted sideways on reflex but the thing was already locked on with limbs that felt like cable-wrapped muscles.

It was a primate. Sort of. It had a monkey’s general structure but its limbs were too long and too thin and covered in gray fur that matched the bark of the surrounding trees perfectly. Six arms. Not four. Two were gripping his torso and two were grabbing his arms and the last two were reaching for his throat.

[Observe: Target Identified: Phantom Grip Strangler - Level 39]

His Featherfall Reflex activated and reduced the impact of the creature slamming him against the tree trunk. His Combat Mastery skill took over his left arm and he drove an elbow backward into the thing’s ribcage with everything his Strength stat could put behind it.

The creature grunted and loosened one pair of arms. Eren ripped his right hand free and grabbed the scimitar from his belt and stabbed backward blindly.

"Get off me!"

The blade side of the scimitar caught something soft and the strangler screamed at a pitch that hurt his ears worse than the wyrm’s sonic blast had. It released him completely and he spun around and slashed twice more across its chest and one of its lower arms before it retreated up the tree trunk using four of its six arms while the damaged two hung at its sides. Dark blood dripped from three wounds and the creature hissed at him from about eight meters up.

Its teeth looked too human for comfort. The whole face did actually. It was close enough to a person’s face that Eren’s brain kept trying to see it as human even though the six arms and gray bark-colored fur were clearly not.

Worst creature design ever. This planet’s wildlife developer needs to be fired.

[Congratulations! Your skill "Combat Mastery" levelled up]

-Level 1 > Level 2

[Congratulations! Your skill "Lovely Eyes" levelled up]

-Level 8 > Level 9

He’d activated Lovely Eyes during the grab instinctively to try to confuse the strangler. It hadn’t worked because the creature attacked from behind where it couldn’t see his eyes. But apparently the system counted the activation under combat pressure as valid training anyway.

And Level 9 meant something very specific in the Evon system if you fill it’s whole exp at that level.

A blue glow appeared in his peripheral vision as the level 9 exp bar of the skill filled to to max and system showed him a continuous path.

[Congratulations! Your "Lovely Eyes" skill is ready to evolve to Evolution League 2]

[Please select one of the following evolution paths to upgrade your skill]

Three screens materialized in his vision. He leaned back against the tree trunk to read them while his adrenaline came down from the ambush. The strangler was long gone but his hands were still vibrating from the fight and his back was going to bruise where the creature had slammed him into the bark.

Come on System Lady. Give me something good. I’ve been getting my ass beat by monkeys in this forest all morning.

[Option 1: Mesmerizing Gaze - (Basic)]

:Extends visual charm duration by 40% and adds a passive confusion debuff that reduces target coordination for 2 seconds after eye contact is broken. Works on all targets within current charm effectiveness range. Retains all original Lovely Eyes benefits

[Option 2: Enchanter’s Focus (Uncommon)]

-Gaze creates a "Prediction Window" which targets under the charm effect. Skill allows the targets’ next movement telegraphed to the user for 3 seconds through micro-pattern analysis.

Synergy with Charming Voice: when both skills are active on the same target within 5 seconds the charm duration is tripled and the movement prediction accuracy increases significantly. Retains all original Lovely Eyes benefits

WARNING: Prediction Window requires direct visual contact. Breaking line of sight cancels the effect immediately

[Option 3: Alluring Presence (Basic)]

-Converts the active gaze into a passive aura with a 15-meter radius. All targets within range experience a minor charm effect without direct eye contact. Ideal for crowd control and social manipulation. Charisma-based effectiveness scaling increased by 25%. Retains all original Lovely Eyes benefits

He read all three twice before having an opinion.

Option 1 was a straight upgrade. Longer charm and added confusion after eye contact broke. Solid and safe but nothing that changed how he fought.

Option 3 was genuinely tempting because it turned a targeted skill into an area effect. No more having to look individual creatures in the eye to charm them. Just walk into a group and everyone gets a little dazed. But "minor charm effect" told him the individual potency would drop hard for that coverage and a Level 44 acid slug for example would need a hard charm to even disturbed.

Area-of-effect at weak strength versus single-target at full strength wasn’t even a real choice for someone who hunted alone.

Option 2 was the one that made him stop breathing for a second.

Prediction Window. I can see what the target is going to do next.

Oh, it is for three seconds!

And if I stack it with Charming Voice the charm duration triples and the prediction gets better?

Three seconds of knowing where something was going to move meant three seconds of perfect aim with his bow. Combined with Charming Voice the target would be locked in a double sensory trap while Eren read its body language for the kill shot. And it upgraded to Uncommon quality which meant the raw stat scaling would be stronger at every level going forward.

That’s not a charm upgrade. That’s a combat reading skill disguised as one.

He rubbed his sore back against the tree bark and made the decision.

"I’ll take Option 2, System Lady."

The skill merged into his eyes with a sensation that felt warm and slightly electric.

His vision sharpened for about two seconds and then settled back to normal but something had changed underneath. When he looked at the tree the strangler had climbed he could see faint patterns in the bark scratches that told him which direction the creature had gone and how fast it was moving when it made them.

[Congratulations! "Lovely Eyes (Basic) has evolved to "Enchanter’s Focus (Uncommon)

Back to Level 1 after every evolution. That was how the system worked. Every time a skill jumped to the next Evolution League it reset to Level 1 but the base power was already stronger than Level 9 of the old version had been. The Clone went through this exact same thing when his Running skill evolved into Kinetic Flux Runner during that insane chase with the black leopard.

Different skills, same system. He got the running version. I got the eyes version. We’re building toward the same kind of end build from completely different angles.

He picked up his backpack from where it had fallen during the ambush. One of his water bottles had cracked and leaked into the dried fruit bag so the almonds were wet now. He ate them anyway because wasting food felt wrong even with a full supply chain back at the farm.

The rest of the afternoon was a crash course in why this forest got worse the further north you went.

A pack of four winged wolf-things crossed his path about an hour after the strangler fight. They had canine bodies but with translucent insect wings growing from their shoulder blades and compound eyes that reflected light in dozens of tiny fragments. Their Observe results came back between Levels 35 and 41.

He didn’t engage. Four on one with flight capability was exactly the scenario his skills were worst at and these things weren’t guarding anything worth stealing. He activated Invisibility and crouched behind a rock formation until they passed.

[Congratulations! Your skill "Invisibility" levelled up]

-Level 1 > Level 2

Further north he found something that made his Apex Predator Awareness go completely haywire.

It had been a tree at some point. Now it was a structure about twenty meters tall made of bark and wood and bone fused together into something that shouldn’t exist. Animal skulls of at least six different species were embedded in the trunk at regular intervals and thin red veins of something that pulsed with light ran between them connecting skull to skull in a web pattern.

It smelled like iron and rot.

He tried to Observe it.

[Observe failed: Target classification exceeds current skill threshold. Approximate nature cannot be determined]

The red veins pulsed faster when he got closer and his Apex Predator Awareness was painting heat signatures everywhere around him. Above and below and inside the structure itself. But nothing was moving. Whatever lived in or around this thing was watching him approach and choosing not to react.

That was worse than being attacked. Things that chose not to attack were things that were confident enough to let prey come closer on its own.

"Yeah.. no." He backed away slowly and didn’t turn his back on the thing until he was at least a hundred meters away.

That goes right next to harmless-looking turtles and glowing deer on the list of things I will never touch again..