North Borough, in a theater.
Though the theater was on the smaller side, it was still filled with over 120 people.
It was a nighttime show of a new magician.
The children in the hall seemed incredibly excited; the adults, on the other hand, just hoped to get their money's worth.
The red curtains on the stage moved from both sides, revealing a figure dressed formally right in the middle of the stage.
The person seemed young; it was the magician they had all heard of.
The young magician smiled at the audience, but his uncomfortable nervousness was completely obvious to the crowd.
The magician bowed deeply, while pressing his top hat to his chest.
"G-Greetings, ladies and g-gentlemen, my name is Harrison Houdini. I'm an apprentice magician." After stuttering for a couple of times, his words finally got clearer.
"Today, I will perform magic tricks taught to me by my master," the magician continued.
The crowd was quiet, with only some occasional talking voices echoing in the dim hall, but their silence seemed to make the magician even more nervous.
"H-Haha, l-let me start with my first trick." The magician held his hat upside down with one hand, and pointed a small wand with a silver tip into it.
Because of the absolute confidence the magician had in this specific trick, his nervousness seemed to disappear for a moment as a proud smile appeared on his face.
"Ladies and gentlemen! Watch close as I set a fire in the hat!" he called out proudly and muttered a mundane, theatrical incantation.
Pha!
The fire burst open out of thin air, but instead of igniting inside the hat, it was the young magician's gloved hand that was suddenly on fire!
"Ahhh!" the magician was startled, screaming wildly. "Not the hand again!" He jumped around the stage, flailing his hand frantically to extinguish the flame, but in the end, he had to use his own coat to smother and put out the fire while jumping around comically.
By now, the crowd was laughing loudly at the hilarious performance of the clumsy magician.
The magician, who now had his coat wrapped tightly around his right hand, also laughed along with the crowd trying to overshadow his deep embarrassment, but it didn't seem to work very well.
"Th-that was on p-purpose! Believe me! Forget about that, let me show you the real magic now..."
—
Within a single week, Jace had contacted many people from the performance industry and even gave them auditions.
With some meticulous skills and supernatural persuasion, he finally got hired by a few theater owners.
This was his second show.
Since he decided to work for multiple people and perform at least a few shows a week in completely different theaters across the boroughs, he was getting paid significantly less per performance, but money was never Jace's primary concern.
The only priority he had was to digest his 'Magician' potion, and the process was going exceptionally well.
——
1 week later.
It was midnight in the North Borough.
Somewhere inside an abandoned building with an open ground floor, Natalie stood leaning quietly against a half-broken concrete pillar.
Soon, a man in a dark cloak walked into the vicinity of the building while looking around cautiously.
His eyes caught a silhouette leaning on a pillar in the shadows of the ground floor.
So, he walked into the structural ruins and stopped at a safe distance from the figure.
Natalie looked at her target. 'Poor guy,' she thought. This was a trap set to hunt him down, and she was the hunter here.
It was a Sequence 7 'Briber' from the Lawyer pathway.
He had come here tonight looking for ingredients for his Sequence 6 potion, but instead, he walked directly into a fatal trap.
And how does a cautious Sequence 7 from the Lawyer pathway walk into a blatant trap, you ask?
Well, more than a simple trap, it was a carefully crafted conspiracy to bring him here.
If it were the old Sequence 7 Natalie, the 'Briber' would have easily realized that it was a trap through his pathway's natural perception.
But Natalie was a 'Conspirer' now, so she naturally conspired with her enhanced intellectual abilities to make the man completely believe in the fake transaction and made him come to her willingly.
As a Conspirer, she was highly skilled at causing confusion, misdirection, and psychological deception; paired with the ability for inciting people, she was already a master of plots.
So, the conspiracy naturally worked, and she even felt a bit of her Conspirer potion digest within her, though it was still going to be a long journey to full digestion.
She stood up straight, moving away from the pillar. Before the man could even ask for the potion ingredients, she attacked!
Her hand instantly lit up in bright, violent flames that illuminated the entire concrete floor.
A bright spear made entirely of condensed flames formed in her hand as she hurled it forcefully at the man.
The man was shocked to realize that this was an ambush, but he quickly moved out of his way with desperate speed.
The flaming spear hit the ground with a loud, echoing 'boom', creating a scorching crater of flames on the concrete ground.
But Natalie wasn't done yet. Her whole body suddenly transformed into pure, searing flames and she disappeared into thin air, instantly reappearing exactly where the flaming spear had struck the ground.
After becoming a Sequence 6, her powers as a Pyromaniac had experienced a significant, mystical power-up, and this fire-teleportation was one of its core aspects. She could now take a temporary fire form, in which she could move incomparably faster and replace her physical position with the fire weapons that were thrown by her; however, it was strictly limited to a range of 10 meters, and maintaining the fire form consumed a massive amount of her spirituality.
The Briber, however, was ready.
Just as Natalie appeared in the crater of flames in her fiery form, he took out his leather wallet and threw it directly at her.
The wallet disappeared into the intense flames of her body, but a moment later, her elemental flame rapidly weakened! It dulled enough that she had to revert to her normal human form.
But even without her flames, she was still strong enough to take the guy on physically.
She shot forward with explosive speed to engage in direct physical combat; with her enhanced Hunter strength boosted to Sequence 6 levels, she doubted the Lawyer pathway user would be able to keep up with her blows.
——
Meanwhile, Jace was hidden behind another concrete pillar, watching the fight from about 30 meters away.
He and Natalie had met over coffee the day before, where she told him what she was planning to do. Of course, she didn't require his help or anything of the sort, but he had simply asked her persuasively.
After hearing that she was going to hunt a Sequence 7 Briber, he insisted on joining her in the fight.
Of course, he wasn't actually going to fight alongside her, as this was her independent commission alone, and he wasn't going to get any money even if he assisted her, and besides she was totally capable of handling a sequence 7.
So, he was just a quiet tag-along watching from a safe distance.
Without a doubt, he had alternative motives for coming here tonight, and Natalie knew that perfectly well. The woman had turned really smart after becoming a Conspirer, so he couldn't hide his intentions from her—not that he really needed to.
His motives were simple: he was hella bored! Performing on stage, acting and acting over and over again—he had grown tired and bored of the repetitive theater crowds, so he wanted a change of pace.
His other and most interesting motive was a mystical experiment he had forgotten to perform due to his incredibly busy schedule.
Pulling out the Polymath Ring from his vest pocket, he slid it onto his finger.
The experiment was simple. Just a few weeks ago, he had a dangerous encounter with a Marauder—a Sequence 6 Prometheus, to be precise—and in their fight, the Marauder had used many of his unique abilities right in front of Jace's eyes.
Meaning, with his knowledge of the pathway and the memory of witnessing those powers firsthand, he could imitate them to half of their original extent, which was more than enough for him.
He had already successfully imitated the basic 'Theft' power on small jewelry and other minor things within a distance of 20 to 30 meters, but he was especially interested in imitating the advanced 'Power Theft' of a 'Prometheus'.
So, he peeked out from behind the edge of the pillar, locking his eyes onto the fighting target who was on the loosing side.
"Decryption!"
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A/N:- Sorry if it seems like I'm rushing things, but it's just that jace had been a Magician for many chapters now, so i am skipping week over week, but it's still reasonable developement.
Regardless it's to going to take a while, but worry not, I'm gonna write like two chapter a day, so it should be done quickly, So we can finally moved on to the next Sequence.
What do you guys think?