As a Sequence 5 of the Spectator pathway, Philip's senses were significantly sharper and enhanced, so even before Jace entered the examining room, Philip had already noticed him.
After hearing the knock, he told the unknown person to come in. The unknown person seemed to be a man in his late 20s with a trimmed beard and curly hair; he was dressed in a casual suit.
It was not hard at all for Philip to figure out that the man before him was a Sequence 7 of the Hunter pathway.
But something was wrong... he could not read or feel anything from the Hunter with his powers of observation and telepathy. The Hunter's mind seemed dull? Or... he wasn't sure...
Philip had a bad feeling about this, but he was still a Sequence 5; he had many ways to get out of such situations.
It was also one of the reasons why he had told the patient beside him to go to 'sleep' rather than just telling him to get out of the examining room.
After putting his patient to sleep with 'Hypnosis', Philip turned to the Hunter with a serious expression.
"How can I help you?" he asked the Hunter for the second time.
—
Jace, who was hidden in a card in his marionette Pyro's pocket, smiled widely as he knew the reason the doctor had put the patient to sleep.
Pyro smiled. "Well, you can help me by telling me if you are related to the organization of Psychological Alchemists."
At this point, Jace was just making small talk before the fight, because he had already decided to make the doctor his marionette, and it wouldn't change regardless of what the doctor said, so he was just messing around.
The doctor raised his eyebrow in slight amusement. "I don't see how that's your business," he replied in a serious tone regardless of his amusement.
Pyro stood there for a moment, seemingly in deep thought, but a few moments later he sighed. "Look, so I tried... I really did, but I came here with the intention to kill you, and I thought I would give you a pleasant exchange of words before your death, but I never was good at holding conversations with strangers."
Jace was honestly telling the doctor his side of things, while he was also using his marionette's power of provoking. Of course, it was not going to work on the doctor, but this is what a Hunter does.
—
As the Hunter spoke, he used his powers of provoking, but it didn't affect Philip to the slightest extent.
On the other hand, he also figured that the Hunter was likely going to attack him after he finished speaking, so he made the first move instead.
The Hunter was in a close enough range that Philip could use 'Frenzy' on him, and that's what he did; as soon as the Hunter stopped talking, he used 'Frenzy' on him.
'Mm? It didn't work?' While Philip was surprised, he was still fine. So this was the bad feeling he had; he realized that 'Hypnosis', 'Frenzy', or any other kind of psychological attack likely wouldn't work on the Hunter before him.
There were many possibilities as to why, but there was no point in calculating them now.
Meanwhile, Jace realized that the doctor had used 'Frenzy' on his marionette, but fortunately for him, marionettes were immune to such things.
"Oh, did you just try something on me?" Pyro asked the doctor, but the doctor's figure blurred and became invisible within an instant.
This was 'Psychological Invisibility'. While abilities like 'Placate', 'Frenzy', or 'Hypnosis' didn't work on marionettes, 'Psychological Invisibility' worked just fine. This was because the former affected the mind—which marionettes didn't have since they are essentially dead—and the latter affected the senses and perception, and marionettes did have senses.
But this was something Jace had anticipated. In the metal card, Jace had already turned on the 'lucky' stopwatch. As he did it, his incorporeal and translucent form flew out of the card, and out of his marionette's back pocket from behind.
As he got out, Jace immediately looked for a reflective surface's around to hide in again, and he found one.
Behind Pyro were medicine cabinets, equipment, and some other stuff. Jace saw a dark bottle of some sort of medicine that was placed on the upper rack of the cabinet along with many others.
Without wasting any time, he 'mirror blinked' into the bottle's reflective surface.
Throughout the whole process of moving, Jace was using the Polymath Ring to imitate the powers of 'Wraith Transformation' and 'mirror blink'. While these powers were weaker and slower than the original powers, they were still effective enough for Jace to use in such a situation.
The doctor surprisingly hadn't noticed the real Jace, likely because he was focused on the Hunter before him. Of course, Jace was also using the 'lucky' stopwatch, so itmight have had something to do with it as well.
Since Jace was not affected by the doctor's 'Psychological Invisibility', he could clearly see him, and right now the doctor had pulled a scalpel out of nowhere and was walking to his marionette Pyro, likely intending to kill him.
Jace smiled; now that he knew where the doctor was, he could make his marionette attack him with no trouble.
Philip walked towards the Hunter with a scalpel in his hand. Since he had used 'Psychological Invisibility', the Hunter could not perceive him, so it would be pretty easy for him to just slash his neck and get this over with.
But in an instant, the Hunter's eyes, which were looking around in confusion, moved and looked at right at Philip.
The hunterd lips curled up into a wide smile.
2 fire ravens appeared over the Hunter as they shot at Philip with incredible speed (Jace was using his fire controlling power to increase the speed from behind).
As the ravens were about to hit him, Philip jumped out at the last second, escaping the attack unscathed.
Boom!
Boom!
The fire ravens crashed into the floor with small explosions. Jace used his flame controlling power again to lessen the impact of the blasts and fire in order to keep things quiet and not attract too much attention.
Philip stood up from the ground; he was again shocked. It turned out that even his 'Psychological Invisibility' worked on the Hunter for only a moment or two.
He had a bad feeling again; this didn't seem right.
The powers related to the mind didn't work, the Psychological Invisibility didn't work, and the only thing that was left with him was his superhuman strength, which a Sequence 7 Hunter could take on.
The whole thing was rigged!... but nonetheless, he still had a variable through which he could get out of this situation.
It was the patient sleeping on the bed to his left side.
Philip had purposely put the patient to sleep in the examining room instead of sending him out; it was because if things did go wrong, he could use the sleeping man to escape out of this situation.
As a Sequence 5 Dream Walker, he had the power to physically and literally walk into the dream of a nearby sleeping individual.
When he would walk into a dream island of a person, he could easily sense and see the dream islands of other people that were sleeping around. Not only that, he could literally jump into other people's dream islands from there, and then he could just exit from the dream to a completely different place.
This was basically a sort of indirect teleportation, but of course it had a range limit on the distance he could jump from one dream to another.
This was Sequence 5 of the Spectator pathway: 'Dream Walker!'
Within an instant, before the Hunter could take another action, Philip used the 'dream traversal' ability.
"Huh?!" His face paled as he realized that his power of dream traversal had disappeared!?
"Theft!"
Sitting in the reflection of a bottle, Jace smiled wickedly. He had already anticipated the doctor's plan to use dream traversal, and he was prepared.
With the Prometheus Ring on his hand, Jace had stolen the power of 'dream traversal' from the doctor.