As soon as Harold's eyes fell on Jace, his body stopped moving!
His intuition as an astrologer had warned him of danger, but it was too late; the moment he saw the young man with short hair and a plain face, his body froze.
He was thinking, but he couldn't act on his thoughts! Soon, his thinking got rigid and slow.
'...What... is.... happening..?..'
Jace, meanwhile, had started controlling the spirit body threads to make Harold his marionette.
A few people who were around on the streets noticed the awkward pause of the two men standing before each other, but they disregarded it as it didn't seem like a big deal.
Jace looked at Harold, whose sentience was fading as he controlled the spirit body threads; the man's eyes looked shocked. He was surprised as well; he hadn't expected the hypnosis he planted in Harold's mind to work so well.
But then again, it made sense. Harold was a Sequence 6, and Jace had planted the hypnosis through his marionette who was a Sequence 5, and it was planted directly in a dream—which was directly connected to the subconscious mind—so it was quite effective.
A few minutes later, Jace completely made Harold his marionette. Without wasting any time, he walked past his new marionette and continued down the street as if nothing had happened; as he did, his marionette behind him turned around and started following him.
Jace sighed. There was a lot to do now....
—
Jace was sitting on the couch in the living room—well, he was actually sleeping in his bed, but he was possessing his new marionette to check out his new marionette powers, and boy, was he excited!
The powers of the Door pathway were something he already knew about, but now he literally had them!—through his marionette, of course...
The power of phasing through walls and opening doors was simple enough. Then there were the tricks of a Trickmaster; they were effective enough for a Sequence 6, but again, they were only tricks.
Then there were the Astrologer's powers of divination and anti-divination. As a Seer of Sequence 5 level, he didn't have much use for these powers himself; he could already perform astrological divinations, but this marionette of his specialized in deep astrological divinations, and Jace didn't necessarily mind it.
On the other hand, he was glad to know that he could use anti-divination and intuition interference through his marionette; it was quite useful.
And finally, the most exciting ability of a Scribe: Record!
According to what Jace could feel about his marionette's potion digestion, he could record about 1 Sequence 4 power, about 9 Sequence 5-6 powers, and about 22 Sequence 7-9 powers.
'That Harold fellow was quite incompetent...' Jace thought as he felt the powers recorded in the conceptual book of his marionette's mind.
There were a few powers like Fire Ravens, Fireball, Bribe, Bribe, Psychic Piercing, and Whip of Pain.
There was only 1 Sequence 6 power recorded, which was 'Distortion'.
And of course, there were 3 interesting powers recorded corresponding to the Sequence 5 level—an inheritance from Harold's master, likely...
The powers were 'Traveling', 'Blink', and 'Blink'.
Jace chuckled. These three powers were quite useful in perilous situations; it was likely why the 'Traveler' had Harold record them.
Unfortunately, what Harold encountered was not a Beyonder from a usual pathway, but the Seer pathway, and Jace had long prepared to make Harold his marionette.
As he sat, Jace pulled out a crystal ball he had found on the astrologer. He looked at it carefully; he knew that Astrologers could scry their own memories through a crystal ball that they kept on them.
Jace wanted to try it out as well, but not to see his own memories, No, as a Seer, he could basically dream-divine about his own memories, so he had no problem there.
What he wanted to do was to see if he could use it to scry the marionette's memories!
And that's what he did. Through the instinct of his marionette, he used a simple scrying divination on his own (marionette's) memories.
Soon, the crystal ball shone with light and started displaying the memories of his marionette! He could confirm it since he himself had seen the memories of Harold while in his dream.
'Whoa ... it worked!... Good, that makes things easier for me.' It really did.
The current 'Scribe' marionette of his was always going to be a temporary marionette; it was always his plan to make 'the Traveler' his first permanent marionette through Harold the Scribe.
But 'the Traveler' was a veteran Beyonder of this world, and a traveler at that, so it was likely he had several safe houses through different countries and places, multiple useful artifacts, many connections, knowledge, etc.
And Jace, in all good conscience, could not let all that go to waste. So his original plan was to first somehow restrain the traveler and put him to sleep, and then have his cat enter his dream—or he himself could enter the dream by 'recording' the dream traversal ability through his Scribe marionette—and then find out about all the sweet stuff he wanted to know in the dream.
But now, he didn't need to go through such trouble. He could just go ahead and make the traveler his marionette, and see the memories through scrying!
Haaa... Jace sighed again. He had to prepare.
The first thing he needed to do was record a few good abilities through Catherine and his cat. Then he needed to take the place of Harold and follow his daily routine for a week or two while waiting for the traveler to visit him, all while the real him hid inside the marionette through the Rose Bishop bracelet. Then, the fight...
'What a troublesome endeavor....'
But Jace did decide on one thing that he would do in the future.
'I am definitely going to switch pathways at Sequence 3 to the Door pathway...' Jace muttered inwardly as he nodded his head seriously.
When choosing a pathway when he first transmigrated into this world, he had chosen the Seer pathway because of the 'Marionettist' sequence, wanting to experience what it felt like to be a Beyonder from other pathways.
Now that he was a Marionettist, he believed it was quite worth it.
But truth to be told, he was never a good Seer, and he felt that he would be quite better off if he was from the Door pathway.
And it would be quite interesting aswell, because he would later have the powers of the Seer pathway up to the Sequence 4 level, and then he would have the powers of up to Sequence 3 of the Door pathway. The powers of his Seer pathway's strength would also be elevated to the Sequence 3 level; he would truly be a bizarre demigod...
But that, too, was going to be quite troublesome as well...
Jace sighed for the third time and laid down on the couch, still lost in his contemplation...