[Bonus Chapter for 100 Power stones]
Jace and Sarah talked for another hour. After that, Jace finally left her apartment.
Looking around the empty hallway to ensure he was alone, Jace slipped the Polymath Ring back onto his finger and teleported straight back to his place.
—
He materialized directly inside his bedroom.
Moving over to the dressing table, he sat down and began the process of removing his jewelry and makeup.
While looking in the mirror, he couldn't help but think, 'I really do look like a female version of myself.'
In fact, Sarah had even gone so far as to give this female appearance a name: she called her "Jessica Liebert."
Jace chuckled and reverted back to his true male appearance. He then took a long, relaxing bath and collapsed onto his bed, sleeping like a baby.
It was still afternoon, but he had nothing else to do for now. He was currently taking a well-deserved break from acting, and it had only been a week since his break began.
—
When he woke up, it was already midnight. A red crescent moon hung high in the sky.
Dressed in a casual shirt and pants, Jace sat on the railing of his balcony with his legs dangling over the edge, gazing into the distant city lights.
His bungalow was isolated, meaning there were no neighbors nearby. While this privacy was worked just fine for him, the property could sometimes get a little too quiet.
The night was still young, so Jace decided to go out and hunt someone—preferably a Sequence 7 Beyonder.
When it came to hunting like this, Jace would usually pull out a stick or his cane and perform a dowsing rod divination using the incantation: "A Beyonder near me." and since he was now a Sequence 6, the divination succeeded even without needing a medium.
Sometimes, the divination led him to an independent Beyonder of the lower sequences. In those cases, Jace simply left them alone, as he had no real reason to provoke an unnecessary conflict.
Other times, it led him straight to a government official—like a Lawyer or an Arbiter. Hell, one time it had actually led him right to a squad of Nighthawks from the Church of the Evernight Goddess who were investigating some supernatural anomalies.
Jace had instantly fled, knowing that getting entangled with official Beyonders was an invitation to death.
Jace jumped off the balcony, landing lightly on the ground below.
He picked up a stray branch from the grass, activated his Polymath Ring, and teleported directly into the dark streets of the North Borough.
The streets were entirely empty and shadowed, illuminated only by the crimson hue of the crimson moon.
Jace didn't waste any time. He held the branch out in his hand and opened his mouth to say the divination incantation, but suddenly paused.
He took a moment to think and smiled.
Reaching into his pocket, his left hand pulled out a silver pocket watch attached to a matching silver chain.
This was his 'Lucky' stopwatch!
Jace looked closely at the watch face. The minute hand rested precisely on 14:59 and the second hand was at 00:00, meaning it was fully charged with accumulated good luck.
It had taken a considerable amount of time for Jace to charge the artifact. He hadn't yet found a proper opportunity to use it since he never truly needed to use it, but tonight was the perfect time to test its capabilities.
With a soft click of the top-right button, the second hand started moving forward with small, rhythmic ticks.
Physically, Jace didn't feel any better or different, and for a split second, he wondered if the watch was even working. However, his spiritual intuition told him that it was.
'So, I'm lucky now, am I?'
Keeping his thoughts aside, he raised his right hand holding the branch and muttered seven times "A mid-sequence Beyonder"
in Ancient Hermes
The branch in his hand turned with a slight force, and pointed in a specific direction. Jace looked at the path ahead and began walking.
He immediately clicked the top-right button of the stopwatch again. The second hand stopped at 00:46, meaning he had only burned through forty-six seconds of his stored luck.
Jace stopped the watch because there was no reason to keep it on. He had already gotten the direction; now he just had to follow it. There was no point in wasting his precious fortune.
Slipping the watch back into his pocket, he followed the direction the branch had poited to, through different streets and dark alleys.
For a moment, he felt concern regarding the exact Sequence of the Beyonder he was tracking.
The incantation he had used for the dowsing rod divination specified a 'mid-sequence Beyonder', which technically could mean Sequence 7, 6, or even 5.
But he wasn't worried, because he was 'lucky' when he used the dowsing rod divination, being lucky would hardly lead to him into danger or death.
So he kept following the directions, and after several minutes he was in a different area of North boroughs.
In a moment Jace got the feeling he was close, so he got ready, he changed his appearance to that of 'Jake' and turned the silverish red ring on his finger, this was the Prometheus Ring he just turned on.
He followed the direction of the branch on a dark street for a minute, and he started seeing tracks.
Seeing and following tracks was a Hunter's thing, but Jace was currently wearing both Polymath and Prometheus Rings, so with his enhanced deduction and analysis with the occasional use of 'decryption' from the Prometheus Ring he was able to find the tracks.
So he threw the branch away and followed the trail with his intuition.
Soon he reached an area where there were not many buildings around, there were some flickering lamps around the dark road.
That's when he saw his target. It was an average height man wearing a hooded black robe, walking forward about hundred or more meters away from Jace.
Jace turned cautious and started following the man silently.
Turning on his spirit vision he looked at the man, the man had a normal body, but through the man's spirituality Jace could tell he was a Beyonder of a sequence 7 level according to his intuition.
As for what pathway? He had some guesses, but he needed to confirm it, but instead of a divination he used 'decryption' from the Prometheus Ring to confirm.
'Decryption' was different from divinations, it worked using incredible observations and the mystic knowledge that the Beyonder already had and pieces them together into an accurate results.
And that's what Jace did, his spirit vision changed and was enhanced when he used decryption, he saw different colors belonging to different abilities in the body of the man, and his abundant knowledge came forward in his mind as he pieced it all together.
In an instant he found out that the man he was following was from the door pathway, a sequence 7 Astrologer.
'This is interesting, looks like the lucky stopwatch does work,' he thought.
But that was not the most interesting thing, by now the target was about fifty meters or so away from him.
That's when the intuition that came with the Prometheus Ring was triggered, this was the intuition of valuable things within the vicinity.
He used 'decryption' again while looking at the hooded man, to figure out what valuable thing he had.
And he decrypted two things that the astrologer had on his person, one was the black glove on his hand and the other was a ring he had in his other hand.
Now Jace realized that the 'lucky' stopwatch worked better than he had expected.