Catherine smiled, "There is a warehouse at a pier near the Tussock River, down below in the East Boroughs here. As for when... well, it's tonight."
Jace looked at her with a flat expression.
The room was silent for a long moment, until Jace spoke, "Tonight?"
Catherine nodded, "Yes, at midnight to be precise."
Jace's eyebrow twitched. "You... couldn't have told me about this a day before?" he asked.
Catherine shrugged nonchalantly. "I hadn't made up my mind," she said coolly.
Jace sighed while in deep thought. 'Well, not like a day would have changed anything.'
He looked at her while narrowing his eyes.
Catherine raised her eyebrow as if asking, 'What?'.
"You might wanna change your appearance," Jace said.
Catherine looked at her clothes and body. "You think so?" she asked.
"Yes, and I mean your face," Jace said, as he pulled out the Polymath Ring from his pocket and handed it to Catherine.
"You've seen the Prometheus's theft ability, right? Imitate it with this ring and 'steal' my 'shapeshift' power," he explained, as Catherine took the ring.
He could just give her the Prometheus Ring, but the power stolen by it would take longer to return to him than the imitated 'theft' by the Polymath Ring, as it would only be half as effective.
Catherine seemed to understand his thoughts and didn't question him; she did as he said.
Within a few moments, he felt his ability to shapeshift disappear, leaving him unable to use it.
Catherine, meanwhile, started changing her face immediately, as she knew she could use the stolen power for about 3 minutes.
Catherine didn't change her appearance much; she only toned down her beauty. She made her face look average and unremarkable while changing the color of her blue eyes to brown.
She also adjusted her body figure, making it less perfect and a little saggy, as it should be around her age.
Catherine removed the ring after the process was complete and handed it back to Jace.
Jace, meanwhile, looked at Catherine.
Catherine's age was about 40 or 41, but she had an amazing physique due to being a sequence 5 Beyonder, and her face, which was quite beautiful, looked 5 years younger than it actually was. She was a total baddie.
But now that she had changed her appearance, she seemed like just an average and unremarkable woman in her early 40s.
She still looked like herself, of course, as she hadn't completely changed her face.
Catherine saw his look and smiled mischievously. "Why? Not attracted to me anymore?" she asked.
Jace smiled. He was not a hard man to please, and he found all kinds of women attractive, except for ones younger than him, so he had no trouble finding stimulation in Catherine's current appearance.
"Why don't we go to the bedroom and find out how... 'unattracted' I am to you," he said with a smooth and seductive voice while leaning in.
Catherine seemed surprised for a moment, but a wide smile appeared on her face.
Knock, knock!
"I'll get it," Jace said as he stood up. He could have sworn that if it wasn't for the interruption, he definitely would have gotten some!
He opened the door, and as he had expected, it was Natalie. She didn't seem surprised to see him. Jace moved aside and let her in.
'Why couldn't you be 5 minutes late—wait, I can go at least 15 minutes... Nevermind,' Jace mused.
Natalie, too, didn't look surprised at Jace's current appearance, as she already knew about it.
But when she looked at the table where Catherine sat, she looked a little surprised.
Of course, as a sequence 6, she knew through her senses and intuition that the woman was Catherine, as she still resembled her, just more average and older. But she figured it was a form of disguise, so she didn't mind it much.
She sat before Catherine at the table.
Jace, meanwhile, went into the kitchen of the room and prepared tea for all of them, while Catherine filled Natalie in on the situation.
Soon they all sat at the table, talking about the combat plan they would go with.
Jace for a moment couldn't believe that he was sitting with two hot women he had slept with, talking about how to kill some guys.
Natalie, of course, knew about the kind of relationship Jace had with Catherine, but she was indifferent about it, as it was none of her business.
Catherine, meanwhile, was unaware that Jace had slept with Natalie about 2 times now, and Jace didn't intend on letting her find out about it.
Catherine's and his relationship was quite good, as good as a lover's relationship would be. Even though they hadn't exactly defined their relationship, he didn't want to disturb that just because he couldn't keep it in his pants.
But he did have some dangerous hots for Natalie.
Regardless, he realized he was thinking too much about it.
Jace was going to participate in an all-out battle of mid-sequence Beyonders; this was the last thing he wanted on his mind.
After an hour, his shapeshifting ability returned. So this time, he gave the Polymath Ring to Natalie and told her to steal his shapeshifting power, so she could change her appearance too.
But Natalie took a different direction than Catherine. Instead of downgrading and altering her looks, she outright changed her shape and turned into a man—a handsome man in his late 20s who looked like Natalie's twin brother.
Jace, of course, couldn't let this go and named her 'Nathan'. Catherine seemed fairly amused, but Natalie didn't seem too pleased with his humor.
Soon, they started preparing, exchanging their ideas and sealed artifacts.
——
It was midnight; the environment was as dark as it could be.
Catherine walked in silence, with the only sound being her boots walking on the wet mud. Beside her walked Natalie in her male form—Nathan, as Jace called her.
About 40 meters ahead of them was a half-broken warehouse besides a ruined pier.
Behind the warehouse, some distance away, was the Tusock River; Catherine could hear the water flowing.
The warehouse was the exchange place, where the smugglers were likely waiting by now.
Jace was not with them; he was waiting behind them, about 100 meters away from the warehouse.
There was a reason for it—the reason being that a 'Wind-blessed' can sense the people around them through their wind sense.
But Jace, with his flame jumping, was only seconds away from them, so Catherine wasn't worried. Besides... they had a plan.
Soon they reached the warehouse. It had no gate, so they just walked right in.
The warehouse was pretty big, with half of its roof fallen, and shining through it was the soft light of the crimson moon.
Before coming here, Jace had performed a divination to see how many people were in there. He even used the lucky stopwatch she had given him to get an optimum result.
Catherine, as a Beyonder, could feel the presence of 4 people inside.
As they walked in the dark, she saw a person sitting at a dusty table right in the middle of the warehouse.
Another person stood behind him, and there were 2 more on the right side sitting on crates.
As a Beyonder from the Arbiter pathway, Catherine was naturally sensitive to the presence of Beyonders, and it wasn't hard for her to figure out their sequence either.
It was as Jace had divined. The middle-aged man with a rough appearance and seaweed hair was the sequence 5 Ocean Songster. Behind him was a sequence 7 Beyonder, and the two people sitting on the far right side were sequence 7 and sequence 8 respectively.
The one behind the Ocean Songster particularly gave Catherine a distinct feeling of malice and depravity, leading her to believe that he was from the Devil pathway she had heard about.
The smuggler gestured towards the guy sitting on the crate. That man was a sequence 7 Pyromaniac, as he gave off a feeling similar to Natalie.
The Pyromaniac got off the crate and brought the crate forward slowly with caution, setting it on the table.
The smuggler smiled and gestured towards the crate, asking Catherine to take a look.
Catherine stepped forward, walked to the table, and opened the crate. The ingredients were all there: the main ingredients for Natalie's potion, her own main ingredient—the things she had asked for. There was also one additional thing: it was a core crystal of a six-winged gargoyle, one of the main ingredients for Jace's potion that he had asked her to look out for.
She wasn't sure she would get it, but it looked like the smuggler had some really good sources.
Nonetheless, she closed the latch of the crate. "The price?" she asked.
The Pyromaniac, who was near the table, picked up the crate and walked away from the table.
"As I said, it would be a fixed rate with no place for bargaining, so the amount would be what I said it was... Anything less would not be accepted," the smuggler stated in finality with a rough and deep voice.
Catherine turned around and walked to Natalie. Natalie had a leather bag slung over her shoulder; in the bag was a buttload of money, basically all the cash Catherine had on hand.
She, of course, was not going to give them anything; she had just brought the money in case the situation was too hard to handle.
Natalie removed the bag and opened it for Catherine to pull out the 'money'.
Catherine put her hands in the bag, but instead of pulling out the money inside it, she activated the Prometheus Ring on her finger.
In fact, she also had the Polymath Ring on her hand. Both were items she had taken from Jace. He seemed sad to part with them, but these two artifacts were an essential part of the battle.
Her demeanor relaxed as she removed her hands from the bag and turned around with a sigh. "Are you sure you don't want to bargain?" she said, looking at the smuggler.
The smuggler straightened up a bit. He had a weird feeling, but he firmly shook his head, rejecting the idea of bargaining.
By now, Catherine was already using the 'decryption' of the Prometheus Ring on the smuggler. She saw multiple swirling colors of different powers.
Prometheus's 'Theft' of a particular power depended on the luck of the user and knowledge of the pathway they are about to steal the power from.
Jace had told her about every power the Ocean Songster would have, so through decryption and intuition, she could tell which power was which. The factor of luck was not needed here.
"Theft!"
With a flick of her hand, she stole the most dangerous ability the smuggler had: it was the 'lightning manipulation'!
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A/N:- The Longest chapter yet. 🤕
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