Next morning, Jace woke up naked under a blanket in a woman's arms.
'So... I did something wrong...' Jace thought as he discreetly got out of the arms of the woman who was holding him; she was the waitress from last night.
Jace was somewhat of a pushover when it came to women; it was one of the reasons he wasn't able to reject the waitress's advances.
'Catherine knew about it and indirectly allowed it...' Jace rationalized to soothe the guilt he was feeling.
He stood up from the bed and started dressing up silently.
'Wait a minute...' Jace stopped buttoning his shirt and looked at the woman lying bare under the sheet.
'Did I sleep with her... or did she sleep with me?... Damn!, women of Intis...', Jace dressed up quickly.
This was just a one-night stand, and he didn't really enjoy sex with this woman much.
It was likely because he had experience with women like Catherine and Natalie, who were literally superhumans, and he also had some experience with a Demoness. In comparison to those women, this waitress seemed quite tame and average.
On the other hand, the waitress seemed to have enjoyed Jace quite a bit, seeing how she couldn't keep her hands off him.
Nonetheless, Jace felt quite bad for his marionette Christoph, who was literally sleeping on the roof of this particular building through the night while Jace was getting some.
Jace's limit of controlling his marionette was only about 140 meters, so Christoph had to stay within that range.
Jace immediately snapped his fingers a few times in succession as he fire-jumped onto the roof of the building.
Christoph, seeing Jace return, got up from the wall at the edge of the building.
"Had a nice time with the lady, sir?" he asked Jace while greeting him with a small bow.
"Hmm... it was fine," Jace answered and walked to Christoph. "Take us home," he said.
"Certainly, sir," Christoph replied as he took Jace's shoulder and immediately teleported to their two-story house in Trier.
...
After resting for a few hours, Jace now lay on the bed contemplating things.
For now, his goal was to digest 50 percent of his potion so he would be able to make and control one more marionette, and it was going well enough.
His plan to act was to meet and interact with Christoph's acquaintances here in Trier, and it seemed to be working well enough considering how things went with the Pyromaniac yesterday.
On the other hand, there was the 'Devil' who was going around killing innocent girls...
With some trouble, Jace could possibly kill the Devil... but he wasn't sure.
It was because of the power 'Malice Perception' that a Sequence 6 Devil possessed.
Jace was a pretty strong guy with his own power as well as through the artifacts he wielded, and then there was his marionette as well; he could easily take care of a Sequence 6 Devil.
But what if the Devil felt Jace's approach like days ago through his preception and decides to just escape?
"Hmm..." Jace fell into deep thought as he tried to figure out how to take care of this Devil...
Usually, he could use anti-divination to interfere with the other party's intuition and perception, but the 'Malice Perception' of a Devil was something that stemmed from the Abyss itself, so at Jace's current level, he couldn't interfere with it in any way...
There were about three conditions to be met for the Devil to feel the Malice Perception:
First was the fact that the person had to be someone stronger than the Devil, with the capability to cause harm and death to the Devil.
Second was that the said person is thinking of harming the Devil.
Third being that the person actually starts searching for the Devil and has full intention of harming him.
Only when all these conditions were met would the 'Malice Perception' of the Devil work.
Jace knew about this because he had actually experienced it himself with the 'Devil ring' he had.
It was right after the 'Demoness incident' when, after escaping from the Demoness—whom he had tricked and humiliated—he had used the ring's power of Malice Perception.
And without any surprise, he felt it, as the Demoness was indeed capable of harming Jace, was thinking of harming Jace, and was searching for him to harm him!
He kept his past experiences aside and thought about how to proceed with this thing.
'Surely I can find some way to go unnoticed by the 'Malice Perception' radar by using the knowledge of how it works...' Jace wondered, as he tossed and turned on the bed.
—
For the next few days, Jace controlled Christoph to meet his acquaintances and research more about the serial killer: how he killed, where he killed, his victims, and what not.
Apparently, the Devil killed once every two weeks or so; he had killed about four girls, and in about a week, he would kill another one.
Since this research was performed by a marionette who was basically dead, it should not alert the 'Malice Perception'.
But since Jace, who controlled the marionette, did have the intention to harm the Devil, now that just might alert the 'Malice Perception' of the Devil...
But Jace took a precaution for it: he used his marionette, who had recorded the 'Hypnosis' power from his cat, and hypnotized himself to have no intention of harming the Devil until he was right before him.
He could only hope that this would work.
After all this, there was the problem of how Jace would know when and where the killer would strike.
But Jace was a Sequence 5 'Seer' and had a Sequence 5 'Astrologer' as his marionette; surely he could find things like this out with his divinations...
And besides, he also had the element of luck with him.
——
And so the night came.
Jace stood on the terrace of a tall, five-story building in the middle of the city.
He was, of course, hiding in the reflection of a metal card held by his marionette, Christoph.
Christoph pulled out a golden stopwatch from his breast pocket.