Jason had just dropped lightly to the lower deck as the yacht rolled under his feet on the open ocean. The three men were startled as the object of the search they just ordered alighted right in front of them. He pushed the hood of his cloak back off his head to reveal his face. They looked each other over.
Jason saw that the magic flowing through them was complicated; it felt more like the magic of an item than a living thing. Essence users, vampires like Vermillion, true magical creatures like Stash, and even monsters had a magic that felt alive. In these men, the magic was more like their body parts had been used as the material for inert magical items while those body parts were still attached.
Most intriguing to Jason was that the three men were flooded with a power that was artificially raising their rank. It felt akin to someone using a spirit coin, but the power was not draining out of them after only a few moments.
More people arrived to form up behind the first three. They were all bronze rank, with less complicated magic and without the power boost flowing through them. Their magic felt like that of the EOA thugs he had been talked out of fighting at Vermillion’s café. They were a variant of converted—the magically modified people the Builder cult had used. The Builder’s examples had been more improvised, using a modified core with extremely negative side effects. The Builder’s forcibly implanted cores essentially hijacked the body and trapped the soul, leaving mindless drones.
The ones he had seen on Earth had critical differences. For one thing, his aura senses revealed that the soul was empowered, like an essence user’s, rather than sealed away to serve as little more than a magical battery. The Earth converted were also more holistically imbued with magic, rather than it all stemming from a central core. He could sense the distinct magic in their flesh, their bones, and even their skin.
There seemed to be two grades of converted. One was simpler, which was the bulk of the people he could sense on the yacht. The three leaders had more sophisticated magic inside them, along with whatever power was artificially raising them to silver rank.
Jason spoke to them as the group eyed him off. His voice was sober and almost soft, with none of its usual bombast. It nonetheless carried over the noise of water slapping into the boat, a trick of voice projection that he had picked up while learning to speak without using air from his lungs.
“My name is Jason Asano, and you’ve come here to kill me. You won’t.”
He subtly employed his aura to hold their attention without provoking them, although they were clearly on the verge of launching themselves at him.
“Here’s what’s going to happen instead,” Jason continued. “You’re going to try and kill me. I’m going to make an example of one of you and then offer the survivors the chance to surrender, which, to be clear, means answering my questions and handing over this boat.”
“You seriously think you can intimidate us into just giving up?” one of the three leaders asked.
“Not yet. I’d like it if I only have to kill one of you, but I imagine it will take all three of you before the others fall into line.”
Jason mentally dubbed the three leaders as numbers One, Two, and Three. He could learn their names if they were smart enough to surrender. They wore bulky seaman’s clothes: heavy, warm, and topped off with woollen beanies. Everyone on the yacht was a man and, aside from Jason, a heavily muscled one. It looked like someone had found a fishing crew at a gym with lax steroid-abuse policies.
Under the clothes of the man Jason had mentally dubbed Number One, a sigil of light glowed. It looked to Jason exactly like a magic tattoo. Jason felt magic surge from the tattoo and into the man, who was suddenly propelled forward into a magical charge.
A second tattoo lit up on the man’s arm, which was wreathed in fire as it passed through Jason’s empty cloak. Jason had already shadow-jumped through it, moving the moment he sensed the surge in magic. In another shadow, a freshly conjured cloak hid him as he examined the man more closely with his magical senses.
Unlike the body-horror converted of the Builder, the Earth-converted seemed to have the power to accept multiple magic tattoos. Normally, one was the limit and the ability to have more could turn these converted into second-rate essence user knockoffs. They would have few and less sophisticated powers, but if they could be produced in high numbers, it would be an incredible force.
Jason could only sense a few tattoos on each of them, though, and he knew from experience that magic tattoos had much longer cooldowns than essence powers. Of course, it was possible that limit had been broken as well.
The three were looking around for where Jason had vanished to, shouting at their subordinates to spread out and search.
“So much for making an example of us,” said Number One. “He flees at first sign of trouble.”
A line of darkness snaked from the shadow cast by the deck above, an arm holding an ornate black and red dagger. It made two shallow cuts on Number One’s leg and tried to withdraw, but was grabbed by the silver-rank reflexes of Number Two. Despite the shadow arm’s intangible nature, a small tattoo on the back of the man’s hand was glowing and the hand had no trouble gripping Jason’s shadow arm. The arm and the dagger both vanished as Jason relinquished the conjured items.
“He can hide in the shadows,” Number Three said. “Enhance your vision.”
“That will cost us boost time,” Number One pointed out.
“Which gets us nothing if we spend it poking uselessly into corners,” Two pointed out, supporting Three. The eyes of Two and Three started glowing bright blue, as did the previously invisible tattoos around their eyes. One’s eyes reluctantly lit up next. Looking around again, they spotted Jason standing casually in the shadows.
Once their gaze locked on to him, Jason ducked through a nearby pair of sliding glass doors that opened at his approach to reveal the yacht’s main saloon. It was a larger version of the bar lounge on his houseboat, and Jason dashed into it while casting a spell on Number One.
“Bleed for me.”
The doors slid closed behind him, only to open as the trio rushed past their onlooking subordinates.
“Should we help?” one of the henchmen asked.
“Don’t get in our way,” Number Two warned them.
Shade was occupied playing parachute, so Jason flung explosive throwing darts at the tinted windows, blasting them out to let in more direct sun. Jason needed some hard shadows to shadow jump through instead of the soft, diffuse artificial lights in the room. So long as he had that option, the room’s furniture would only be an impediment to his enemies. Combined with the room’s extravagant size, he decided this would make a good place to face off with the trio of converted.