They chased him in and he cast a second spell on Number One, before jumping from one shadow to another and casting a third spell. The trio was clearly used to working as a team, spreading out for maximum coverage and limiting Jason’s room to manoeuvre. When they adapted to his tactics and started to box him in, Jason switched it up again.
His primary goal was achieved; the affliction suite was in place on Number One, so it became a matter of waiting. He retreated through a door and moved deeper into the yacht.
The trio chased him through the door, up stairs and out onto the top deck, where he leapt right off and out over the water. Using his shadow arm and slow fall, he reached out to the lower deck and pulled himself back aboard, continuing the merry chase.
The trio pulled their subordinates into the pursuit with shouted orders, sending them scattering across the yacht to keep an eye out. In the meantime, Number One was increasingly suffering from the afflictions Jason had locked in place.
“Why aren’t I healing?” he asked out loud. His veins and flesh were increasingly becoming deathly black as the necrosis claimed his body at an accelerating rate.
“Because you don’t get to heal anymore,” Jason said, reappearing in front of them. “You’re dead and you just don’t know it yet.”
“Fix him,” Number Two demanded. His body language screamed that he was itching to leap after Jason once more, but he held himself back. He clearly understood that Jason was more likely to slip away than hold still to have a remedy shaken out of him.
“I can’t help him now,” Jason said. “He’s dead, whatever I do.”
“If I die, you’re coming with me,” Number One snarled.
“We both know that isn’t true,” Jason said. “Those of you still alive have another chance to surrender.”
“Keep chasing him,” Number One snarled, fearless even in the face of death. “All that teleporting has to cost him. His mana can’t last forever.”
Two and Three did as instructed, resuming the pursuit as Jason went back to fleeing all over and through the huge yacht. At one point, two of the bronze-rank henchmen chased him through a door to a dead end. He used his aura to suppress theirs, debilitating them with a soul attack. As he rushed past them, they each pulled out an injector and jabbed themselves in the legs, even as they doubled over in pain.
The magic of their bodies advanced immediately to silver rank, as if they’d both just consumed spirit coins, but there were also differences. Their auras remained at bronze rank and felt divorced from the magic of their bodies. Jason’s soul attack was not repelled but ignored, as if their bodies were now operating independently from their souls, operating on animal instinct. The men were slack-faced with empty eyes, more like the converted the Builder used.
They stood up straight with no indication of pain, as wild magic coursed through their bodies. Whatever boost they injected themselves with was clearly less stable than what the trio of leaders had taken, and with far greater side effects. Jason quickly got himself away from the spooky, zombie-like henchmen.
The pursuit eventually brought Jason back to the body of Number One, who had expired on the lower deck. Two and Three arrived to see Jason draining the remnant life force from Number One’s corpse.
“As your life was mine to reap, so your death is mine to harvest.”
“You have the choice,” Jason called out to them as the corpse at his feet withered to a dried-out husk. “Surrender, or one of you is next. With you guys as my mana supply, I can do this all day. Can you say the same about those boosts you’re on? How long will they hold out, exactly? Is there blowback afterwards?”
Number Two snarled, but Three grabbed his arm.
“He’s not wrong,” Three said fiercely. “We aren’t catching him, and we used our boosts early so we could use those rockets.”
“You want to surrender?” Two asked incredulously. “After what he just did to Henri?”
“He’ll do the same to us.”
“No, he’ll die.”
Two yanked his arm free and rushed at Jason, who didn’t run. He held up his hand, his palm slick with blood as leeches sprayed like water from a garden hose. Then Jason fell into his own shadow like it was a manhole, rising from Number Two’s shadow and making two shallow cuts with his dagger. Two was madly yanking leeches from his face as he yelled more in panic than pain.
Three and a group of henchmen following the noise watched in horror as Two staggered around while Jason added more spells. Rather than run them around again, Jason was using Colin for a more brutal approach, rapidly overloading Two with afflictions. Some of the henchmen moved to go after Jason, but Three ordered them back. Two’s gaze fell on the ocean water and he had a revelation, launching himself towards the edge of the yacht.
“Drop,” Jason commanded.
The leeches fell instantly to the deck as Two threw himself over the side.
“Come back,” Jason commanded.
The seawater splashed onto the deck by ocean swells was already having a negative effect on his leeches, killing off a decent number of them. A bloody strip emerged from the pile of Colin and flew to Jason’s hand. The leeches melted into a ball of blood and were drawn along the bloody rag as if sucked through a straw.
Jason then went to the side of the boat where Two was treading water, glaring at him with a face already blackened with necrosis. At bronze rank, just as at iron, Colin remained the most powerful weapon in Jason’s arsenal.
With killing Number One, Jason had wanted to drag it out, to show the others his suffering. With Number Two, he wanted to close it out quickly and demonstrate the threat he posed, so he cast another spell.
“Suffer the cost of your transgressions.”
Two screamed as Punition piled on damage for each of the many afflictions on him.
“We surrender!” Three called out. “Can’t you let him live?”
“When I warned you,” Jason said without turning around, “it was not because I would refuse to stop. It was because I didn’t have the option. When I fight, I fight to kill. My powers offer me no alternative.”
He turned around to face Three.
“There is a price for transgressing against me. How many more of you are willing to pay it?”
He glanced back at the man suffering in the water, rising and falling with the ocean swells.
“Feed me your sins.”
Jason drained Two’s afflictions and left new ones in their place, which glowed as they started annihilating him from the inside out. Two was strong and resolute, but the transcendent damage was where the screaming began.
“We surrender, damn you!” Three called out. “Stop it!”
“I can’t stop it,” Jason said, his voice devoid of mercy. “I can only finish it. Mine is the judgement, and the judgement is death.”
Behind Jason, transcendent light shone down on Two. When it faded shortly thereafter, nothing was left but empty ocean.
[Elite Converted] has been wholly annihilated. It has been looted automatically.
413 [Euros] have been added to your inventory.
[Satellite Phone] has been added to your inventory.
[Cellular Phone] has been added to your inventory.
Jason turned his gaze on Number Three.
“It’s time for us to have a talk.”