With the Prometheus Ring on his hand, Jace had stolen the power of 'dream traversal' from the doctor.
Seeing the doctor in a confused state, Jace immediately took action and made his marionette Pyro immobilize the doctor.
Pyro was wearing the Devil Ring on his hand, and now it was time to use it.
"Flame cage!" A cage of pale blue flames manifested out of nowhere around the doctor and confined him.
But the flame cage wouldn't last for very long, so Pyro took this opportunity and summoned the 'sword of lava!'.
In his right hand—on which he wore the Devil Ring—the sword slowly materialized from the ring.
It was a single-edged, curved broadsword that was boiling in pale blue flames; rather than being made out of metal, it seemed to be a semi-fluid, dark material like molten lava.
As soon as the sword appeared in his hand, Pyro lunged at the still-confined doctor in the flames.
The doctor—Philip—had understood the whole situation. He never stood a chance here!, this was a planned and coordinated attack on him, his all powers were somehow rendered useless or 'stolen'!!
The blue fire cage was making him sick in some way, and not only that, it was also preventing him from moving.
In an instant, the blue fire cage faded. Through the smoke, the Hunter jumped at him with a deadly, flaming sword!
He moved his body into a defensive stance, but he was too slow. The Hunter slashed the sword at his lower body, cutting his legs mid-thighs smooth as a butter, without any resistance!
His face contorted with pain, his body slumped down losing its support. The stumps of his legs were not clean, as one would expect them to be after being cut off by a sword; rather, the stumps had turned dark, melting, and corroding his blood.
As he laid on his chest, he lifted his now-crippled body with his hands and looked up at the Hunter who stood over him. Again he used 'Frenzy' on the man and said, "Stop," using the full extent of his Hypnosis.
But it was not working?!
The Hunter raised his hand toward him. "Death," he uttered.
Philip's mind scattered and his body burned. Dark lesions started appearing on his skin as his eyes turned bloodshot.
Blech. He puked out blood on the floor that seemed black due to the corrosion.
As he suffered, his mind and body turned rigid; he was unable to think or move his body.
—
Jace now stood beside his marionette Pyro.
It had been about a minute since he started controlling the spirit body threads of the doctor.
The body was crippled and damaged by the corrosion of the 'sword of lava' and the language of foulness.
But that was not something he had to worry about, as the damage done could be recovered by the Rose Bishop bracelet.
Jace sighed as he turned his head to Pyro beside him. "...Rest well, Pyro.... You have served me well," he said as he patted his marrionett's shoulder.
Pyro looked at Jace, smiled lightly, and nodded. He removed the Devil Ring from his finger, took some cash from his pockets, and handed it all together to Jace.
Jace accepted the money and the ring, and nodded at his marionette with a smile.
Thud.
His marionette was dead... "How sad," Jace muttered. He had gotten used to Pyro.
Unfortunately, he could still only control one marionette, so while he made another one, he had to discard the one he had.
A few minutes later, the doctor—no, the Dream Walker—opened his eyes and smiled at Jace as he supported himself up and sat while leaning against the wall. "Greetings, Master."
Jace said nothing. And why would he? It was him who was controlling the marionette to say what he was saying. It was the same thing with Pyro earlier; he couldn't help but feel that he was becoming a creepy like one of those guys that talk to dolls, but marrionetts rather than dolls in his case.
But the conversation between a marionette and the marionettist was also a form of a act, so he had to do stuff like that.
He sighed, took the Rose Bishop bracelet from his pocket, and threw it at the doctor. The doctor caught the bracelet and looked at Jace with a clueless expression.
"Wear it and heal yourself," Jace said to the marionette.
Within seconds, he made the marionette use the Rose bracelet and regenerate the limbs that were cut off. Now the marionette stood up, looking at Jace.
Jace, meanwhile, pulled out a metal card and threw it at his marionette, who caught it. Then he used 'imitated mirror blink' through the Polymath Ring and entered the card.
Jace fully possessed his new marionette.
The doctor—or rather, Jace—smiled, feeling out his new senses and powers. Through the eyes of a Dream Walker of the Spectator pathway, the world seemed much clearer.
He looked down on the floor, at his ex-marionette Pyro. The Beyonder characteristic of the Sequence 7 Pyromaniac had formed over his body. He took the characteristic and put it in his pockets.
Looking down, he also realized that he was wearing only shorts, because the legs of the doctor were cut off mid-thigh, and while the legs were regenerated, the pants were not.
He sighed.
By now, he could hear that the people downstairs were panicking, hearing the commotion upstairs. Not only that, a few of them had already gone out and returned with two policemen.
'Now... how to get out,' Jace thought... but the answer was obvious.
Jace turned his head and looked at the chubby man who was still sleeping on the bed. A wide, excited smile appeared on his face.
"Dream walking, huh?" he said out loud with excitement.
Jace realized that he had actually stolen the 'dream walking' power from the doctor earlier, so he currently didn't have it.
So he stopped the marionette possession, came out of the metal card, and gave the Prometheus Ring to the Dream Walker marionette.
Only about 7-8 minutes had passed since he had stolen the power, so it was still in his body. So he made his marionette 'steal' it back.
After stealing the power back, Jace hid in the metal card again and possessed the marionette.
Now he looked carefully at the sleeping man. The world through the eyes of a Dream Walker really did look different.
Even now, he was able to sense the emotions and feelings of the sleeping man. Not only that, he could see something like a translucent bubble over the sleeping man's head; there was a translucent, thin end of the bubble connected to the sleeping man's head.
Jace, looking at the bubble carefully, he could faintly see some hazy images... these were images of what the sleeping man was dreaming about.
Jace chuckled. But sensing the emotions of the sleeping man and seeing the hazy images of the dream, it was not hard to figure out that the sleeping man was having an... erotic dream.
'How amusing... and interesting.'
Normally, Jace was quite aversed to watching other people... 'go' at it, but he had to escape. And he could hear the people walking up to the examining room's door, though he wasn't worried as he could just use 'Psychological Invisibility'.
And he was quite excited over the prospect of entering someone's dream, so he focused his gaze on the translucent dream bubble, which was basically the gateway to the sleeping man's 'dream island'.
He used the 'dream traversal' powers. Soon his body, along with all the things on his body (including the metal card in which his real body hid), became translucent and turned into a stream of shiny spiritual light and entered the dream bubble.
Soon his physical form materialized in a space completely different from where he was before.
In his mind, Jace laughed in excitement. He was in a dream!
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A/N:- I had to do some research again as to find out how exactly the powers of 'dream walking' worked... and this is what i found out.
Well explore some other aspects of this particular power in the next chapter as it is actually quite interesting...