The vial was cool in his hand, the dreamlike crimson liquid swirling with its hypnotic foam. There was no ceremony left to perform, no further preparation to make. A fierce, burning eagerness, an impulse that felt equal parts Lutz's desperation and Andrei's audacity, seized him. He didn't raise the vial in a toast. He didn't hesitate.
He lifted it and brought it to his lips in one fluid motion, tilting his head back and gulping it down.
The first sensation was a surprise. The Marauder potion had been a vile, bitter sludge. This was different. The crimson foam was light and airy on his tongue, and the liquid itself was... sweet. Not just sweet. It was a cloying, overwhelming, agonizing sweetness. It was the saccharine pleasure of a lie told perfectly, the addictive rush of a deception successfully sold. It was the taste of honeyed words that hid a venomous intent, the satisfying click of a trapdoor swinging shut beneath a fooled mark. It was so intensely, painfully sweet it felt like it was stripping the enamel from his teeth and searing the lining of his throat. It was the flavor of manipulation itself, and it was intoxicating.
The last drop gone, he dropped the empty vial onto the soft felt cloth on the table. The sound was dull, final. Then, the real trial began.
It was a psychic avalanche. He stumbled back, clutching his head, his eyes squeezing shut. The familiar, desperate strategy from his Marauder advancement surfaced—the cube of light. He visualized it, a perfect, shimmering lattice of pure will, and tried to force the chaotic, sweet, deceptive energy inside, to contain it, to prevent the mutation that would unravel his very self.
But this power was slippery. It wasn't a brute force to be caged; it was a mist of lies seeking to permeate everything. As he fought to contain it, his mind was violently rifled through, not by an external force, but by the potion itself. It was a mirror held up to his soul, and it reflected every falsehood he had ever uttered.
He saw himself, as a younger Lutz, lying to a shopkeeper about his age to get work. He saw himself assuring a fellow street urchin that everything would be alright, while his own stomach gnawed itself with hunger. The small, necessary deceptions of survival.
Then, sharper, more recent lies flashed with blinding clarity. The smooth, practiced charm of "James Morgan" assuring Edmund Reeves of his frivolous ambitions. The calculated words to the alchemy shop attendant about his "investor" alchemist. The blatant lie to Eliza about a timber meeting. Each one replayed in his mind, not as memories, but as experiences, the taste of each false word returning to his tongue, that same agonizing sweetness.
But it went deeper. It clawed at the lies he told himself. The lie that he was in control. The lie that he could outrun the Harbor Vipers and the Church of Steam forever. The lie that Andrei's memories were just a useful database and not a fundamental part of who he was now. The potion seized on that, amplifying the guilt, twisting it, trying to convince him that his entire existence was a fraud, a house of cards built on deceit.
The cube of light in his mind flickered, the walls straining, threatening to shatter under the weight of his own duplicity. The sweetness was becoming a suffocating syrup, drowning him in the sheer volume of his falsehoods. It was daunting, a tidal wave of self-recrimination.
No.
The thought was a spark in the drowning sweetness.
He stopped trying to push the lies away. Instead, he grabbed one. The lie to Eliza about the timber meeting. He forced himself to remember the reason. Not the Swindler's reason of convenience, but the deeper truth. To protect her. To keep her innocent, to keep her safe from the terrifying reality of the Rotwood Fens and the Beyonder world. The lie was a shield.
He seized another. The creation of "James Morgan." The reason? Survival. Revenge. The power to stand against evil. The facade was a weapon, a suit of armor.
One by one, he confronted the torrent of lies, not denying them, but reframing them. He saw them not as sins, but as tools. As strategies. As the essential, grimy currency of a life lived in the cracks of a cruel world. The lies to others were for protection, for advancement, for justice. The lies to himself were necessary fictions to get through the day, to armor a heart that had seen too much.
He wasn't a good man. He knew that. But he wasn't a mindless vessel of falsehood either. He was a practitioner. An artist. His lies had purpose. They had value and reason.
As this realization solidified, the agonizing sweetness of the potion began to transform. It didn't vanish, but it integrated. It was no longer an external assault; it became a part of his spiritual makeup, a new layer of his being. The chaotic energy stopped fighting his containment and flowed smoothly, obediently, into the cube of light. The cube glowed not with pure white, but with a complex, shifting pattern of silver and deep crimson, stable and controlled.
The pressure in his head receded. The cacophony of remembered falsehoods faded to a whisper, then to silence. His breathing, which had been ragged, slowed and deepened.
He opened his eyes.
The basement looked the same. The lamplight flickered on the glassware. The safe stood silent in the corner. But everything felt different. He looked at his hands, turning them over. They were the same hands, but he felt a new potential in his fingers, a new readiness in his posture.
He stood up, moving around the cleared space in the center of the basement. His body felt light, responsive. It was the body of a confidence man, built for smooth gestures and misdirection.
Then, he turned his attention inward, digging into the new architecture of his own mind. It was like discovering a new, secret room in a familiar house. There was knowledge there, cryptic and instinctual, waiting for him. Abilities, not as simple as "Agile Hands" or "Thief's nose," but more complex, more nuanced. Talents rooted in the very essence of the deception he had just mastered.
He spent long moments in the quiet basement, experimenting, probing, feeling out the contours of this new power. He moved through a series of subtle gestures, tested his voice at different registers, and practiced controlling his expression in the dark reflection of the safe's polished door.
The transformation was complete. Lutz stood in the center of his basement workshop. The spiritual turbulence had subsided, leaving in its wake a profound and unsettling calm. He felt… more. Not in the way a muscle grows stronger, but in the way a tool becomes sharper, more specialized. He was still flesh and blood, still far from being a force of nature, but the chasm between himself and a normal person had widened significantly. Where a Marauder was a predator in the alley, a Swindler was a phantom in the drawing-room. He was becoming someone to be very, very careful with.
In his opinion, this leap from Sequence 9 to 8 felt more monumental than the initial transition from mundane to Beyonder. The Marauder had given him tools for survival—theft, agility, a keen eye for value. The Swindler, however, was giving him tools for influence. It wasn't a vast increase in raw combat power, but it was an incredibly complete and versatile Sequence. It was the difference between being a foot soldier and a spymaster.
And with the power came the compulsion. Just as the Marauder in him itched to pilfer and claim, the Swindler thrummed with a deep, instinctual drive to deceive. It wasn't born of malice, nor was it solely for material gain. It was a primal urge for the act itself—the artistic flourish of a perfectly crafted lie, the intellectual satisfaction of leading someone down a garden path of their own assumptions. It was the desire to see how much of reality he could reshape with words and gestures before it snapped back into place. This, he knew, would be his constant companion and his greatest internal threat. He would have to learn to harness this drive, to channel it towards his goals, lest it use him for its own whimsical and dangerous ends.
He focused on the new layers of his consciousness, examining the cryptic knowledge that had taken root.
The foundation of this Sequence was a dual-pronged enhancement of his social capabilities. Charm and Eloquence. He could feel it as a low-grade, persistent aura around him, an invisible pheromone of approachability. It wasn't the overpowering, almost chemical persuasion of Creed; this was subtler, more innate. It made him seem trustworthy, interesting, reasonable. Coupled with this was a sharpening of his linguistic faculties. Words came to him more easily, phrases arranging themselves for maximum persuasiveness. He could feel that for a natural-born Swindler, wich Lutz was, these abilities didn't need to be used actively but instead became a passive state, a constant, effortless manipulation of the social field.
From this foundation, the rest branched out.
Thought Misdirection. It wasn't telepathy. It was a sophisticated form of psychological nudging. He could, through a perfectly timed word, a shift in posture that drew the eye, or even a deliberate arrangement of objects in a room, redirect a person's train of thought. In a crucial moment, he could make an opponent overlook the hand reaching for a weapon, or a merchant fail to double-check a calculation.
Then, came Mental Disruption. It was the ability to induce very mild hallucinations on the mind of one single target at a time over a short range. He picked up his silver pocket watch from his waistcoat. Holding it in his palm, he focused his will. He wasn't trying to charm or misdirect; he was attempting to impose a minor, sensory falsehood onto reality itself.
He focused on a spot on the wooden table about three meters away. The air above it shimmered, almost imperceptibly. For a brief second, a second, ghostly pocket watch appeared next to the real one in his hand, a faint, translucent duplicate hovering over the table before flickering out of existence. A slight headache pulsed behind his eyes.
Limited, he assessed clinically. One target at a time, short range—no more than five meters. The Hallucinations were minor. He couldn't conjure another him or hide a revolver shot. But he could make it appear like there were two or three more gold coins in a pile during a trade. He could make a key clause in a contract seem to blur or shift, encouraging a signature before a proper read-through, perhaps this would increase its capabilities with potion digestion.
The new abilities didn't seem groundbreaking on their own, but their true power lay in their synergy. Charm made the mark receptive, Eloquence laid the groundwork, Thought Misdirection steered them away from the truth, and Mental Disruption provided the final, flawless illusion. It was a seamless assembly line of deception. Yet, the potion's influence did not stop there. It seeped into the foundations of his existing being, refining and enhancing what was already there, making the Marauder and the Swindler not two separate entities, but a single, more dangerous whole.
Lutz's gaze, already sharpened by the need to assess value and opportunity, now gained a new, penetrating layer. Superior Observation had evolved. He could now, with concentrated effort, perceive the subtle, involuntary tells of the human body. The slight twitch at the corner of a mouth that betrayed suppressed anger, the quick, darting glance of a liar, the almost imperceptible relaxation of shoulders indicating belief. He couldn't read minds, but he could faintly grasp the target's mental state.
This wasn't as strong as even a Sequence 9 spectator's analytical capabilities, but it was a nice addition that aided the swindling of each individual objective, of course, with his limited Beyonder knowledge, Lutz couldn't make this comparison himself.
Next, he assessed the changes to his body. He took a few steps, then exploded into a short, silent sprint across the length of the basement. The movement was close to being a blur. He stopped instantly, not a single vial on the alchemy table rattling. A slow, impressed whistle escaped his lips.
His physique had received a substantial, targeted upgrade. It wasn't about strength; that felt largely unchanged. But his speed and agility had increased. He felt light, a coiled spring of potential energy.
I could probably run almost like Usain Bolt, he thought, a memory from Andrei's world providing a bizarre but useful benchmark. If I add Creed on top of that... He imagined the physical boost from the stiletto dagger synergizing with this new innate swiftness. There's probably few terrestrial animals back on earth that could catch up to me. The thought was both thrilling and absurd. Now that I'm thinking about that, I should start exercising. Push these new limits, see what I'm truly capable of.
He could achieve higher physical feats of all kinds that relied on finesse and velocity—scaling a wall, dodging a blow, moving through a crowded room unseen. Yet, a cold, pragmatic voice in his head, the voice that remembered the raw, explosive power of a certain someone, chimed in. That being said, even with Creed, I'm sure I still couldn't keep up with someone like Karl in terms of pure physicality. Karl was a monster of a different order.
Finally, he turned his attention to the core of his original power: Theft. The increase in agility naturally made him a better, quieter thief. But there was more. He focused on the concept of taking, of acquisition. He looked at the safe that was a few meters away from him, inside it, he could feel Boris's Characteristic and the Dream-eating Rat's heart, he concentrated.
A very weak and faint, shimmering, semi-transparent hand that only he could see, a phantom limb composed of his spirituality, materialized and headed towards it. It was clumsy, ethereal. With immense mental strain, he willed it to close. The spectral fingers passed through the steel once, twice, before on the third attempt, they managed to gain a tenuous purchase. With a final, sharp tug of will, something appeared in his open palm with a soft pop of displaced air, it was a foggy and hazy little heart.
He gasped, a headache instantly blooming behind his temples.
The effort was immense, the range was pitiful—no more than five meters—and it only worked on items with a spiritual nature that interacted with the spirit world in some way, but he could remotely steal them.
He couldn't remotely steal a coin purse or a key. But he could potentially steal a Beyonder characteristic or a mystical ingredient. It was a niche, demanding, but potentially game-changing ability.
Finally, the range of his Thief's Nose had increased from 10 to 15 meters, possibly increasing further to 20 after digestion.
"Sadly, I'm still incapable of performing divination and i don't have any kind of spiritual perception, rituals are still complicated to me as my spirituality hasn't increased that much, I'm just now starting to realize how valuable Umbra was."
He stood there, breathing heavily, the small and dreamy heart cool in his sweaty palm. The assessment was complete. His tools for charm, misdirection, and illusion were sharp. His mind was sharper, able to read the unspoken language of the body. His body was faster, a vessel built for graceful escape and precise action. And his core power of theft had evolved, faintly reaching now into the realm of the spiritual.