Team Building

Jack returned to the market and had been keeping track of the other spies. Two had left the city already and were kept in place by the bats, which had simply knocked them down and sat their tails on top of their bodies to restrain them. The other three had decided to hide inside buildings or alleyways. Jack picked them up one by one and sucked them into his portal, which led to a prison he had created inside a rock. It was a place that was impossible to flee from and that only had small openings to let in air and light from the ceiling. Once he had collected all 5 of them, he joined them in their makeshift cell. "You wanted to see me so badly and now I'm here. How can I help you guys?"

The 3 men and 2 women remained silent but Jack could sense Sym energy fluctuations in the air which likely were due to the telepathy ability of one of them. Jack got up, walked to the telepathy user, and grabbed her by the neck. "You don't have to say a thing if you don't want to." He then put his finger into her mouth, which contained the assistant's submission bots. "But I hate being left out." He then lowered the woman back to the ground and returned to his previous position. To his surprise, the other spies had not even tried to intervene. "Not much camaraderie amongst you guys, huh?"

Then Jack looked at the telepathy user and gave the command. "Talk."

"My name is 809. We were sent by-" The moment she started to reveal truthful information, the sniper turned around and tried to fire an energy bullet directly at the woman's head. Without the Sym crystals, the bullet would have been much weaker, but it would still easily blow her head off if Jack had not put all the other spies into their own multi-layered barriers. Jack looked at the sniper. "Don't ruin the mood. You will get your turn." Then the sniper placed his hand on his head and blew his own head off.

Jack looked at the scene in disbelief and his eyes followed the blood that was rolling down his barrier as well as the limp body that was leaning against it. He released it and observed the body and a pile of blood splashing on the ground. "What the hell was that?" Then he shook his head and looked at the others who did not seem to have any way of committing suicide. They might bite their tongues off, though, Jack thought. But he only needed one of them. He looked back at the telepathy user. "Go on."

"We were sent by the organization to kill you. You were difficult to locate, so we used our assets in the governments to intercept you after the meeting. We were too late in Cibolas but the timing was perfect in Silve," the woman said with a friendly tone.

"That's enough," Jack said to the woman. Then he addressed the assistant. "I will subordinate all of them, and then you can give me a briefing of their memories." Jack got up and gave the same treatment to the other spies. They tried to resist but they were easily overpowered. He then went to the other dimension where the woman with the portal ability was located. She was sitting in the corner of the barrier, hugging her knees, and staring daggers at the bat, which was entirely indifferent to her presence. When Jack appeared, she quickly rose up and got into a fighting stance but Jack immediately overpowered her and she got the same finger in her mouth that the others had the pleasure to taste just moments ago. Jack looked at her with an apologetic face and a sarcastic tone. "Sorry you had to be the last one."

The subordination bots in her body took effect immediately. "I fully understand. You did what you had to do."

Jack wanted to avoid subordinating humans initially, since it didn't sit right with him, but he could not deny that it easily solved all of his problems. And, according to the assistant, it was reversible, since the bots could be excreted from the body on command. So it was a necessary evil he had to live with.

He brought his five new assassins into his villa in the Cibola territory and gave each of them a private room to live in. They were of varying ages and all seemed to be between 20 and 40 years of age. Since they were now under his control and under full surveillance by the assistant, they were as trustworthy as the bats to him. With the sniper dead, he had two men with mind control and visual abilities, as well as three women with portal, telepathy, and detection abilities. These would come in handy, and Jack also assumed that they were well trained physically and mentally to execute difficult missions. The most useless ability was mind control, since it seemed quite limited in its use, especially since Jack had the assistant's subordination bots. The other skills could be useful in some situations, so Jack decided to keep them around, while the mind control user would be sent back as a double spy. If he is exposed, he can quickly return through a portal.

Jack found the subordination bots interesting, since the people he talked to seemed to fully retain their personalities, but they were obliged to follow his commands at any time. It was almost as if the bots were only guardrails that intervened as little as possible and only when it was absolutely necessary. The subordinated could not plan against Jack or actively harm him, nor could they lie to him or help others to go against him. Since the assistant monitored their minds at all times, there was no way they could ever become a threat. As a result, Jack felt like he had gained a team rather than a bunch of slaves, since they were relaxed around him and casual in their demeanor.

The assistant would need a few more hours to compile all of their memories, so he had some time for himself. He commanded the assassins to wash themselves and get food in the kitchen. He also gave each of them an animal mask so that their identities remained hidden as well as a pendant with an emergency portal.

This assassination attempt had shown Jack that being in the spotlight is indeed dangerous. He can be all-powerful, but if he gets shot by multiple snipers that are amplified by Sym crystals, he might be in trouble. He cannot feel how strong his skin is and he never knows how much his barriers can handle unless he tries it. So, even if he is very strong, he is taking a risk whenever he acts like superman and makes himself the center of attention. He needed skills that could help him. Since he already had portals, healing, barriers, levitation, and detection that are lifesavers in their own right, he thought about three more skills that would drastically improve his survivability. These were sniping, avoiding detection, and invisibility.

With sniping, he will be able to handle all of his fights from a distance, and it should be orders of magnitude more powerful than what the dead assassin used. His range should also be incredibly wide and at least 2.5 kilometers. Combined with his detection skill and high Sym energy density, he would be able to kill almost anything in a wide radius.

Invisibility is a no-brainer for survivability, since there is no need for him to be visible to others for 90% of his activities. Whenever he was not speaking to people or interacting with them, he could be invisible. This makes him unapproachable and therefore hard to assassinate. With his energy pool, he could easily stay invisible forever if he wanted.

Lastly, the skill to avoid detection, which Viva Ashton surprised him with not too long ago. It was ideal for stealth operations and had great synergy with the invisibility skill. Detection devices are common, and humanoids seemed to often have that skill as well, so it was an important ability to have.

According to the assistant, all three abilities were well documented in its database, which made it easy for Jack to learn them. He spent the next ten hours in the bats dimension and only focused on training these abilities. He had started to use their planet as his vacation home since it had exceptionally high Sym energy density and allowed him to accumulate energy even faster than in the high-density environment of his cave. It also allowed him to freely destroy the environment while testing his skills without any regard for potential bystanders or collateral damage. Another benefit was that he could always gather more bats whenever he was bored or took a break.

After the ten hours were over, he had gathered 53 more bats and had successfully learned the three abilities. Still fully invisible and undetectable, he returned to his villa. The assistant had already brought the mind control ability user back to the city of Silve and told him to return to his employer, claiming that the mission had failed and that at least three were dead while the other two were missing. The assistant also created a believable story for him to support his claims.

The other four were training in the gym of the villa, which was a large space outside next to the garden. It had a large area for free workouts, multiple weight machines, and also a variety of weapons like bows and swords. It was a surprisingly combat-focused gym, but this seemed to be how the previous owner, a high-ranking military officer, liked to have it. As Jack was watching the four work out, the assistant began briefing him on their memories. The four were assassins who had been nurtured into the trade since they were kids. They had few memories of their families or upbringing. Their character-forming memories began with the excessive training they had to undergo since they were about eight years of age. They were trained in assassination techniques, poisons, explosives, and especially in their own Sym energy abilities. They were forced to develop their abilities to the maximum to innovate and create new use cases that could improve their value in the team.

They were participating in a variety of missions, which included surveillance and intelligence gathering, which accounted for about half of their missions. Interestingly, they were also deployed on missions to hunt creatures in the high-density areas to gather more funding for the organization or to support their own living expenses. They seemed to be very well versed with advanced weaponry and other Sym devices that the assistant had not seen in any of the countries they had been to so far.

When analyzing their memories, the most important finding was that they did not know who their employers were. They had only ever met other assassins in person but never any of the superiors. They had communicators that were encrypted, and they would be contacted through them by anonymous senders. If an assassin was rebellious or tried to flee, they would be killed on the spot through some type of Sym device embedded in their brains, which seemed to allow remote activation. Upon finding this small device, the assistant had immediately inactivated it by depriving it of its energy source and excreted it for all the assassins except for the one who was sent back to avoid suspicion.

He had learned a lot about them, but the most important parts were missing. Jack did not know who wanted him dead or why. But the assistant was able to create theories based on the types of missions the assassins had executed in the past decades of their activities. They were not loyal to any nation or government, since they operated and caused havoc in all large regions. They also were not exclusively financially motivated, since they did not make decisions that obviously maximized profits but often followed another geopolitical agenda. They seemed to be like a secret organization that had its own goals and was operating from everywhere around the world. The assistant had compiled a list of notable figures in power that benefited from their actions, but it had tens of thousands of names on it. Even when the list was reduced to only those individuals or companies that benefited from 80% of the missions, then the list still had thousands of names on it. And the communicators of the assassins did not allow the tracing of the senders, since each sending device was only used temporarily and thrown away after every mission.

They were very careful.

The assassins had spotted Jack and stopped their training to greet him. They were loyal and polite, which was likely a result of their harsh upbringing and early indoctrination. He had decided to call them by their animal masks, since their actual names were numeric codes that were unusable in normal conversation.

Cat had the portal ability, and she was 35 years old and very skilled in her use of portals and teleportation. She was able to create portals of many different sizes and often combined them with the sniper to create small portals for him to shoot through. Combined with the visual ability to see through walls, this allowed them to assassinate almost anyone without leaving a trace. She had a slim figure and was very well trained in close combat and acrobatics.

Wolf had the visual ability, and he was a tall and muscular man. His ability did not fit him at all, since he looked more like someone who should be kicking down doors rather than looking through walls. But you cannot choose your talents. At 39 years of age, he was very quiet and often preferred sitting in silence by himself when he was not on a mission or working out.

Deer was the youngest of the group at 18 years, and she had the telepathy ability. She was not as slender as Cat but small and slightly more curvy. She was not very muscular but had excellent speed and flexibility, which would often make her the first choice in reconnaissance missions.

Dove had the detection ability, and she was by far the scariest looking woman in the group, but she had the sweetest personality. For an occasional killer who was 190 cm tall, she was surprisingly warm and caring. Soft-spoken, she often just followed the others in her free time, since she had no real hobbies or dreams outside of living a decent life. She was 25 years old but had joined the ranks of assassins at 5, which was much earlier than the others.

These were the first real team members Jack had in this world, and, even though they were artificially subordinated, he was looking forward to working with them.

The takeover of the West Alliance was ongoing and would not need his attention. He had already removed the Messiah from his cave prison and returned him to his family, but only after subordinating him with bots. This way, the assistant could start using him to create a more peaceful transition of power. This will greatly legitimize the new government under the Serenity Sect and also quench any rebellious attempts by the old government officials.

Now, it was time for him to strategize, since he had at least three problems to solve. First, he needed to find more clues about the humanoids, which had been dormant for weeks. Second, there was a strange portal he was unable to access, and which might be connected to the creatures. Third, some secret organization is after him, and they could present a serious threat.

80% of the bats were currently used for the takeover of the alliance, so the amount of reconnaissance he could do was limited. So he would place most of his attention on that strange portal, which was currently the hottest and most interesting clue he had available. Jack gave his assassins the command to enjoy their free time but also keep their skills sharp until he gave an order. He also instructed the assistant to help them improve their Sym abilities based on its records as well as train them in advanced mixed martial arts techniques from Earth in order to improve their skills. Then he went into his room to take a shower after telling the assistant to check if Fey was free tonight.

As he had just entered and started to shower himself off, the assistant had notified him that Fey was indeed free in about two hours and could come over. She could come through the portals by herself, since the assistant could grant her permission and route her through the right path. Jack lay on the bed and decided to sleep for one hour to calm his mind, even though he did not feel tired. As was his habit, he created a barrier around himself while he was sleeping to avoid any ambushes or surprise attacks in addition to the assistant's vigilance.

When he woke up, Fey had just entered the room through the portal and had knocked against the barrier with a happy expression as if it was a window. When he released it, she tumbled on top of him and kissed him, then hugged him. She then lay flat on top of him. "I missed you. What have you been up to these past weeks?"

Jack smiled at the cute Fey looking at him with big and curious eyes. "I had to take care of some things."

"Did you really take over the West Alliance?" she asked while gently kissing his neck.

"I did," Jack said while stroking her back. "They were treating their people like shit. I had to do something. It will be better soon."

Fey lifted her body up to look at Jack. "Were you in danger?" she said with a concerned tone.

"I was not," Jack said with a smile. "You know I am too careful for that."

She let her upper body slump down again and continued showering his cheek with gentle kisses. "Yes, you are too paranoid to be in danger."

Then the two spent the night and stayed in each other's arms until morning.