Jason was best suited to slaughtering unarmed idiot American college kids. Sending him against fully armed Trinity soldiers was a little more demanding. Take enough bullets and even he would die. Fortunately, this fellow had been strengthened by the ghost ship several times, and both his speed and strength had risen dramatically.
"Swoosh! Swoosh!" Jason appeared out of nowhere at a road junction. His machete swept in from the side and severed a Trinity guard's neck, then continued to the right and chopped off another guard's hand. Jason radiated killing intent from head to toe. He raised his left foot and kicked the maimed guard straight into the ravine.
Bang, bang! Gunfire rang out. Trinity's soldiers were hardened fighters, completely different from the American college kids who fled screaming whenever Jason appeared. The fallen guard's scream was still echoing through the ravine when the others raised their weapons and returned fire. Jason did not panic in the slightest. He pushed forward through the bullets, hacked down two more soldiers, and then vanished directly in front of the others like smoke.
He killed two men on the left, turned around and twisted the head off a soldier on the right, then, before Trinity could surround him, raced farther ahead and shattered another soldier's spine with a single punch.
With Jason creating chaos, Paititi resistance fighters familiar with the terrain guiding the way, and the Brotherhood's elite assassins, bioengineered humanoids, and Desmond Miles—the protagonist who had barged into this storyline—launching a fierce assault, they finally wiped out Trinity's forces throughout the mountains the following day. Their leader, Dr. Dominguez, tried to escape. Jason teleported directly inside the helicopter, killed the pilot with one slash, and then brought Dominguez back down to the ground.
Paititi might have had only eight hundred to a thousand people, but the procedure for transferring the throne was extraordinarily complicated. Dominguez had to abdicate, Unuratu had to succeed him, then marry Desmond Miles, and finally hand the throne over to Desmond. The entire succession process involved ceremony after ceremony, dancing, ritual bathing, and endless rounds of formalities.
While they held the ceremony in the royal palace, Bella went alone to an altar far from the palace, built deep in the mountains.
A serpentine emblem of the Feathered Serpent god Kukulkan was painted across the front of the altar. Bella studied it carefully for a while. Yes, this was the place!
She ordered the bioengineered humanoid soldiers to guard the mountain pass. Without her command, no one was allowed through.
When the sun rose and cheerful, rhythmic beats once again sounded from the distant palace, she knew the time had come.
Kukulkan was a chief god of the Mayan pantheon. His Divine Portfolios encompassed life, harvest, culture, wind, and rain, and for a brief period this deity had even held a Solar Portfolio.
Among Earth's many pantheons, anyone connected to the sun was never weak.
To deceive Kukulkan's perception, Bella had to make full use of both timing and terrain to confuse his sight. For her, sunrise provided the right timing, while Paititi and this altar provided the right ground.
Like a street vendor laying out videotapes for sale, Bella first arranged all nine tapes she had brought with her. Then she began casting. Once again, she drew on knowledge from the Darkhold, using Nyx's Dark Gaze, a spell named for the Olympian goddess of night. Its target was Bella herself.
A large mass of thin mist wrapped around her. To an ordinary observer, she still stood in the middle of the altar with nothing visibly unusual about her. There was no black aura and no barrier blocking anyone's sight. Yet on a higher level, her entire form had already changed. Different people looking from different perspectives would each see a complete stranger they had never met before.
Her opponent was a chief Mayan god and an extremely vindictive one at that. Bella had no choice but to conceal her identity thoroughly.
Everything was ready. She ran through the entire procedure twice in her mind. After confirming that nothing had been overlooked, Bella took out the Key of Chak Chel and the Silver Box of Ix Chel. She held the Key in her left hand and the Box in her right. After several deep breaths, she drove the Key into the Silver Box.
Boom! Boom! Boom! Three bursts of flame ignited. The flames of life inside three small altars around Bella sensed the divine power within the Key and the Silver Box, causing all three altars to light at once. The flames of life converged on Bella from three directions, linked with the divine power inside the two artifacts, and together sent a signal to the Feathered Serpent god Kukulkan in a distant realm.
This was a hidden move Kukulkan had arranged long ago. As long as a believer obtained both the Key and the Silver Box, they could allow him to return to the Material Plane. All he needed to do was pour divine power into that believer, turning them into a new avatar for himself in the Material Plane.
There was nothing wrong with the Key or the Silver Box. Kukulkan's gaze turned toward the Material Plane. The procedure was correct as well. From his perspective, Bella looked like a devout believer whose face was filled with reverence. The Feathered Serpent god immediately began sending an unending stream of divine power across to the other side.
Using the flames of life within the three small altars as a bridge and the Key and Silver Box as beacons, a channel for transmitting divine power was established directly between Kukulkan and Bella.
Kukulkan was creating an avatar, not another deity with the same attributes as himself. If divine power carrying properties such as wind, rain, life, and harvest were poured into an ordinary human, there was a chance that a new god would be born, or at the very least a demigod. Kukulkan was not stupid. He would never create a competitor for himself.
What he sent over was completely unaligned divine power—safe and free of hidden complications. It was exactly what Bella desperately needed!
"Hahahahaha!" Even though she was alone in the middle of the wilderness, Bella could not hold herself back. She laughed with complete delight.
The endless divine power was transforming her body. She raised an arm and discovered golden divine power filling it from within. Skin, bones, blood—her entire body was being washed over and over by divine power like an ocean tide. Every cell seemed to cheer. The overwhelming abundance of energy was driving a fundamental transformation in her level of existence.
Even a weakened giant was still a giant. The Mayan pantheon might have been somewhat weak, and the Feathered Serpent god, despite being its chief deity, was far inferior to Odin, but he was still a chief god. His divine power was extraordinarily potent, and the mental characteristics that came with it were equally remarkable.
Less than half a minute into the transfer, a phantom of the Feathered Serpent god had already appeared behind Bella. As enormous quantities of divine power entered her body, the Secrecy Portfolio within her showed signs of being drawn toward Kukulkan.
Bella had anticipated this. She cast quickly and soon invoked a spell from the Book of the Vishanti: the Crimson Bands of Cyttorak. The bands firmly locked the Divine Portfolio inside her Mind Lake.
After going through all this trouble, she was not about to gain the enemy's power only to lose her own Divine Portfolio in exchange. That would leave her badly in the red.
Bella had to absorb and convert Kukulkan's divine power while simultaneously condensing a Divine Body of her own, all while keeping the Secrecy Portfolio suppressed. She was overwhelmingly busy.
"Still not enough! I need more!" Brain cells damaged by excessive use of psionic power, bone-marrow cells extracted when she gave birth, cellular aging caused by time-related spells, and all the other accumulated damage to her body were rapidly repairing themselves.