After searching for another half hour, aside from finding a wooden bed with "Jason" carved into the headboard and piles of whetstones and iron arrowheads, they found nothing else worth noting.
Sam Winchester hadn't found any items connected to Jason's immortality. He seemed a bit lost now.
"This Jason keeps refusing to return to his lair. Where could he be?" Barbara was the first to react.
"Oh no!" Bella caught on too. "The people at the villa are in danger!"
They all simultaneously realized the severity of the situation.
Finding them annoying was one thing, but they couldn't just stand by and watch them die.
"You have the gun—you protect them. I'll head back to check."
Bella trusted Barbara's abilities. Her friend's future achievements wouldn't fall short of Black Widow's. The only reason she was less famous was simply due to less experience.
It seemed her friend and her nominal sister both had something going on with Hawkeye. Hawkeye had pretty good taste. She wondered if he looked as wrinkled in person as he did in the movies...
"Be careful. If things go south, fall back."
"Got it."
The two often sparred together. Barbara knew Bella's combat abilities and judgment well. If she said she could handle it, she basically could.
The nighttime Crystal Lake was eerily quiet. The water's surface was completely still, the lake calm like an unfathomably deep pool.
When a breeze passed across the lake, you could faintly hear mournful crying in the wind.
"This lake is pretty interesting."
Bella took only a couple of glances before moving on without dwelling on it.
She cut loose at full speed, using her Levitation spell to cross Crystal Lake and return to the country villa.
When she was less than 150 feet away, she knew she was too late.
The air now carried a faint scent of blood. Her Isu sixth sense picked up the aura of death—an indescribable feeling that somehow fed directly back to her brain.
The hockey-masked Jason stood at the second-floor window holding his blade, blood dripping from it. He stared straight at Bella, showing no joy, no sorrow, no fear, and no hesitation whatsoever.
"You're dead meat!" Bella had run out of arrows, so she didn't use her bow. She swept her hand through the air, manifesting an ice shortsword—longer than her hidden blade, shorter than a rapier.
Shortsword in hand, she leaped up, tapped the first-floor wall with her toes, twisted at the waist, and with an agile flip, landed on the second floor.
Jason moved first, transforming into grayish-blue smoke and vanishing into thin air.
Stealth? Evasion? Not happening! Bella pushed through the window and walked right in.
At the center of the room were the headless corpses of the rich kid and his girlfriend, blood sprayed everywhere. With her exceptional vision, Bella could even see fragments of their neck bones among the blood.
The two corpses seemed to maintain their connection from when they were alive. The two heads were placed neatly at the bedside—the woman's eyes glazed over, the man's face frozen in terror.
Jason had deliberately arranged this scene to enrage her, to make her lose her cool.
While Bella was observing, a machete swung from the side, powerful and fierce, carrying unstoppable momentum. The target was her neck.
The blade passed cleanly through, but there was no blood. No head flew off. Bella looked at Jason with a half-smile. The next moment, her figure popped like a bubble with a snap and disappeared.
Create Illusion! This was another ability from the Golden Apple. Through extensive analysis and repeated practice, Bella could now cast the same-named spell using psychic power.
"Looking for me over here?" A Bella with a shortsword appeared on Jason's left.
"Look this way, dummy!" Another identical Bella with a shortsword appeared on his right.
"Why are you looking at me? Look at the blackboard!"
"Don't look at the blackboard! Look at me!"
"This isn't personal."
"Yes it is!"
Seven Bellas appeared around Jason from different positions. They looked identical—same appearance, same clothing, same weapons.
Only their movements, expressions, and words differed.
Some laughed and cursed. Some wore perfectly calm expressions. Others floated through the room like phantoms.
They surrounded Jason from multiple angles.
Jason gripped his machete, looking left and right. Even without fear, he was still confused. What was going on here?
He swung his machete at the Bella on his right, but the moment he stepped forward, he heard two soft sounds behind him.
Thud, thud! Two ice shortswords simultaneously pierced his back. The bone-chilling cold invaded his bodily functions. Grayish-black smoke leaked from his body. His sturdy frame briefly seized up.
Ignoring the wounds in his back, he pivoted on his left foot and swung a reverse slash. But the Bella he struck was still an illusion.
"I'm over here!"
"Watch your left!"
"Just kidding—you should actually watch your right!"
Jason swung his machete like an emotionless machine, only knowing how to hack away with all his strength.
Bella tested Energy Suppression, but unfortunately, while the spell worked perfectly on Natasha, it was completely ineffective against Jason. In her perception, his will was like a rock—and it reeked. Classic case of stubborn as hell. Her suppression had zero effect.
Debuff spells didn't work? Then she'd go with brute force!
Like toying with a mouse that had fallen into a trap, she stabbed left, slashed right, covering Jason in wisps of black smoke.
Initially, the smoke carried a heavy stench, but as the ice shortswords' magic continuously eroded his body, Jason's self-repair ability grew weaker. The wounds gradually became encased in ice. His already clumsy movements slowed even further.
"An immortal? Heh, you picked the wrong person to mess with..." Bella's seven figures merged back into one. By now, Jason was frozen like an ice sculpture. Aside from the hockey mask, his entire body was nearly covered in white frost.
"Serve aboard the Flying Dutchman for a thousand years, and I'll set you free... No response? Then I'll take that as acceptance. Okay, contract established!"
Jason: "..."
The Golden Apple had calculated that if Bella did nothing but hide in a bunker, eating and sleeping all day, with her Isu genes she should live about two hundred years.
Magical life extension is more advanced. She didn't know if she could unlock the secrets of life itself, but if the spell research succeeded, theoretically she could add another five hundred years. Any longer than that? She figured she'd be bored to death...
The Ancient One had lived seven hundred years before finally getting tired of it all, abandoning her human identity to merge with eternity.
Bella estimated seven hundred years would be about right for her too.
A thousand-year contract to bind Jason? Perfect.