Essence of theMastermind

By drinking this constantly twisting gold and silver Essence, you gain the powers of the Mastermind.

• Mastermind’s Mind: A Mastermind’s thought process is always a mystery until they reveal their plans themselves in a grand monologue. Your mind is untouchable. No esoteric abilities, not mind control, drugs, nor even mundane manipulation will be able to affect or control you. Should anyone try you will always know by instinct that something is wrong and can take the fight to them, whether that be tilting your glasses so the mind reader’s mental probe gets reflected back towards them and instinctively following the probe to read your attacker’s memories, or changing your meals so the drugged meal is eaten by the would-be-drugger. Though there is no guarantee that they would eat the meal, or might notice the drug by taste and stop eating before they get affected too much. Also, it wouldn’t do for you to forget your own plots and plans, so from the moment this Essence takes effect all your memories will become eternal, though you might need some time to sort through all the irrelevant memories before finding the relevant one if the thing you are trying to remember is from a long time ago.

• Mastermind’s Body: A Mastermind only gets more dangerous through age, not less. You only grow better at things, never worse. Your skills and abilities will stay at their peak, and if you push past your limits then your previous limit will be upgraded. All your wounds and aches will eventually heal perfectly, even if you lose a limb it will either grow back or you will find a replacement that is as good as the old one, though in the latter’s case you may choose to replace decrease one part to increase another, such as sacrificing sensation of a fleshy limb for the greater strength of a machine one, but the amount you gain will always be worth equal to the value you put to what you lose. Yes, this does mean a Mastermind has biological immortality, does not need any kind of nourishment to live, and can grow far past the limits of your species.

• Mastermind’s Soul: A Mastermind watches on from the shadows as their minions sets the final stage for them, never to be noticed before it is their time. Your entire being exudes a feeling of normalcy around you. Like you are just a random kindly stranger that wouldn’t hurt a fly. While this does mean some lowest level thugs might find you to be an easy mark, it also means the big wigs of various universes won’t notice your presence or your plans regardless of their various abilities to predict things, even if they were right in front of you. Even telling them you are the cause of everything will likely be dismissed by them as their trusted instincts will guide them to distrust your honest words.

• Mastermind’s Plots: A Mastermind plans and plots, and then, regardless of how fragile they are, those plots does not unravel. No matter how weak the reasoning for your plans, as long as there is a plan, events will follow through. This does not mean they will unfold exactly as you plan, but they will tend to follow your plotline. You might need to instruct your minions to set up a trap with the hope of the patrolling hero stumbling into it, getting wounded, and then somehow ending up in a secluded location not far from the trap, and events will follow as you planned, but unseen variables might mess with your plan. Maybe the hero has backup that they called to take their wounded body back to their base, or maybe they are stronger than you thought and their bleeding is a simple nose bleed. Or maybe they are wounded worse and you need to rush them to the hospital to save them from a death you did not plan for. But in general, if your plan was for them to trust you after nursing them back to health, you will get it in one way or another, maybe they took off their mask to fix their nose and you saw their face so they trust you with their secret identity. Though certain long ranging plans will require your constant attention to reach fruition, or else the hero just might die at your door because you were out grocery shopping at the time… Just remember, free will is chaotic, and it cannot be stopped no matter how carefully you plan, but despite that human nature is actually quite simple.

• Mastermind’s Looks: As the Mastermind you shouldn’t stand out unless necessary.

• You have a minor ability to change your looks according to the people surrounding you, the changes are retroactive from everyone else’s perspective unless you don’t want it to be. Surrounding yourself with super models would allow you to become just as good looking over time, while diving into the public transport would allow you to become perfectly camouflaged in a short time, allowing you to lose anyone following you by removing them from the list of people that knows your new appearance. This ability grows through utilization and will eventually turn into shapeshifting, and keep improving from there.

• You will instinctually know how to lock down parts of your body from changing, though doing so lowers the amount of ‘experience’ you get with the skill, but not every Mastermind is okay with changing gender or species.

• Mastermind’s Skill: As the Mastermind you cannot be lesser than your minions in anything. Whenever you aren’t focusing on anything all the subconscious knowledge of those working under you will flow into you, allowing you to effortlessly grasp and replicate any skill they have. This also gives you intuitive understanding of between you and your minions. From communicating what you want perfectly with vague wording to understanding their exact capabilities and condition, and modify your plans accordingly. Also allows you to enter into a Sherlock Scan like state where you understand the tools (from minions to surroundings to the debts owed to you) at your hand and how to use them to get out of tough situation, whatever that might be. If you don’t have the tools to get out, you might notice something you can get easily in your reach, such as a newspaper article showing someone earning just the right amount of cash to pay your debt.

• Minion Making: You have a pool of energy inside your shadow that you can mold into minions of all shapes and sizes. At the start you can make one minion with half the physical and mental capabilities of a normal person, creating more minions than your pool can handle or increasing the aptitude of the minion in an area beyond your pool’s capability will result in a proportional drain of your physical, mental, and spiritual energies. After sleeping you will find your pool of energy restored to full, and you are guaranteed the ability to instantly fall asleep at will, while also having the ability to wake up at a moment’s notice should your subconscious sense an intruder during your sleep. Through utilization and simply living your energy pool will see gradual grow. The exact process to make a minion differs from minion master to minion master, one might be literally molding their shadow into creatures of darkness, another might get a gamer interface that lets them pick and choose traits from a predetermined list. It is possible to turn existing beings into minions however such a skill requires trial and error, with the errors resulting in loses in sanity, morality, and individuality of the subject. As a side benefit you can manipulate and shift your shadow into any state of matter you can think of, allowing you to form solid matter, tools, and even clothing from your shadow, in time this power might grow and offer additional abilities. Manipulating your shadow against the light drains your pool but in total darkness you’ll see no drain at all.

• Name Bestowal: You have the ability to give your minions a Name, a Title, or leave them without either. A Nameless minion is an infiltration specialist, they are like ghosts, when they want to they can avoid notice even in the middle of a brightly lit empty white room. Due to their weak existence and malleable state the evidence of any crime they commit will dissipate into thin air over time, camera records that captured their faces, witness statements, and even the memories of those with perfect recall will fail, thus even if captured in the act they won’t be held in prison for long. Not only that, if sent to infiltrate a place for the long term their weak existence will also generate the things they need to fit in such as paperwork, paper trail, a car, and memories of past interactions with their ‘coworkers’. These memories date back to however long they need to be to suit the background the minion needs, and might be made of half forgotten memories with others attributed to the Nameless minion, or entirely fabricated(or maybe not, when a being has such a weak existence reality itself sometimes forgets ‘when’ they are) memories. A minion with a Title gives up some of the invisibility a Nameless minion enjoys and gains the ability to grow in the skills related to their Title without limit, a minion with the ‘Hacker’ Title for example would never forget anything they heard, read, or thought about related to hacking and would be able to grow in the skills and knowledge needed for ‘hacking’ to unprecedented levels, and keep on pushing the knowledge of the world in their area past its previous boundaries day after day. A Named minion on the other hand sacrifices their weak existence and in exchange gains the ability to grow physically, mentally, and spiritually past the state they got upon creation. A Named minion will be able to develop in ways other minions cannot, and will be more ‘real’ than the Nameless minions.

• Preplanned Help: The connection your minions have with you and your plots extends beyond space and time. Even it is an on the spot plan you will find your minions ready and equipped with the best gear they can think of for the task at hand with a day advance. You might’ve robbed a bank with two of your minions and crashed the getaway vehicle by accident on a random bridge, after barely pulling yourself out you can jump off the bridge to land on a bouncy castle that your other minions inflated on a yacht they hired, with an emergency medical team on standby at gunpoint to heal you to perfect condition. As a side benefit your minions knows exactly what you’d want them to do in any and all situation, thus even the stupidest minion won’t reveal your plots your enemies, at least not in a way you wouldn’t want, such as appearing to give information without giving anything damaging and giving misinformation to put them at the backfoot.

• Staying Power: Your minions exist only to serve you. They will take no breaks, they will not rest, eat, or even breathe if it serves your desires. Every minion will give their 200% all the time with a single minded focus to whatever task you give them. Even death isn’t the end for their servitude to you as Nameless minions will return in 48 hours, minions with Titles will return in a week, and minions with Names will return in a few months. A minion with both a Name and a Title will return in a year. Others that know your minions won’t find this strange, even their killers won’t notice anything, beyond maybe a creeping feeling that something is wrong if they attempt to kill them again. To clarify, your Named minions do need all the things a living being needs to live, a minion with only a Title needs to rest from time to time and breathe, however minions without either does not need anything other than you to exist, though they still can partake in such things for the enjoyment’s sake or to blend in.

• Peerless Synergy: If multiple minions are set to work together then their teamwork will make the dream work every time. They will display a level of coordination and cooperation that is similar to a choreographed dance than anything else. Acting like a one mind with multiple bodies than multiple people working together, they will not need verbal components to communicate with each other. The synergy between the minions will even enhance their physical and mental capabilities, to the point of doubling them at 4 to 7 minions working together(the number depends on task complexity), any more than that there won’t be any effect and the minions, in fact the minions themselves will start to split into cliques, with each group focusing on different part of the task.

• Unquestionable Loyalty: No matter how thankless, no matter how bad your treatment of them gets, no matter how shameful or demeaning the tasks they are given is… Your minions will follow through with the goal of keeping you safe, helping you achieve your desires, preventing things you don’t want from happening, and accomplishing any command you give to them, in that exact order of priority. They might complain and bitch about it if you give a named minion with a powerful title the job of cleaning your toilet, but they will clean that toilet until it sparkles. Depending on their experiences that minion might just decide to be smart about it and buy a new toilet or call a professional cleaning service instead, justifying their actions by stating how little they know about cleaning or how much better the new toilet is than the old one if questioned.

• Optional Isekai Reincarnation Ticket: If you wish for it, besides the Essence, you will be given a ticket that only you can see, it is always in your hand whenever you want to look at it, once ripped in half you will get a floating menu that lets you customize the life, the world, the universe, and the multiverse of your reincarnation. You will even be able to choose at which age your memories will return. If you die and haven't used the ticket yet you will reincarnate with all the choices you would've picked if you had ripped the ticket yourself, and get another ticket. You can 'cheat' the system by never using the ticket, it won't rip unless you are absolutely certain that you want to end your current life and reincarnate elsewhere without hesitation.