It was as though someone had parted the mist before his eyes, revealing the truth.
Ruger recalled Mahama's speculation aboard the ship. Big Guy had said the jar might be an oddity. Now, even if it wasn't, it was certainly strange enough. And Mahama, who had acquired it, wasn't its owner yet, but someone being used.
The jar had been placed on a shelf for consignment, waiting for the right person.
That man had used some unknown aspect of the jar to hide himself away until the right person came along and took it, carrying him away from that place as well.
Was breaking it how you used it? Then where was this? Did breaking it produce the same effect every time?
Ruger watched the scene before him gradually become real, his mind racing.
This possible oddity might be more complicated to use than the two he had encountered before.
Could that man's transformation into Mahama also be one of the jar's peculiar abilities?
If Ruger's theory was right, and the Mahama who had raced across the sea each day was still the original, then the sound of something breaking in his room during dinner must have marked the moment he was replaced. If the jar had also been used to switch Mahama out, the real Big Guy might be somewhere in this strange place too.
Ruger began searching his memory for something only he and Mahama knew, something he could use as a code to tell the real one from the fake.
Still, as the impostor had said, leaving the jar on consignment in some random little shop, only for the Wizard who found it to be a Demon Hunter Wizard, was truly rotten luck. When he walked out of Big Guy's room and saw a whole table of