HITMAN WITH A BADASS SYSTEM

If they locked this place down, Michael would be stuck, trapped. To dispel the Transference of Consciousness spell, he needed to be within eyesight of the host body. Otherwise, the connection would weaken, the control would slip, and the host—Eldoran, in this case—would realize that something was wrong. Some hosts just freaked out, panicked, thought they were going crazy. But elves, spies like Eldoran? They would recognize the symptoms. They would know what was happening. And they would raise the alarm. That would be bad, very bad. The System had warned him: some targets could sense the intrusion, could locate him through the mental link.

Unlike in the mortal realm, where a cultivator in lower levels could defeat a higher cultivation level cultivator with enough spells and strategies, that shit would not work here. If a Level Five god came to fight Michael, he was done for; escaping would be the only option. He might be immortal, invulnerable to most forms of attack, but that did not mean he was invincible. There were other ways to hurt someone, to trap them, to imprison them, to break them. He had felt that power firsthand, back when Rudhra attacked him.

He needed to act fast. He needed to find this fucking mole or find a way to prevent a lockdown. Stealing the red crystal and destroying this place would be a hell of a lot harder if he was trapped inside a body that was not his, with the exits sealed and every goddamn spy in the Citadel hunting him down. He needed to resolve this, and quickly.

“I need to find this fucking mole, and fast,” he muttered, more to himself than to Lyra. He needed a plan, and he needed it now.

Suppressing his internal panic, Michael forced himself to focus. He pushed the anxiety down, replacing it with a cold, calculating calm. “Is this confirmed, Lyra?” he asked, his voice low and steady, channeling his inner Eldoran.

“This is a serious accusation. Finding this mole before Lady Seraphene arrives, it will be a fucking nightmare.”

Lyra, her expression grim, pulled him into a dark corner of the hall, away from the prying eyes and ears of the other operatives. “Shhh,” she hissed, her voice barely a whisper.

“Seraphene, she knows moles are inevitable. She expects it. She will not be pissed if we find the traitor and deal with it before she arrives.”

Michael, his mind racing, frowned. “She is the Goddess of Information, Lyra,” he pointed out, his voice low and urgent.

“How do you plan to hide this from her? She probably knows already.”

To his surprise, Lyra rolled her eyes, a flicker of annoyance crossing her features. “Of course she knows, you idiot,” she whispered, her voice laced with exasperation.

“She sees everything, hears everything. But she expects us to handle it. This might even be a test, to see if we are competent enough to deal with a mole on our own. So, we are going to find this traitor. And we are going to deal with them. Fast.”

Impressed by her sharpness, her deduction, Michael simply nodded. She was smart, and resourceful. He would follow her lead for now, at least until he could figure out a way to exploit this situation to his advantage.

“What is the plan, then?” he asked.

Lyra, her eyes gleaming with a fierce determination, retrieved another parchment from her robes.

“This,” she said, her voice low and conspiratorial, “contains the names of our latest recruits. The ones with backgrounds that are questionable, inconsistent. We need to question them, but discreetly. We cannot alert them. If the mole knows we are onto them, they might panic and do something drastic, something stupid. We need to catch them off guard.”

Michael, playing the part of the slightly dim Eldoran, rolled his eyes with deliberate exaggeration.

“Well, you cannot just ask them, ‘Are you a mole?'” he drawled, his voice dripping with sarcasm.

“And you know how long these fucking interrogations take. We might not have time for all that. Besides, these are spies, Lyra. They are trained to lie through their teeth. How the hell do you plan to figure out who is telling the truth and who is bullshitting us?”

Lyra, who under normal circumstances likely would have ripped him a new asshole for his insubordination, simply smirked, a glint of dark amusement in her eyes. She reached into her robe, her fingers closing around something small and cylindrical.

“Did you think I had not considered that, Eldoran?” she asked, her voice low and amused. Then, she pulled out an incense stick, its surface dark and utterly unassuming.

Michael frowned, confusion furrowing Eldoran’s brow. What the fuck is that, incense? Is she gonna pray the truth out of them? his mind raced, trying to make sense of the situation.

Lyra chuckled softly, shaking her head in mock exasperation. “Do not act like you do not know, Eldoran,” she said, her voice mocking.

“It is Spy’s Bane.” She paused for dramatic effect.

“I am going to turn off the runes and arrays that prevent the smoke from affecting the spies. Once I give the signal, you light it up and place it in the corner. Then we question them. Discreetly. They will tell us everything. They will not even realize they are talking.”

Spy’s Bane. The name resonated with a chilling familiarity within Michael. It was a special kind of truth serum, a potent concoction, crystallized and infused into an incense stick. When burned, it released a colorless, odorless smoke that compelled anyone who inhaled it to speak the unvarnished truth. But it was not just any truth; it was the deepest, darkest, most guarded secrets, the things they would never willingly reveal.

And the truly insidious part? The victims would not even know they were affected. They would answer every question honestly, completely, without realizing they were betraying their secrets, their loyalties, their entire fucking cause. They would spill their guts, every last festering bit, and they would not even remember it happening. It was insidious, effective, and utterly terrifying. Most domains had banned its use, outlawed it outright. Even Seraphene, that cold-hearted bitch, had reservations about it. But in certain circumstances, when the stakes were high enough, well, desperate times called for desperate measures, and this felt like one hell of a desperate time.

But before Lyra could walk away to turn off the runes discreetly, Michael stopped her with a hand on her arm.

“Lyra, hold on a fucking second,” he interjected, a note of urgency creeping into Eldoran’s voice.

“What is it now, Eldoran?” she asked, a hint of impatience in her tone.

Michael hesitated for a fraction of a second, choosing his words carefully. He had a bad feeling gnawing at him about this Spy’s Bane. If somehow it affected Eldoran, his Transference of Consciousness spell might be disturbed. He could already feel the connection to Eldoran’s body subtly weakening; the longer he maintained the spell, the more Eldoran’s own consciousness seemed to be stirring, like a sleeper slowly awakening. If this truth serum smoke messed with consciousness, that fragile bond could snap entirely. If that happened, all hell would break loose.

He needed to take this place down, and he needed to do it now, before the Spy’s Bane filled the air. Although the runes and arrays were in place to safeguard the red crystal, preventing anyone from simply snatching it, an explosion, a well-placed chaotic blast, could take those safeguards out along with everything else. In the ensuing pandemonium, he could grab the crystal and store it safely within his system storage before making his escape. But for that to happen, he needed explosives. And those explosives were currently with his original body in the lobby. That meant Eldoran needed to physically meet him there.

“I need to eat something, Lyra,” he said, forcing a casual tone into his voice, struggling to mimic Eldoran’s usual dismissive mannerisms.

“Before we do this. I am starving,”

When she heard him, Lyra stared at him and looked like she wanted to slap him into next week.

“Are you fucking kidding me, Eldoran?” she hissed, her voice low and dangerous, each word laced with venom. “We have a mole to catch, a traitor in our midst, and you are thinking about food?”

She yanked her arm away, her eyes blazing with fury, the incense stick clutched tightly in her hand. “What the hell is wrong with you?”

Michael’s mind raced. He knew he sounded like an idiot, but he had to get out of there. To meet his real body, to retrieve the explosives before everything went completely to shit.

“Do not lose your shit, Lyra,” Michael retorted, injecting a note of forced casualness into Eldoran’s voice.

“You know once we start this we cannot leave, not until we flush out this mole. And we cannot do that on an empty stomach, can we? I cannot, at least. I am fucking starving.”

He paused, letting his words sink in. “Let me just grab a bite at that kebab place downstairs,” he continued, his voice smooth and persuasive.

“I will be back in a minute, two tops. You will not even notice I am gone.”

Lyra stared at him, her eyes narrowed, her lips pressed into a thin line. She scrutinized him, her gaze intense and probing, as if searching for any hint of deception. Finally, she sighed, the tension leaving her shoulders as she relented. She knew he was right. Once they started this interrogation, there would be no going back, no breaks, no interruptions. And hungry spies were sloppy spies, and she, for one, did not want to be trapped in a room with a bunch of starving, irritable elves.

“Fine,” she conceded, her voice grudging. “Go. But be quick about it. I do not have all day. And get me something while you are at it. I am famished too.”

“Will do, Lyra,” Michael agreed, grinning. “Will do.”

With that, he bolted. He practically ran out of the room, his heart pounding in his chest. He had to reach the lobby, to meet his real body, to retrieve the explosives. Time was running out.

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