Thug and Idol: 10X Rewards Second Identity System

Finding a chemistry lab wasn't so hard—King Lion Gang wasn't producing drugs themselves, but they had a place to check their quality and sort them out before dealing.

Lately, that makeshift lab was being mostly empty because of the police pressure, and the drugs had to stay untested, but so far, your overseas suppliers didn't fuck you over.

As for the ingredients, Tristan bought what he thought he might need with untraceable cryptocurrency.

During that time, he also found something online which, he thought, might help him out later. Not a thing to be bought, but a contact.

A week after he came up with his idea, he was standing in the lab, neck-deep into cooking the poison. The entire thing was known only to the few people who directly helped you with running errands and such.

Another week later, Tristan had his poison, alongside several failed prototypes and a bunch of mice he tested it on.

An innocuous, slightly yellow transparent liquid. Faintly disgusting.

If taken in small doses over time, it gradually increased blood pressure—not noticeably so. By Tristan's expert prognosis, after a few weeks of that, the heart would get too tired pumping all that blood and fail.

This was a very common cause of death, and the traces of poison would be unnoticeable even if someone bothered to make a toxicology test.

And why would they, when the cause of death was obviously an ordinary age- and stress-related heart attack?

Only delivering the poison was a problem. But Tristan thought he had a solution.

In the depths of Darknet—the assortment of illegal and banned websites, accessible only through special browsers—Tristan had found assassins for hire, offering their services.

There was also plenty of gossip about them. People confirmed or disproved the reputation of these people, which was very important, since there were no other guarantees you won't be duped.

They also chatted about various assassin celebrities and legends. Like No Hope, an impersonator of whom tried to kill Tristan once. He was just a fake, but at the time, he took Tristan by surprise.

'I probably can't afford actual No Hope even if I find his contact, but I can hire someone who's good at infiltrating. And if he fails, then I can frame the attack on the Chief of Police as a singular incident. A personal revenge or something. Then I'd be able to try again.'

Tristan scrolled the things assassins wrote as their resumes until he found someone fitting his purposes and with a good reputation and sent him a message.

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[I have a task for a good infiltrator. It will take some time, but I will pay well. Are you up to it?]

[Nope, sorry, busy. Forgot to take my resume off.]

Tristan scowled at the screen while he read the message.

'Yeah, he should've done that! At least he replied quickly and not two days later!'

Then there was another message.

[I will make it up to you. I know someone who's even better at infiltration than me. He might be free now. Just don't tell where you got his contract, say something mysterious instead.]

The irresponsible assassin attached a contact to the message. The nickname read, "Someone_You_Knew".

'This might be a prank, but it won't hurt to check this person out. First, I should look at what I can find about his reputation.'

Anonymous forums didn't give Tristan much. There were some assassins who were too secretive to advertise themselves online, even anonymously. Instead, they relied only on word of mouth to get contracts.

Someone You Knew had to be one of them.

On a good side, those people usually were the real deal. They didn't advertise themselves because they didn't need to.

Tristan repeated his earlier message about a job to Someone You Knew. That assassin replied even quicker than the previous one.

[Where did you get this contact?]

Tristan hesitated for a moment, then shrugged and decided to be nice this time.

[I saw it in a dream. Do you want the job or not?]

[A dream? I see.]

There was a pause for a while. Tristan frowned, feeling like that Someone You Knew really seen… more than Tristan thought he was telling.

It was a strange and unpleasant feeling. He felt like he was being observed with the same piercing intensity with which he inspected people.

[I need details. If the job includes killing children, I'm not interested.]

Tristan smiled and typed the details. The pay he offered was on the smaller side, because he fully expected Someone You Knew to haggle.

[Deal. I will get it when the target is dead—in crypto. Don't try to avoid paying, though. As for the poison—leave it at a drop point and give me the address.]

That was a safer method, but it made Tristan frown. It also meant that the assassin will have no information on Tristan.

[You won't take the poison in person, and you didn't take any payment in advance. That sounds very arrogant to me.]

[It's not arrogance. When I'm done with my task, whoever you are, I will call you by a real name. Then you will know.]

Tristan clenched his fists to suppress a sudden tremor in his fingers.

With a cold shock, he realized that there was a high chance he stumbled upon someone truly dangerous.

'"No Hope" is just a nickname people gave to him because of the entire "100% kill rate" thing. It would make sense for No Hope himself to call himself differently, especially if he prefers to stay as anonymous as possible. He most likely uses several pseudonyms and changes them regularly.'

If Someone You Knew was actually No Hope, and to protect his payment, he was going to research Tristan, then Tristan could be in trouble. Maybe he should've refused the contract—or paid in full in advance?

Or maybe Tristan was just paranoid.

What he knew was that he didn't want to pay an assassin in advance only to be scammed. But he didn't want his identity to be discovered, either. How much could Someone You Knew find?

What should Tristan do?

'It's stupid to refuse working with an efficient and affordable assassin because of a vague threat. I will just be extremely careful with him. As soon as I leave out the poison, I will switch to the pop-star identity and keep it until I pay the assassin.'

'As long as I keep working through text messages with my criminal underlings, it will be alright. And going dark is understandable in current circumstances. Hell, I'm already in my pop-star identity, because I was already mostly going dark!'

Together with Tristan's decision, a system notification appeared.

[New task: avoid being discovered by Someone You Knew. Value: 1500.]

Tristan read the task's value and almost choked on his saliva.

1500?

This meant 15000 points of reward. Just for avoiding an assassin who wasn't actively hunting him!

'This just proves that he might be No Hope.'

With a shake of his head, Tristan began writing another message to the assassin.

He described in detail how he wanted the Chief of Police to die and asked when the assassin will move to Los Angeles for this.

[I can start on this tomorrow, if I will have the poison. If it works as you described, it will take around a month for the target to die. If it doesn't work after that time, I will abandon this task, even if you offer me extra. Also, I won't respond to any messages after I start working.]

Not the best terms for Tristan—but he could live with them.

After the conversation with Someone You Knew ended, he contacted one of his trusted people and instructed him to pick up the prepared bottle of poison from the chem lab, then move it to an unused drop point in the city.

When the man will give Tristan a report that the task was done, Tristan will give Someone You Knew the instructions.

In the meantime, he was busy making his online communications even more secure.

[Hacking skill increased from 2431 to 6431.]

[Hacking rank increased from Hacker Man to Data Demon.]

'Hm, and I thought that if I hit 6 thousand, I will reach the "Impossible!!" rank here, too. Ranks really aren't equal, are they?'

Despite the rank, Tristan felt a familiar, heady rush of knowledge and new ideas.

For the most part, though, he felt reassured.

His existing security methods were already secure enough. Darknet users only really got caught when they acted stupidly and gave hints about his personal data.

Tristan didn't chat in public spaces and was careful in private conversations with untrusted people, especially Someone You Knew. To find him, the assassin would have an easier time just trying to deduce who might want the Chief of Police dead.

That being said, Tristan still deleted all incriminating conversations from his laptop. From now on, he was going to use another, more cheap and dispensable laptop to communicate with Someone You Knew.

'And last but not the least—I really should open the system shop while I still have any points left.'