Chapter 49: Mission Accomplished
Hodell drew two items from inside his coat.
A black notebook with a worn, mottled cover.
And a crystal that glowed with a sinister red light, as if fresh blood had been trapped inside translucent stone.
He held them up for the entire tribunal to see.
"These were taken from the underground chamber beneath your residence last night," he said, his tone level and unhurried. "The notebook is your personal record. The crystal is the medicine you use to suppress the rejection caused by occupying another person's body."
Then he tilted his head slightly and looked straight at Wayne.
"Commissioner Wayne, does this count as evidence?"
The words hit harder than any spell.
From the high platform, Elanis leaned forward at once, her gaze locking onto the red crystal. For the first time since the hearing began, genuine shock flickered across her face.
"Occupying another person's body...?" she said softly.
In the next instant, countless eyes in the hall snapped toward Wayne like drawn blades.
Wayne's pupils shrank so violently they seemed ready to burst. His gaze fixed on the red crystal in Hodell's hand. That thing had once been his lifeline.
Now it was his death sentence.
"Forgery!" Wayne screamed.
The polished dignity he had worn until now shattered on the spot. He lunged down from his seat like a mad dog, reaching for the evidence with both hands. All composure was gone. Only raw panic remained.
Facing him, Hodell did not move.
He merely loosened his grip at exactly the right moment.
Wayne snatched the crystal with wild delight.
"Silence!"
The Chief Justice's scepter slammed down.
Boom!
An invisible force burst across the platform. Wayne and the crystal were blasted backward. He rolled across the floor in an ugly heap, his robes twisted, his wig half knocked loose, his body as graceless as a sack of rotten meat.
The black notebook, however, rose into the air under a gentler force and drifted calmly toward the Chief Justice.
Then it opened by itself.
Pages fluttered.
The holographic projection above the court immediately captured the contents and magnified them across the dome for all to read.
The first lines burned there in cold, merciless clarity.
"Damn it. My mind is getting worse. I have to write things down, or I'll definitely expose myself... The rejection reaction is becoming more severe. The original owner's soul residue is stubborn... This body is too fat and useless in a fight. Could Troy not have chosen a better shell for me?"
Dead silence.
Then the hall erupted.
It was not loud at first. It was worse than that. A collective intake of breath, sharp and horrified, rolled through the court like a storm front.
The Chief Justice rose halfway from his seat, his face turning terrifyingly grim.
"You..." His voice shook with fury. "You are not Wayne."
His stare nailed the man sprawled on the ground.
"What is sitting before us?" he thundered. "Where is the real Commissioner Wayne?"
That question was a knife plunged straight through the heart of the entire upper class of Oluson.
If corruption was merely ugly, this was something far worse.
This was every man in power's oldest nightmare given flesh.
Not infiltration.
Replacement.
Not bribery.
Body theft.
The tribunal exploded into uproar.
"Original owner's soul residue?!"
"Is this some kind of parasitic possession?"
"Who is Troy?"
"If this can happen to a Committee member, then who else—?!"
The panic in the room was no longer political. It was primal.
And at the exact moment that panic reached its peak, Hodell spoke again.
His voice was not loud.
It did not need to be.
Compared to the chaos around him, it cut through the noise with almost surgical precision.
"You should understand now," he said.
He looked up at the projection of the diary, then swept his gaze across the tiers of officials.
"Specialist Arthur claimed earlier that the Black Bone mine riot, the destruction of the Snake Fang Gang, the Blingshee Society incident, and the component recovery were all part of a grand conspiracy."
He paused.
"In that one point, he was right."
Then his eyes turned cold.
"The difference is that I was the one ruining it."
The hall fell quiet again, piece by piece.
Hodell raised one finger.
"This thing wearing Wayne's body needs that red crystal to suppress the rejection reaction. That means the body does not belong to it."
A second finger.
"I once saw Professor Freeman, a D Rank mage, secretly communicating with a mysterious figure late at night. The next day, he died because of a soul stone overload."
A third.
"After the Black Bone incident, the Obsidian Group took over the mine. They obtained strategic minerals capable of interfering with the Magic Net, along with a vast quantity of rare ore."
A fourth.
"In the Snake Fang Gang case, the enemy was gathering soul stones. That means their soul related technology had already moved beyond theory."
A fifth.
"The Blingshee Society was only a decoy pushed into the light. If you review the full report, the flaws are obvious. The buyer's skills were abnormal. The case developed too cleanly, too smoothly. It was a performance."
His voice remained calm, but every sentence drove the truth deeper.
"They stirred chaos throughout Oluson to create cover for their operations. But the more perfect a scheme tries to be, the easier it is for small mistakes to become fatal."
He looked directly at Wayne.
"And the Obsidian Group incident was one of those mistakes."
Then Hodell let the final blade fall.
"They are not infiltrating your system."
He turned slowly, making sure every official in the hall heard him clearly.
"They are parasitizing it."
"They do not merely want your authority. They want your lives. The so called Special Isolation Review Order was not justice. It was a rushed attempt to manufacture a scapegoat before Commissioner Wayne's identity could be exposed."
The truth stood naked beneath the Eye of Truth.
The Chief Justice's voice came down like a hammer.
"Commissioner Wayne," he said, each word iron heavy, "do you have anything left to say?"
Wayne remained on the floor, shaking.
All color had drained from him.
He had expected Hodell to struggle. He had expected anger, defiance, maybe a desperate accusation or two.
He had never imagined the notebook would be in Hodell's hands.
Never imagined the red crystal would be dragged into the light.
It was over.
Not only for him.
For the entire plan.
For every layer of preparation built around it.
For everything.
On the left platform, Elanis gripped the armrest so tightly her knuckles turned white.
Her purple eyes burned.
"Troy..." she whispered inwardly. "How much of this was a lie?"
She had believed, at least in part, that Troy's methods were a cruel tool in service of a necessary reform. Painful, ugly, but aimed at forcing the corrupt to experience what they had inflicted on others.
What stood before her now was something entirely different.
Arthur remained at the prosecution desk, frozen stiff.
His mind had gone completely blank.
How had Hodell gotten evidence?
How had he gotten it from Wayne's residence?
How had he done any of this?
He had only meant to crush a troublesome genius before that genius grew any sharper.
Instead, he had helped drag a nightmare into open court.
Then Elanis stood.
When she did, the entire tribunal quieted on instinct.
A pressure rolled off her that made the air itself seem heavier.
Her gaze pinned Hodell in place.
"Specialist Hodell," she said, and now even her restraint carried edge. "I have one question."
The whole room listened.
"Whatever Commissioner Wayne is, his residence still possessed the security of a senior official. Its internal defenses were not a joke."
Her eyes narrowed.
"You are a newcomer who has served little more than a month. Without the help of a high level mage, how did you enter that chamber, take those items, and leave without anyone noticing?"
That question struck the exact point everyone had been avoiding.
Because once Wayne was exposed, the next question became unavoidable.
How had Hodell done it?
Was he truly what he appeared to be?
Or had he merely exposed one secret while hiding another?
Under the weight of hundreds of suspicious eyes, Hodell remained calm.
Then he smiled.
He extended one hand toward Elanis.
The anti magic restraints clinked softly.
On the high platform, Elanis watched him for a heartbeat, then raised one finger and flicked it through the air.
Clang.
The restraints broke apart and fell to the floor.
At the exact same instant, Wayne stopped shaking.
His terror vanished.
In its place came something much worse.
Silence.
A dead, resolved silence.
He knew he was finished. So be it. But mission priority came before self preservation. Always.
Never leave core samples behind.
That had been drilled into him far more deeply than fear.
A savage expression twisted across his face. The remaining magic power in his body surged toward his right hand as he lunged for the red crystal.
If he could destroy that, even if it cost him the hand, there would still be something left to salvage.
"Not good!"
The Chief Justice's warning had barely left his throat.
Elanis moved.
Or rather, she intended to move.
A binding field began to form.
Then her eyes narrowed to pinpoints.
Because someone had moved faster than she had.
No incantation.
No gesture.
No buildup.
Only a faint, nearly invisible blue ripple that flashed and vanished in less than an instant.
Under Elanis's sharpened senses, Hodell's figure seemed to overlap with itself for a fraction of a second, like a frame cut from a film strip and jammed back in wrong.
Then he was no longer where he had been.
A hand appeared beside Wayne's.
Wayne's expression froze.
An irresistible force cut precisely into the gap between his fingers.
Hodell stood before him, upright, not even bent at the waist. Two fingers closed lightly.
The red crystal changed hands.
The entire exchange took less than a heartbeat.
"As a planted agent, your professionalism is admirable," Hodell said, his tone almost conversational. "But as an opponent... you're too slow."
Then the same impossible distortion flashed again.
He was back at the defendant's stand.
The only sign that he had ever moved at all was the crystal now resting securely in his hand.
Only then did Wayne's fingers finish closing.
Crack.
He crushed empty air.
No crystal.
No hope.
Without the drug, his body gave way at once.
His skin sagged and darkened. The flesh on his face seemed to collapse inward as if rotting in fast motion. His limbs convulsed. White foam poured from the corner of his mouth. He tried to scream, but what came out was a broken, wet hiss.
No one in the tribunal looked at him anymore.
Every eye was fixed on Hodell.
"Space...?"
A red robed elder lurched to his feet.
"That was space displacement!"
"No spell model!"
"No spatial array!"
"Impossible!"
Even the Eye of Truth above hesitated, its records showing only fragmented points of light and blurred phase data.
No one understood what they had just witnessed.
Not really.
Teleportation was not something casually used on Liuli Star. Space magic belonged to the realm of legends, catastrophe, and old era geniuses whose stories were repeated precisely because no one had matched them since.
And yet Hodell had just crossed the distance in a blink.
Effortlessly.
Silently.
Cleanly.
On the platform, Elanis slowly sank back into her seat, but the look in her eyes had changed.
She knew better than anyone that Hodell was no conventional mage.
Which made what she had just seen far more terrifying.
Space affinity?
Innate spatial talent?
A mutation?
A miracle?
Whatever the answer was, the fact remained.
Hodell had crossed another boundary no one thought he should be able to cross.
The way the hall looked at him changed again.
No longer as a suspect.
No longer merely as a genius.
But as something rarer.
Something dangerous.
Something priceless.
Hodell, for his part, seemed utterly unconcerned with the fact that half the court had just had its worldview kicked down a flight of stairs.
He calmly took a white handkerchief from his pocket and wiped Wayne's sweat from the crystal.
Then he turned and walked toward the prosecution desk.
Arthur flinched.
Hodell passed him without even sparing him a glance.
That hurt Arthur more than a slap ever could.
Because in that moment, he understood exactly how little he mattered.
Hodell set the wiped crystal on Arthur's desk.
Clack.
Arthur shuddered.
Then Hodell continued forward until he stood at the center of the court, facing the Chief Justice.
He bowed with an impeccable mage's salute.
"Your Honor. Lady Elanis."
His tone was gentle again, polished and measured, as though he had not just humiliated half the room.
"I have completed the mission."
For a second, no one knew how to react.
Completed the mission?
This had looked less like a mission and more like a one man coup against a conspiracy embedded inside the General Administration.
But Hodell went on before anyone could object.
"As a member of the General Administration of Mysteries, once I detected signs that Commissioner Wayne had been compromised, I had no choice but to use unconventional means in order to avoid alerting the enemy."
The faintest smile touched his mouth.
"The process was somewhat complicated. Fortunately, the result was satisfactory. A hidden danger within the General Administration has been exposed and removed."
He lifted his gaze to the Chief Justice.
"Although I did not receive a formal order in advance, I trust that under the emergency avoidance provisions, this should still fall within acceptable procedure."
Brilliant.
Coldly brilliant.
He was not denying procedure.
He was not attacking the institution.
He was giving the institution a way to keep its dignity while accepting his result.
That mattered far more here than anyone would say aloud.
In the audience, more than one experienced political animal silently praised him.
No angry protest.
No self righteous complaint.
No demand for apologies.
He had taken his own supposed crimes and reframed them as necessary sacrifice for the greater whole.
The Chief Justice stared at him for a long time.
Then, slowly, he raised the gavel.
"Hodell," he said. "In this matter, your procedures were flawed. Your contribution, however, was extraordinary. You protected both the security and the reputation of the General Administration."
He brought the gavel down.
"All charges against you are dismissed on the spot."
The strike rang through the tribunal like thunder.
"And furthermore," the Chief Justice continued, "in light of the ability and contributions you have displayed, your rank will be reevaluated. You may now return to your unit."
A trace of satisfaction passed through Hodell's eyes.
"Thank you," he said. "For the fair ruling."
Then he turned and walked toward the gallery.
When he reached Kyle, the captain stood up so quickly the chair nearly fell backward.
For a moment, Kyle could not speak.
Over the past month, he had watched this newcomer repeatedly walk into the heart of danger and walk back out carrying truth in one hand and trouble in the other.
At first Hodell had looked like a talented but incomplete specialist.
Then like a rising ace.
Now?
Now Kyle was no longer sure what, exactly, he was looking at.
Only one thing remained certain.
Ryan had won.
The young man who had entered Third Squad carrying secrets still carried them.
But now he did so in full daylight, with the entire city forced to acknowledge him.
Kyle's throat tightened. A thousand words pressed at his chest.
Hodell lifted one finger and pressed it lightly to his own lips.
Shh.
Not yet.
The real show was only beginning.
Then, as he moved past, he lifted his eyes one last time toward the high platform.
Elanis was still seated there in silver, cold and bright as winter.
This time, she did not look away.
Their gazes met in the air.
No words passed between them.
None were needed.
Hodell's eyes said enough.
You've seen my secret.
Your turn to keep it.
It was a silent provocation.
A challenge.
And, in its own strange way, the outline of an alliance.
A nearly imperceptible curve touched Elanis's lips.
Interesting.
Very interesting.
Ryan, she thought, I accept the game.
But I will uncover every secret you have, one piece at a time.
By the time Hodell stepped through the great doors into the daylight beyond, the tribunal behind him had already exploded into chaos again.
No one needed to say it aloud.
From this day forward, the name Hodell would spread through every layer of Oluson.
Not as a criminal.
Not as a suspect.
But as a rising star too sharp to ignore.
.....
[If you don't want to wait for the next update, read 50 chapters ahead on P@treon.]
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