A Message From The System.

Alex was in his system space. He was banging his hands on the ground, expressing his anger. He was really mad at what he had done before and was too ashamed to leave the System Space.

This wasn't how his journey was supposed to happen. He wanted to curse his system for lying to him about the hyena's heart, that it doesn't have any side effects. But even the system wasn't here, and he couldn't express his frustration on anything but himself.

After banging his hands for what seemed like hours, he gave up and lied on the ground. His arms were swollen, and his mind was all over the place.

The reason that he had failed the mission, was because the unknown number was not enough. The sim could simply be discarded, and Alex was only trying to make up a reason to hide his failure from himself. they only needed to be incapacitated, and interrogation was necessary to find out the mastermind behind the robbery attempts.

Lucius had made sure that this was not a family mission because he knew that he would have to register the mission under the Letifer Collective. He didn't want Alex to lose his standing in the major families, because he cared for his student. As for the mastermind behind the robbery he had already dealt with him. This was a controlled test, and the corpses that Alex had left had already been taken care of.

Alex didn't know about any of this. He was still busy shouting at himself inside of the system space.

"Do you even know what you have done? Is this how you were supposed to become the world's greatest assassin? You can't even control yourself, how are you worthy enough for a second chance!"

Alex kept reprimanding himself.

"Excuse me, Are you Marlos?"

Alex turned around. He was absolutely terrified of the voice that he just heard. There was no one supposed to be here, so his fear was understandable.

"W-Who are you?" He stuttered. A man that deeply resembled his previous self, was standing in front of him. He was wearing the attire that he had worn before he had died in his previous life.

"Don't worry. You aren't hallucinating. I am a small part of the system, which was left in case of an emergency. The System itself had little time to prepare for the upgrade, so it had no time to set up for anything other than this."

Alex calmed down. The system sure knew how to give him a scare. Since it was a part of it, he lowered his guard.

"As for the message that the system asked me to tell you, it was fairly vague, so if you don't understand, don't blame me. Blame the boss."

Alex nodded. He wanted to hear what reason the System had for lying to him.

The message is as follows

"I know that you are having trouble, that is the only reason why this message is being played. So, listen carefully. Anything given to you by me doesn't affect your nature unless I explicitly say so. It can at most work as a catalyst, increasing the rate of the change in your nature. It can't control our nature, and if you want to combat your current problem, refer to the source of it. The source will always be you, so remember to cut the supply of the source to the catalyst, and your problem will be immediately solved, temporarily at least."

The message ended. It was extremely vague, but it was enough for him.

Alex finally understood the problem, and he was extremely thankful to the system for it.

"The message has ended, so it is time for me to leave. Take care, and don't expect me to come back again."

The messenger vanished. Alex lied down on the floor again, this time with a smile on his face. The problem had been in front of him, but he had been a fool for not seeing it earlier.

It is all tied to the mission in Ukraine. As much as he hated to admit it, Alex hadn't killed anyone important before in his current life. In his previous life, he had only gone up against simulations and had killed some civilians targets for practice. In his current life, everyone had been taken care of by the people who were around him. He had tortured people in his previous life, but that was for practice. Despite being a genius in the field, he had never completed a contract before.

His state of mind had gone haywire because of it, and the conversation he had with Sylvia boosted this attitude, leaving him frustrated when he wasn't able to easily access the adrenaline that he felt during the death of Fedir. Hyena's heart boosted his metabolism and senses, so rather than it being a side effect, it boosted his current state, increasing his frustration due to the lack of killing. Him succeeding in the ball exercise had helped vent some of this frustration, but constantly being reminded that he was making mistakes led to further pent-up of stress. He had become addicted to that feeling, which never came to his mind because he had only killed one person.

As soon as he got a chance, all the stress had been released. He wasn't able to control himself, and his instincts took over him completely, resulting in the loss of control and the wipeout of those thugs. He hadn't been able to calm down, and that had led to all of this mess. Getting drunk on the feeling of murder had led to him being out of his mind.

After his mind was cleared, he slept like a baby. He left the system space and continued to sleep for the entire day, which made Lucius and Clara worried for him, but seeing that his body was stable, they felt relieved. Lucius even saw the smile on his face and attributed it to him feeling a lot better after failing his objective.

"A huge burden of always succeeding has been taken off."

He said while sitting by his bedside, taking care of him as if he was his own son.