Evil Sorcerer System 2 (Patreon)

I was alone in a strange world I knew nothing about. My only advantage was the System screen before me. If I wanted to be anything more than the bandits lying dead on the ground around me, I would need to use the System.

The question was, how much did I want to use it? From the daily quests to the abilities it granted me, it was clear the System was amoral by design. If I followed it mindlessly, I would become a cold and ruthless killer who absorbed soul after soul in pursuit of ever-greater quantities of points. In short, I would become the very evil sorcerer the people in that city had almost executed me for being.

Such a life didn’t appeal to me. Did I want to spend my days hunting or being hunted? A life of causing misery and pain?

No thank you.

I would much rather retire to some quiet town. With no skills to speak of, it would be impossible to support myself, but with a bit of money I could afford to open a small inn or something. Then I could relax, marry some village girl, and spend my days without worry. That would be my goal. But I would need to use the System to get to that point.

The means to achieving it was right there in the System shop.

Complete Alternate Identity (1,000 evil points)

If I made this purchase, I would have the paperwork needed to pass as a native of this world. But first, I needed resources, and resources needed points.

To get the points I would have to kill, but nothing in the System menus said anything about needing to kill people. I could simply go into the wilderness, kill animals, then exchange the points for the alternate identity, gold, and whatever else I needed to build my new life.

I had 520 points to work with, but as the saying goes, “it takes money to make money.” I would need to spend some of these points on the tools I needed to make this plan work.

Purchased Sorcerer’s Staff (-25 evil points)
Purchased Warded Traveling Robes (-50 evil points)
Purchased Life Detection Spell (-120 evil points)
Purchased Dark Bolt Spell (-50 evil points)
Purchased Hex of Slowness Spell (-100 evil points)
Purchased Nightvision Spell (-100 evil points)
Purchased Regional Map (-50 evil points)
Purchased Compass (-25 evil points)
Points remaining: 0 evil points

It was a heavy blow to spend so many points at once, but everything had been cheap and gave me a lot more tools to work with. Thankfully, the bandits had camping supplies and food I could take for myself now that they were dead. Otherwise I would have had to spend a lot of points on provisions. I still expected to spend some points on such things depending on how long my trip into the wilderness lasted, but I could cover those costs as I earned the points, at least until I started saving up for my big purchase.

With my decision made, I checked my newly purchased map. It looked like the city I’d left was named Winthrop, and the map had the city at its center. There were several nearby towns and villages mapped, all smaller than Winthrop. I would head to one of the smaller ones far from the city, making my way there through the wilderness.

I turned my back on the road and the dead bandits, though I had as many of their belongings as I could gather stuffed into a salvaged rucksack strapped to my back. Then I went into the wilderness.

The mud started seeping into my shoes immediately. The footwear for the outfit I’d purchased was meant for towns, not the forest. I’d need to replace it eventually.

I soon crossed into deep forest. The ground was mostly clear save for the occasional shrub, and it wasn’t long before I stumbled across a squirrel. I reacted instantly and tested my new Dark Bolt spell on it. A tiny purple beam cut a bullet hole through the little creature, and I cast Soul Absorption before it could die.

Quest Completed! +100 evil points.

Success! As I had hoped, I could earn all the points I needed hunting in the forest. Maybe by the time I was done here, I could even make a living as a hunter.

I left the body where it was. I’d already gotten what I needed from it, and I didn’t know how to gut and cook a squirrel anyway to add it to my supplies.

I went deeper into the forest, turning whenever my Life Detection Spell identified something nearby worth harvesting. Several more squirrels, rabbits, and a raccoon-sized thing all died under my spells. I wasn’t always lucky enough to catch them by surprise, which was where the Hex of Slowness came in. By using that first, the forest critters made for much easier targets.

Quests completed! +500 evil points.

Just like that, I’d replenished everything I’d spent before the end of the day.

“I love it when a plan comes together…” I yawned. Night was falling, and though I’d purchased the Nightvision spell, it still took power to operate, and I couldn’t run it constantly unless I was harvesting souls. I would have to set up camp for the night.

I struggled for a few minutes to light a fire, but the bandits’ sticks proved more stubborn than expected. Thankfully I had my Fireball spell, otherwise I would have given up and made camp in the dark.

Soon I had a crackling fire and was snacking on some cheese and crackers within the comfort of a tiny tent. I closed my eyes in my bedroll and had a restless, wary sleep, alone in the woods.

I woke poorly rested, but it was morning and nothing had come to eat me in the night, which was good enough for me. I packed up and prepared for another day of adventure when I spotted another squirrel near camp.

Deciding to get a head start on gathering points, I fired off a Hex of Slowness to keep it from running, then followed up with a Dark Bolt.

The critter died just as before, and I absorbed its soul just as before to replenish my exhausted energies, which I was increasingly thinking of as mana. But when I was done, there was no familiar ding of a notification.

I checked the System to figure out what was wrong, and suddenly I knew where a wrench had been thrown into my plans.

Today’s Quests:
Quest 1: Defile a holy place of Meliana, Goddess of Light. (100 evil points)
Quest 2: Construct, reanimate, or conjure a henchman. (500 evil points)
Quest 3: Destroy a city. (1,000,000 evil points)

The day’s quests had changed. I’d thought the quests I’d been presented with on my awakening would be permanent, but apparently they rotated each day. Suddenly, my progress had come to a complete halt. None of these quests were things I could do immediately, and even if I had the ability to destroy Winthrop, I wasn’t willing to do that.

I checked my System menus for some sort of henchman-summoning spell, but the cheapest outright summoning spell I could find would cost me 2,000 evil points. I couldn’t afford it.

I packed my bags and got ready to leave anyway. If I couldn’t gather points, I might as well make progress walking toward my destination. It was never good to spend the whole day alone with your thoughts in a survival situation, so I ended up making a small purchase to keep my mind busy and away from dark places.

Purchased Local Travel Book (-25 evil points)

I read while I walked, a skill I had perfected in my last life. The book taught me a lot about where I was. The region was filled with independent city-states loosely united by their shared devotion to Meliana, Goddess of Light. The Temple of Light was the only true governing body in the area, and unfortunately for me, they were adamantly opposed to anything besides the holy magic their priests and paladins wielded. I would need to be careful of anyone bearing the sigil of Meliana.

As for the local economy, the primary exports were wine and textiles, which was to be expected of farming communities. The land was decent, though not good enough that the more powerful, wealthier neighboring kingdoms wanted to conquer it. A man could make a good living here as a traveling wine merchant, and it was the aspiration of most young entrepreneurs in the region. The dead man the bandits had been robbing was probably a wine merchant himself. Lucrative as it was, being a traveling merchant clearly wasn’t without its dangers.

Soon, night fell. I camped, ate more supplies, read, and slept.

Morning came, and the quests were no better than the day before.

Today’s Quests:
Quest 1: Corrupt a pure maiden. (100 evil points)
Quest 2: Kill a city guard. (500 evil points)
Quest 3: Orchestrate the downfall of a noble house. (1,000,000 evil points)

I wouldn’t have minded the second quest back when the city guards were trying to kill me, but I wasn’t about to hunt down a local town just to murder people protecting their homes. And there were certainly no pure maidens to corrupt alone in the forest.

So I spent another day walking and reading. The pattern continued for three days of travel, interrupted occasionally by hostile local wildlife. But with my spells, even a bear was easily driven off.

Then, on the fifth day, I finally got back the quest I’d been depending on to earn my points.

Today’s Quests:
Quest 1: Absorb a soul. (100 evil points)
Quest 2: Kill a knight of the Order of the Golden Sword. (500 evil points)
Quest 3: Inflict a region’s water supply with deadly poison. (1,000,000 evil points)

“We’re back in business!” I said, slamming my book closed. I had taken to talking to myself more and more; these days of solitude were starting to get to me. Thankfully, I was nearly at the provincial town I was aiming for, but I would delay any further travel until I’d spent the whole day harvesting as many points as I could.

Now that the soul absorption quest was back, I knew I needed to make the most of the day.

I came out shooting everything in sight. Squirrels, rabbits, bears. It didn’t matter what. I went on a rampage, killing whatever crossed my path the moment I saw it. Soon the local wildlife was scattering at my approach, even this deep into the forest.

Quests completed! +1,100 evil points.

I had exhausted my mana multiple times throughout the day, but the steady stream of energy from Soul Absorption kept me going.

I was so focused on farming points that I didn’t even notice the crossbow bolt hurtling out of the woods and slammed right through my back before stopping halfway out of my chest.

“Got him. This bastard thought he could hide in the wilderness. Ha, we showed him!” I heard the slap of a high-five as my killers congratulated each other.

Meanwhile, I gasped as my lifeblood pumped out onto the ground around me.

I wrapped my fingers around the bloody arrow and tried to heal myself, but my mana had been drained from firing spells at a squirrel a moment earlier.

Up until a moment ago, I’d been certain my biggest problem was getting enough points for my new identity. Now it seemed I’d been a fool all along. I was being hunted. I'd probably been hunted since I left the city.

I’d kept an eye out for guards, but I hadn’t seen a single one since I left. The two robed figures before me looked nothing like guards, but beneath their rugged traveling clothes I could see the sigils of Meliana from the travel book. These had to be people sent to hunt down sorcerers like me.

If I lived through this, I would never be so careless again.

“Alright, you know the drill, rookie. Tongue goes in one bag, head and hands in another,” one robed figure said to the other. This one looked somewhere in his forties, while his partner seemed barely old enough to be considered a man.

“I really don’t want to…” the rookie blanched.

“Don’t look at me like that. These sorcerers sacrificed their humanity the moment they started practicing their dark magic. I feel worse slaughtering a goat than I do chopping up one of these guys, and you should feel the same if you want to make it in the Order of the Golden Sword,” his older companion said, chuckling as he set his unloaded crossbow against a tree and drew a big knife.

“I think he’s still twitching…” the rookie said, pointing at me.

“That was a shot straight to the heart, there’s no way… wait a second!” the older figure cursed.

Teleportation Token purchased. -50 evil points.

I snapped the token, and my bleeding, dying body vanished from where it lay on the ground.

Once I rematerialized, I immediately started scrolling through the shop menu. I was lightheaded and felt like I might fall unconscious at any moment. Once I did, I would bleed out and die in short order. My basic healing spell clearly wasn’t enough to handle a crossbow bolt to the heart.

In those crucial few seconds of consciousness, I picked the first thing that would let me fix my problem.

Apprentice Flesh Sculpting skill purchased. -1,300 evil points.

The memories that flashed through my mind were far more intense than usual. Through force of will, I pushed them aside and forced myself to focus on the problem at hand. As soon as I’d learned enough from the skill, I went to work.

Flesh Sculpting was the art of molding flesh like clay. My own body was a sculpture, and someone had put a crossbow bolt through it. I grabbed the arrow while softening my flesh, and the bolt came out like it had been pulled from moist soil. Blood came with it, but an act of will thickened my blood into something like wax.

With another act of will, I forced the hole in my chest to close. I did something similar for the punctures in my heart. When I was finished, it wasn’t pretty, and something felt deeply wrong in my chest, but at least I wasn’t about to drop dead.

“The mana scanner says he went this way, quick!” I heard the rookie yell. They were coming my way.

So that was how they were tracking me. They had some way to sense when I cast a spell.

x2 Teleportation Tokens purchased. -100 evil points.
Invisibility Scroll purchased. -80 evil points.

I activated the first Teleportation Token and rapidly changed locations, then activated the Invisibility Scroll to help me hide. Both were items, and neither cost me any mana. It was the only thing I could think to do to avoid being detected.

It was then that I realized the Teleportation Token hadn’t taken me far at all. Just a few paces away, I could see the crossbow leaning against a tree. And I was still holding the bolt that had been shot through my heart.

“He has to be around here somewhere. Keep searching,” said the older man.

“I’m looking! I’ll cover this side,” the rookie shouted back.

Meanwhile, I faced a conundrum. I could stand here under the cover of invisibility, curled up in terror and hoping I wouldn’t be found. Or I could grab that crossbow.

Fuck cowering in terror. I would take my fate into my own hands, and if I died, I’d go out swinging.

I went for the crossbow. I grabbed it, slowly cocked it, and loaded it, all in silence. I tried to target the older man, but try as I might, I couldn’t get a lock on him.

“Hey, Sir Arthic, where’s your crossbow?” said the rookie.

I turned to find the rookie approaching my position, concern on his face. He looked so young, with bright, eager eyes full of hope and a life yet to be lived.

Damn it, kid. Why’d you have to come this way?

I pulled the trigger. The bolt flew and slammed into the rookie’s throat. He let out one gurgling grunt as he collapsed to the ground. Blood gushed everywhere.

I cast Soul Absorption.

Quest Completed! +100 evil points.

Suddenly, mana filled my body again, and I was completely recharged. Far more so than killing animals ever had.

“You killed him!” the older man bellowed in sudden fury. He rushed me like a man possessed, sword drawn.

My staff was still lying in the dirt where I’d been shot, but I could still conjure a Fireball. I did so, only for the man to draw his glimmering sword and swat the Fireball aside with the flat of his blade.

I had only a moment to be shocked. I activated the other Teleportation Token moments before he took my head off.

The first thing I did was restock, my fingers flying across the menu.

Teleportation Token purchased. -50 evil points.
Invisibility Scroll purchased. -80 evil points.

I used the scroll immediately.

“Come out wherever you are, sorcerer!” the man said, though I noticed he was breathing fast and his fingers twitched on his sword as he scanned the dark woods around him.

I cast a Fireball from somewhere behind him. He turned just in time and swatted it aside too, but that wasn’t the only spell I cast. Hidden by the light of the Fireball, I’d cast Dark Bolt as well. The second spell struck home, wounding the man’s sword arm. Then I teleported clear and bought another scroll.

Invisibility Scroll purchased. -80 evil points.

I vanished once more. While invisible I caught a glance at my point total. I had 35 of them left. I needed to finish this without any more teleports or invisibility tricks.

“Damn it. Curse you, sorcerer! You and all your kind!” he screamed, clutching his ruined sword hand. He tried to pick up his sword again with his off-hand.

I cast another Fireball and Dark Bolt, and this time he wasn’t quick enough to deflect either. Both struck him. His coat lit aflame and a hole appeared in his stomach.

“Aaaargh!” he screamed, rolling on the ground to put out the growing flames.

Meanwhile, I approached the corpse of the dead boy and pulled the crossbow bolt from his ruined throat. Then I cocked the crossbow a second time and fired. The bolt slammed into the man on the ground with a dull thud, and that stopped him from squirming.

“M-mercy!” the man on the ground begged, gasping. “P-please, mercy!”

A wet spot spread at the crotch of his traveling garments that wasn’t blood. The blood oozing out of him had put out the fire on his clothes, but it was clear he was dying.

“If I’ve already sacrificed my humanity, why would I give you mercy?” I asked as my would-be killer continued to piss himself.

He blabbered a few moments longer while I cast Soul Absorption and put him out of his misery, simultaneously replenishing my mana.

Quest completed. +100 evil points.
Quest completed. +500 evil points.

When the deed was finally done, I sat down by a tree and clutched my head in my hands. I was covered in blood. Most of it was mine, but anyone looking would assume otherwise.

I allowed myself a moment to gather my wits and work on my ruined insides a little longer. I hadn’t even noticed the bolt had scratched my lung; my chest had been filling with air during the fight because of it.

I was still repairing myself when a new set of footsteps sounded in the distance. Instantly, I bought a Teleportation Token and had it ready in my hand.

Teleportation Token purchased. -50 evil points.

It was a deer, stumbling awkwardly through the forest. I was about to ignore it when I noticed the reason for its awkward gait: an arrow sticking out of its side.

It stomped through the clearing full of bodies, and as I feared, there was a hunter close behind it. And unlike the previous two, this one would be entirely innocent.

Would I be breaking my promise to hold on to some scraps of humanity in this cruel world? Or would I be breaking my promise to never be careless again?

There had to be a third choice. And if there wasn’t, I’d make one.

I cast my Hex of Slowness on the deer and grabbed it by the antler. Then I cracked my Teleportation Token and took both it and me some hundred yards away. I made a show of noise as I wrestled the deer to the ground.

I tore the arrow from its side and used it to slit its throat, masking the blood already covering my clothes with the deer’s own.

“Ha! Finally, something to eat,” I shouted into the forest.

The deer whined and died beneath me. I put it out of its misery in the usual way.

Quest Completed! +100 evil points.

It wasn’t long before the hunter reached me.

“Hey, pal! That’s my deer you’re poaching,” said a female voice.

I turned to find a pretty villager. She was a young woman with eyes as bright as those of the boy I’d just killed, along with the brown hair and flushed cheeks that seemed common in this region. She wore a ragged tunic clearly meant for a man, yet she filled it out in all the right ways.

At the moment, her eyes bore a furious expression as she looked at me like a thief. Which I suppose I was. But thief was better than murderer.

I looked up at her and smiled. “I’ve got a few coins on me, if you’re willing to cook it for me.”

<Notes>

Total points: 685

The epilogue today was short, so I figured I'd give you guys something else too. And something for the free subscribers to let them know book 7 is done and officially in editing.

I'll just write this out until I'm satisfied. I had a specific scene I wanted to write, so I'll probably end just after that. It's flowing pretty smoothly for me though.

I'd forgotten what it was like to just sit down and draft an entire chapter in one sitting without needing to review notes or lengthy outlines again and again. It's been a while since I've done that with Amazon Apocalypse.

Anyway, I'm still soliciting feedback on this story pitch. Now that there's a bit more content out hopefully you guys have a better sense of what it's about.