Evil Sorcerer System 3 (Patreon)

The huntress' expression softened when I jingled my coin pouch, and it softened more when I offered to carry the deer to her home for butchering.

"Fine. There's a stream down by my cottage anyway. You should get cleaned up. You're absolutely covered in mud and deer blood." The huntress gestured to me.

"You're right. Sorry, I'm not a hunter, just hungry." I smiled amicably. My stomach growled helpfully a moment later.

"Don't carry the deer like that. Put it over your shoulders. Here," the huntress said as she corrected my form. I followed her lead, and carrying the deer became much easier.

"What town are you from? Lamford, hopefully?" I asked.

"Lamford is about a day's walk further east. I'm from a hamlet so small the maps don't even officially name it. But enough about me. How did you get this far from the main roads with no supplies?"

I launched into a vague series of lies that involved bandits, fleeing for my life, getting lost, and slowly losing my supplies bit by bit as I desperately tried to reach civilization.

"Tried your luck at becoming a traveling wine merchant and got robbed, did you? I'm sorry. Where I grew up I knew more than one young man who lost his inheritance trying such a thing. They say one good trip pays for the horse, barrels, and goods. But not everyone survives that first trip. You were lucky to lose your money and not your life."

I feigned a dejected expression, which wasn't hard given everything that had happened to me since I arrived in this world. I wanted the huntress to think I was depressed about recent happenings and didn't want to talk about them. The fewer details I shared, the less likely it was that she could pick apart my lies.

"So how long have you been a hunter?" I asked, forcing a change of subject.

"Not too long, truthfully. My father was actually a merchant. I'm out here so I'm not an embarrassment to my family. It's a long story," the huntress explained.

My brows rose. I thought in a medieval world like this everyone would be working the trade their fathers passed down to them.

We walked in silence for a while, since we'd both accidentally broached awkward subjects. I filled in the details of my little story. I needed to think of a name and origin for myself that I could keep consistent until I'd picked this woman's brain for any local knowledge I needed before continuing on to the town of Lamford.

"We're here. Bring the deer this way," the huntress said.

"Is that your butchering shed?" I asked.

"No, that's my house. The ground outside it is where I harvest the meat. You can wait and watch," the huntress said.

Feeling a bit sheepish, I laid the dead deer down. The huntress had only just gotten to work when a young voice came out of the small house nearby.

"Mama, you're back?" asked a young boy. From his age and voice, I took him to be somewhere between seven and thirteen. Perhaps toward the latter, since a childhood of harsh winters and little food would have left him small for his age.

"Yes, I'm back, Jandon. Go inside," the huntress said.

"Who's your friend?" The boy glanced at me.

"A dinner guest. We'll be done in an hour or two, go play with the other children." The huntress shooed her child off.

"I didn't expect you to be a mother," I admitted as we both watched the boy run off.

The huntress sighed. "I know. Sometimes I wish the boy had been born to someone else. If he had a father, we wouldn't be living in a shack at the edge of some remote hamlet. And I could care for him like a mother's supposed to instead of spending my days stalking game in the forest."

"Did you lose your husband?" I asked curiously.

The huntress scoffed. "I wish. The boy's father is the archcleric of Lamford. That's the reason we're all the way out here. I was a stupid girl when it happened. I couldn't stay in town where I'd be a danger to the archcleric's reputation."

"You must have been young." I looked at the young huntress before me, who couldn't be past her mid-twenties at the most.

"I had him at sixteen," the huntress explained.

I made a grim noise. "Not stupid then, just young."

We remained in silence while she worked. I would have just gotten in the way, so I watched carefully and filed the butchering process away in my mind. It might come in handy later, given all the wilderness hunting I'd been doing.

The hostility of our initial encounter had melted away. My stomach growled a few more times, especially when she got to cooking the meat in a pan over some hot coals.

I spoke to her some more about odds and ends. Mostly what she thought about the local region, how dangerous the roads were, and anything else that hadn't come up in the travel book I'd read. When it was over, the huntress called her son Jandon back for a meal.

There were only two stumps for stools, so the huntress sat cross-legged on the ground so Jandon and I could sit. The boy finished his meat quickly and offered his seat to his mother, and the two of us talked a while longer.

"You have a good kid. Very polite," I said once Jandon was out of earshot.

"He's smart too. I wish I could afford some books for him. He could earn a better living with his mind back in town. I fear his talent will be wasted out here. But this is the best I can do on my own..." the huntress sighed. Her head leaned toward me. Only then did I realize that she was seated a bit closer to me than was likely proper.

I didn't move away. This woman was pretty in a girl-next-door sort of way. Her life in this hamlet wasn't the best, but even on her own she was getting by. No doubt she thought she could improve her circumstances by marrying even someone as lowly as the wandering wilderness vagabond I pretended to be.

I entertained the notion for a long moment, but then sadly pushed it aside.

I'd just murdered two people today. And until I had a good way to hide myself, my existence would be a constant danger to this woman and her son. It was time for me to go.

"That was a lovely meal, and I am satisfied. Here, your payment," I said as I reached into my coin pouch and withdrew most of what it contained. I was pretty sure I was overpaying, but I didn't mind helping a struggling single mother trying to raise her child.

"Wait, where are you going?" the huntress asked. Her eyes darted between the pile of copper and silver coins I was pouring into her hands and my back.

"Back into the woods. Take care." I waved goodbye.

"I never even got your name. I am Aia! Aia Carata, formerly of Lamford. What's your name?"

I turned for a moment and dipped my head. "Thank you, Aia, for sharing your name with me. You're better off not knowing mine."

Then I turned my back again and returned to the forest.

***

I spent more time shooting squirrels and farming points. Having an easy daily quest to complete was a rare opportunity, and I'd wasted enough time eating and talking. Besides, I wanted to get to those two bodies before anything else did.

Quests completed! +300 evil points.

It took me two hours to return to the site of my battle. The two bodies were still fresh, though scavengers had already stumbled across them and picked at both.

I grimaced at the sight of the two corpses.

Crude Shovel purchased. -35 evil points.

I had to buy a shovel, or I'd be at this all day. While the bodies were still exposed, they served as decent bait for more critters, each of which I killed for points. I picked the corpses over while I was handling them, too. Once that was done, burying them took only about an hour.

I was sorely tempted to take their swords, the crossbow, and especially that mana scanner they'd been carrying. Unfortunately, all of them had clearly identifiable sigils belonging to the Order of the Golden Sword. Possessing them would raise questions I'd rather not answer.

In the end, the only things I took were the coins from their pouches and a spare outfit the rookie had, who'd been roughly the same size as me. I was grateful to finally get out of my muddy town boots and into some real travel clothes. I double-checked it all for crests or sigils, but it seemed clean. I also picked up the staff I purchased from the System, which was helpful for aiming my spells, though at this point I was already outgrowing it as a learning aid.

Quests completed! +200 evil points.

I went back to hunting and managed to kill two more things, which put me comfortably over the 1,000 evil points I needed for a Complete Alternate Identity.

I held off on actually making the purchase though. Those teleportation tokens and invisibility scrolls had been the only reason I survived the ambush that knight and his sidekick had laid for me. I wouldn't feel comfortable spending what I had until I had an emergency fund saved up.

I circled the scene of the battle a dozen times hoping I'd find their base camp. They might have had horses or other supplies that I would either need to hide or destroy. But try as I might, I couldn't find any of them. Still, I killed a few more things while wandering the woods late into the night.

Quests completed! +200 evil points.

I worked straight until my quests reset for the next day at midnight. Seeing that the new quests were useless to me, I finally laid my head down to rest in the low branches of a tree.

***

The next morning I woke sore, exhausted, and generally miserable. My sleep had been poor these last few days. The only things keeping me going were my healing spell and the invigorating jolt that came when I absorbed a soul. A normal human would probably have died of exhaustion some time ago.

But that was all in the past. Now I finally had a small safety net, even after my big purchase.

Purchased Complete Alternate Identity. -1,000 evil points.

Points remaining: 350 evil points.

Memories flashed through my head again, this time of growing up as the third son of a minor shop owner. I heard a mother calling my name, a father scolding me for hanging out with the wrong crowd.

I remembered my eldest brother taking over the shop, and my other brother being apprenticed to a blacksmith while my sister was married off. I remembered going to my parents on bended knees and begging for my inheritance early so I could make something of myself.

I used my inheritance to buy a wagon and filled it with local wine for a long journey. I had nearly made it to Winthrop, where I would have chartered a ship and the hard part of the journey would have been over. But just as the gates of the city were in sight, bandits fell upon me and killed me.

I died in the dirt while they rummaged through my things. I would never return home to celebrate with my family and prove that I wasn't a failure.

I opened my eyes and the name came to my lips. I was Alden Reed, failed wine merchant and disgraced third son.

The identity belonged to a real, dead man. He was the wine merchant the bandits had been robbing the day I fled Winthrop. The System hadn't given me his face, only his name, his papers, and the memories that came with them. I wish I'd known these things the day I'd stumbled into those bandits. I could have laid the real Alden Reed to rest with more dignity, and perhaps taken some things back to his family.

I hung my head, remembering a life lived and lost that wasn't mine. Then I began my journey again as Alden Reed.

I returned to the roads and from there made the rest of the journey toward Lamford. The first night traveling I came across a group of people gathered around a campfire, and I purchased food and a place to sleep from them.

I gave them some of the silver coins I'd looted off the dead knight. If there was some way to track such things, I wanted to get them out of my hands and dispersed throughout the area quickly. If more of those knights of the Order of the Golden Sword showed up and started questioning dozens of people, I'd have time to make my escape. Even blockading the city gates wouldn't work on me when I could just buy teleportation tokens.

The next morning I was close to the city and traveled with the villagers who had sold me dinner the night before. They turned out to be several groups who'd joined together for safety, so it wasn't unusual to have a stranger among them. We arrived at Lamford, which was notably smaller than Winthrop and sported wooden walls instead of the huge stone things they'd tried to execute me on.

"Halt, stranger. What's your business here in Lamford? I don't see any goods on you," asked a guard in a leather vest, holding a spear. The only bits of metal on him were his spearpoint and his helmet, which was a serious downgrade from the chainmail the guards in Winthrop wore.

I shook my head sadly and explained myself in accordance with my backstory. "I tried my hand at being a traveling wine merchant, but luck wasn't on my side. Fortunately, I still have my life. I'm to rest at an inn and eventually buy a wagon and new goods to try again."

"Hmm. Fine. A single copper for your entry fee. And I'll need your name for the ledger."

I smiled and handed over the copper coin. "Call me Alden Reed."

<Note>

Total points: 350

Our protagonist finally has a name! I've held off on giving him one because I figure he'd use many over the course of his journey.

We should see Aia and Jandon again soon.

Maybe two more chapters before reaching a good stopping point? I swear I keep feeling like I just need to write one more chapter. Ah well. I might as well get to novelette length and leave this up as permanent free patreon content.

But the protagonist is coming together. He's seeming pretty competent, despite the harsh circumstances he's been thrown into. In third person he'd have a very 'mysterious stranger' vibe.