Evil Sorcerer System 11 (Patreon)

"Dismount and confront him. He's laid traps for the horses all throughout this area," said one of the knights. I was fairly certain he was the scout who'd run earlier.

The knights dismounted, and I studied them as they came. Escape on foot might be more of a possibility if they were going to abandon their horses. But I would need more mana.

I dropped my invisibility, seeing it was useless against these foes.

I spread my arms wide. "Perhaps you'll kill me eventually, but I'm certain I can take many of you down with me. Let whoever is most eager to die step forward first."

The knights hesitated, and I hoped the fear would lock them in place. But Knight Commander Rufus restored their courage with a scoff and a harsh look.

"There is not a man among my troops who isn't ready to lay down his life. In the name of the goddess, slay this creature of evil!" Knight Commander Rufus leveled his sword in my direction.

"Kill them," I commanded my Skeletal Knights.

Human flesh met undead sinew. The two lines clashed. The living were more nimble, but my Skeletal Knights made up for it with sheer fearlessness. They didn't bother defending themselves as they hacked and slashed. One of my Skeletal Knights went down, and two others were on the verge of falling apart. But it had cost two of the enemy knights mortal wounds to make it happen.

I managed to cast Soul Absorption on both, replenishing my mana reserves.

I immediately put the new mana to work growing my ranks.

"Rise and fight for me!" I demanded of the newly dead knights.

"Archcleric Maldon!" Knight Commander Rufus barked.

"Uh... right! You will not taint the sacred rest of these fallen heroes!" Archcleric Maldon shouted as he lifted his scepter high.

Suddenly I felt like I was playing tug-of-war with my own mana. Archcleric Maldon pulled to keep the corpses dead. I pulled to raise them as undead. The bodies twitched, caught between us.

I switched tactics and conjured a Dark Bolt aimed directly at Archcleric Maldon's head. He yelped and abandoned whatever he'd been doing to shield himself with his cloak. That gave me the moment I needed to complete my summoning spell.

Getting two more bodies on their feet happened just in time, because the living knights were pressing in around me. My undead formed most of a circle at my back, anchored by a tree. The living knights spread into a wider loose ring to box me in.

"Archcleric! Focus. You need to prevent him from casting more spells!" Knight Commander Rufus demanded.

"Yes, yes, I am. He's been trying to get away from us," the Archcleric replied.

I had been trying to teleport away, to little avail. The Archcleric really was keeping my spells from working properly. I needed to distract him again, and even then I wasn't sure I could slip away.

There were a few tense seconds of cautious probing and thrusting as my undead knights squared up against their counterparts.

I tried to get off another Dark Bolt at the Archcleric, but Knight Commander Rufus was skilled with his sword. The instant I loosed the beam of energy, he was there with a wide sweep of his blade to deflect it.

Even so, we were locked in a brief stalemate. It broke when one of the squires in the back found an opening and leveled a crossbow at me. I barely reacted in time to duck. The bolt struck one of my Skeletal Knights in the head instead and broke my spell. The corpse clattered lifelessly to the ground.

I took its place in the circle and snatched its sword out of the air before it hit the earth. I'd done so just in time to avoid being rushed.

Against a single trained knight, I should have been overwhelmed in an instant. Against two, I should have been crushed. But two spells, Physical Enhancement and Mental Enhancement, had been running quietly in the background all this time, and I was channeling more power into them now.

The knights' blows were struck with far more skill than mine, but I answered them with supernatural reaction time and a strength that outstripped what had cost them a lifetime of drills to earn. I bashed both swords aside, and the opening let me plant a point-blank Fireball on one of my opponents. He screamed inside his armor.

"Archcleric!" Knight Commander Rufus demanded.

"I can't keep up with him! He's casting too many spells too fast," the Archcleric said in a panic.

"Bloody amateurs..." Knight Commander Rufus cursed. Sword drawn, he came at me with grim determination, seizing the two knights who'd been moments from closing with me and taking their place himself.

My sword clashed with the Knight Commander's, and in an instant I knew I was outmatched.

There was something different about the way the Knight Commander wielded his weapon. Despite my enhanced reaction time and strength, he seemed to flow around every attack I made and turn the force of my own strikes back on me. He was never where I aimed and always had his blade primed for the moment I left myself open.

I felt like the clumsy amateur with a sword that I was. This would not end well for me if it went on any longer.

Thankfully, I wasn't out of tricks yet. I'd kept a few points in reserve, and while the Archcleric could block my teleportation spell, I had a hunch the tokens would be tougher to stop.

Purchased Teleportation Token x5. -250 evil points.

I broke the first one, abandoning my undead knights to their fate. Once clear, I turned invisible and started running through the woods again, Physical Enhancement carrying me over the ground faster than any man had a right to move. Behind me the battle continued, and only Knight Commander Rufus seemed to realize I'd vanished.

I could hear them shouting at one another as I fled.

"Archcleric! Get your head in the game! He teleported again," Knight Commander Rufus shouted.

"This is no ordinary Master Sorcerer, Commander! He is far more slippery than any I've faced before, and his arsenal of spells is vast. Perhaps we should retreat and call for a paladin," the Archcleric replied.

"Enough excuses. Men, finish off these undead and get back on your horses."

"But sir, the traps!" complained one of the knights.

"The traps don't extend much beyond this area. Circle around and mind where you steer your horses. He's got some sort of movement enhancement spell, and we'll need the horses or he'll get away."

I had about two minutes' lead on them, and I hoped to lose the knights in that time. But once again Knight Commander Rufus proved more competent than I'd hoped, and soon I heard the steady beat of his horse's hooves coming up behind me.

Once I realized I'd be overtaken, I whirled on them with a Dark Bolt and a Fireball, catching another knight by surprise. But by then the others were on top of me again, and all I could do was break another of the Teleportation Tokens I'd bought.

They closed on me even faster the next time. I barely managed a single spell before I had to teleport again.

The process repeated until I was out of tokens and had to buy more.

Purchased Teleportation Token x5. -250 evil points.

As I spent the new tokens, my expression turned grimmer and grimmer. I was getting close to running out of points. Despite all my bravado about fighting to the death, I had intended to slip away if I could. Unfortunately, that was looking less and less likely.

A few regrets flashed through my mind. I wished I'd been able to marry Aia properly. I wished I'd finished working through the chapters of that grimoire I'd burned. I wished I'd been able to put down that bastard Maldon. I would have killed him already if that damned Knight Commander hadn't kept getting in my way.

Now I was about to be run down by an entire cohort of knights. At least it would be a good death. Far better than the one this body had been promised before my soul got stuffed inside it.

Purchased Teleportation Token x5. -250 evil points.

10 evil points remaining.

I kept up the hit and run, taking down another knight nearly every time I burned a token. But my time was running out. I was out of points. Maybe I should have bought something else, something other than those traps, or not wasted so much on the demonic fire scroll I'd thought would get us away clean.

"Stay on him, men!" Knight Commander Rufus panted, his voice ragged now, his armor covered in scorch marks.

"Sir, half the troop is dead. At this rate there won't be any of us left by the time we catch him!" said one of the surviving knights.

I chuckled. I didn't think I'd gotten quite that many. If only I'd drawn a quest for killing knights, I could have come out of this with points to spare. So many if-onlys.

"Men of the Golden Sword do not fear death! Onward!" Knight Commander Rufus growled. Then his horse stumbled beneath him and went down. We'd long since left my traps behind. The Knight Commander had simply pushed the beast too hard, and it had given out under him.

That was my opening. I dropped my invisibility while Rufus was busy claiming one of his dead men's horses. I'd long since learned not to target him directly, since he could somehow use that to find my location even while I was invisible. The other knights were nowhere near so skilled.

"Argh!" One of them cried out as my Fireball lit his cloak aflame.

"There! Crossbows! Archcleric, block his magic!" Knight Commander Rufus whirled toward my position. His crossbowman was ready, but my Ward of Minor Deflection intercepted the bolt and sent it careening away, as it had several times already. Then I was gone, spending my last Teleportation Token to slip the Archcleric's attempt to freeze me in place.

When they rode me down next, there was no more running. I didn't bother with invisibility for this final stand.

"I've finally got him! He won't be casting any more spells!" Archcleric Maldon declared with glee.

Knight Commander Rufus's shoulders slumped with relief, though his surviving knights shook with anxious anticipation. Clearly, the Archcleric's recent failures had shaken their confidence in him.

"Good. Hold him there, Archcleric." Then Knight Commander Rufus looked to me. "You've given me more trouble than any sorcerer in my entire career. But I can tell you're as exhausted as my men are. I would offer you the chance for last words, but you're too dangerous to be allowed to speak."

The Knight Commander turned to the men behind him and held up a fist. Thirty of them formed up at his back, all ragged and battered.

Hadn't he had a hundred men when we started? Where had they all gone?

"Do not approach. He might have some deadly suicide spell the Archcleric can't block. Archers, fire, and keep firing until he's dead!" The Knight Commander waved his open hand forward.

Ten of the knights unleashed crossbow bolts from all directions. I tried to dodge, but without my magic I was just a man. Half of them struck home, turning me into a pincushion in an instant.

"Again! Fire!" The Knight Commander's men reloaded while I fell to my knees. Soon another round of bolts sank into my flesh, and this time I couldn't dodge at all.

"Another volley!" the Knight Commander ordered.

I could only laugh to myself as I took in their expressions. Even now, they were terrified of me. That was why they were standing all the way back there, shooting me full of bolts.

Then a single arrow sang through the forest canopy. It flew straight and true and sank into the eye of Archcleric Maldon.

It had come without warning and without a whisper. But come it had. And I was the first to react.

I cast Soul Absorption on the Archcleric, turning him into mana. Then I cast Minor Teleport, vanishing from the spot where I knelt bleeding.

My lungs were filling with blood and I couldn't speak, but I could still hold Physical Enhancement and my healing spell. Between the two, I reached down to a bolt buried in my knee and tore it free. Then I pulled another from my throat.

I stood. My face and body were a bloody ruin, but a few drops of mana still ran through my veins. Until the world snuffed out my soul, I would fight until I could fight no more.

Another teleport put me behind one of the crossbowmen. I cast Fireball at his back. Without a sword in hand he was helpless. I killed him and used Soul Absorption to replenish my mana again. I was burning through it just to keep myself from keeling over, but there were plenty of souls here to harvest.

"The Archcleric is dead! He cast an arrow spell!" one of the knights shouted in panic.

"No, you idiot, there's an archer in the woods! Look out!" said another.

"He's right behind us!" said a third.

It didn't matter. By the time they marked my presence I had teleported and gone invisible again. But I wasn't done casting.

"Rise and serve, my Skeletal Knight," I whispered among the shadows of the trees. The corpse I'd just made climbed to its feet. My Fireball had burned the face away until there was nothing left but the white bone of the skull and the sinister gleam of undeath in the eye sockets.

The knights fell upon it, which only gave me the opening to pick off another of them. Then a second, and a third. With each cycle of teleport, invisibility, Fireball, and Soul Absorption, the number of knights fell and the number of undead rose. And every time I had the chance, I tore another bolt from my flesh and forced the wound to heal.

"Form a line! Form a line, damn it!" Knight Commander Rufus shouted at his men. But they had been exhausted and terrified to begin with. Now that things were finally going my way, their terror had curdled into mind-numbing dread.

One of them broke ranks and ran for his horse. That was the start of a cascade of terrified screams as warriors of the Order of the Golden Sword turned tail and fled.

Soon there was only Knight Commander Rufus. One of the others had taken his exhausted horse in their desperate flight.

I emerged from the woods. My cloak was full of holes, but they only revealed unblemished skin beneath. There was still internal damage, and my skin was unnaturally pale, but I'd patched myself over well enough that my blood stayed inside me.

"It seems your men have abandoned you, Knight Commander Rufus." I chuckled.

"Today I meet the goddess. Fight me, if you have the courage, sorcerer." Knight Commander Rufus picked up one of his men's abandoned swords and threw it at my feet. I knelt and picked it up.

The two of us circled one another as though we stood in a dueling ring, waiting only for the signal to begin.

At some unspoken command, Knight Commander Rufus rushed forward with his sword raised. He bashed my guard aside with the skill of an expert.

I dropped my sword. I was never going to beat the Knight Commander in a duel.

Just as Rufus thought he would take my head, he took a Fireball to the face.

His flesh melted and he loosed a harrowing scream. He swung several wild strikes, still trying to reach my neck. His eyes had cooked in the first moment, and his face ran like candlewax. His final words were lost among the flames, and he fell to the forest floor, dead.

I sank down to the ground shortly after, panting to catch my breath. It was over. A hundred knights had come for me, and I'd won. Though it had taken a little help.

"I knew you'd come back..." I chuckled, coughing up blood as I did.

Aia knelt on the ground beside me. She set her bow to one side.

"I could never abandon you, my love," Aia said as she pulled her arrow from Archcleric Maldon's skull.

<Note>

Total points: 10

Alden didn't get points directly for the kills, but he can still find a way to get some points out of this.