Evil Sorcerer System 16 (Patreon)

My plan for the undead paladin was to keep it in harm's way and nudge things however I needed, depending on how the situation in Lamford developed.

It would be my eyes and ears in town while I was away, which was often, since I was staying out in the graveyard with Aia and Jandon.

To that end, I bought a few more spells.

Purchased Minion Sight. -1,000 evil points.

Purchased Minion Telepathy. -1,000 evil points.

Since I was still working with plenty of points, I didn't mind spending a few to keep an eye on things and know when it was time to bail.

I sent my undead paladin to join Lamford's defenders. With the big, bulky cloak I'd draped over it, most people couldn't tell it was any different from the Skeletal Knights and Skeletal Soldiers.

Since it was smarter, it served better as my eyes and ears throughout the town. The undead paladin wasn't particularly talkative beyond the occasional word or flashed image, but it was enough to count as a status report.

The Order of the Golden Sword was being surprisingly slow to respond to my blatant provocation. But they would come eventually, I was certain of it.

***

I woke the following morning to a fresh set of quests.

New Quests Available!

Quest 1: Teach initiate sorcerers. (100 evil points)

Quest 2: Slay knights blessed by a goddess. (500 evil points)

Quest 3: Slay a paladin of Meliana. (10,000 evil points)

I looked through the quests as I stretched and carefully extricated myself from Aia's arms without waking her. This was the quest I'd been waiting for. On other days I didn't mind sleeping in, but as the farmers said around these parts, make hay while the sun shines.

I left for town. Isolda and Master Theragrim's other apprentices were back to teaching the basics, which was how I'd set things up last time. They would educate the students most of the time, and I'd step in on days when I'd get points for it.

I smoothly slid into my role as teacher once again and finished the first hour of lecturing, complete with all the points that came with it.

Quests Completed! +4,600 evil points.

I was starting on the second hour of teaching when something terribly loud rang through the air. It sounded like a tree exploding, or maybe a wall coming down.

The noise had many of my students clutching their ears. I frowned, but assumed it was a shopkeeper dropping something and was about to go back to my lesson.

I stopped when it was followed by shouting and the whinnies of horses.

"A moment, class."

I switched to Minion Sight and targeted one of the Skeletal Soldiers by the gate. What I saw made me drop the chalk I was holding.

It was finally happening. Today of all days.

I glanced at the class of students before me. It had been one thing to know in a distant, clinical way that their town was going to be attacked. It was quite another to be in charge of them when it happened.

I debated continuing to teach despite the attack. Surely the Order of the Golden Sword wouldn't slaughter a classroom full of students, right?

I used Minion Sight again and found furious knights. They had finally spotted one of the Skeletal Knights, and seeing their former comrades turned undead truly enraged them. They were killing everything they could get their hands on. The human militiamen I'd recruited to fill the guard roles the undead couldn't were cut down as easily as the skeletons under their command.

These knights seemed in a murderous mood. Holy or not, it wouldn't pay to be on the wrong side of them.

I glanced at the chalkboard and remembered what I'd just been teaching. Across it were clear symbols and diagrams depicting the intricacies of sorcery. If a knight came to search the place, my students would be shown no mercy, young as they were.

I couldn't run quite yet.

"Everyone, stay in your seats," I said in my instructor voice. Then I grabbed a sponge and began furiously wiping the chalkboard down. "Isolda, confiscate everyone's notes and begin burning them."

The students blinked at one another in confusion. Not long ago I'd handed out the very paper and quills they were using, since it had seemed sad to teach them to read and write with nothing to apply it to. Now I was taking it all back.

With the board scrubbed clean and Isolda and the others collecting the notes, I turned and gave the students a hard look.

"Soon, some people are going to burst through that door. If you tell them any of what I just taught you, you'll be killed. If any of you do admit to anything against my instruction, I expect the rest of you to deny everything and claim the one who spoke is lying. I know these knights well. Collaborating with them will only get you killed faster, no matter what they claim to offer." The students looked pale at my announcement.

This wasn't the first time I'd spoken of what the Order of the Golden Sword would do to them if what they were learning was discovered, but that had been in the detached, clinical voice of a lecture. This was real, and they could sense the urgency in my words.

Terribly, horribly real. A knot of guilt wormed in my stomach. I would have to stay just long enough to make sure the kids would pull through all right. Hopefully Master Theragrim could turn this into enough of a battle that the knights who lived would be in no condition to go door to door hunting sorcerers afterward.

Those hopes soon proved misplaced when I checked on the status of the battle. Things were going poorly, to say the least. The walls had fallen with hardly a fight. Master Theragrim was giving orders that scarcely amounted to more than hurling wave after wave of undead at the enemy. At the rate things were going, he'd run out of undead before inflicting so much as a single casualty on the knights.

I couldn't blame everything on Theragrim's poor grasp of tactics, though. There was an anomaly at the head of the knights. No... two anomalies, but the second seemed just a bit stronger than a regular knight. It was the leader who drew my attention.

He was a confident man in shining armor that clearly set him apart from his men. At first I'd taken him to be a captain like Knight Commander Rufus, but this man demonstrated things the Knight Commander could never have dreamed of. While the Knight Commander was a skilled swordsman, that was all.

This man was a paladin. Living and in the flesh. The ray of golden light that shot out of his sword and destroyed the town gates was proof of that.

Everywhere he went, Skeletal Soldiers crumpled. Only living knights could stand near him long enough to make a fight of it, and when they did, he proved no slouch with a sword.

I used Minion Sight a few more times to get a good grasp of the situation, then started issuing new orders to the undead. While many of the Skeletal Soldiers were Master Theragrim's, the Skeletal Knights were all mine. They could split off from the rest for something resembling an actual strategy.

I followed the path the knights were chasing and had the undead under my control fall back again and again. The undead pulled the nearby human defenders along with them, until the living got the idea too. We would funnel the knights into an enclosed alleyway outside the town jailhouse, where Master Theragrim was.

"Isolda, how is that fireball spell coming along?" I asked her.

"I've been practicing while listening in on your lectures, Master Reed. A few of the students are passable, and so am I." Isolda conjured the start of a fireball for my examination.

It was closer to a magical candleflame than a ball of fire, especially compared to the sort I could produce now that I'd massively enhanced my mana reserves. But it was technically a fireball, and it could kill a knight with his back turned, or at least distract one long enough for the defenders to push them back and mount an offensive.

"Students, stay here and avoid the windows and doors. Keep everything locked until the noise outside dies down. And remember what I told you!" I said as I left with the volunteers.

I positioned the volunteers in the buildings where they'd do the most good, something resembling real strategy.

The ambush went well at first. Knights were caught by surprise as Isolda, her fellow apprentices, and a few of the senior students unleashed a handful of fireballs at the knights' unprotected flank. But what truly surprised me was the paladin's ruthless reply. He ordered his men to burn down the city.

If their earlier actions hadn't made it clear, by now I knew the knights intended to leave no survivors. This entire city would burn.

I was counting on the old sorcerer having the kind of spells needed to act as the anvil to our hammer.

It worked, at first. The paladin even let Master Theragrim get off a little villain speech that did no favors for the local stereotypes about sorcerers.

But when it became clear the paladin would kill Master Theragrim in moments, I realized I needed to step in. If the paladin survived and Master Theragrim died quickly, he would still have the men to overrun and purge the city.

That paladin needed to die. The fact that the System was offering me points for it, today of all days, made me a little suspicious of how it had known I'd cross paths with a paladin.

I mentally scrolled through the spells I'd been considering for purchase and picked a few combat-focused ones that would be excellent for this situation.

Purchased Hex of Stillness. -2,000 evil points.

Purchased Faith-Severing Curse. -5,000 evil points.

Purchased Heartpiercing Lance. -5,000 evil points.

The Hex of Stillness was a direct upgrade to my Hex of Slowness, but my opening attack would be the Faith-Severing Curse. From the brief description, it would weaken the defenses of paladins and clerics. I wasn't sure how much it would do, but it certainly wouldn't hurt.

The real star of the show was the Heartpiercing Lance, a magical attack that shot a short beam of energy capable of punching through armor and flesh alike.

Armed with all three spells, I turned invisible and jumped onto the platform. At the same time, and without the cover of invisibility, I directed my undead paladin to do the same.

"Your blasphemy knows no bounds! Even our honored dead are defiled by you!" the paladin shouted.

Master Theragrim grinned wide as my trump card shed its cloak and crossed blades with the paladin. Despite his bravado, he'd been moments away from being gutted like a fish.

"Hahaha! It seems I have friends in high places. Now, foolish paladin, prepare to die!" Master Theragrim cackled as he conjured a spell I'd seen him use several times before. The destructive beam of energy was a nasty little spell that caused flesh to rot. It wasn't particularly powerful, and I could probably have defeated it with my healing spell alone, let alone my Counterspell. It was effective, but slow to cast and slower to take effect, so not exactly something I was interested in hunting down in the System shop for myself.

The undead remains of Paladin Gavin Haveron battled its living counterpart, blades clashing again and again. I hoped mine was stronger, but whatever was lost in raising it meant even my trump card wouldn't last long against the real thing.

But that was what I was here for. The next time the paladin's blade crossed my undead's, I cast my Faith-Severing Curse, followed by my Hex of Stillness.

The enemy paladin froze, and my undead scored a hefty blow. But there wouldn't be a second one. I could see the paladin struggling to break my magical bindings.

I didn't give him the chance. My open palm landed just off-center on his back, and the moment my fingers touched his armor I cast the Heartpiercing Lance.

The paladin's armor exploded in a fountain of blood and gore, and just like that the strongest enemy was dead.

Quest Completed! +10,000 evil points.

I turned back to Master Theragrim, meaning to tell him how to finish the battle, only to find him lying on the ground in a puddle of his own blood. Looming over him was the second figure I'd marked as unusual, the one besides the paladin.

I called up Chain Lightning. These knights would show no mercy to me or anyone else here. I planned to repay that in kind.

I cast the spell at the figure looming over Master Theragrim's body. She held up her sword and intercepted the burst of electricity. That protected her, but not the knights behind her. Their steel armor conducted my magic far better than I could have predicted, and in an instant three of them were dead and half a dozen more were wounded.

Taking a page from Theragrim's book, I simply cast the spell again, this time with even more mana. The burst of lightning shooting from my fingertips engulfed the entire square. The female knight before me who'd been blocking my attacks went flying as her defenses were overwhelmed, and then the small army of knights faced the full brunt of my magic.

The first ranks fell in a heartbeat, flesh cooking inside their armor. The second convulsed as the magic made their muscles seize and twitch. Then the third gasped and sputtered and fell to their knees.

Quests Completed! +19,500 evil points.

That rendered them helpless as I sent the undead forward to finish them off. Of those who escaped the worst of it, many looked at me with wide, terrified eyes and turned to flee.

Just like that, the battle was over. Not long ago, an army of knights smaller than this one had pushed me to the edge of life and death. But this time, an army bigger and stronger than that one folded the moment I revealed myself.

Perhaps the Order of the Golden Sword had been right to try to kill me when I'd been weak. I knew now that I'd never be that weak again.

I glanced at Master Theragrim's corpse on the ground. This would have been much easier if the old sorcerer hadn't gotten himself killed. So much for my plan to slip away.

I looked over to the few knights who'd been cornered without their mounts. Among them was the female knight I'd blasted with Chain Lightning.

"Skeletal Knights, hold position!" I ordered. I snapped my fingers and an intimidatingly large Fireball took shape. This one made Isolda and the others' look like candleflames, as it was backed by a sorcerer well into the second chapter of the Grimoire of Soul Refinement.

<Note>

Current points: 48,510

So originally I wanted to leave things just after this battle, but it still feels like a bit of a cliffhanger.

Really, this chapter should be a bit longer but I skimmed over the middle part from Alden's perspective to fit it all into one. In an official series I would fix that but for now I'll leave it as is.

I have to think if I want to do more and how to tie things up cleanly. It feels like the next part of interacting with Ellen and fixing the city would be another 5-6 chapters, and another ten before another good ending point comes up. But at that point I'm basically writing most of a book and it might not be worth it unless this is going to be a series.

I'll probably just do one or two more to tie things up neatly, then switch back to Amazon Apocalypse unless I am really feeling it.