Blinking, I stared at the masked man in front of me. Dressed as a robber would - fitted in a conspicuous yet featureless black outfit - the man nudged his head toward the locked door ahead, and it was then I realized what I had in hold.
A crowbar was grasped with gloved hands, my hands, so I couldn’t help but gulp as I understood the task in spite of the confusion.
“Gettin’ cold feet now, Lick? C’mon, just one flimsy door, and the gig would be already over.”
Cold sweat ran down my back, the black shirt no doubt damp from my shivering despite the warmth of the air. A screen of purple blocked my vision, freezing me just as I took a step forward, but also seemingly freezing the air around me.
[Welcome, Gracious Host, to the Villainous System]
‘What?’
[To live a life of villainy and debauchery, to enjoy a world without rules or laws, you need strength, and some thinking outside the box]
‘Wait, wait wait. Villainous System?’
[The Villainous System has been designed to assist you with your endeavors, allowing you to enjoy privileges only dreamt of by many, but not for free]
I would have started shivering again at reading those words, but not out of confusion this time. It all began to make sense-
[To become the ultimate Villain, you have to kill, steal, and conquer]
‘Yes, yes, yes!’
[Quest: Rob the cache
Objectives:
- Rob at least 1000 dollars worth of items (0/1000) (Optional)
- Escape without being caught by law enforcement
- Survive.
Rewards: Unlocking of the Villainous System’s Features
Upon failure of this Quest, any opportunity to use the Villainous System would be locked]
‘No, no, no!’
[Good Luck]
And that was the last window offered to me before time resumed.
Under the urging eyes of my companions (at least, I assumed they were), I hastily rushed to the door before staring at it, trying to figure out where to place my crowbar. Logic dictated that I lever it to break open the door, but I had no idea where to place it, or how even to.
When I stood for a few seconds just rotating my crowbar while trying to understand what to do, one of my companions, of whom there were three, just stole the thing from my grasp, a frustrated “Gimme that!” escaping him as he shoved me away.
I noticed the glares he and another one had given me, but the first man who called me ‘Lick’ instead looked at me in worry. I hurriedly waved him off and, after a minute of finagling, the door burst open, and we all rushed inside while bumping into each other.
“Reminder,” one of them spoke, who I’d dubbed Companion A, “We’re here because we got a scoop that this place is a Red Ice stash that was left unguarded due to the current war, as you know.”
Since I totally knew what he was on about, I nodded, so he continued, “We’re going to pick up as much as we could grab, and bolt outta here. Drugs, guns, whatever you could get your hands on, just stash it into the bag and we’ll be golden.”
It was then I noticed that I had a duffle bag on my back, but he was already moving ahead along with companions B and C.
Rubbing my wooly hands, I hastened toward them until we were faced with yet another door, but they were glaring at it instead of acting.
“What’s wrong?” I heard a new voice only to realize it was mine, or Lick’s.
“There’s someone inside,” C pointed at the floor, and I could see the light peeking under the door.
“Shit?”
“Yeah, shit. Alright, y’all got your weapons ready?” B inspected each of us while I fumbled with my pockets, thankfully finding a switchblade. Not that I knew how to use it, but they didn’t need to know that.
Putting his ear on the door, C closed his eyes for around 20 seconds, then he nodded at us. When he glanced at me, he clicked his tongue and elaborated, “I estimate no more than two inside there, so we will storm in and kill them if they so much as twitch wrong, you get me?”
I gave him a thumbs up, thankful for the info. It seemed like Lick was new to the business, so it was quite considerate of them to give me the info.
“On the count of three,” A grasped the handle and began counting.
One, B tightened his hold on the crowbar.
Two, C brandished a dagger of his own.
Three, light flooded my eyes as we rushed in, the occupants of the room screaming.
Before I could act, my fellow thieves began yelling and beating down the guys that were chilling about, the stench of smoke making me cough but the room was cleared by the time I blinked.
“Red Ice will-”
One of the goons was immediately silenced when B slammed his foot to his side, “Shut it. Get movin’.”
‘Professionals. Wow.’
We all separated and began tossing whatever was apparently valuable into our bags, and I couldn’t help but notice something in the corner of the room. It was a weird, seemingly inconspicuous carpet that was incredibly alarming for the context.
“Guys? You might wanna look at this.”
Companion A stepped over while I dragged the carpet away, whistling as we came face first with a hatch. An actual hatch!
“Thought it a bit weird that they just left the valuables out here. The real goodies, though..” I could imagine him licking his lips under his mask, but I was too focused on the prize beneath my shoes.
With a loud screech, I lifted the thing up, my muscles straining, while A pushed it the remainder of the way. He whistled as the stairway came to light while I hollered at the other two to hurry up. They gave me scathing glances until the new entrance entered their sight.
They abandoned whatever non-valuable valuables they were looting and marched over with greed in their eyes.
“That what I think it is?”
“Only way to find out,” I gripped my switchblade comfortably before attempting to step down, but B squeezed himself in front of me, daring me with his eyes to even mutter a complaint.
I didn’t, I was too focused on the potential of the loot down there.
“Someone has to keep his eyes on the outside. Lick?”
‘What?’
“The hell? I want to go down there too!”
“Who knows, you might break something or trip a wire.”
“Cut him some slack, he needs the experience,” Companion A stepped up. My hero!
Clicking his tongue, B motioned to C, and the man wordlessly stepped away and began checking over the knocked over thugs. Was he trying to make sure they were securely tied up?
The echoes of the stairs broke me out of my stupor, so I quickly followed after the two. One of them had to pull out a flashlight to combat the darkness, but when I took the final step, my mouth gaped in awe.
“Jackpot...”
“Priority: jewels, drugs, guns, money. If you find something not in this list, ask me first,” Companion A spoke while B began taking care of the locked crates and cabinets.
As for me, I had my eyes on something that was glowing. And I mean actually glowing, though I don’t think the other two noticed. It was an apparently innocent suitcase that I opened without hesitation, the glow fading and my vision blocked by a new purple screen.
[Congratulations, you found a Highly Valuable Item (HVI). Highly Valuable Items are unique and give unique bonuses to the user upon successful acquisition. Selling or losing the item at a later date does not remove its bonus]
At that, I gulped. When the panel faded away, all I was left with was a cube with neon-like inscriptions on it. No extra information was provided, but when I picked it up, I realized what the issue was.
[Villainous System features are locked until the completion of the Quest]
Sighing, I just planned on pocketing the cube, but the suitcase itself felt pretty posh. Grinning, I put the cube in my dufflebag and decided to fill the suitcase with whatever pretty things I could get my hands on, including a whole bunch of gems and some random looking paper files that I thought might come in handy at a later point.
“Good catch,” Companion B commented on the papers. “If it has good info, it might lead us to some more hideouts, or we can sell it for a pretty penny to the next competitor.”
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“T-thanks. You done?”
He tilted his dufflebag, showing the way it nearly burst from how much it was stuffed. I could see the glee and pride in his eyes. Our minds echoed together : ‘We’re makin’ bank!’
“Leg it, we’re done!”
With a pep in my step, I followed the two up the stairs once more until B suddenly stopped at the top, and that made A take a step back.
“Company,” A whispered.
“Why, hello there. Had your fill digging through our stuff?” a new voice spoke with confidence.
Grimacing, I placed the duffle bag on a step and prepared my weapon, something that A noticed and made him nod in return, though he didn’t copy me. Instead, he pulled out a whole ass gun from his back pocket.
B, on the other hand, was still covering the top of the hatch, so for all they knew, only B was there, but that made me realize that C was probably dead. On one hand, shit. On the other, I didn’t like the looks he gave me anyway.
“Yeah, real juicy stuff. Now why don’t you shove it?”
The stranger chuckled, then footsteps came closer. From where I stood, I was able to see B holding three fingers down. Then B jumped forward, eliciting a curse from the stranger and two others.
B had tackled someone to the ground while A was in a dance with one of the three. As soon as I was spotted, a shiny bat swung toward my face, the third thug making it his task to take me down.
With glee, I ducked below the attack and stabbed my dagger forward, embedding it into his stomach. Rather than backpedal, the thug kicked me directly in the face, and it was then he actually backpedalled.
While he was clutching his stomach, the bat dropped from his hand. “Amateur!” I laughed, ignoring the pain in my face before slipping the weapon into my hand and, instead of aiming at the head like he did, going straight for the legs.
His eyes widened as the bat struck with a loud smack, but I wasn’t going to let up. With one leg down, and hands occupied - one on his stomach while the other unconsciously dragging itself over to his leg - an overhead came and landed decisively on his skull, dropping him in an instant.
Huffing while tightening my grip on the bat, I glanced at the other fights while gasping. A was getting wailed on, a gun two meters away from them. I quickly debated grabbing it and trying to shoot, but the bat.. It felt pretty good.
Roaring, I sprinted at the thug beating my companion and baseball swung at his head, sending him tumbling off A. Rather than checking up on my friend(?), I hopped over him and began wailing on the thug, only stopping when I felt a hand on my shoulder.
“Stop, Lick, he’s dead.”
Blood slipped down the bat, an ecstacy unlike any filling me. When I comprehended the scene, I couldn’t help but smile under the mask. The thug’s arms were bloodied, but they were nothing like his mangled face. I wanted to do more, but, looking at A, I abandoned that thought for the original goal.
Money.
B was dusting himself off, the crowbar embedded within his opponent’s skull.
“Damn, you’re brutal,” I whistled.
“So are you. Let’s get out of here. Also, grab his body,” he pointed at C, and I nodded.
With all our loot and C in hand, we ran outside to our escape vehicle, a van.
“Gg, EZ”
“The fuck are you talking about?”
I just shook my head. Not my fault they don’t know about video games.
---
I used to be someone else. A working man in a normal office, doing menial tasks and handling whatever usual difficulties life threw at me. It was boring, unfulfilling, and most definitely safe, but it got me living comfortably.
Then I blink, and I’m Lick. Why he, or now I, and how it all came to be in the first place - those questions only crossed my mind once. One single time, and that was only before the Villainous System introduced itself. ‘I love that thing.’
[Quest Complete!
Objectives:
- Rob at least 1000 dollars worth of items (4800/1000) - Complete!
- Escape without being caught by law enforcement - Complete!
- Survive - Complete!]
‘Yes, I’m great, I know.’
[Congratulations, the Villainous System is now unlocked for use!
Current system realm: 1]
‘Hehehehe.’
“Man, stop giggling like a sissy and help move the stuff. Your payday counts on it,” B, or rather Bango spoke. Who knew his name aligned with the one I gave him? Submerged memories from Lick, perhaps?
“I’ll have you know I’m not giggling like a ‘sissy,’ now I wanna know how you’ll deal with our guy here,” I pointed at the corpse of C. Wouldn’t wish to be him.
“Other than giving him a decent burial, I got contacts to help hide the details. Don’t want anyone, especially his family, to make a connection between the gig and his death.”
“Interesting..”
I wasn’t a criminal in my past life, and never attempted anything close. Abiding by the law, however, didn’t stop me from immersing myself in the world that was documentaries and books. Imagine if I could make my own heists, or have my own evil empire of doom. ‘Hehehe…’
“Stop laughing, you dickhead!”
“Piss off! Hahaha!”
Bango grumbled while A, Alphonso, silently sorted the items along with the suitcase I had acquired. Even if I was an up and coming villain, he actually tried to take care of me in the job, and I appreciated that.
“Yo!” I tapped him on the shoulder, and he gave me a side glance.
“You did better than I expected, you know,” he said, as if it wasn’t the 5th time he did since entering the van.
“Yup, when’s the next one?”
At that, he blinked, then shook his head. “You know, I faintly remember you mentioning that you only wanted to do this just once since, ya’know, you didn’t want to die and just needed a quick buck.”
Probably Lick told him that before I shamelessly (and against my will) took over. Well, now that I’m the new Lick, let’s just say..
“I take it back, I had a lot of fun.”
“Riiiiiight,” he shrugged, then resumed sorting. “We won’t be doing anything till we can sell the stuff, and finding buyers for this stuff is my specialty. Usually I don’t join in on hits like this, but I couldn’t trust you to run this on your own.”
“Hey! I did great!”
“Doesn’t change the fact that this was your first run.”
I huffed, “Whatever, teach me what you’re doing.”
“Aight, so..”
As he began instructing, new prompts began popping up, the first of which I did manually (hooray).
[Character Information
Name: Limbo Jimbo - Current nickname : Lick
Age: 26
Rank: No-bit thug
Attributes: (5 Points Available)
Brawn: 12 - Brains: 6 - Spirit: 0
Bling : 0 (1000 Pending from recent jobs)]
‘I’m smarter than 6 Brains, what the hell!’
Regardless, I had asked the System for a rundown, and it gave me a tutorial. It was frankly sleep inducing (maybe I’ll use that to lull me to sleep later), but the gist of it was that it was quite versatile, and seeing the options made me fall in love.
Other than the “Character Information,” I also had “Shop,” “Options,” and “Inventory,” though the last option was locked behind a shop upgrade. What interested me most was what the shop offered, and oh did it offer.
[Shop:
Categories: Evil Attributes - Dastardly Elixirs - WMDs - Superpowers - Unhelpful Misc. Items]
Ignoring the adjectives, the tabs were pretty self explanatory. The “Evil Attributes” tab, which I’ll shorten to simply “Attributes,” offered to give me more attribute points at the cost of.. “Bling.”
For the life of me, I, Limbo Jimbo, better known as Lick, the super villain in the making, had my money referred to as Bling. How!? Why!?
Even while grumbling about it, I scanned through my options, and grumbled even more as I had to wait for my money to roll in once the items were sold.
[Shop: Evil Attributes:-
1 Brawn : 500 Bling
1 Brain : 750 Bling
1 Spirit : 2000 Bling
10 Brawn: 5000 Bling
10 Brains..]
Rinse and repeat for multiples of 10. In the tutorial, the System graced me with info on what each attribute actually means, and the general intent is that Brawn covers everything that my body can do. Whether it be strength, durability, speed and reflexes - all of those were governed by one attribute, and if compared to any of the random RPGs I knew about, then this made its cost way more worth.
Just imagine if I had to pay 500 Money (I’m not calling it Bling) for Strength, then another 500 for Durability. ‘This is value, I tell you!’
Brains governs the whole smarts and computational speed aspect. While it won’t grant me immediate knowledge of whatever, it will slowly but surely (according to the tutorial) allow me to grind to become a genius.
‘And I can at least give it the benefit of the doubt, because if it can make me understand maths after I put some points into it, then it sure as heck is overpowered.’
Then comes Spirit, the one attribute I got none of. Basically, it dictates how strong my superpowers can be, along with the added benefit of simply making me more in touch with the mystical side of things. So not only would it directly improve my powers, it would also open up options for me to get said powers without the System. ‘Ain’t that amazing?’
“Hahaha!” - “Shut uppppp!!!”
See, I’m not dumb, regardless of what the System is saying. In fact, look at this! My Brains is at 11!
Then it hit me.
‘Holy shit, why can I feel the rusty cogs in my brain getting greased? What the fuck!?’
Nothing outwardly changed other than the fact that I felt my thoughts moving twice as fast, which should technically be true since I nearly doubled my previous Brains. Wait, since when did I think like that?
I shivered for a moment, and quickly decided to ignore it. ‘Yup, I was always this smart. Yep yep.’
[Shop: Dastardly Elixirs:
Elixir of Evil Healing (Minor) : 1500 Bling
Elixir of Tasty Poison (Minor) : 1250 Bling
Serum of Evil (Minor) : 2000 Bling]
These were options among many. The shop cost went as high as 1 million money before I gave up on scrolling. There were too many things to even cover, like the heck is ‘Tasty Poison’? Candy? Is the shop selling diabetes for 1250 Money!?
Not that I could tell by now. Or later. Lowest cost is still more than the amount of money I will be getting, so that’s a bust. I was so hyped for the WMDs though. WMDs!
[Shop: WMDs:
Perfect Evil Sword Stick : 500 Bling
Evil Socks (Minor) : 750 Bling
Rad Underwear (Minor) : 1000 Bling
…
Super Villainous Nanite Armor : 200,000 Bling
Grenade Launcher of Doom : 250,000 Bling
…
BFG : 500,000 Bling]
I fell on my knees, repeatedly slamming my fists on the ground.
“WHYYYYYY!”
“Are you.. Is he ok?”
“..Just ignore him, probably the nerves from the first job.”
What do you mean a stick is worth 500 Money? Socks for 750? I’m being fleeced, I tell you!
After a minute of wallowing, I didn’t even have the heart to check the rest of the tabs. Most likely, the superpowers one would just give me the ability to roll my tongue for 2000 Money or something.
Sighing, I glanced back at the now organized table before finding the cube I had pocketed before. It was glowing in a purple-haze just like the System’s panels, so I held it for a second until a new screen popped up.
[Highly Valuable Item registered : Weak Alien Supercomputer (Weak)
Bonus issued: 10 Attribute Points
Current Villainous System Realm progress: 2%]
“H-hey, Alph, you looked at this?”
“Yeah, I put it in the junk pile. No clue why you brought this, but metal scrap is metal scrap.”
I chuckled nervously, “About that..”
He blinked as I began explaining to him, and when he asked how I knew that it was an alien supercomputer, I put a finger on my lips and shushed him.
“Look, if you know someone who might buy alien artifacts, and a supercomputer at that, then hit them up. If not, I’ll keep it.”
He sighed, “You know, this item might sell for big bucks if you’re right. Let me keep it for a bit, I know someone who might be interested.”
I grinned and, after some questions on my part and some very innocent ones like “where do I live?” I took a taxi and went back home. Thankfully, our group was smart enough where our own valuables were kept in the hideout where we sorted the loot, and A alerted me about them before I stepped out.
I couldn’t help but cringe as I enjoyed the absolutely amazing taste of old Lick. He had a damned cartoon character on his phone cover. It wasn’t even cool or anything, it was just some girl shyly preventing her skirt from flying off. What even was this guy doing with his life?
Don’t worry though, Lick. I’ll take good care of your body.
First, though.. Why was my house a rundown pile of crap?