The chain that had pulled me off my platform, started being reeled in. It dragged me across the cobblestone street. It had easily popped the protective bubble Abigail put around me. Standing at the end of the chain was a giant of a woman. She had to be at least 8 feet tall.

I shot a giant spike at her. She put her hand in front of it and caught it in her hand. It had stabbed through her hand but she was pushing against it hard enough to prevent it from moving forward.

This did what I wanted it to do. Give slack in the chain so I could remove it from my neck. She pulled at the chain hard when she saw what I was doing and the hook raked across my face, slicing it open.

It quickly healed, but it still hurt. I summoned two more giant spikes and threw them at her. She caught one in her other hand and one in her teeth.

We were at a standstill. I analyzed her misdeeds and found they weren't as bad as some of the others I'd seen. They weren't forgivable, but they weren't as bad as Olivia's.

She was a bounty hunter. She only took contracts that allowed her to kill her target before delivering them. Wanted dead or alive, or just wanted dead. The "wanted alive" contracts she didn't take. They were too difficult and not as fun.

She killed every target she hunted, even if she found out they were innocent. She didn't care. All she cared about was killing and getting paid. She didn't care if the person deserved it or not.

She had a tragic backstory too, but it still didn't justify her actions. She grew up a slave and was treated poorly until she led a revolt to kill her masters. She succeeded and went free, but all she knew how to do was labor and kill. And she didn't want to labor anymore.

I sent a skeleton with two swords at her while I had her occupied with my spikes. The skeleton methodically slashed her Achilles tendons, dropping her to her knees.

[Auto crit on evil activated!]

Then he stabbed her in the heart. She bled to death rather quickly. She collapsed to the ground without a word. She just closed her eyes and that was it.

[You have defeated Great Evil! You have gained 3 justice points]

I looked around and Olivia's thermal signature had disappeared. She must have gone out of the range of Evil Eye.

'Spend them on Evil Eye.'

[You have upgraded Evil Eye 3 times! Evil Eye's range has increased to 1,500 feet]

Olivia's thermal signature popped back into view. She was several blocks away. I hopped back on my bone platform and sped in that direction. I took the roads instead of trying to make my way between buildings. It was faster and there was no one on the street.

I caught up to her coming out of an alley. She stopped when she saw me and put her hands up. "Stop! Please, wait! I can help you."

I stopped. "I'm listening."

"There will be many more coming for you besides me, and they won't be agents. They'll be bounty hunters. They will be far more willing to endanger innocent lives than me," she said.

"You seemed pretty willing to endanger innocent lives to me," I said, crossing my arms.

"That was nothing compared to what a bounty hunter would do. A bounty hunter would threaten anyone to get their prey to surrender. If you let me go, I can say that I killed you, and the bounty will be dropped. Then no innocent people have to get hurt," she said.

I saw a thermal signature on a rooftop 3 houses away. "Hold on one second," I said. I prepared a giant spike and shot it through the part of the roof they were hiding behind.

I pulled the spike back with a dude attached to it and deposited him in the nearby trash heap. "I'll let you go if you can convince me you won't do evil things to innocent people anymore. You can do whatever you want to evil people, but leave innocents out of it," I said.

Olivia got on her hands and knees. "I promise I won't hurt another innocent again!"

Evil Eye still read her as evil. "Sorry. I'm not convinced." I summoned a giant spike and prepared to launch it through her neck. Then the ground opened up and we fell. I extended my bone platform to try to reattach it to the ground. I fell 10 feet before my bone platform stabilized and I landed on it on my back.

Olivia screamed and fell into the dark. I lowered my platform as fast as I could to try to catch her but I couldn't see her anymore. It was too dark. I kept lowering the platform until I heard a thud and Olivia stopped screaming. I lowered my platform to the ground and once my eyes adjusted to the darkness, I saw Olivia's crumpled form on the ground next to me.

Stolen content alert: this content belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences.

I immediately raised bone platforms around us to protect us from our attacker. The ground didn't collapse naturally. Someone set it to collapse to trap us or just me. I enclosed us in a circle of bone platforms.

I wished I had some way to make light with my powers, but there was nothing. I looked around and saw a thermal signature of another evil person down here. They must have collapsed the ground and dropped us down here. It was probably another bounty hunter.

Experimentally, I dropped a bone platform and threw a giant spike at them. I didn't see any barriers between them and me, so I figured I could get a free shot, but halfway to my target, the giant spike split into several pieces and fell to the ground. I tried picking up one of the larger pieces of the spike and throwing it at my target, but that was split into several smaller pieces.

Several torches flickered on in the underground space. We were standing in a large underground sewer tunnel that didn't currently have any sewage in it. Looking at our attacker, I still couldn't see anything more than glowing yellow eyes. I could see little flickers of metal glinting in the light in front of them, but I couldn't make out what they were.

This person was evil in a similar but worse way than the tall woman. He was a bounty hunter who didn't care about guilt, but he also worked as an assassin who killed whoever he had to to get paid.

Olivia stirred and sat up. "Where are we?" She said, looking around.

"An unused sewage tunnel, it seems," I said. "Can you walk?"

Olivia tried to stand up, but she couldn't. "My leg is broken. I can't get up."

"Lower your columns!" The attacker said.

"No! You'll just kill us," I said. I kneeled down and put my hands on her leg. I activated Advanced Healing to mend her broken leg. Once I was done, I said, "You should be fine now."

Olivia felt her leg and then stood up. "You healed me! Why?"

"You need to be healthy if either of us is going to make it out of this alive. This guy is the real deal," I said.

"Ok, well, if I kill him, will you let me go?" She said.

"I can't negotiate with you while you're still evil and willing to hurt innocents to get what you want," I said. "If I let you go and you kill again, their blood is on my hands."

"You're so stubborn! I'm offering to save your life, and you won't let me go because I fit some rigid concept of evil to you? Who knows if your version of evil is truly evil?" She said.

"You torture and kill innocent people to capture guilty ones. How is that not evil?" I said.

"How do you know those people I tortured were innocent? You don't do you?" She said.

"Ok, I guess I don't, but the point is you don't either. You tortured those people without knowing if they had done anything wrong," I said.

"Sure, but I also didn't know that they hadn't done anything wrong," she said.

"What? I don't understand what you're saying," I said.

"The problem is, you assume people are innocent until proven guilty. I assume people are guilty until proven innocent," she said. "So to me, I tortured and killed guilty people who associated with the guilty person I was after. They were guilty by association."

"Wait, you can just assume people are guilty? How does that make sense?" I said.

"How does assuming they're innocent make sense? You might be letting murderers go on to murder other people. In my mind, I'm killing more guilty people than not, and that makes what I do ok," she said.

"What the fuck? It's ok if you kill more guilty people than innocent people? Explain," I said.

"Uh, are we going to fight, or are you two going to argue all night?" The bounty hunter assassin said.

"Shut up!" Both Olivia and I said at the same time.

"It's ok because more innocents are saved in the end. That's how the justice system works. You don't think innocent people are imprisoned or executed? It happens all the time," she said.

"What makes it ok, is more guilty are being taken out than innocent, thus saving more innocent lives than if the guilty were allowed to go free."

"Ok, your non-sense is actually starting to make sense to me now," I said.

[Sense of justice realigned. Olivia no longer deemed evil. Olivia is now classified as morally grey]

"Damn it! You're not evil in my mind anymore. Now I can't kill you unless you try to kill me," I said. I looked at her.

She looked at me. "What?"

"I'm waiting for you to kill this guy so we can get out of here," I said.

"Oh, right," she said. She picked up her staff off the ground and zapped the assassin with a lightning bolt. He dodged out of the way with incredible agility. She tried zapping him several more times but he kept dodging. I didn't understand why he didn't come into the bone column area and attack us himself or why he didn't attack Olivia back. He must not have been able to.

"This is getting annoying," Olivia said. She slammed her staff into the ground and several lightning bolts shot the ceiling above the assassin. This caused massive chunks of concrete to fall onto him.

The assassin looked up at the falling rocks and said, "Oh sh—". He was cut off when he got crushed by the stones.

"Thank you," I said. "That doesn't let you completely off the hook. If you try to kill me or any of my friends, you're still dead."

"Convince me what you're doing is right and I won't kill you or any of your friends," she said.

"I'm trying to take down a corrupt organization capitalizing on addiction, underpaying people, with no training or safety procedures," I said.

"There are a lot of businesses you could be talking about when you say that," she said.

"I know, but I currently have my eyes set on the Red Tail Fox Company. Now are you going to help me, fight me, or stay out of my way?" I said.

"The easiest and most comfortable option would be to kill you now that you don't have your bubble," she said.

I summoned my bone armor and a bone sword. I put the bone sword against her neck. "Try it if you think you can get away with it."

She put her hands up. "But I've decided to let you be and just try to find work elsewhere."

"Good," I said. I lowered my sword but didn't put it away. I walked out to the dead assassin. I was curious what weapon he was using.

After examination, and removing some of the rocks off his body, I could tell he was using razor-sharp wires attached to his fingers and a post. That was how he sliced up my bone spike. And that's why he had no defense against Olivia's lightning other than to dodge.

And why he couldn't attack us with my bone columns up. They were blocking his wires. His whole plan relied on us falling down and him immediately slicing us to pieces, but his plans were thwarted when I didn't fall down with Olivia and he had to wait for me to be in a good position.

"Stand next to me," I said to Olivia

"Why?" She said, giving me a look.

"It's nothing sexual. I'm just getting us out of here," I said.

"Ok," she said standing next to me.

I summoned a bone platform underneath us and rose it to the street. We stepped off back onto the street.

"Well, this is me," Olivia said and saluted me.

"Wait, you live here?" I said looking at the nearest house.

"No, I mean I'm going to leave," she said.

"Oh. Right. I guess, be well, and try to only kill people you think are bad?" I said.

"I will, Tom. I will. Good luck with your crusade," she said. She walked down the street and disappeared into an alley.

I took a bone platform back to Sally's bar. When I got back, all the patrons were gone, and Sally and Abigail were sweeping the floor, trying to clean up the debris. Abigail dropped her broom when she saw me. She ran over to me and threw her arms around me.

"You're safe!" She said, kissing me.

"Yeah, surprisingly, I am," I said.

"Good," she said. "Well, I have a surprise for you."

"Oh, yeah? What is it?" I said.

"If I told you, it wouldn't be a surprise," she said.

Sally walked up to me. "Whatever it is you're doing to get people on your ass, keep it away from my bar. I have a business to run! People will stop coming around if they think they're going to get killed here."

"I'm sorry, Sally. It won't happen again," I said.

"See that it doesn't," she said.

"Yes, ma'am," I said. "Well, I'll help you two clean up."

I helped Sally and Abigail clean up the mess that was the inside of Sally's bar. When it was all over, Abigail took me upstairs and showed me her "surprise." I was actually surprised, but I was very pleased.