I arrived at Sally's and looked across the street. There was a nondescript building across from Sally's that wasn't lit up in any way. The street was lined with light poles with gas lamps on top of them. But all the ones around that building were off or not working.

I walked to the shadiest part of the building. The back entrance in the alley. Since it was nearly pitch black here, I donned my living bone armor and created a sword from bone.

I knocked on the door and then stepped out of view against the wall. "Who's out there?" A voice said.

"Vermillion," I said.

"Oh, why didn't you say so?" He opened the door.

I came into view and kicked him in the chest, knocking him over.

[Auto Crit on Evil activated]

'Have you committed harmful acts to the innocent?'

'Yes, but only because I was told to. I don't like killing. I don't regret it or feel bad about it though.'

"Good enough for me," I said. I summoned a giant spike and impaled him with it. I suppose I could've taken the Auto Crit on Evil as confirmation, but I wanted to be sure.

[You have defeated evil! Rewards incoming]

[Choose your reward]

[Evil Eye: The ability to determine if someone is evil]

[Command: The ability to give someone one command they must carry out how and when you want them to. Only one command can be active at a time]

[Heart's Guidance: The ability to show someone how to become their best self and give them the motivation to do it]

Ahh, damn it. I really liked Evil Eye and Heart's Guidance. I could use a quicker way to determine evil, but Heart's Guidance just seemed so good. Not necessarily useful to me, but good.

'I choose Evil Eye.'

[Granted. Your aura is not affected]

'Thanks.'

Unfortunately, I'd have to pass on being able to save people's miserable lives and make them better people. Being able to determine evil was too important. Saving people from danger was a higher priority than saving them from themselves.

Before I could travel any deeper into the building I got a notification.

[You have committed several good deeds! +50 good aura for Lloyd's family +10 good aura for Henry +10 good aura for Stu +15 good aura for Abigail]

[Subtracted against your 30 dark aura, you are left with a status of 55 good aura]

[Threshold of 50 good aura met. You have gained the ability Emanate Good Aura Level 1]

[Emanate Good Aura: The ability to give the instinctual impression that you are a good person to others]

'Interesting. I wonder how much of that good aura will get canceled out by what I'm about to do.'

[All of it most likely]

'That's what I thought.'

I toggled on the ability, Emanate Good Aura, and then I dispelled the giant spike. The giant spike disappeared. I didn't want to leave any evidence someone with my abilities was here. That would be far too easy to track back to me.

I walked into the next room. There were 10 men sitting around a table playing some form of game. I was dressed in a suit of bone armor. I checked them with Evil Eye and they were all evil.

"Does anyone know where the restroom is?" I said.

"Oh, yeah, it's down the hall to the right," one of them said. They all turned back to playing their game. That must have been the good aura at work.

I used the time to set up 20 floating spikes, with 2 aimed at each man. They turned back around. "Hey, are you sure you belong here if you don't know where the bathroom is?"

They still ignored the fact that I was wearing creepy combat armor. But then they saw the spikes. "Hey, guys, this guy's clearly up to no good. Let's get him!"

As soon as they stood up, I sent the bone spikes into their chests, and they sat back down. I got one Auto Crit on Evil notification but the rest were just me. Apparently, I could only auto-crit once every 10 seconds, which made it less useful in situations like this.

I sent bone spike after bone spike into each guy until they all stopped moving. And then I dispelled the spikes. I didn't want to leave any obvious evidence. Sure someone could analyze the wounds, but there was nothing I could do about that.

[You have defeated evil 10 times!]

[Your dark aura has increased by 5 per kill. 5 good aura remaining]

[You have unlocked new reward options!]

[Roll a new ability (choose 1 of 3), Upgrade an existing ability, or save kills for an ultimate ability (50 kills)]

'I'm going to go with upgrading an existing ability. Let's upgrade Evil Eye.'

[Evil Eye upgraded! You can now recognize the nature of an evil doer's wrongs]

[You have 9 remaining rewards. Will you Roll, Upgrade, or Save?]

'I'm assuming I can't upgrade my bone spells or Emanate Good Aura since I didn't get those from defeating evil.'

[That is correct]

'Then let's upgrade Experience Plunder.'

[Experience Plunder's radius of effect has increased from 1 mile to 2 miles]

[Your dark aura has increased by 5 (0)]

[You have 8 rewards remaining]

'Upgrade Experience Plunder 8 more times.'

[Experience Plunder's radius of effect has increased to 10 miles]

Ensure your favorite authors get the support they deserve. Read this novel on the original website.

[Dark aura increased by 40 (-40)]

Nice. Experience Plunder felt underwhelming in its original state, but now I might be able to get some decent gains. And I was close to hitting the -50 threshold for getting the Emanate Dark Aura ability that I assumed existed.

I checked around the rest of the first floor but there was no one around. It made sense. It was an office building and it was night.

I went up the stairs to the next floor. I tried to be as stealthy as possible. I made it so the bottom of my feet didn't have bone armor on them. This way, my footsteps didn't make loud noises. I was wearing leather boots underneath.

I carefully open the door out of the stairwell. I opened the door and no one was around. There were desks and chairs that appeared to be for administrative staff or office workers.

Nothing sinister here unless you consider who they were working for. Regardless, I don't think Evil Eye would ping them as evil.

I moved onto the third floor and carefully opened the door. The room had several what appeared to be adventurers or mercenaries or both inside. The walls were lined with crates of weapons, armor, and crystals.

They appeared to be eating and arguing about something. "What I said was—" one of them said, and then everyone turned and looked at me. Someone in the background dropped their sandwich on the floor.

"This isn't the bathroom," I said.

The guy who had the coolest clothes and tattoos, who I assumed was in charge, said, "No, the bathroom's down the hall and to the right."

"Thanks," I said and turned to walk out of the room. I figured coming back with some spikes prepared would be better than this.

"Hey, wait a second! You look familiar," the leader said.

"I do?" I said, confused. I was wearing full-bone armor that even covered my head.

"Yeah. Aren't you the guy that fucked my mom?" He said, getting angry.

"You mean your dad? No, I'm not your dad. Sorry, pal," I said.

"That's just the kind of thing my dad would say. Kill him, boys!" The leader said.

"You must have a really bad relationship with your father!" I said. I dodged a sword swipe.

"I do!" He said. He swiped his sword at me again. "He fucked my mother!"

"That can't be the real reason. He had to do that to create you," I said, pulling out a sword of my own and blocking his blow. I swirled my sword around his, pulling it out of his hand and flinging it across the room. I had no idea how I did it, until, I got a system notification.

[Counter Evil activated!]

Oh yeah. Counter Evil did it for me. How did I think I could be good at sword fighting after never doing it in my previous life?

The leader pulled out another sword he had on his belt and went, "Aha!"

He slashed at me and this time I didn't come anywhere near blocking him. I whiffed and his sword hit my legs, but it only chipped my armor. Then the chips healed and repaired themselves.

"No, it wasn't because he fucked my mom. It was because he fucked me!" The leader said.

"Literally? Oh, geez, I'm sorry man," I said. I whiffed at blocking again and he hit my armor again. So I decided to attack first this time. I swiped across his chest, drawing blood.

[Auto crit on evil activated!]

"No, not literally! That would be gross! Metaphorically," he said. I kept swinging at him and he blocked these, but I pushed him back until his foot hit a crate against the wall.

"Oh! Metaphorically. That makes more sense," I said. I kicked him in the stomach and he knocked against the crate and fell to a crouch.

Then 5 other swords all struck my armor. The other men in the room were joining the fight. All of the men in this room registered evil when I entered. I swung my sword in a circle around me, hoping I could get them all with an auto crit rather than one.

[Auto Crit on Evil activated!]

I sliced all of their necks with my swing. They fell to the ground and bled out. I lowered my sword and pressed it against the throat of the leader.

"Now tell me, who has a bigger penis than you?" I said.

"Uh, my dad?" He said, with fear in his eyes.

"Wrong answer," I said as I slashed his throat. I dropped my sword on the ground and dispelled it.

[You have defeated 5 moderate evils, worth 2 justice points each, and 1 great evil, worth 3 justice points. You have 13 justice points. How would you like to spend them?]

[Reward options: Roll, Upgrade, or Save?]

[Your dark aura has increased by -30 (-70)]

[Threshold met. You have gained Emanate Dark Aura Level 1]

[Emanate Dark Aura: The ability to indicate to others that you have committed many dark deeds]

Nice! Now I could intimidate people.

'Save.'

[Saving your 13 justice points]

I went back up the stairs and stood outside the door. I had to decide whether to go good aura or dark aura. I decided to go dark aura. I decided to go in silent.

I opened the door and slipped in. Luckily, I wasn't in a room with people in it. I was in a hallway. Right across from the stairwell was a room that had voices coming from it.

I walked up to the door and listened.

"Crystals made it onto the market today! Bobbin was selling them," a concerned guy said.

"How did that happen? They had to have come from one of our dungeons," an angry woman said.

"Stylus! Which teams reported in today after their dungeon run? There has to be a discrepancy," said a commanding man.

"Teams 1, 2, and 3 all checked in sir," the concerned guy, Stylus said. "But team 4 never did. I heard that they lost a member and their run was a loss. The team member they lost was one Lloyd Semperman."

"They have to be lying! Or they did lose a member, but their run wasn't a loss. Maybe that's why they lost a member. Because they went all the way and beat the dungeon," the commanding man said.

"Send someone to check on the different team members under the pretense that we're sorry for their loss and are looking out for their well-being. Then while you have them at the front door talking, have Nico sneak in the back and search for any large amounts of money they recently acquired."

"I'll go, sir!" Stylus said.

"Good. I like that initiative Stylus. You might actually make something of yourself one day," the commanding guy said.

"Thank you, sir," Stylus said.

"Nico, get ready. You're going now," he said.

"Yes, sir," Nico said.

"Bruno and Dulce, you back them up just in case a brawl breaks out and they have more people with them," the commanding guy said.

"Yes, sir," Bruno said.

"Very well," the angry lady who was Dulce said.

I needed to do something and I needed to do it now. If they checked on our guys, they'd all be majorly fucked. I opened the door and stepped inside.

"Hey!" I said.

It was set up like a conference room. One huge table in the center of the room with chairs around it.

There was a stealthy rogue looking girl. That was probably Nico. There was a wimpy guy near the far end of the table with a pen and paper. That was probably Stylus. The commanding guy sat at the far back of the table.

Bruno was a big strong warrior-looking guy, and Dulce was dressed vaguely like a witch, but a civilized one. The commanding guy wore all-black leather armor with red accents.

"Hey, yourself. Who are you and what are you doing here?" The commanding guy said.

"I'm here to take down your evil organization. You take advantage of desperate people and don't even train them so they don't get killed in your dungeons," I said.

"Yeah, and? We do what we have to in order to run this company. We dont have the time or money to train people. Despite not being up to your standards of employee accommodation, we employ dozens of people and help them get by and feed their families," the commanding guy said.

"Without us what are they going to do? Become homeless and starve. That's what they're going to do. And their deaths will be on your hands. What do you say to that, hero?"

Oh shit. I hadn't thought of that. What would I do?

"I'll employ them. To do the same job they did for you," I said.

How was I going to do that? I didn't have a degree in business. Wait, a minute. I did have a degree in business. My master's degree was in business administration with a focus in accounting.

I may not have any experience, but I had training. Training from a long time ago that I barely remembered, but I did have it.

"Oh yeah? How are you going to even find out who we employ and how to get a hold of them?" He said.

"Stylus. He clearly knows the business and he's not reading as evil like the rest of you are," I said.

"Good luck with that," he said. "Stylus is loyal to me. He'd never go against the company like that."

"We'll just have to see, won't we?" I said.

"I guess we will," he said.

There was a silence in the room, then, "Uh, get him, obviously."

Then Bruno, Nico, and Dulce advanced on me, but it was awkward because they had to carefully walk around the chairs since they were so close to the wall.