I'm the Bad Guy: Bigger, Badder, and Uncut: A Supervillain LitRPG Adventure

by Simon Archer

  ‘Menace’ was an interesting one, being a measuring of the villainous presence that a person had, only applying to villains like my organization and me. None of the heroes had it, instead having ‘charisma.’ What’s more, I could weaponize my own menace using my power, magnifying it to devastating effect. It also served the ‘fear’ portion of everyone’s loyalty percentage, modifying and boosting it beyond the one hundred percent capstone. Theoretically, everyone could eventually be two hundred percent loyal to me if they were afraid enough and loyal enough, but going over one hundred wasn’t really worth the effort when they were already going to lay their lives on the line for any command I gave them.

  Next up was my favorite gearhead and experimenting scientist, Nick. He was capable of turning a paperclip, a cardboard box, and a stick of gum into a functioning supercomputer, and surprisingly sharp in his improvisational skills. Pair that with his short-range telepathy, and he was quite the asset in a fight. The dreads made him look like he’d just finished a college summer in the Bahamas, and he was more than willing to show that he might as well be keeping tubes of grey matter in all of that hair:

  Nicholas Flamel, Lvl 40 Inventor

  Power: 35Menace: 10

  Strength: 16Brains: 95

  Speed: 45

  Loyalty: 95% (43% fear)

  Then, there was Yomura, a giant of a no-nonsense samurai-type with a knack for computers like a bamboo shoot had a knack for growing straight into the sky. At this point, there probably wasn’t a computer in the whole game that he couldn’t hack into, especially when he could take advantage of all the cheats I can provide for him with my unique status. Given his superpower to grow extra body parts out of himself at will, he always had an extra set of hands to type code faster than the competition, and an extra set of eyes to watch a dozen monitors at once:

  Hitsugaya Yomura, Lvl 40 Blackhat

  Power: 40Menace: 46

  Strength: 60Brains: 85

  Speed: 44

  Loyalty:97% (46% fear)

  Of course, there was always Crazy Cane, who couldn’t be taken down in a battle as long as he was still fighting. Sure, his temper was about as long as his height, but that only made him fiercer on the battlefield and harder to pin down. He wouldn’t wish to be any taller himself, seeing as how it was easier for him to jump around from enemy to enemy this way, and his ability to phase through objects for a short period of time each day made him virtually invincible:

  Cain “Crazy Cane” Kartap, Lvl 40 Gladiator

  Power: 45Menace: 40

  Strength: 50Brains: 15

  Speed: 96

  Loyalty: 94% (38% fear)

  Kate was the first of my girls on the team, and the former leader of the small gang made up of the knuckleheads that were just listed. At the time, she was the only competent criminal of the bunch, and teaming up with me had only made her more fearsome as the levels started to pile up. On top of that, she had a tasty set of fire powers stolen straight from another hero who had logged out after losing a fight to me. Needless to say, she was now a force to be reckoned with, and a firestorm like this world’s never seen before:

  Katlyn Marcetique, Lvl 42 Flame Empress

  Power: 70Menace: 67

  Strength: 45Brains: 67

  Speed: 130

  Loyalty:100% (53% fear)

  Infatuation: 100%

  5th Tier Villain buff: 25% combat prowess to all minions

  Maximum Infatuation Bonus: All minions in your gang now have a base speed of 15 instead of 5, and elite minions have a base of 20

  That infatuation buff at the end was what I was talking about before. The higher that got, the more benefits my whole organization got, and there was a capstone bonus once it was maxed out at one hundred percent. It worked a bit differently than loyalty, and I couldn’t quite figure out how, or I’d have been powerleveling that shit with the other girls like nobody’s business. I was more than sure that the natural progression would serve my purposes well enough as is.

  Back to the review, Natasha was a very special girl, in many different ways. Previously the player character to a pile of rat feces in the shape of a gamer, that gamer also decided that his misogynistic views and his fight against me weren’t compatible, and logged out, leaving the body to me. I took the liberty of trying out a hack with a ‘raid boss’ mechanic, and accidentally ‘pinocchioed’ her to life, with her previous powers of controlling a weaponized cloud construct intact:

  Natasha, Lvl 40 Fluffmancer

  Power: 125Menace:15

  Strength:35Brains: 25

  Speed: 55

  Loyalty: 100% (48% fear)

  Infatuation: 60%

  3rd Tier Villain buff: 30% minion damage increase to heroes, 10% reduction in minion skill costs

  Next threshold for villain buff: 75%

  Now, Minou was a relatively new addition to the team. She’d decided to join my criminal enterprise and me after I’d brought her boss to his knees, and he gave his empire over to me, her included. While I wasn’t sure how helpful she was going to be at first, her natural stealth and cat burglar training, working in tandem with the power to shapeshift anywhere between a humanoid and a feline form, made every subsequent stealth mission I’d ever needed a lock:

  Minou Rouge, Lvl 40 Lioness

  Power: 50Menace: 45

  Strength: 80Brains: 40

  Speed: 100

  Loyalty: 85% (47% fear)

  Infatuation: 35%

  2nd Tier Villain buff: 25% minion stealth and 10% damage resistance against superpower skills

  Next threshold for villain buff: 50%

  The boss in question that Minou previously worked for, Anu had a host of magical abilities at his disposal as numerous as the secrets he still had surrounding him. The only things I really knew about him was that he used to work for a guy called Mr. Yin and was part of the biggest criminal society in the world known as the Ghoul. Besides that, he was just damn powerful, and earned his previous reputation as the crime lord of Damax City before I took the position from him:

  Anu Bysma, Lvl 43 Warlock

  Power:110Menace:150

  Strength:110Brains:80

  Speed:110

  Loyalty: 93% (10% fear)

  Ghoul Perk: All Occultism research costs reduced by 10%, and all Occultism experiments are 10% more effective

  Yeah, that last perk made finding more Ghoul executives a high priority, one that I was working on adamantly. I didn’t know much about this Ghoul society yet, but they seemed to be tough fighters in their top brass, and I was going to have to bring them all to their knees. Hopefully, killing them was just as effective as recruiting them for getting those Ghoul perks, since I was more than sure that they wouldn’t be as agreeable as Anu was to work under me. We’d just have to see if there were other ways to get the same results.

  Oh, and last but not least, ‘FrickaFresh’ Freddie was a hire from another gang, and the first double agent I’d employed. The name spoke enough about what talking with Freddie was like. He was instrumental in taking down the Curbstomp Demons, and his subsequent leveling as part of my empire allowed me to train him as a sniper with skills to make the White Death look like a kid with a carnival popgun. If anyone didn’t know who White Death was, he was a sniper with seven hundred kills under his belt. And, with the ability to teleport on a cooldown, FrickaFresh was bound to become the world’s best sniper in a heartbeat:

  “FrickaFresh” Freddie Jackson, Lvl 40 Sniper

  Power: 67Menace: 27

  Strength: 25Brains: 30

  Speed: 78

  Loyalty: 43% (95% fear)

  Yeah, I had a good roster of people to work with. We were just about ready for the main event of the day. Rumors were already starting to spread about me, and now I was going to spread them around like wildfire. What followed would be a torrential rain of ones and zeros across the battlefield.

  “Welcome back, sir. I assume the mission was a success, then?”

  A voice came o
ver the intercom, prompting me to look over to the screen to the right of me. Yomura sat down at his console, a sight not many people could stomach. It wasn’t that he was particularly hideous to look at as a regular person, but his powers and his job requirements meant that he rarely was a regular person these days. With an extra three sets of articulated hands and wrists growing out of each forearm, and a constantly moving eyeball spaced out every few inches along his arms, Yomura’s multitasking was in top shape. Luckily, his face only had three extra eyes, though they were randomly assorted throughout his forehead.

  “Absolutely,” I answered, getting up from the bed as I moved Minou’s leg off of myself. “We’ll be ready as soon as the troops can mobilize.”

  “Are you sure we want to attack a city so openly right now?” Yomura asked. “I do not mean to question your plans, sir, but I had thought that we needed to stay in the shadows a bit longer before we made any overt movements. We could not withstand the full force of the heroes if they decided to fight us all at once.”

  “People are already suspicious of us and our movements anyway,” I said, moving towards the front of the plane as I buttoned up my shirt. “We’re well past the point where they can join together fast enough to do anything to us at this stage of the game. We might as well make a big move now while they aren’t expecting it, catch them off their guard. After this next city, we’ll have everything we need to move forward to the big leagues.”

  “Are we not already in the big leagues?” Yomura chuckled. “We have all made more money than we even know how to count. I am certain that no one in the syndicate has any real desire they cannot meet at a whim with the ample salaries they’re given.”

  “I’m not so humble, Yomura.” I tied my black tie on myself before putting on my suit jacket. “I won’t settle for anything less than absolutely everything this world has to offer, including its landmasses and its governments. I’ve got two cities in my sights that’ll make sure we can’t be stopped from making that a reality soon enough.”

  “What makes you so sure?” Yomura asked, “the entire world is not as feeble as a city or two. We have yet to encounter the truly ruthless heroes out there who would seek to destroy us. How do you plan on taking it all for yourself? I know you must have heard me ask this a million times, but--”

  “Simple, my friend.” I walked over to the plane’s cockpit, the hundreds of dials, controls, and blinking lights operating by themselves under the will of the autopilot. Yomura’s face projected onto a section of the window so we could continue our conversation. “We just take what we want and watch them do nothing about it the whole way.”

  “Why would they not do anything about it?” Yomura kept questioning, understandably from his intellectual position in the dark about my greater plans. I kept most of my overarching goals very close to the vest. “Would they not be fighting back with tooth and nail for everything that you have taken from them, sir?”

  “That’s where you’d be quite wrong.” I watched as the massive aircraft-carrier-like vessel in the ocean quickly came into view in our approach. “Sure, some of them will try to stand up to me, but it won’t be the ones that can make a difference. The ones who’ll be fighting me will fall flat under my foot, and the ones who might stand a chance will be tied up by other matters until they’re just like the first before they realize. Nothing that they can do to us will matter in the slightest by the time we bring about the endgame.”

  “What about the Ghoul?” A new voice mentioned the secret society that had become my newest target. “What if they try to do something about it? From what that guy Bysma was telling us, they were the old school top dogs that you’re trying to be right now.”

  “Nick, how did you get onto this channel?” Yomura was more than a little upset by the breach of security. “I thought I cut your hardlines.”

  “You missed a couple.” Nick giggled. “Man, am I glad I decided to study programming and computer science as a hobby. I’ve got, like, a few dozen backdoors to your systems.”

  “Good thing I still control all of your social media accounts.”

  “What?! Is that why I keep getting messages about a subscription to ‘Cheese Weekly?’”

  “I am quite surprised that is the only thing you noticed.”

  “Dammit, Yomura! Though, I do admit, that explains a lot--”

  “I’d been thinking quite a bit about the Ghoul.” I interrupted their spat, sitting back as the plane automatically dove underneath the waves, submerging itself and entering into the hanger underneath the mighty vessel. “They seemed to be powerful allies. However, they also seem like unstable elements in a corporate structure. I doubt any of them will be so ready to just kiss my ass while I take up the throne of the world. While we will require their power and assets, I’m still on the fence about moving forward with their executives and their living status.”

  “You want to make an enemy out of the most powerful villain organization in the world?” Yomura restated my words. “We will not defeat their executive members so easily. We will suffer very heavy losses if we take them on brazenly at our current might.”

  “Several things that you must keep in mind, my friend,” I said as the water drained out of the undersea hanger, slowly filling the space with air as I flipped and toggled a few switches. “One: they’re not one big organization anymore. They’re a bunch of rag-tags fighting over scraps. Powerful rag-tags with influential scraps, sure, but not the cohesive unit they once were. Two: there’s more than one way to fight against an enemy other than just facing them head on. We need to take Tirnberg quickly after crippling the Retributioners, but after that, we’ll have everything we need to play these battles safely and quietly.”

  “I was going to ask about that next.” Nick switched over to my earpiece as I moved away from the cockpit to the back of the plane where my girls were still asleep. “Tirnberg’s a bit of a dump.”

  “It’s one of the most prosperous cities in the country.” Yomura reminded him, their conversation now living in my ear canal. “Half of the tech giants of the world are based there. We will benefit immensely from adding its power to our own for that reason alone.”

  “But we have several other cities with investments in progress right now,” Nick countered, “and we are much closer to taking those cities over without a militaristic approach to the conquest. Why waste all the time trying to cripple this city now when we can just bulldoze it without a second thought later?”

  “You’d be absolutely correct about that,” I told the mad scientist. “But, this city has something that we’re going to need sooner rather than later, and this is the quickest way to get it. As soon as we have it, then we can really begin the fun stuff.”

  “And what exactly do they have that we would need?” Nick asked in my ear. “Is it some kind of weapon? A bomb? Why didn’t we try to get this city earlier if it was so damn important?”

  “Because we can’t have them suspecting that we want their city until we’ve already got it.” I lightly tapped on the girls, rousing them all from their slumber as they sleepily yawned themselves awake. “If they catch on too quickly, they might just move our prize somewhere else to keep them safe. Taking the city by storm, we’ll have the element of surprise, and then they’ll be ours soon enough.”

  “You still have yet to tell me what it is we will collect in this city,” Nick inquired. “What could be so important to warrant a full-scale invasion? We’ve been taking things slowly with every other city so far, yet you’re going to change the strategy that you have employed for taking over every other city just for this one?”

  “Surprise, surprise, you have yet to read the message that Dantem sent the two of us.” Yomura sighed heavily over the com. “We should already make the preparations for when we retrieve it.”

  “Oh, um, yeah, I totally read that.” Nick tried to cover up his obvious refusal to read my message to him. “But, just as a test for you and the boss to make sure you guys read it, how about y
ou tell me what it is, and I’ll confirm it for you.”

  “Honestly, I think it’s going to be more fun to just show you when we get it at this point.” I cracked my knuckles as I headed out to the door out of the plane to the hanger below. “For now, we’ll just have a hell of a good time running wild in this next city. It just might be our big debut.”

  3

  Chester McFeeley

  “Fuuuuuuuuuuuuuck.”

  Oh my fucking god, that was the biggest, bullshittiest bullshit that had ever been bullshit ever before. I threw my P-Cept headset off my head and into the couch, knocking over several cans of Frenzy™ e-sports beverage before it rolled slowly and settled down. Months of preparation and grinding just down the drain in one day, in one fucking raid gone horrifyingly wrong. Because of one piece of bullshit!

  Who the fuck was that guy? Could he have just been an NPC in the game? No, there wasn’t any fucking way that was possible. He was way too… dynamic. But maybe it really was that souped-up AI getting real weird with their bullshit. Whatever.

  Fuck me with a fucking spoon. Fuck that guy, whatever he was. Fuck, I was this close, this FUCKING CLOSE to getting a spot in the top twenty. Sure, my guild wasn’t top-twenty material, but my stats didn’t fucking lie. I was a top-tier player by any means. Fuck my life. Why the hell did this happen to me?