All Because I’m Evil~ (Arcane): Chapter 1 (Patreon)

"Oh please, please -- it won't happen again, just give me another chance and it won't ever happen again!" No one really knew how they would face death until the very end. Everyone had an idea -- maybe going out as a steeled-eyed badass, with a faint graceful smile. Maybe even laughter as they greeted death like an old friend. But, no one ever thought they would beg, even if it meant extending their lives just a few seconds longer. They never thought that they'd break down into tears and start blubbering, saying whatever they thought would let them live.

Everyone thought they'd leave life with their head held high, but crying and begging were vastly more common.

"Didn't I ask you to start gagging them? This shit is depressing," I muttered as I frowned down at the man that was bound yet not gagged. He was on his knees, frantically trying to escape his cuffs, his eyes darting around for a lifeline. I didn't know his name. Didn't care to know either. "Come on, man. Chin up. Do you really want to go out like this?"

I expected more from him, honestly. His knuckles were covered in thick calluses, he had a few scars over his body. He was naked, revealing a powerful frame. Not in a bodybuilder way, but he was clearly used to hard labor. My gaze drifted to the veins in his arms that bulged under his pale skin and held a faint hot pink glow.

"I'm sorry, I'm sorry, just let me go," he continued to beg and… fuck me, dude.

A sigh escaped me before I raised a hand up. The pale white flesh of my fingers and hand, all the way up to my forearm gave away to the truth that lurked beneath the surface. A pitch-black writhing mass highlighted with gray light and the same shade of hot pink that lurked in the man's veins. The hand revealed itself to be a claw with each finger capped with a wicked point. "I tried," I told him, thrusting my arm forward and punching through his chest. Instantly his breathing became sharp gasps as he struggled to take in air without his lungs.

Blood erupted from his mouth, spilling out over my arm. Still, I could feel his heart pounding. My feeder tendrils lashed out of me, emerging from my chest and back and taking hold of the dying man. No matter what I tried, I found that I was a pretty messy eater. The sound of flesh and meat squelching, bone-shattering as my tendrils brought the man's body into me filled the cavern that I stood in. The sounds bounced off the rough weathered stone, reaching my ears again and again. But, thankfully, there was no screaming.

My feeder tendrils broke his body down into nutrients. Nothing was left to waste. The man must have weighed at least three hundred pounds, but I still felt as light as ever as my body was once again covered by a human mask. The claws gave way to human fingers, the swirling black mass was replaced by normal blemish-free flesh.

"The prognosis?" I heard a hissed whisper from across the room after I was done eating, idly noting that some blood had sprayed across the stone wall. Whoops. Glancing over, I saw an elderly man with a shaved head and just about covered from head to toe. The only part of him that I could see was from the eyes up, revealing one blind eye and burn marks around it. The rest of his face was covered with a dark gray cloth that matched the loose rags that he wore over the rest of him.

I pursed my lips for a moment, sorting through the influx of DNA that has been added to my steadily growing collection. DNA was mind-bogglingly complex and strangely simple when you came right down to it. That double helix contained the blueprints for life -- from the nitty-gritty basic cell reproduction to organ function. To life itself. The process repeated itself trillions of times over the course of a lifetime. Hundreds of trillions.

But, with something that complex, there were bound to be just a couple of fuck ups here and there. Some new fuck ups or some inherited. A line of genetic code that made someone more susceptible to liver failure inherited by a parent. Or some wires get crossed in someone's brain and they find themselves with a hyper addictive personality. Or you end up with two different colored eyes. Those fuck ups, some worse than others, were called mutations. In the average human body, there were dozens of them.

Which might seem like a lot, but given how DNA involved code that was trillions of lines deep… well, it wasn't that bad. And most of them were completely benign. Some could even be useful.

It was those useful mutations that I was hunting down. "The Shimmer targeted his tendons and it reacted best there. I'd say point five increase in muscle density overall. But the damage done to his cells was already apparent with a single dose. I'd give it five years before he was a lumpy husk," I answered the question, scratching at my cheek.

I cast a look at the lab I was in -- it was more of a cave, really. Pipes with glowing green and pinkish purple liquid flowed, the crossed floodlights posted on the ceiling cast long shadows. On one wall was a massive tank filled with green sludge to preserve a massive lizard -- it was called the mutation. A mutation that was harvested by a dozen tubes running in and out of it, taking the bright pink fluid. Before the suspended creature was a desk covered with utensils of science, mountains of notes.

And the man himself. He called himself Singed. Which was fair enough based on the burn scars.

"It sounds worth pursuing," Singed uttered, a raspy quality to his voice. I shrugged my shoulders and walked over to him. He said that every time with every single batch for the three months we've known each other. At that time, I hadn't killed humans every time. Most of the time, it was rats. If a promising strain of Shimmer, the mutation, it would be harvested and then implemented in a human host.

Singed held out a hand and I offered him an arm, bringing forth the mutated strain and having it flood my veins. Without a word, Singed took a needle and hooked it up to me, filling a suspended bag up with dark blood that had pink light within it.

"If we combine…" I trailed off as Singed checked the flow of blood.

"T-113," Singed answered and I did a little mental math.

"T-113 with T-100, then we have a match made in heaven. T-100 had a huge increase in muscle and bone density," I said, glancing at Singed, then up at the mutation. The source of the drug known as Shimmer.

DNA was a fragile thing. It really was. It had a real glass jaw and, worse, you had to just trust that it would work as intended for the entirety of your life. You just have to hope that you wouldn't start growing fingernails through your pores instead of hair or spontaneously develop cancer. And Shimmer wasn't just a punch to the face. It was a damn sledgehammer. But, instead of reducing someone to primordial goo, it bolstered genetics.

It made people stronger, faster, the senses sharper. It could even make you think faster. Temporarily. And with repeated uses, it would turn you into primordial goo. I had to be careful with it too. I could recreate strains and mutations, but if my DNA blueprints got corrupted, then I would lose them for good. Or, until I pieced them back together again. Which is why a highly effective non-corruptive Shimmer was ideal for me as well.

"You believe we are close?" Singed asked me, sounding like he didn't care one way or the other as he took out the needle. Instantly, my body closed the wound, and then I sat back for a moment, playing around with the building blocks of all life within myself. The blueprints of the two mutations were within me. My body was formless, easily able to copy the two mutations and give them to myself.

I shrugged as he prepared to grab another bag and marked it with EV-33. Experiment version 33. Settling in my seat that he had procured just for me some few months ago, I flooded my veins with Shimmer. My muscles grew denser, as did my bones. My hearing sharpened until I could hear a drop of condensation falling from the ceiling on a budding stalagmite.

The two mutations were fighting one another. So, I began to pick them apart to make them compatible. "Course I do. We've been working at this for months now," I answered with confidence.

"Years, in my case," Singed remarked, his tone idle. After a few months, he stopped with the sullen silences and stubbornly refused any small talk. He was definitely warming up to me. And he should. I was the ultimate petri dish. "We have made progress. Your… unique biology has accelerated my timeline."

I gave him a roguish grin, "That almost sounded like a compliment." I pointed out. "What's the timeline looking like now?"

"Provide progress holds steady, then another fifteen years. If we find the right combination of mutations and the right strain of Shimmer… then much sooner," Singed answered after a moment, and I dare say that he even seemed hopeful.

I hated to disappoint him, but I completed reassembling my mutations. I focused on stability, meaning that the effectiveness of the mutations were drastically undercut. "A point three across the board," I told him as he hooked up another IV bag and filled it with more of my blood. "Hopefully it reacts better with other strains of Shimmer."

Singed just nodded his head and continued to draw blood.

Finding Singed hadn't been easy, but convincing him to work with me had been a lot easier. His goal was to perfect Shimmer, advancing Chemtech to the point that made humans functionally superhuman and immortal. I thought that he might try to lock me in a crate or something and keep me around as a petri dish, but he admitted that there wasn't a point. Our current arrangement already gave him almost too much data to study and experiment with.

Our relationship was a symbiotic one -- I helped him with his research and he helped me evolve.

The true meaning of transhumanism couldn't be understood until you truly were beyond human. I could alter my DNA on a whim. I could internalize beneficial abilities -- like my claws, or my enhanced strength.

I wasn't human anymore. I was already something beyond it and I was barely at the start of my journey.

"I believe that will be all," Singed told me after the bag was filled. "I shall let you know if there are any developments." He said, offering me a grateful nod of his head. I wished I had fiddled around more with the Talents and Defences. But, there was a good reason why I hadn't picked up Science Talent, even if I was tempted.

"Sounds good to me," I told Singed before giving him a pointed look. "And next time… please gag them?"

"Do you find death so discomforting?" He asked me as I started to make my way towards the exit.

"Nah," I dismissed. Humans… in the end, they were on the food chain for me. They were food. I wouldn't say that it was exactly like killing a rabbit or a deer or something, but it also wasn't that far off. "It just gets messy when they can beg. See ya'!" I said, giving Singed a wave as I left his laboratory.

“Elix,” Singed called out, just as was about to kick the door closed behind me. “My employer has been made aware of your… activities. They are looking for you. Don’t let yourself be caught -- it would set back my research.” He said, wishing me well in his own way. Don’t get me wrong -- the guy was about as morally black as they came and all too comfortable with human experimentation, but his heart was in the right place and he cared in his own way. Probably.

“Thanks for the heads up,” I told him, kicking the door closed while I smiled to myself as I pulled up my thin white hood underneath my jacket to hide my face. So, I had finally gotten their attention? I had been waiting for that. It took a lot longer than I thought it would.

The Undercity was built in fissures, old mines, and caves, which made Singe’s laboratory seamless as it ran by one of the toxic rivers that had eroded the stone. The river itself was a run-off from one of the processing plants in Uptop or Piltover. While the utopia city of Piltover built up, the Undercity built down. Some areas of the Undercity were stripped bare, others had aged and rusted signs of civilization, and other parts were a thriving city in it’s own right.

The smell of the Undercity was a powerful one, reeking of waste, rust, and death. The only natural light that reached the dark depths of the Undercity was the afternoon sun, its light rays managing to punch through the smog that seemed to forever loom above like a perpetual cloud.

But whenever the light began to wane, the Undercity came alive with neon lights and candles, and on some streets, you could find a fire or two going on, a welcoming invitation for any lost soul that managed to find themselves in this special layer of hell.

The Undercity was a twisted joke just under the surface -- whereas Piltover was a city of progress with glorious white and gold buildings, the Undercity of Zaun was comprised of toxic fumes, rust, and decay.

I’m pretty sure that there was a moral there. Something, something, all that glitters is not gold, something something, different sides of the same coin. Though, admittedly, if you asked any resident of Piltover or Zaun, they were actually two different cities that just happened to be stacked on top of one another. And more than one war had been started between the cities above and below.

Either way, I made my way into Zaun’s heart, the heavily urbanized parts of the city, and joined the flow of foot traffic as countless people went about their own business. The people came in all shapes and sizes. Some were eight feet tall, built like brick shit houses, and had scales and gills instead of skin. Others were about two feet tall and looked like a Yorkie dog if crossbred with a human being.

They all mingled and spoke and laughed. And fought, I saw when I glanced down an alley to see a multicultural and racial beatdown against some punk getting the holy hell slapped out of him. It was nice to see people getting along. Well, most people. Sure sucked to be the guy getting his ass kicked, but that really wasn’t my problem.

“Move out the way! Move it! You, show me that ink!” I heard someone shout ahead, catching my attention. I looked up, seeing the crowd… ah. I guess that Singe was right -- I hadn’t gone unnoticed. I closed my eyes for a moment, and when I opened them, the world was a cascade of dark and light shades of blue. The fine detail of the Undercity was lost to me in exchange for something far more meaningful.

Like a stone in the middle of a river, I saw the crowd parting ways for the group of gangsters that were making their way towards me. Members of Zaun were pretty easy to pick out in a crowd, mostly because they were the cleanest usually. Huge, burly men that carried weapons, striding confidently forward. They were also easy to pick out when you saw people giving them any amount of respect.

Zaun was a street gang that had grown to such prominence in the Undercity that the Undercity itself was called Zaun. They were a gang and a nation.

There were a half dozen of them, and almost all of them were colored bright red to my eyes. The mark of an enemy. Everyone else around them was colored a dull blue, the same shade as our surroundings, almost marking them as background characters and completely unimportant to me.

I had absolutely no clue how the Eagle Vision worked. As far as I could tell, the Eagle Vision from Assassins Creed was basically just magic. Even if there was absolutely no reason why my secondary vision should be able to know something, it would anyway and it would make it easy to spot. From a super well hidden safe, to a loyal ally, to a hated enemy. Enemies were marked bright red, as the gangsters were, allies were marked a shining bright blue… and lastly, there were things or people of importance which were marked gold.

One of which I saw briefly as the crowd shifted, prompting me to drop my Eagle Vision, and the world became a mess of colors.

Leading the pack of thugs was a surprising choice that those that didn’t know better might think that the men were hounding her. A waifish teenage girl that looked out of place amongst the group of thugs, but she strode forward with confident exaggerated steps. It was an odd sight, to be sure, but one that quickly made sense when you noticed that everyone was tense -- not because of a marauding band of thugs, but because of that waifish girl.

Everyone that walked by her eyed her warily, not with respect but much like one would keep an eye on a coiled snake, else it would lunge for their throats.

Jinx was a character alright. The youngest enforcer in the gang, she was the exact opposite of what anyone would imagine.

She had pale skin and dark blue eyes that matched the color of her hair, which fell in two long braids behind her, with tattoos of light blue clouds on her right side that dipped beneath a black crop top bearing a white X over her modest breasts, before vanishing below the hem of her black and pink striped formfitting pants, which in turn stopped well short of vanishing into a pair of high-top sneakers with the tops folded out and unlaced.

At her hip was a massive pistol that she knew how to use based on what I saw of her handiwork, but it was the handcrafted grenades at her belt that I feared the most.

She seemed to bounce with each step, humming a tune to herself as she walked by, not paying anyone any mind as her gaze bounced people that passed her by.

I kept walking, bringing her attention to me. I watched her gaze flicker over my face -- one that was handcrafted by me to fit the vibe of the world.

And I went full fucking tilt when creating my new body.

Ruggedly handsome with a strong jawline and stubborn chin, with a scar clipping one of my eyebrows, just over my glowing violet eyes. My hair was black except for the white streek near my hairline that I pushed back to reveal a ragged scar that the white hair grew out of. It was so damn anime, but it fit the vibe of the world.

I was head and shoulders taller than her, so I watched her tilt her head up to get a better look at me…

And then she kept walking.

Zaun was looking for me. I had better make sure that they find me.

…

“This the new lot?” I asked, leaning over the rusted railing of my personal hideout. A fissure that had been filled with old houses that probably hadn’t been used in at least a decade. We were deep in the trench, to the point that even the neon light couldn’t fight the cloud of darkness that smothered the depths. I affectionately called this place the Pit, because that’s what it was. A fucking pit.

In front of me were a dozen men and women, all in various stages of beat up. Some were sporting black eyes, split lips, or a busted nose. All of them were rough looking, the kind that had a mountain of callouses on their knuckles, their clothing old and stained. They probably needed a good meal or a dozen. Still, they stood proudly as they looked up at me, emboldened by the cheering of their fellow gangsters that surrounded them, looking on from the ramshackle houses or half-completed buildings. There were dozens here, and dozens more sprinkled out through the Undercity.

“The ones that passed initiation,” Grog told me, his voice low and rumbly. He was my right hand, I guess. The one I left in charge of recruitment. The guy was honestly about as smart as a sack of rocks, but he was earnest and so far I didn’t have any issue with him.

All things considered, my initiation was rather simple and to the point. To become a member, you had to do two things -- beat the shit out of a Zaun member, then get the shit kicked out of you by a Zaun member.

It was that test, I suspected, that finally put my fledgling gang on Zaun’s radar. It really said just how utterly massive they were that it took near three months for word to get around that they were getting targeted specifically. But, that time worked in my favor -- I had over a hundred members in my gang now, all of them rough and tuff.

I nodded, standing tall as my gaze swept over the dozen people here to sign up.

“I’m not one for speeches, so I’ll keep this short,” I said, starting to walk down the porch I stood on that let me overlook the small rocky clearing. I think it was originally meant to be a playground or something, but all that was left was rusted metal poking out of the ground. “You are all here because of three things or some combination of those three things. First, you have issues with Zaun.”

As I walked down, I activated my Eagle Vision, sweeping my gaze over them. And… yeah. That’s about what I expected. All but one of them was a washed-out blue, the same as those punks jumping that guy in the alley. Completely indifferent to me. The one that had color gleamed a brilliant ruby red. Meaning that guy was an enemy, a plant by one gang or another. Probably Zaun.

“Reason number two -- you need protection from other bottom feeder gangs, but for reasons I really don’t care about, you can't sign up with Zaun,” I said, deactivating my Eagle Vision. Zaun might be the largest gang in the city several times over, but that didn’t mean that they were the only one. Protection gangs ran rampant in an unsafe city like this one.

“Reason number three -- you’re just here for the money. I respect that,” I said, coming to a stop in front of the dozen. “But, why you’re here really doesn’t matter because this gang exists for one singular purpose -- to fuck Zaun’s shit up at every turn,” I told them, earning a few agreeing nods, telling me that they were here for reason number one.

There was a war brewing between the upper city of Piltover and the Undercity of Zaun. There was a tension in the air that couldn’t be missed by anyone. Shimmer had tilted the scales of power and with the gang Zaun, the Undercity was as united as it had ever been. Armed with Shimmer, Zaun expanded until it had an iron grip on the city and now they were looking up. And Piltover was beginning to realize it.

So I set myself against the gang of Zaun, for the sole purpose of making myself an attractive ally to those that wanted to counter their influence, which would give me connections to use. My gang -- the Goonies -- had already benefited. There were plenty even in Zaun that weren’t exactly happy with the direction the gang was going. In an ideal world, I would be supplanting Zaun as the top dog, but that was getting ahead of myself. Either way, it wasn’t like I had a personal vendetta against the gang or anything. It was just a business model.

I reached into my pocket and pulled out my literal god-given Stamp, “Who wants their ink first?” I asked, and instantly, the one that was covered in glimmering red stepped forward. I smirked as I looked at him -- he was young, a thuggish face, and I’m guessing the excitement in his eyes wasn’t to join my gang. “Where do you want it?”

He lifted up his tank top, revealing a bit of a beer gut, and gestured to his pec. Pressing the stamp onto his skin, with my Eagle Vision, I watched the red bleed from him with the stamp acting as the focal point. A pair of Mardi Gras comedy and tragedy masks intertwined with sheet music from the song When You're Evil. A little on the nose but it was rather appropriate. In place of the red, a brilliant shade of bright blue appeared. From an enemy to a loyal ally.

Brainwashing was pretty convenient, I thought to myself as I moved on, stamping the others. I’m pretty sure that it wasn’t the intended purpose for the Slave Crest, but it was too useful to ignore. The stamp itself just made them loyal and every order I gave them absolute. It would take some time and conditioning for them to ideal slaves, but it was a start.

Admittedly, they did all want to fuck me, so it wasn’t perfect, but… eh.

A minute later, I stood before a dozen more loyal gang members, all of them proudly displaying their ink. I used it instead of gang colors, so my mark acted as the Goonies gang flag. The gangsters around us cheered loudly, stomping their feet, welcoming the fresh blood that had given and gotten their licks to prove that they belonged. I smiled lightly as I watched the excitement -- one thing that my gang had that other didn’t was that the brainwashing made it that they were less likely to run into personality conflicts.

So, we were one great big happy family. Sorta.

I held up a hand, getting everyone to quiet down after a long minute of cheering and it took another long minute for them to finally shut up. “Zaun has been looking for us!” I announced to everyone, my gaze sweeping over what could have been a lovely cul de sac carved out of the stone walls. In the heavy darkness, I saw the eyes on me. “And, they found us!” I continued, my shouts echoing in the Pit as I turned on my Eagle Vision, turning it to the one entrance into the pit.

Within the darkness, I saw red. Men and women that peeked out from their cover of junk, old buildings, and the tunnels that led to the Pit.

“Are you scared?” I asked the Goonies and I got such a resounding no that the cave seemed to shake from the force of it. “How do we feel about some punks stepping into our home like they own the place?” The answer was pissed off to hell and back based on how the Goonies grabbed their weapons -- pipes, machetes, brass knuckles, but guns were fairy sporadic in the group. They beat them on the ground, filling the Pit with deafening noise.

“What do you say to showing them the door?” I asked the Goonies, striding forward as I saw more and more red tricking from behind their cover. However, I paid them little mind as I led the charge, a confident stride as our two gangs walked towards one another. My gaze was on the girl that shone as brilliant gold in my vision. Too large to be Jinx, but I didn’t mind that.

Zaun was here.

Time to kick things off right.

…

Here’s the revamped version using the OP isekai generator as a base. I think it’s overall a stronger chapter and introduction. The characterization feels more defined and there’s a hook beyond the initial premise.

Let me know what you think!

Here’s the build:

70 [Start]

+10 [Edgy Villian]

80

-4 [New You(3), Improved Biology(1)]

76

-5 [New World(5)]

71

-2 [City(2)]

69

-14 [Slave Crest(10), Conditioning(4)]

55

-25 [Consume and Evolve(20), Hybridization(5)]

30

-20 [World Portal(7), Planar Portal(13)]

10

-5 [Swift Learning(5)]

5

-5 [Write in power: Eagle Vision]

0