When I open my eyes, I am alone, and it is dark.

-Perfect! I couldn’t hope to wake up to anything better. After all, what is a villain surrounded by people supposed to do in the light? No, this is much preferable.

...But it is a bit eerie. I had hoped to awaken to a few hundred henchmen, but… They are noticeably absent. Indeed, I stand here alone, on the lotus-fountain in the middle of a darkened square. It seems my evolution took the whole day to complete. The moon is hardly young, but not old either. It stands jst above me, proud and luminous as it ought to be.

That full fat moon. I grin with glee, thinking that I now stare at the very same moon that my prestigious predecessors stared at, contemplating their morals and their plans.

...Show me my new power, oh system!

David Branner Bloodsucker Level 1/25 Power Health 25/25 Blood 100/100

Status

Flight 2 Succ 3 Defence 1 Noise 2

Skills

Mitosis (2 or 5 Blood/Use) Evolution Bloodwork

...As before, it seems my stats have gone unchanged. However, the amount of blood I can now hold and the health I possess far outweigh these trivialities. Even better, I’m full of blood! My henchmen are nowhere to be seen, so it would be fair to assume that I absorbed them in order to evolve.

-Mosquitwo, you were an evil man, and I could have had no better lackey for my first day.

But, with this much blood, I can easily create a couple of dozen henchmen. Wait… There’s something off here. The Mitosis skill is… it has changed. System, clarify the Mitosis skill to me. Or face the consequences.

Mitosis: creates a copy of the user.

Saved copies:

Mosquito

Bloodsucker

Oh, is that how it is? Let me guess, my final stats as a mosquito have been frozen, and if I now create a normal mosquito, they will have those properties, while a Bloodsucker will have my current ones? An… interesting mechanic.

Alright, I have 100 Blood. I could increase my stats this very moment, but I really would like to procure a stable source of Blood, so recreating my army is more important.

System, use 80 blood to create 40 mosquitos, and use the rest to create Bloodsuckers.

Very evil. A shiver passes through me, and much too similar to the last five dozen times I’ve done this, I feel a bit light-headed. I stumble, but when I return to me senses to look at my new, albeit small army of only 44 mosquitos.

How I plan it is, we’ll still be making use of the whole squad system, however, we will expand them, with a total of eleven mosquitos for each squad, with ten normal ones and a Bloodsuckers to control them. It’s night right now, but even so, I’m sure they’ll be able to find prey. It doesn’t have to be humans, but it would be much more fun since, well, no villain of quality would abstain from attacking civilians! How else am I to rile up the hero?

My forty-four henchmen stare at me, big black eyes and all. They really know no manners, must I order the lot of you to do everything? Bow, you foolish lackeys!

The mosquitos pick up on my order, and quickly scramble to press their noses to the ground. That’s better, damn it.

You may all be only newly born, but as a villain, I have no qualms with sending children to war! And as your overlord, I expect you all to follow my orders and thank me for giving them! Now, take to flight! Find me blood, or find your end!

The lot of them make the salute, as if they had already prepared this all before, and fly off into the darkness.

But, with this, I was actually able to take a look at myself. Or, rather, one of the Bloodsuckers. As it would seem, my colour scheme is now far more evil, my main colour being red, with some black highlights, my only largely black part being my abdomen. Very good!

Sadly, I’m not much larger than I was before, but physique isn’t all an evil man needs! No, my wit and intelligence will be more than enough-!

As I cackle to myself, the first of many mosquitos start rolling in. I extend my tail, only to realize it is now not just one, but five, all capable of draining blood all at once. How useful! I put my new tail to use immediately, and within just a few minutes, I’m right back up to 100. I would love to increase my stats this very second, but right now, I need troops more than anything.

So, I put 60 blood into new mosquitos, and 40 into Bloodsuckers. This way, I’ll have three new squadrons, and five as my personal bodyguards. I plan on making more, but for now, this will be fine. I send out the three new squadrons, and await the next couple of yields.

And, strictly speaking, it all went very fine. Once I had about 500 normal mosquitos and 30 Bloodsuckers and had them steady, I could get to increasing my stats.

Now, a thing I’ve been noticing quite a lot is that the Bloodsuckers don’t always return with their bellies full. What I can assess from this is that they have no time to fill up, and when their underlings are done, they’re barely half-full. In other words, their Succ isn’t high enough. So, my first order of business is to increase Succ until they always return will full bellies. Any more than that will be useless, since the normal mosquitos can’t get any faster.

My current Succ is 3, so I increase it to four. And then five, and then six. After a few minutes of testing, it seems 9 was the perfect number, so I stick to it.

The other stats, Flight, Defence, Noise… They are all equally useful. Sure, Defence is only useful once it allows a mosquito to take a hit and not die, but even before that, it will be quite useful. Flight and Noise are both equally good (evil) to have, since they allow for less detection and all that.

It would be standard procedure to have one or two stats and focus on them, but… In this case, I feel that it would be alright to put equal focus on them all, since they are both few and exceptionally variable.

And so, I put an equal amount of points into all of them.

This cannot backfire.