I Burned Nine Towns. Now I Rebuild Them. [A Progression LitRPG]

Vaelor won. He burned nine towns between the Kelder and the coast, and when the last hero fell, the system that had paid him for every roof and every field opened a Ledger and handed him the bill. He does not level by killing. He does not level by winning fights, or taking gold, or clearing monsters. There is exactly one way he gets his power back: by putting back, entry by entry, everything he took. And the six hundred and twelve people he killed in the first town are sealed. They count against the debt and they can never be paid. His ceiling only goes down. So he calls himself Roan now. He has a scar that four search parties are describing to strangers, a hundred crowns on his head, and a village called Ashmoor with eleven roofs left out of sixty and a door that needs hanging. If anyone in that village ever gives him up, the Ledger closes for good.   What this is: • A dark lord doing hard, unglamorous manual labour, on purpose, for years. • A system with three numbers and no stat sheet: Restored, Sealed, Rank. • Violence that costs him permanently. Every life he takes is sealed, and sealed lowers his ceiling for the rest of his life. • A slow village rebuild, with a hunter working her way toward him one valley at a time.   Ten chapters up now. Ashmoor is the first of nine.