Overpowered Wizard

“Overwhelming Darkness: Twenty Dark Locks Sealing Style Technique. Unlock Dark Lock One. The Worm Lurks Buried Deep Under Fabled Myth.”

Under the relentless storms of oil and coal, Zarian motioned his hands smoothly along with his chant. He shifted his weight slightly as heavy waves of ocean sludge crashed against the sides of the mountain he and his party stood on.

Entropic titans, the largest they’d ever seen, roamed from nearly all directions. Each one towered at heights that placed their heads at the thinnest layers of the world’s upper atmosphere. The titans every footfall shook up the Floridians and their tag-along further while sending more sludge waves rolling across the heavy ocean.

The drag-down effect from the Dying World bore its weight upon them all. The low aura density made every magical discipline more difficult to conduct. Yet Zarian, his friends, and his wife persevered.

The enemy was in front of the Floridians even if they couldn’t see them directly through the raining muck. The Floridians, mainly Zarian, didn’t need to see. They didn’t need aura perception, either. Not when they had someone who could sniff out the strongest source of tragedy like a bloodhound.

“Three Percent Power Unsealed.”

Zarian groaned, feeling his darkness strain against his tight controls. His aura channels felt like they were on the verge of breaking from the immense power he contained and the lack of aura in the environment. He was two more technical phrases away from finishing, and he was already on the verge of facing a catastrophe by the feel of it all.

Zarian almost wanted to stop.

But he had the best adventurers and an Ultra Goddess on his side for a reason.

She dug out and replaced the floor under their feet with an enchanted platform for gathering even more aura. She changed the enchantments on Zarian’s leggings and boots for better darkness control and for recovering aura at a faster rate.

She’d even hollowed out a portion of the mountain beneath them and created an even bigger aura power plant. It was nearly on the verge of exploding while drawing in as much aura as possible. Then she used her aura traits to link up with Zarian’s channels like hooking power cables to a car battery, forcing even more aura into Zarian.

Just like that, Zarian became a lightning pole of power, with Hannah’s abilities juicing him to the gills. Combining that with his own aura abilities made their efforts grander.

But the power of Overwhelming Darkness at three percent required more than just aura, more than just the efforts of an artificer. The darkness rallied against Zarian’s mentality to erode it. Despite the bad odds, the temptation to use the Lion Prince grew.

There was no need for that.

Para/Naomi moved up from behind Zarian. They combed their fingers through his hair before grasping his head by the sides. The familiarity of the gesture followed by calming waves of phantom psychic energy combatted the madness and hunger of Zarian’s darkness.

As the possessed cultivator calmed the cosmic beast inside of Zarian, everyone else chipped in.

Gilbert revealed his arm under his armor and slashed his wrist open with a sharp knife Hannah had crafted. Grimacing throughout, the Rescue Ranger made the blood sacrifice on the enchanted altar where Zarian stood.

Bianca danced in the putrid rain, wings flaring out from her back, before she placed down in a tight circle around Zarian her powerful skill, Great Shining Territory. Helices made of light and darkness spiraled up the Conquest Wizard’s legs, torso, and arms, enhancing his dark power.

With everything mostly set up, Zarian stretched his left arm forward, his hand trembling as he chanted the last words. “Triple Threat Darkness. Dark Bolt.”

The floodgates opened, and Zarian didn’t buckle. All the extra aura from Hannah helped him wrestle Three Percent Darkness into submission. His enhanced mind from Para/Naomi fended off the cosmic hunger.

Gilbert’s sacrifice became the fuel for casting Blazing Blood Blast and mixing it with Three Percent Dark Bolt. Bianca’s Great Shining Territory made the darkness even more powerful.

Then there was the last component, Luciana. She gripped Zarian’s wrist with her one remaining porcelain hand and carefully assisted his aim.

“A little more to the right,” Luciana said cheerfully. “A little more upward.”

As she made her adjustments, darkness gathered into a tightly coiled orb in front of Zarian’s palm.

He gathered apocalyptic darkness from the skies. He gathered darkness from the sludge oceans, draining something deep and forsaken into the orb in his palm.

He used his Wizard Body Conversion skill and void abilities to become something akin to a human-shaped being from the void. From there, he gathered even more darkness – the purest darkness – that only the void could provide.

Throughout all of that, Gilbert’s blood sacrifice for Blazing Blood Blast mixed into the coiling and intensifying dark orb in Zarian’s hand. The charging magic attack grew denser and blacker, with only the faintest hint of crimson light along the edges.

When Zarian thought he couldn’t charge up his attack any further and was going to lose it all, Luciana finally finished adjusting his aim for him. The timing couldn’t be any better.

A whole entropic titan that looked like a long-legged clay man moved in front of the Floridians and their tag-along. The behemoth monstrosity reached forth with one mutilated stalk that could crush their entire mountain.

Zarian cast Void Parade on everyone else other than himself. He sent them miles behind him onto a small, mostly sunken island.

He stayed on the mountain top alone as the entropic titan reached down and got as close as a few feet before Zarian released his attack with a crazed smile on his face.

His hand disintegrated into particles that flew away at speeds close to light. His arm suffered a similar fate as the backblast slammed into him while super-heating the air from the sheer force and speed.

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The mountain underneath disintegrated while catching on fire at the same time. But the fire didn’t last long as the rapidly spreading shockwave from the release pushed away all fuel sources.

Zarian’s consciousness stuck around just long enough to see the entropic titan’s arm suffer obliteration. Part of its left side got scattered across the sludge oceans around Somnigrav. Not a kill shot, but certainly a decent enough warning shot to send the titan packing along with the others.

Then Zarian died, unable to endure the backblast of his own immense attack, his body too frail without the direct support of his Parasite Phantom. When the Divine Revival Charm kicked in and brought Zarian back to being whole again, he found himself in a deep trench.

To his left and right, waves of sludge came crashing toward him, refilling the gap he’d dug out with his attack. Distant entropic titans stalked away in the opposite direction, especially the one missing an arm.

Looking up, Zarian saw the skies directly overhead had parted and revealed the grand cosmos above. When he looked forward, the haze and filth blocking direct vision had cleared away, and all he could see was a tiny shimmering light on the horizon.

He cast Void Parade twice. He picked up his party with the first cast before moving everyone to the shining wormhole between universes on the second cast.

They had to float on a phantom psychic platform made by Para/Naomi, since the ground underneath them was a hollow that span miles deep and many miles wide. Above their heads, mountain-sized chunks of Somnigrav floated off into space, having broken past the limited atmosphere after getting tossed up there in the aftermath of Zarian’s Three Percent Dark Bolt.

Thankfully, the revival charm returned everything to Zarian’s person, including his leggings, boots, the dwarven cuffs on his wrists, and even his marriage ring. Or all of that would’ve gotten blown across the world or sent into space.

“Naomi’s excited,” Para said, scratching at the owl mask on her and Naomi’s face. “I have the urge to say ‘oorah’ and ‘kill’ more times than necessary.”

“Even when that insane woman is asleep she can taste the destruction in the air,” Gilbert grumbled, readjusting the armor on his arm. “Was it even necessary to make me do a blood sacrifice like some pagan-worshipping heathen? I could’ve gone without that, honestly.”

“One hundred Enslavement System Invaders,” Hannah announced. “We contributed to killing the second wave of invaders in one swift move. The blood spell was an extra insurance to make sure none of them survived in case they had decent enough defenses against darkness.”

Gilbert harrumphed. “Well then, now what?”

The Rescue Ranger turned his gaze toward the portal to another universe. Everyone looked in the same direction at the shimmering circle of gold edges and a white interior that sparkled with iridescent light at the center.

Zarian strained his vision. He almost caught sight of countless flickering images that appeared and disappeared so rapidly there was no tracking any one thing. It was like the portal was showing them everything everywhere at once in the other universe.

“This is where Mr and Mrs Darkrun must fight ahead while the children must wait and see,” Luciana sang.

Everybody turned to the Ultra Goddess with various reactions. Para/Naomi grew tense. Bianca’s eyes grew wide. Gilbert summoned his lasso and played with the length, as if he was going to hog-tie Luciana’s doll-like avatar.

Zarian kept looking at the gold-rimmed portal. It wasn’t like the portal he’d opened to go from the old universe to the Infinita Star System Universe.

Hannah readjusted her spectacles, the shimmering light of the portal reflecting off the mirror-like apparel. “You can guarantee Zarian’s return to the Star System, but you can’t guarantee the same for the rest of us. I’m assuming that’s the reason for the separation on top of having a quote-unquote date mission with your husband.”

“I was more focused on the date mission aspect, to be honest, but the rest of what you said is true.” Luciana shrugged, her smile growing wider. “Going to another universe with this limited vessel is mostly all I can do in this contest between the Star System and the Enslavement System. Other than that, you can consider this vessel lost on the other side. But once we close the portal and secure victory, I can assure you this vessel can return only one of us back to the Star System.”

“This is part of the reason you can go back and forth to our old universe, isn’t it?” Hannah questioned.

Bianca rubbed a hand up and down her arm upon hearing that. She looked away as Luciana’s doll-like eyes clicked toward the Radiant Queen.

The smile on the doll’s face stretched wider, becoming creepier. “Yes, this has something to do with that, but not entirely. It’s just easier to do so with my husband. And unlike some people who don’t follow through on arrangements, I intend to keep mine.”

“Woman of corruption, there are many things I can call you,” Gilbert said, looming over the doll, “but if you can put aside your sinful ways and bring back Zarian, then maybe there’s hope for you yet.”

“Please don’t trick him into slavery or something bad,” Bianca said squeamishly.

“I should go with you,” Para said.

“No,” Zarian replied softly.

“I knew you would say that. But here’s my counter argument. Naomi wants me to go.”

Zarian shook his head. “And Naomi’s a good Marine and will follow orders. Until she’s up and ready to move about on her own, you’re staying with Naomi.”

“Would Zarian’s skills persist all the way to another universe?” Hannah asked. Before the Evil Goddess replied, Hannah answered her own question. “Of course it would, since this is the inverse of the invaders entering our universe. It seems the Enslavement System is a twisted mirror to the Star System, but instead of having alignments, they have the Enslavement power. We can speculate that achievements, stats, skills, traits, and the other parts are the same, can we?”

“Indeed,” Luciana said, nodding. “Para will persist despite the distance. So would the skeletons and spiders of my dear husband.”

Pressing her lips into a thin line, Hannah reached into her chest as something phased out and shone under the dim light of the night sky above. She took off her Divine Revival Charm and offered it to Zarian while extending her other hand, palm open and facing up.

The wizard saw the no nonsense stance in Hannah’s body language and gave in without putting up a fight. They exchanged revival charms, Hannah taking the spent one while Zarian took the one with one more revival, letting it phase through his chest and connect with his soul.

The wizard gave Gilbert a sharp look before nodding meaningfully toward Hannah, and the big Rescue Ranger nodded back stoically. They were all taking major risks, and at the center of it all was the smiling and creepy one-arm doll representing Zarian’s wife.

They exchanged some awkward words, though the words coming from Para/Naomi were the most difficult to hear. “We’ll be waiting for you, Zarian.”

Zarian hesitated, uncertain of what to say.

Gilbert helped by slapping Zarian in the back. “Now head on out, Marine, and go invade the invaders.”

The wizard nodded. He wrapped his tail around the doll’s waist and hopped off the phantom psychic platform.

The moment he and Luciana touched the portal, Zarian had a sense of deja vu. He felt his body, mind, and magic stretch out like taffy.

He felt everything had stopped, and all that existed was perpetual stillness. But unlike his first trip between universes, constant light and countless images from everywhere and everything assaulted him at once. It was too much to take in, and nothing he saw would stick for long.

The experience was far from comforting. There was no darkness here, after all. Only the scorching light of infinite creation before it finally ended.

Zarian and Luciana hit an icy and metallic floor. Winter chills blasted over them with a roaring force. Before Zarian could make sense of what was happening, Luciana gripped his tail and pulled him into the shadowy plane of existence layered thinly on normal reality.

Zarian was unsure of what she was doing until he noticed a hostile gold-orange spotlight shine through the roaring tundra weather. The spotlight passed over their position without stopping, failing to notice them.

Luciana had effectively made them invisible, at least for now, giving Zarian time to reassess the situation. His first item of note was the latest notifications he’d received with some aggressive dings.

<You’ve invaded the Doulos Enslavement System via the portal at Corpo Slave World Surging Ice Wrath!>

<Do not flee or hide. You will be caught! And you will be enslaved, invader!>