Overpowered Wizard

Zarian followed Luciana’s lead, his tail around the waist of her doll avatar, her shadowy powers keeping them cloaked. They moved as incorporeal and invisible spooks away from the shimmering wormhole that would lead back to the Star System Universe.

A part of Zarian felt nervous about leaving behind his party and his Parasite Phantom. His Willpower helped firm up his nerves as he looked up between large freight trailers covered in an array of neon colored runes that were indecipherable to him at first glance.

The enchantments and magic runes were nothing like the stuff Hannah had worked with prior. None of the runes of the Enslavement System were recognizable to Zarian and his wizard studies either.

He looked further beyond the stacks of freight trailers and saw towers with neon lights piercing the howling, ice-hurling skies. Raging winter flurries twisted and roared around the towers and struck the rows of freight trailers staged around the portal area.

Zarian concluded that he and his wife had entered the Enslavement System via the staging grounds for a large-scale invasion. Since the married couple crossed over to the Enslavement System Universe and didn’t meet immediate resistance, that must’ve meant the Floridians and their tag-along had removed the second wave just when they arrived in Somnigrav.

That stroke of luck was both wondrous and suspicious. It was almost as if Zarian’s current partner had manufactured the outcome by fixing Zarian’s odds and rushing everyone to the checkpoint.

Under the shadow cloaking, Zarian looked suspiciously into the doll’s back.

He knew he was taking an enormous gamble with trusting Luciana. She could turn around and betray him, especially when she wasn’t beholden to him as a slave.

Wouldn’t it be a stroke of irony to make Zarian the slave under the rules of the Enslavement System?

Aura density? Low. Just like Somnigrav.

Enemy density? Uncertain. Mostly just searchlights from the towers above. There might be patrols.

Priority? Winning the game.

Win condition? Uncertain. But being on the other side of the invasion can end the game faster.

Against the base of a grand cyberpunk magic tower, they found a darkened nook that was out of direct view and out of the howling wind.

Luciana dropped the shadow cloaking and ran her one remaining hand through the silky black hair of her doll avatar. Zarian wrapped his tail around his own waist and pulled an epic coat from out of his leggings’ spatial pocket. He slipped it on and felt the toasty enchantments push back against the bitter cold of Surging Ice Wrath.

“They fear failure. Very much so,” Luciana murmured suddenly. “And they are aware of the losses on the other side. They are uncomfortable and amid chaotic reorganization, slowing them further, frustrating them further.”

Zarian tried to scan the area carefully with his aura. He didn’t push his luck because he was in enemy territory, and he had no idea how sensitive they were to any sort of aura manipulation. He didn’t even try to use Devourer of Secrets and Stories.

He couldn’t get much information this way, so he looked at Luciana questioningly in their dark, out-of-the-way nook.

“Wherever there is tragedy, I can be made aware. Wherever there are secrets, shadowy acts, clandestine maneuvers, and dark tidings, especially behind closed doors, I can be made aware. This is part of what makes me a worrisome foe, I suppose,” Luciana explained.

“No shit.” Zarian looked her up and down.

Her doll avatar was a few inches shorter than him and came across as lithe and delicate while draped in a frayed black dress and worn boots. Luciana had chosen her attire purposefully just like how she’d shaped Keiko into a creepy doll with ball joints and porcelain features. Could this form be closer to Luciana’s real appearance, or was it another trick?

Luciana tilted her head at an angle that would’ve broken the neck of a human. She smiled widely, far too wide, and revealed too many teeth. Then, without another word, she raised her single hand and formed a conjuration of shadow and darkness.

A sickle-like blade with a straightened edge and short handle appeared in her grasp – something Zarian recognized as a Japanese Kama.

Then Luciana gathered and shaped more shadowy motes until she formed a new arm that was made purely of shadows. In her shadowy hand, several shadow throwing knives appeared.

“The win condition, dear husband, is simple,” Luciana said, twirling the kama in her porcelain hand while twiddling the throwing knives in her shadow hand. “We kill the leader of the invasion. Then we get you back to our home one way or another.”

“Works for me.” Zarian sent out spectral spiders to survey the area.

The little guys suffered some adversity from the low aura density and the harsh weather. The network connection fuzzed out periodically, but the spiders did a better job of observing patrol routes and finding potential enemies more than Zarian was daring to do with his aura.

In half an hour, Zarian had a detailed grid layout of the freight staging area and the roads between the magic cyberpunk buildings. He had mental records of how their enemies moved while patrolling and where they gathered at greater concentrations.

He also had his spectral spiders track down important checkpoints that would give him and Luciana cover on their way to the back of the facility. Their goal was on the other side where an impressive bunker-style structure stood while armed with many magic spotlights and neon-illuminated guns that looked like magitek rail cannons.

If only Hannah were here.

Luciana tilted a smile in his direction. “Perhaps they have smaller versions of their advanced weaponry that you can steal.”

“You like reading my mind?” Zarian grunted.

“Whenever you feel bad about your companions, that, too, is a sort of tragedy I can be made aware of,” Luciana said.

There was something tricky about how she said that phrase of hers – ‘I can be made aware of’ – but Zarian saw the window of opportunity to strike coming up through his spider network. He focused on the major task at hand and walked out of the shaded nook.

Luciana matched his energy, his step, and acted like the perfect shadow assassin who could pair themselves up with a wizard. Their squishiness was troubling, but their kill-potential was unmatched.

They strode through the bitter cold and the howling winds that twisted between the mighty stacks of freight trailers.

Zarian could use Void Parade to cut through the obstacles, but didn’t know if the bunker had their own version of anti-teleportation magic.

So, they moved by foot while under the winter flurry. Eventually, someone found them.

A normal sized man dressed in neon green cyberpunk gear that looked more appropriate for a magical biker came to a stop in front of them.

A yellow question mark popped up on the neon rune lights running across his black visor. Then the question mark changed into a red exclamation point, the enslaver on the verge of yelling.

By then, Luciana slashed out the man’s jugular with her kama. Zarian summoned the Advanced Grimoire of Black Magic +3, the ghoulish chains rattling quietly as the thick book settled into a hover next to him. He cast an incomplete version of Blazing Blood Blast and drained the blood out of the first victim of the Darkrun Duo.

The cyberpunk man still had some fight in him while missing most of his neck and having his blood drained away. He thrust his hand forward, sparks of acidic green flames appearing within his palm, his aim centering on Zarian.

The wizard remained standing as the perfect target, but the acidic magic didn’t have time to fly and hit. Luciana had already shadow-teleported behind their victim, hacking her kama straight through the neck vertebrae for the beheading finisher.

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Zarian immediately cast Deploy Expert Skeletons and turned the cyberpunk guard into a cyberpunk skeleton. Blood and viscera poured out of the neck opening of the thick neon-colored leather top until the outfit was sagging on the bony frame of the advanced skeleton. Then the skeleton picked up its dropped head along with the helmet and visor and propped it back in place.

Throwing up two thumbs up, acidic sparks popped and crackled around the skeleton’s ragged gloved fingers before it moved to Zarian’s whims and took charge of the front. Since the wizard was more frail without his Parasite Phantom, he had to go back to old school tactics of setting up an advanced bone wall of the undead.

As they moved toward their first checkpoint through the maze of stacked freight trailers, Zarian glanced down at the crimson orb in his hand. He mulled over his options before deciding to play things more conservatively. He used Aura Mastery to send the charged cast of Blazing Blood Blast in orbit around him.

He summoned his other grimoires, the Advanced Grimoire of the Voidling Exile +3, the Advanced Grimoire of the Hell Gator +2, and the Advanced Grimoire of Freaky Morphs +2.

With all of his grimoires rattling softly, orbiting with a metallic hum, making predatory growling sounds, or scrambling like a maniac on the back of his coat, Zarian focused on another part of his magic.

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

With a calming breath, Zarian pushed to his most comfortable limit while in a low aura density environment. He didn’t expand far out either. He didn’t take over every spot of darkness that existed nearby.

He focused on a condensed form of One Percent Darkness he kept immediately around him.

From there, he pushed a small portion of his darkness into his wife and felt a symbiotic relationship with her. Her shadows beefed up considerably. Her throwing knives and kama had more weight on them.

Right on time, too, because they had six battle-ready cyberpunk guards turning the corner at the end of the freight trailer maze.

Spectral spider webbing came into view at the ankles of the cyberpunk enemies and tripped them up.

The classic spider maneuver slowed the cyberpunks while Zarian’s acid-punk skeleton threw forward volleys of green bolts. The acidic attack slammed into the first three guards and knocked them back into the other ones who were stumbling behind them.

Their advanced neon-colored, all-body gear fended off the damage with an incredible resilience similar to the gear the slave giants and Keiko had worn. Hitting them directly with basic spell magic wouldn’t kill them fast enough.

Thankfully, Luciana lent her aid by throwing her thick shadow knives and scoring some bloody hits that kept the six enslavers even more occupied.

Zarian took this opportunity to experiment by casting a spell from Morph: No Hard Walls. He melted the walls of the trailers into water to the left and to the right of the cyberpunk guards.

Then Zarian cast another spell from Morph: Water to Slime. The water became slime that was sensitive to cold temperatures, becoming black ice that held like welded steel, locking all six guards down where they stood.

Surprised by numerous attacks and tricks, the cyberpunk guards cursed and struggled as blood leaked from where Luciana had scored deep, gear-tearing hits with her throwing knives. Each visor on the guards’ helmets switched from emoting question marks and exclamation points to expletive symbols.

Giving up on yanking free of the black ice, the guards raised their hands. They powered up an assortment of ranged attacks from fire to lightning to light and more, aiming at Zarian’s casually standing form.

Luciana teleported through the shadows with a twirl behind the guards. Her buffed-up and darkly intensified kama hacked through the back of their necks, one by one, serving a spine each.

Blood sprayed in geysers from each beheaded guard. The gory splatter twisted away from the ground and gathered in swirling crimson orbs circling around Zarian.

He formed six more pre-charged Blazing Blood Blasts to go with the one already orbiting him. Then Zarian used Quagmire Pit to free the corpses from the nearly impervious ice before casting Deploy Expert Skeletons to raise six more gruesomely made cyberpunk skeletons.

When he finished with that, Luciana suddenly stepped in front of him. She slashed her kama in the air near Zarian’s side and struck something that could bleed – someone who was so sleek, fast, and concealed that the dying cyberpunk woman had nearly caught the wizard blindsided.

Zarian didn’t have time to reconcile with that close call when a squad of twelve cyberpunk guards appeared at an intersection between the towering neon-lit buildings standing over them. With the freight trailer maze left behind them, Zarian had more open lanes and streets and less tight corners to work with.

One guard sniped at him with a sharp pulse of magic that would’ve drilled a hole through Zarian’s head if the wizard’s One Percent Darkness was a hairbreadth slower. A dark column rose in front of Zarian and stopped the attack while his seven punk skeletons faced a losing battle against twelve cyberpunk guards.

That was until Zarian cast the same spell combo from Morph: No Hard Walls and Water to Slime.

The nearest walls around the cyberpunk guards melted into chilled water that fell in a great deluge on top of the guards. The water quickly became a slimy substance that reacted harshly to the cold before transforming into a metallic black ice.

All twelve guards froze under the wizard’s surprisingly effective spell-combo, encasing the enslavers in a see-through trap that bound them tightly.

Some guards had the Strength or the ferocious firepower to break their way through. But no matter how hard they fought to free themselves, Zarian had twelve thin One Percent Javelins lined up for each guard before they could do much of anything.

With a single thought, the Conquest Wizard executed each of the twelve with headshots and a half cast of Blazing Blood Blast, adding to his collection of circling crimson orbs by a dozen.

Luciana smiled like a loon at him, twirling her kama and her throwing knives as she bounded at his side. Zarian paid her little mind while he focused on maintaining his One Percent Darkness and multiple casts of spells.

He was also paying closer attention to his immediate surroundings with sweeps of his aura and devourer trait. His free evil +7 became even more useful as he multitasked while alone in his head and stuck with a weaker body.

Doing this stuff without Para is less fun and much harder than it should be.

“I will stop you here, invaders!” roared a large thirty-foot tall man dressed similarly to the other cyberpunk enslavers. “Once I enslave you, I’ll finally stop being a slave guard and be the one who sits at the top of the Enslavement System!”

“Or you’ll die,” Zarian said from the back of his growing punk skeleton legion.

Nineteen skeletons made it rain bolts and bombs of elemental magic on the male slave giant. Acid. Light. Fire. Magnetism. Lightning. And more.

They struck the giant man with an air-shaking burst of power that made the metallic buildings creak heavily around them. But none of their attacks served as anything more than irritants for the giant, whose outfit flashed with blindingly bright runes.

Brown feathery wings appeared from his back and an immense hammer that was as tall as the giant appeared in his hands.

The giant flapped once and forced Zarian to put up a thick One Percent Wall that soaked a thunderous hit, saving his punk skeleton legion. A majority of the impact flew in a shockwave that clashed against the nearest buildings and knocked their base from under them. The roaring winter wind of Surging Ice Wrath did the rest, sending an entire metal building down on Zarian’s head.

Before he could take care of it, Luciana did the damndest thing – she turned her kama into a shadow katana. Then she jumped up and sliced the building in half, sending the parts flying on either side of Zarian and his skeletons.

That left Zarian a little flustered under all of his Willpower before he regained his composure and turned to face the giant winged man swooping up and diving upon him.

“Nineteen Blazing Blood Blasts,” Zarian growled, letting the crimson barrage go at once.

Each one struck with an aura enhanced impact that battered the visor and chest of the diving giant, but that was of little consequence compared to the raging inferno of life-burning magic. The giant man didn’t seem to care as he slammed down his hammer and crashed against a rising column of Zarian’s One Percent Darkness.

The Strength and power of the winged giant cracked the column made from Zarian’s darkness, but the collision sent the hammer blow off to the side instead of landing directly on Zarian.

The hammer struck the street and shook the ground before rising for another hit.

Instead of fleeing, the wizard stood his ground under the giant’s shadow. Why run? Zarian was having the glorious pleasure of extra life energy getting injected straight into his body as the giant’s life burned away rapidly under the intense, multi-layered inferno.

The male slave giant knew his death was almost guaranteed, it seemed, so he roared with berserk rage and kept the hammering attack going.

Like an angel of wrath, he slammed his hammer down again and again upon Zarian. And the wizard responded in kind, hurling up rising columns at various angles to deflect the incredible blows of the dying giant.

Each impact drew closer and closer to crushing the wizard flat. Each impact sent resounding shockwaves that rattled the nearest buildings and sent quakes through the streets, knocking Zarian off his feet and deafening him.

Even while in a bad position, Zarian’s One Percent Columns kept rising at the hard angles to knock aside the hammer blows. But the giant kept striking with a vigor and physicality that matched his size.

Something had to give, and it seemed like the male giant might have his way when the hammer came down for a last hit that was many times faster than before.

Zarian was already too deep to cast Void Parade and make for his escape, which should’ve ended up with him having a wasteful death. Instead of that, a shadowy cord linked to his marriage ring appeared, pulling taut, reeling Zarian far enough out of the way where the hammer missed by a few inches.

The wizard covered himself in darkness and aura to cushion the shockwave as he got sent bouncing and careening through debris. When he got his feet under him, he looked up and watched his wife teleport from the shadows and land on the winged giant’s shoulder.

Luciana lay her hands, one of porcelain and one of darkened shadow, on the giant helmet before pulling back. She wrenched something spectral away from the big man until it snapped with a wail that was ghoulish and soulful. The giant stopped fighting and fell dead, the crimson flames snuffing out without more life energy to feast on.

“You could’ve used your void magic,” Luciana said, sauntering off the dead giant.

“Yes, I could’ve, but I had him where we wanted him.” Zarian swept his hand over his shoulder and dusted himself off.

“Now we’ll have him where we’ll need him.” The doll of the evil goddess laughed.

Zarian pushed up the brim of his wizard hat with one hand and flashed a toothy smile. He cast Deploy Expert Skeletons again and raised a winged punk skeleton that was thirty feet tall.

“Shall we, Mrs Darkrun?” Zarian asked, striding after his punk skeleton legion, the winged giant leading the charge.

“Yes, Mr Darkrun, we shall.” Luciana frolicked beside him, her hands of porcelain and shadow twirling her katana and knives.