Overpowered Wizard

The punk skeleton legion grew to three hundred average-sized humanoids and ten giants of different magical disciplines. The winged giant was the one leading the charge, which Zarian found interesting.

Seeing the punk skeleton giant flap his frayed wings and launch across the city to crash down on the latest wave of cyberpunk guards didn’t get old for the Conquest Wizard.

“It’s been a while since I could sit back and…” Zarian’s words trailed off when another invisible assassin died because of Luciana’s anti-assassin abilities.

The latest assassin had a long shadow knife thrust through the back of her helmet and out the front of her visor. All the gore spraying out joined the orbiting Blazing Blood Blasts – forty and counting now – that Zarian circulated around him.

“You were saying something, husband?” Luciana asked.

She was flipping her knife around in her shadow hand. Her porcelain hand held a chain sickle now, the weighted ball dangling from the end until she started spinning it playfully.

Her enthusiastic game with the deadly weapon snapped to deadly action when she flicked the ball into the face of another invisible assassin. The attack burst the assassin’s helmet open, spilling out chunks of skull along with brain matter.

Zarian added another charge to his orbiting crimson collection of Blazing Blood Blasts. He cast Deploy Expert Skeletons carefully, being more selective of the advanced punk skeletons he wanted to raise.

If it wasn’t for Aura Mastery and Aura Transcendence, he would’ve run out of aura already. All the dark magic and wizardry he was juggling cost a lot, after all.

“I was saying, wife, that it’s been a while since I let the skeletons lead the way,” Zarian said.

“Are you afraid that your concentration in the wizard arts and stats makes you too vulnerable?” She tilted her head at an inhuman angle.

Zarian sniffed indignantly. “You won’t even let me have the pleasure of lying. You know the truth. So why even ask?”

Luciana snapped the sickle end of her chain above Zarian’s head. Another assassin screamed out, caught by the ribs, the sickle hooking deep.

The assassin tried to free herself, but Luciana was too fast, too strong. She easily reeled in her prey and thrust her long shadow knife into the assassin woman’s neck.

Then, with a murderous glee that went beyond the delicate appearance of her doll form, Luciana hoisted the assassin above her head and used her long knife as a lever while keeping the sickle sunk deep into the dying assassin’s ribs. With a powerful wrench, she ripped the assassin’s head off while eviscerating the woman’s guts.

This time, Zarian didn’t even bother gathering blood for another crimson orb. He was at capacity, and he found the gruesomely savage look on Luciana an interesting contrast to her normally gray and black appearance.

The doll-like eyes clicked in his direction as Luciana’s smile grew inhumanly wide.

“I really enjoy talking to you this way.” Luciana slowly turned back to their objective. “I enjoy adventuring with you like this, too. I’ve never done this before. Everything is so … tangible down here among the mortals. No wonder Ariana is so upset. You’re having all the fun.”

Zarian slowed his steps, his stomach cooling at the mention of his little sister. Ariana was a lot to deal with. He hadn’t seen her in the Grimrock Hell Gate, but he knew The Dragoness was biding her time for something major.

Letting the familial issues go for now, Zarian’s attention shifted toward the heated action happening at the present. A big orange-purple beam shot out of the main gate at the front of the bunker as the doors slid closed before all the guards could run inside.

Zarian raised a One Percent Wall, saving his punk skeleton legion from the orange-purple beam that struck like a thunderous bomb. Showers of orange-purple waves and sparks hissed against the wintery winds howling above in the frosty weather.

His attention snapped toward the more pressing problem of having to cross a two thousand foot danger zone covered by spotlights and sectors of fire under the barrels of many magitek rail cannons. The punk skeleton legion had done the smart thing of stopping at the edge of the towering cyberpunk buildings where assassins lurked in the shadows, hoping to catch the wizard off-guard.

The roaring winter weather continued gusting between the towers and down along the streets. The chill battered at Zarian and his legion as he transitioned to the next stage of their counter-invasion of the invaders.

He extended his hand and cast the stupidly low-quality but secretly powerful spell that could remove most obstacles.

“No Hard Walls,” Zarian chanted as Morph scrambled around on his back while making gurgling sounds.

The Conquest Wizard turned the thick, hard, and highly enchanted wall into water with an uncommon-quality spell, which would’ve failed if it hadn’t been for Zarian’s powerful wizardry. Even with the low aura density, Zarian clearly dominated where magic was needed.

However, that showing of power over the structural integrity of a defensive bunker forced the enemy to attack at once.

Instead of waiting for Zarian, Luciana, and their punk skeleton legion to come out into the open, the rail cannons unleashed a thunderous magic magnetic barrage of such utter destruction that all the enemies hiding in the buildings, waiting for their chance to dive on the wizard, quickly became casualties.

The rolling rail cannon destruction covered a mile of their own territory and tore down tower after tower. When the barrage ended, nothing but ruins and dead remained in the wake.

None of that affected Zarian, Luciana, and their punk skeleton legion – the wizard had swept everyone up with his Void Parade and moved them an easy two thousand feet forward. They came out of the void in front of the wide open bunker entrance with puddles of iced water under their boots.

Zarian rubbed his finger in his ear, grimacing from all the rail cannon noise. The electric buzz from the magnetic cannons remained in the air as Zarian waited for his punk skeletons, large and small, to sweep through the entrance where hundreds of guards waited to hold the defense.

Luciana turned her head one-eighty to look behind them. Then she spun her head fully three-sixty and glanced at Zarian with the corner of her eyes.

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“What?” he asked, watching his punk skeleton giants slam down on the human guards.

“Use your kitty skill for a physical boost,” she said.

“I’ll have to deal with the odds.”

“Right now, the odds are very much in our favor. I will help manipulate the flow of causality without cost to you.”

“There is always a cost.”

She reached over and poked his cheek with a shadowy finger. “Of course, there is, but it is nothing to concern yourself over. Just come and have fun with me. Please.”

Zarian wanted to argue, but the ‘please’ at the end coming from his wife cooled his defiant mood.

He grumbled to himself before reaching behind him and flapping the coat tail of his top. His lion tail unraveled from around him and flicked with a muscular snap.

Then he reached into his leggings and pulled out Aura Slayer from his spatial pocket. The giant hunk of metal settled on his shoulder, his fingers curled tensely on the handle.

“Lion Prince: Physical Boost,” Zarian chanted, directing his troublesome reality-bending skill with a skill-based incantation.

His Strength rose sharply. His Agility rose just as much. He gasped, his body feeling invigorated, reminding him of his prior vulnerability – his weakness, his slowness – without his Parasite Phantom.

The hunger from One Percent Darkness replaced the hunger Para would usually share with him, making his blood course through his veins like rapids.

Zarian strode forward with a determined and weighty walk. He kept his giant black sword on his shoulder, which would’ve made him stand out if it wasn’t for the punk skeleton giants rampaging about.

He had a simple time walking past the magic-blasting firing line the smaller punk skeletons had established. Before any of the enemy guards noticed him fully, Zarian performed one powerful lunge that crushed the distance so fast he nearly caught himself off guard.

Instincts from free evil +7 took over, with Zarian slashing down Aura Slayer while running his magic along its edge like a chainsaw. The enchanted cyberpunk gear of his first victim resisted for a split second. Then the man came apart like fresh steak meeting a butcher’s meat saw, blood and gore flinging everywhere.

Zarian raised a column of darkness to his left to block shots from that direction. He turned to the right and swept his sword around, eviscerating three cyberpunk guards at once.

He ignored the cyberpunk guards trying to jump on him from above – Luciana teleported from the shadows with twin katanas, one in each hand. She spiraled above and slashed three men into separate pieces.

Zarian stayed grounded and moved about like a juggernaut, his tail snapping about thrillingly from behind him as he hacked and slashed his mighty sword. His grimoires followed him everywhere, along with over forty crimson orbs waiting to be unleashed.

The screams of horror and shouts of panic only encouraged the wild beast inside of Zarian, intensifying the flow of causality, reinforcing the Lion Prince, reducing the chances of him having to suffer a heavy consequence.

He became a slaughterer who ran straight down the middle, bisecting the sea of guards and breaking their formation, painting them all red with the flowing life essence of their brethren.

The punk skeleton giants took advantage by crashing down on one side that had more frail enemies who preferred attacking from a distance. The smaller and more magical punk skeletons unleashed a concentrated barrage on the enemies who preferred attacking up front, like shooting fish in a barrel with elemental machineguns.

Before they finished killing the last of the weaker enemies, Zarian found Luciana weaving herself behind him and above him, covering his blind spots no matter how he slashed and moved, like having a shadow trailing his darkness.

“The Lion Prince is playing nice,” Zarian growled, his voice taking on a more deep and rumbly tone.

“I know what the Lion Prince wants.” Luciana sent a teasing smile his way.

“I shook the world because of you,” Zarian grumbled.

“Ah, how romantic.” She batted her fake eyelashes at him.

Zarian shook his head at her. He stepped forward at the front of his legion and took them down a wide corridor.

They found a locked stairwell that Zarian easily opened up with a simple cast of No Hard Walls. He took one step inside before sensing something was amiss and walling off the stairwell with darkness.

A heavy explosion rocked the One Percent Wall and the rest of the facility, the floor shaking under Zarian’s boots. However, the explosion wasn’t quite strong enough to break through Zarian’s darkness and harm his side of the conflict.

Looking back, he checked on his punk skeleton giants and saw they were bent over and crawling on hands and knees. Turning away from them, he waved the smaller punk skeleton mages and fighters forward.

He melted the One Percent Wall into a One Percent Staircase before his punk skeletons entered the demolished stairwell and had to face hostile resistance attacking from above.

Heavy bolts and blasts of magic smashed skeletons into pieces within their own gear. The attacks kept raining down with power and precision, going beyond the initial barrage.

No matter how many punk skeletons went forward, more and more of them ended up blasted apart. If that wasn’t troublesome already, Zarian found it harder to maintain his One Percent Staircase under the continuous assault of heavy magic.

Zarian waited for a while to see if the punk skeletons could fight their way up on their own. Luciana twirled around by his side, waiting for their eventual next move.

The punk skeletons kept failing, and the situation seemed to worsen.

With a sigh, Zarian checked his aura reserves and found them lacking. It was time to unload the crimson orbs. He pressed his hand lightly on Luciana, guiding her out of her twirl, and gestured with his tail for her to follow.

She giggled from behind him as they stepped through the legion of skeletons who were waiting for their turn up the staircase. The bony punks moved aside, some of them revealing their disappointment with a sad emote that shone in neon runes from the front of their visors.

Zarian and Luciana entered the staircase and immediately faced heavy resistance. Zarian covered himself and his wife in darkness before spreading his Void Domain around the area and checking for enchantments against teleportation.

Stuff like that couldn’t stop him from entering the void, but they could set him back or delay him from exiting the void. It took a while since he was still devouring the secrets around him, but he eventually found the anti-teleportation enchantments on the walls. Then he cast No Hard Walls and melted the structures.

He sent a few upper floors crashing down, but none with enemies that concerned him. Then he and Luciana went on a short parade through the void and reappeared in the middle of the more advanced cyberpunk guards holding the upper floor.

Zarian unleashed a few Blazing Blood Blasts that knocked all of them aside and burned up their life energy rapidly, feeding their losses straight to Zarian. Luciana didn’t seem affected by the extra life. Her doll probably didn’t rely on the stuff, so more life energy went straight into Zarian.

They hacked and slashed their way through the survivors, parting limbs and heads in equal measure. Then they waited on their punk skeleton legion to follow them up the staircase with the giants crawling in last.

A few guards scrambled in from around the corners ahead, not realizing how outmatched they were, and not having time to retreat when Luciana’s throwing knives hit their mark.

Zarian looked around at the white sterile walls and faint white magic lights beaming from above. The scenery reminded him of a sanitary hospital or very white military base.

Though, no base he knew of had automated magitek guns with metal slugs that could put a melon-sized hole through a man’s chest.

Zarian nearly took a few to his face if he hadn’t snapped his head out of the way in time. He quickly raised a One Percent Column before sending out a few of his Blazing Blood Blasts.

However, the regular crimson color of the orbs faded into a glassy and eerie color, an effect that came with altering the spell through Void Domain.

The blazing void blasts struck with a thunderous force that damaged physical components and short-circuited enchantments. The magitek guns came apart easily.

Zarian did the same thing for the next pop-up guns that tried to get in his way of their primary goal. He knew they were getting closer when more living enemies and magitek turrets fought in desperate concert to slow down the Ultra God, the Ultra Goddess, and the punk skeleton legion.

Zarian softened them up with Blazing Blood Blasts and blazing void blasts. Luciana dove in after his bombardment with her shadow katanas flicking left and right, slaying every man and machine caught within her shadowy reach.