Overpowered Wizard

Chapter 155: B2: C55: Research Spiders

Jokes aside, I think I’m missing something, Zarian thought, becoming more serious as they drew closer to deathly danger. I faced multiple challenges where warp energy was involved. It feels like there’s a lesson I’m supposed to learn, but I keep missing it. I bet Ruvaria is trying to teach me something in a very roundabout and brutal way, but I really can’t see what it is yet.

He’d missed some opportunities to copy the High Warp Manipulation skill from the Warp Fey. There were bound to be a few still zipping around somewhere. But Zarian hadn’t focused on that for two reasons.

The Warp Fey were fairly decent at defending themselves from direct aura manipulation, at least while in combat. And it was easier to kill them than to capture them while he and Naomi had rushed toward the heart of the lair.

To be fair to me, I’m not in the mood for more Level 0 skill copies right now. I got a bunch of other stuff to work on first. He could also ask Hannah to help him. She was great at using warp runes and enchantments. That way, he could get in extra study without juggling more powers.

Zarian kept unpacking the warp problem in one part of his mind while descending into an even denser field of warp energy. He landed at the start of a spacious bridge that was covered in layers and layers of ancient dark blood.

After scanning the area with Aura Mastery + Identify multiple times, Zarian concluded they had to start from the beginning of the bridge. That way, they could avoid triggering the wards that were all over the place, even in the air. Each ward linked to something so devastating, it could wipe out a small country.

This was the true danger of a world boss, a Tier 4 creature that was a threat to hundreds of thousands to millions of lives.

Zarian placed Naomi down. As she settled her feet on the blood-caked bridge, the two scanned their surroundings with their eyes.

The setting light of the twin suns could barely reach down here in the cavernous pit. When Zarian looked up, he noticed how all light dimmed down to near black because of the inherent dark magic of the black citadel.

Zarian would’ve found it cozy if it wasn’t for the warp energy.

To the sides, and behind him, there were churning blood pools filled with squirming corpses. Each body was humanoid or bestial, or something in between.

Beyond the blood pools, Zarian saw rivulets and streams of dark blood pouring in from gaps and tunnels from the sides of the cavernous pit. The streams fed into the main blood river under the bridge, which contained other half-living wretches that were an amalgamation of oddly fitted bones, taffy-like flesh, and partially rotten organs.

As for the source of the heavy warp energy and destructive wards, Zarian noted how the citadel looked like a shattered fortress that had a rounded dome at the center. The citadel was amid toppled walls, decrepit ramparts, and uneven courtyards filled with skeletons and cursed fungi.

Multiple towers lay over the citadel’s dome after falling over from an ancient calamity years ago.

The more Zarian looked at the stronghold of the Chimera Tyrant, the more he believed the expanded details on how the citadel had once existed on the surface.

Fourteen hundred years ago, some twisted wild magic happened here, collapsing the citadel from the surface to this pit. This was also when the boss evolved into a league that could threaten large populations if it was to leave its lair and roam about.

Zarian dropped all verbal conversation and communicated with Naomi and Para directly through thoughts, feelings, and impressions. After some practice, Zarian realized he could invite Naomi closer into his mind because of her Psionic Affinity.

It was an intimate proposition, almost risky, but this could help them sync up even better. After all, Naomi’s psychic abilities could scan a scenario in a way that differed from Zarian, and she could gain a more direct benefit from how Zarian saw things.

More importantly, when Naomi held a larger presence in his mind, Zarian felt more at ease. Maybe it was because Zarian had a high amount of Willpower and some powerful mental abilities that paired well with Naomi’s profile. Or maybe it was because they had personalities that worked well with each other, finding strong compatibility.

Nonetheless, Zarian was happy that they could merge consciousnesses a little with no drawbacks.

Para was happy, too, because she liked Naomi and could share impressions more directly with her. Naomi even accepted Para’s darker and more fiendish impressions that came with being a man-eating article of parasitic clothing.

Naomi was awesome like that.

Without a word, the militant woman knew where she was needed to help Zarian. She took a few steps forward and placed herself on guard. Para watched their flanks with a field of aura and countless thin strands that reached out to scout about.

Nothing came out to meet them at the beginning of the bridge. Nothing came from the citadel to greet them.

There was a rusted gate on the other side that was about to fall free from the crumbled edges of its stone frame. Other than that, there were no true obstacles, only the wards.

With their defenses staged and no hostilities in sight, Zarian focused on tackling the wards first.

There were multiple ways to go about that.

If Hannah was here, she would’ve challenged the wards directly, find their weaknesses, and break them down. Hell, Hannah would’ve turned the wards around to her benefit and use them against the remaining monsters lurking down here in the sunken citadel.

If Bianca was here, she would’ve burned out the wards herself. That was not a scenario that would come up often, but Zarian had it in mind that Bianca’s powerful abilities and free good +5 could cheat her way through challenges like these with enough laser beams and flashy sword princess maneuvers.

That was, of course, a riskier tactic to take. The world boss would’ve faced such adventurers like Bianca before and placed down some countermeasures.

In fact, Zarian could sense some buried traps that were connected to the wards and concealed under heavy layers of warp energy. Because of those warp layers, Zarian couldn’t get a clear scan of the enchantments and their runes.

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It was too risky to take a more brute force approach for now.

Again, the warp energy problem stood in his way. But this time, the warp energy was more concentrated and debilitating than ever before.

He experimented by casting his Void Authority spell and trying to manipulate the warp energy directly. He ran into a lot of difficulty. The warp energy functioned on a chaotic frequency that differed vastly from the void.

Warp energy existed perpetually in a gap between three-dimensional reality and the vast reaches of the void.

It was kind of wild to think how Hannah could use warp enchantments and apply them to skeletons as a simple element. Yet, for Zarian and other particular casters, warp energy was a major weakness on a larger scale.

The fact that warp users could use teleportation made Zarian think it should fall under the power of his Void Authority. However, it kept slipping from his grasp, rebelling against him and staying unwieldy and wild.

Zarian felt growing frustration as his Void Authority spell failed again and again.

What is it I’m missing here? Do I really need to copy another system skill? Or is it an actual ‘skill issue’ I’m not grasping?

Naomi’s soothing psychic energy entered his head. She was sharing her Tranquil Mind +2 with him through their link. It helped a lot. A lot, a lot.

After half a minute of Naomi soothing him, Zarian dropped his Void Authority spell. He entered a low hover over the bridge and crossed his legs, placing his hands on his knees.

He meditated on the problem.

Zarian carefully combined the powers of his Unraveled Mind, High Rune Mindframe, free evil +4, and Naomi’s Tranquil Mind +2 during his meditation. Then Zarian took things a step further when he flipped his Overpower trait from boosting all his stats by 25% and focused on boosting one skill by 125%.

Zarian had stopped using the Overpower trait for the one-skill boost because the increase in stats overall paid off more. He also needed a significant adjustment period when he lost the stat boost, which could screw him up in the middle of a heated battle.

It wasn’t a big deal when he had fewer stats in the lower levels. But now the stats were high enough where rapid changes were a hindrance most times.

On this occasion, he raised the power of his High Rune Mindframe so much he felt his mind zoom like electricity down a cable.

He made numerous calculations, like a computer, which helped him disregard the heavy drop in overall stats for now.

Eventually, Zarian found a solution to the main issues. But the solution would require him to get really, really conceptual with the relativity of what existed in between separate dimensions.

Zarian opened his eyes while remaining in his meditative hover. In a flash of black light, he summoned the Advanced Grimoire of Black Magic.

The spectral chains on the covers rattled ghoulishly. The spell book spread open and flipped its pages rapidly in front of Zarian.

Once the grimoire reached the gravity section, Zarian used the Aura Mastery + Lore Eater combo. He devoured the study material at a more rapid pace.

Ironically, this might mess up his progress with learning the entire gravity spell. The gravity spell was a tricky, tricky beast that only got harder the further Zarian learned, especially if he tried to learn too fast. With a lot of things involving the gravity spell, time and speed and even the mass of knowledge he’d gained was relative to its grand scheme.

Still, Zarian sifted through the gravity pages quickly. He put together a series of runes and enchantments that would help him build a particular spell array.

After a few minutes, he’d gathered what he needed. He closed the grimoire and submerged it back into his soul before summoning three hundred spectral spiders.

He passed the series of runes and enchantments to his spiders via the spider network. He watched them spin their webs and conduct tiny gravity experiments on the blood-caked floor in front of him.

This went on for thirty minutes. By this point, all light from the setting suns outside disappeared. The Florida Man, the Florida Woman, and their spiders did their work in the deep darkness of the sunken citadel.

The red glow of the foul blood pools and the blood river barely served as much light. That was perfectly okay. Zarian could see just fine, and through him Naomi could see decently, too.

Amid the red glow, orange flickers appeared on the edges of powerful warp fields and warp vents pushed out from the center of the citadel. Sometimes, there were even warp pulses that could scramble delicate magic patterns.

Thankfully, Zarian and his spiders had accounted for the high density of the warp field with their gravity experiments. When the warp energy collapsed an experiment, they adjusted their calculations and tried again with more experiments.

Then Zarian noticed one little gravity experiment creating a tiny bead of gravity magic. Inside of that little bead, there were the captured particles of environmental aura and warp energy crushed together.

Zarian directed his attention to the team of research spiders that had developed this successful model. He received a full briefing from them via the spider network and interpretive spider dances.

Then Zarian shared the results with the other research spiders. They replicated the same warp-trapping model.

They found a high amount of successes.

That was the good news.

The bad news was the scalability. Zarian didn’t have enough aura to make a larger and more applicable gravity array that would completely wipe out the citadel’s warp fields.

So he went for a more conservative but daring approach after scanning the wards and making a few adjustments to the models. Then he summoned more and more and more spiders.

He didn’t stop until he had over two thousand of them.

Knowing their assignment, the spiders saluted Zarian and Naomi before skittering out in all directions. There were so many of the pale blue and ghostly fellows that Naomi chanced a look away from guard duty.

She watched them stream past her feet. She prodded at a few with her big toe and smiled a little. Then she wore her serious Marine-On-Guard face again and continued keeping watch at the front.

There were still no enemies.

Zarian appreciated the ethics of boss monsters and ancient evils who grew lazy over the years. He waited as his stealthy little guys maneuvered around traps, around trigger sections of the wards, and around billowing vents of warp energy that could blast them away.

The spiders had to get creative to avoid the blood pools and blood river. They constructed web bridges and rope swings. They even put down tiny gravity arrays that would send them up into the air, then they would ride on some web boards to get past further obstacles.

They reached the perimeter of the sunken citadel on all sides and began their highly detailed work. They webbed down the framework for a giant, interconnected network of runes and supportive enchantments for one big and costly gravity array.

Despite how fast and highly leveled the spiders were, Zarian and Naomi were going to have to wait. Normally, they would’ve filled it with jokes or teases. But the two settled into a comfortable silence while focused on their duties.

Naomi stood like a powerful sentry who wouldn’t let anything get past her and reach the wizard. Zarian kept his high-functioning brain running to coordinate with thousands of spiders that were constructing the biggest spell array he’d ever drafted.

The work took over an hour to finish the fundamental structures. The finishing touches were exhausting by this point for Zarian.

He felt a crushing pressure on his mind for running it so hard for so long. He felt like he was about to burn out.

Para comforted him from the back of his mind. Naomi remained as steady as bedrock for him because of her Tranquil Mind +2 and reliable personality.

With these two helping him with their warming presence, Zarian felt like he could keep going. He was getting close to finishing the big gravity array.

He smirked a little when he had a quick thought about achievements and his Feats of Adventure he would earn, but he didn’t dwell on that for long. The rewards could wait for later.

Things were going well.

Then Ezda showed up and ruined things.

“My alpha! My sigma! I can smell you are close! I’ve returned to help you!”