Overpowered Wizard

He stood on the precipice. Everywhere was darkness. All the noise of battle seemed distant and dull. He felt more alone than ever before.

He could feel the temptation of the fall.

The temptation was everything wonderful and horrible blended together. The temptation of Shadowfell made everything about Sinfeast look incompetent and cheap.

Luciana, his wife, awaited him in the abyss. In this place, her charm was magnetic and irresistible, more corrupting than the tears she could shed.

She was the perfect wife. An enabler of his most depraved and darkest desires, a gateway to his baser instincts and never rising above.

She truly was the incarnate of corruption.

Through her, tragedy would truly be wrought on others. And in that tragedy, there would be pure and utter ecstasy.

Yet Zarian didn’t give in.

“I alone am the Dreaded Outsider,” Zarian said, stilling the darkness and the corruption. “I do what I want.”

“And what is it you want?” Luciana said, her darkly charming voice reverberating from every shadowed place outside of him and somewhere within him. “What do you truly desire in the darkness of your heart? What savage, primal instinctual thing comes to mind? Whatever it is, be it vicious, animalistic, bestial, depraved, let your wish come to the forefront and dominate all that you can reach.”

“I want to see Foodie and have her make a birthday cake. And we’re going to have a birthday party for Naomi. Then I’m going to let Naomi have me as a gift, and I’ll have her for the fun of it,” Zarian said, clamping down on all the hunger and madness of his own power.

He pulled himself out of blinding darkness that tried to cloud his mind. He ripped away from the powerful grip his wife had on him.

He saw he was still in the air with the divine storm raging above.

His friends were still fighting the corrupted. Para was pushing herself to do more wizardry than ever before, holding back the teleporting aberrations.

Bianca remained by his side, smiling at him. She said, “You were there for me when I lost myself. So I thought it’ll be nice if I’m here for you.”

Zarian appreciated that a lot as he looked up and saw how much more powerful his darkness became. The curving and towering dark tentacles had greatly thickened where one could swat down on an entire mountain and crush it. The stormy finger caught within their embrace struggled to move forward or back.

“Only in Infinita, I have to beat my wife to save a bunch of zealots so my friend can kill the zealot leader herself,” Zarian said. “Then again, I’m from Florida. So it is what it is.”

His darkness broke the stormy funnel that tried to crush the paladins. Instead of a cry of pain or shock, Zarian’s wife released a loud sigh of pleasure. Her voluminous voice filled the basin and rolled across the mountain range.

Before the storm had a chance to re-surge or turn into anything more nonsensical, Zarian’s darkness reached up further. Dark tentacles whipped through the tumultuous clouds and tore up whatever divine workings made it all possible.

The storm’s magic and power faded, but Luciana’s voice carried on a little longer. Her sighs of pleasures turned into inappropriate gasps, hearty panting, and rumbling moans that shook the air around them and inside of Zarian’s chest.

“Yo, Zarian, your wife is a bigger freak than me,” Naomi said on the spider network as she punched and kicked aberrations to death.

“That sounds like defeat in your voice. Why not train and become a stronger freak?” Hannah said, still shooting cannon shots and elemental beams.

“Shut up, Hannah,” Naomi grouched.

Zarian ignored them as the storm finally abated and Luciana’s presence seemed to disappear, at least for now.

Right on time, too, because Zarian’s cosmic hunger had nearly become too much. He quickly signed and chanted, struggling with himself throughout to seal away his Two Percent Darkness.

But as always, nothing could go so simply for him, especially when he was standing on the edge.

“Big Bro!” Ariana appeared like an opportunistic scoundrel. She projected all nine feet of her humanoid form as a skimpily dressed dragon woman with no shame. “This is our chance! Break free and unleash the darkness again!”

Interrupted, Zarian said the first thing that came to mind. “Go back and put on proper clothes, young lady!”

He knew that was the wrong thing to say or do right now. He still had to finish the sealing of his Two Percent Darkness, but Ariana projecting herself without shame was too distracting.

He should’ve scolded her the first time it happened. Regardless of her being the ultimate power inside Infinita, Zarian was still the big brother, and he couldn’t help but act like it this time.

“You’ll have to make me!” Ariana said, smiling with viciously sharp teeth. “And you can’t do that unless you become the darkness again! Then clothes will stop mattering once you free me and I become darkness, too!”

Zarian felt annoyed. His hunger grew. The temptation was nearly too much.

Ariana knew what she was doing. She was striking while her brother was at his most vulnerable. Truly, she was the evilest little sister anyone could have.

Even if he became the darkness and punished her, it wouldn’t be much more than a slap on the wrist. They were family, and they had a genuine love for each other, but that could come at the cost of countless lives.

Thankfully, Zarian had friends!

“I get it. When I turned eighteen, I wanted to show off and do whatever I wanted, too,” Bianca said, stepping on small platforms of light to get between Zarian and Ariana. “But there’s power in dressing tastefully, and there’s power in being a nice little sister for your big brother. Now you need to leave, because you’re being a bad influence on Zarian, and you need to think about being better than that.”

Bianca sounded reasonable and mature, holding herself with impeccable bearing, as if she really was royalty.

Ariana, almost like her big brother, didn’t give a damn.

“Get out of my way. This is between me and my brother, and you are nothing but a pet, you blonde idiot,” Ariana growled.

“I see. You wish to find out. Dale.” Suddenly, Bianca became a neutron star of light so bright Zarian’s entire being revolted in surprise.

Zarian would’ve feared for himself if it wasn’t for how Bianca directed the light straight at Ariana’s projected form. That didn’t seem to stop the darkness inside and outside of Zarian from shying away some.

For that moment, the cosmic hunger abated, as if the darkness became uncertain if it should come out fully just yet. It was then, while the darkness showed weakness, that Zarian found his opportunity to finish sealing his Two Percent Power, ending the chant with, “Full Control.”

The titanic dark towers swinging and flexing above them stopped. They broke apart into rapidly fading motes as the storm above rumbled softly with no divine essence to power it anymore.

Zarian felt wrung and worn out for the first time in a while. But he hadn’t failed himself, and he hadn’t failed his friends.

Better yet, all his nights cultivating didn’t go to waste and his friends had come through for him, Bianca especially.

You might be reading a pirated copy. Look for the official release to support the author.

When Zarian searched around after Bianca dimmed down, he saw Ariana was gone.

“What the hell was all that light behind us?!” Gilbert shouted through the spider network. “I lost track of everything because of these howling bastards in my face and the giant black tentacles in the air doing UnChristian things.”

“That was me!” Bianca admitted. “Zarian’s little sister was being a bad girl! So I flashed her!”

“Ariana’s eighteen, right?” Gilbert asked.

“Yes,” Hannah answered.

“Okay, no pause,” Gilbert grunted.

“Is Ariana gone, gone? I mean the projection of her, not her sleeping body,” Naomi questioned.

The others waited for Zarian to answer, and he tried to think back on the flow of events when Bianca had used her brightest flash yet on Ariana. Sealing his darkness had distracted him, but he could’ve sworn that Bianca violently wiped away Ariana’s projected image.

He wasn’t sure how much of that would affect Ariana directly, but it seemed like Bianca had defeated yet another dragon.

And not just a dragon.

Bianca had rejected The Dragoness, even if it was only a mental projection.

Ariana wasn’t showing up again, so the defeat might stick for the meantime.

“I think Bianca won,” Zarian said.

“Oh, Gilbert’s Christian fucking God,” Naomi muttered.

“Hey, now! Watch it!” Gilbert warned.

Naomi didn’t care. “We’re not checking notifications until after Operation Save The Cook is done, right?”

“Yeah,” Zarian answered.

“Fuck! I need to know if Bianca got a win on Ariana or not!” Naomi grouched.

“I’m not looking! So I can’t tell you! You must wait,” Bianca sang.

“Ugh, dammit!” Naomi took her frustrations out on the aberrations, punching and kicking some into the sky.

“Perhaps the sooner we take care of our work here, the sooner we can see the notifications,” Para said, joining in on the spider network. “Bianca, dear, would this be the right time for you to take care of the Prime Archbishop?”

“All I have to do is wait,” Bianca said.

“Oh, is that so?” Para inquired.

“Because he’s going to come to me. I’m standing next to the Dark Lord. And the Dark Lord did Dark Lord things that a hater like the Prime Archbishop won’t like,” Bianca answered.

Nobody questioned Bianca anymore, because she was right, which was almost unfair.

Bianca could come to the right conclusions through the sheer power of her high Wonder stat without having to think much at all. That had led to Bianca being in the right place at the right time when Luciana and Ariana both tried to push Zarian over the edge.

Yeah, it really is best to let Bianca be herself and not question it too much, Zarian thought, as he transitioned into helping Para with spell casts of Void Authority.

With him involved in stopping teleportations, the burden became much easier for Para. Together, they could stop a thousand teleportation attempts every few seconds.

The cost to stop all of that would’ve been mind-melting and too much on their aura if it wasn’t for Zarian’s Aura Magnificence and Hannah’s Aura Generator.

For the first time since they’d known each other, Zarian had to rely on Hannah’s nearly limitless aura supply and rapid aura recovery through the spider network. This was while Hannah helped him recover aura after he nearly wrung himself dry from using Two Percent Darkness.

The extra aura from Hannah was also a relief for Para, who’d stayed locked in on teleportation defense the whole time.

Better yet, the Parasite Cloak +3 had kept a spark of herself from falling to Zarian’s darkness because of her latest advancement and its founding of her personhood. She’d pulled through just like Zarian thought she would, and that was wonderful for both him and Para.

Things only improved from there.

“Skies are manageable now. Payload being delivered,” Hannah said on the spider network. “In three. Two. One.”

A streaking red comet punched down from the dark clouds above. Without the calamitous and wrathful winds of Luciana’s boon-raised storm, the shining red artillery round found no issues landing somewhere close to its mark.

Both Zarian and Naomi shouted “KILL!!” when the 250mm magic artillery struck with a fiery and explosive result that filled the basin with a bright red light.

Tons of rubble, smashed aberration, hissing steam, and black smoke rose upward in a rising and blooming mushroom. Smoldering debris rained in all directions, reaching as far as the paladin camp behind Zarian and the castle itself on the other side.

Then a few seconds later, another red comet of an artillery round streaked down from the sky and led to the same explosive and mushrooming result. Then, after a few seconds, another came down and did the same. Then another. And then another.

None of them landed in the same spot. They moved up and down the field, sometimes going side to side. But they fell accurately enough between the castle and the angled walls and ditches.

Hannah was showing her genius here.

She could coordinate with the spiders at the artillery battery site. She could shoot from the midrange to help clear out aberrations that get past the choke point or beyond the wall. She could control the battlefield and knock down the horrid aberration waves with enough time.

The aberration attack slowed significantly, and the Floridians found themselves cruising a little more.n/ô/vel/b//in dot c//om

“Fucking damn,” Naomi said. “I didn’t know you can dish it out like that, Hannah.”

“Thank Reiki and her library,” Hannah said. “The amount of technical information kept in those books is staggering. It took a lot of extrapolating and my engineering experience, but I found ways to bridge the gap between what I could do with enchantments and modern warfare.”

“Don’t forget your Minecraft cheat,” Zarian said, unbothered by the fiery light glowing over the walls.

He loved the wrath and destruction of magic artillery regardless of how much light it produced.

“Yes, well, my cheat abilities are indeed great factors,” Hannah said. “Are we fine with flame explosives for now? It seems effective enough. I don’t wish to obstruct our path with ice magic and I’m a little unsure of lightning magic while all of us are wet.”

“I bet the fire would hurt them more if it wasn’t so wet out there,” Naomi said.

“Let me solve that,” Zarian said. “Para, hand me the feisty boy.”

“Be careful with him.” Para passed over the growling and kicking grimoire to Zarian’s outstretched hand.

Once he got a hold of Morph, the Madness Wizard clamped down firmly. The squirming and hissing grimoire rebelled more than any grimoire, like a spoiled teenager.

Since Para had already used the gentle mother route, Zarian played his role as the tough father. “Hey, kid, I know you think you’re your own grimoire. So I’m going to give you a choice. Either you cast spells for me based on when and how I tell you to do it. Or you let me do the casting of spells. Or I will force you to follow orders, and you will not like it when I do.”

Zarian didn’t mince words, letting his Uncanny Valley Effect and The Dreaded One unfold through his aura and his voice. He bore down on the feisty grimoire, and while it acted boldly in its rebellion, Zarian’s traits and his Willpower became too crushing for the weird and freaky grimoire to deny.

Becoming pliant, the covers spread and the pages flipped to show what he’d desired.

Zarian shook his head. “Man, you are a messy thing, but whatever. A little tough love will certainly set you straight.”

Zarian went in and out of the void to reach a spot above the battlefield. Smoke, steam, roiling flames, and aberrations raged down below. Most of the flames didn’t last for long because of the flooded battlefield.

Zarian fixed that with his next spell cast, chanting, “Water to Slime.”

For thousands of feet in all directions, Zarian turned water into a thick, oily, jelly-like substance that had a tendency to cling heavily. By the time the spell was complete, Zarian returned to the other side of the defenses before the inevitable whoosh of roaring flames took place on the battlefield.

Another glaring red artillery round fell. The resulting explosion sent flying debris that burned far more wrathfully now because of the napalm-like slime Zarian had made from water.

He went back and forth between falling artillery rounds to cast Water to Slime again and again. He stopped once the battlefield beyond the defenses became a burning hellscape that the aberrations had to run through if the artillery hadn’t blasted them to smithereens.

“You do know I have to stand here and soak their hits, right? It was okay before, but now I have to take them on while they’re covered in magic napalm,” Gilbert grumbled.

“I bet you’ll come out smelling like roses,” Zarian said.

“Sorry to break in, my friends, but I think the paladins are coming out now,” Bianca informed. “Oh, and there’s this strong old man at the front with a big shiny sword. He looks angry, and he’s glaring straight at you, Zarian.”

“Want to go say hi to him for me?” Zarian asked. “Hell, you can go tell them that eloquent phrase of yours.”

“Sure!” Bianca chirped before going off on her own to face the Prime Archbishop and a hundred of his Battle Bishops.

Zarian kept an eye on her, of course, ready to jump in just in case. He also had a thousand spectral spiders that could help lay traps on the water-logged ground. If it came down to it, he would even use his Good Suppression Orb and Scroll of Godly Banishment.

He doubted Bianca could dominate with the full power of her free good +6. She’d admitted how she felt selfish for coming here to assassinate the Prime Archbishop for her own aims, which would put her at a disadvantage.

Thus, Zarian felt some concern, but that quickly faded when Bianca reached into her satchel. She pulled out two legendary items.

First, the Scroll of the Shining Stage.

Then, the Scroll of Bestial Transformation.

Going down to meet the greatest fighters of the Stalwart Paladin Kingdom, Bianca untied the strings from around both scrolls and activated them. Immediately, a tower of light blasted through the dark clouds and shone down on Bianca.

With a spotlight on her transformation, she attempted to say her well-rehearsed phrase:

“Hello, my name is Princess Bianca Garcia. I must kill you for my familia. Prepare to … FACE JUDGMENT FOR BEING TOO UGLY!”