Overpowered Wizard

The System allowed for multiple skills to function at the same time. It didn’t assist much with Zarian’s multi-spell attempts.

Zarian didn’t care and kept risking permanent brain damage anyway. He felt like he was close to a breakthrough. He just needed to keep pushing.

He saw the runic symbols staying strong for the skeleton spell in his mind’s eye. The runic symbols for the lifesteal spell flickered on and off, fighting to stay active.

He caught the sensation of an energy – his aura – streaming out of sync, more so than usual. He noticed the strand of aura breaking and reforming on beat with the lifesteal symbols turning on and off in his brain.

Just when Zarian thought he might have a breakthrough, his brain felt like it blew some fuses. Thankfully, he was back on his feet while Para and his skeletons protected him, but that was where his luck ended.

His body went slack, and he nearly crashed backward. Para folded some fleshy material under him and turned it solid – she became a simple chair with a backrest.

Zarian nearly blanked out before snapping himself back to a semblance of focus. But, oh, did it hurt! It was absolute hell.

He’d just committed self-lobotomy, and he now had to pay the price until he reconnected with Gilbert.

At the very least, he could keep the skeleton spell going still. It took a lot of painful concentration.

Blood poured down his nostrils in a strong, consistent flow. He felt around his nose to check for any brain chunks. Nothing yet.

His vision was terrible. The lights were brighter and more distracting. Everything was fuzzier. He was in terrible shape.

Perfect, now the real training could begin.

“Para, everyone, let me do more of the fighting now,” Zarian said. “With this, I’ll earn my next level up.”

Para vibrated with uncertainty. The skeletons rattled with a note of uncertainty as well. They were concerned, but they didn’t contradict his orders.

Zarian stood to his feet woozily. He stalked down the hallway in search of enemy spiders.

His condition persisted. His fuzzy vision made everything harder to see unless it was in shade or darkness. He could see things clearer in the dark, but the magic sconce light dominated mostly.

It was good he had a crystal clear mini-map in the corner of his vision. It was worth its weight in gold right now.

Para vibrated urgently against his chest in the two o’ clock direction. Zarian barely formed a dark pillar in time to block a projectile. It splashed on the dark surface and made a dangerous hissing sound.

Ah, this was a new type of spider. The last ones shot web balls, which had entangled him once. This one shot acid.

Good, he could deal with deadly projectile fights. A few training exercises from his stint as a Marine Infantryman translated to a battle like this.

Zarian formed another straight pillar a dozen feet to his left. It was a distraction as he leaned to the right from behind his current cover. He knew the general area of the shooter because of his minimap. He thrust his palm forward.

A dense shotgun volley of dark darts peppered the spider shooter’s location. Zarian heard the wet and sloppy burst of spider meat getting splattered. A gold notification confirmed the kill:

.

He didn’t linger out from behind cover for too long, and good thing, too.

More hissing volleys of acidic projectiles crashed against his position. He studied the minimap and saw new red dots closing in. The red dot he peppered with a spray of dark darts turned gray with a red ‘X’ over it, signifying a dead enemy.

Three new shooters edged closer to the other side of the dead spider. The shooters took turns spitting acid and covering for each other.

Zarian noticed his pillar was losing its integrity from the constant volley of attacks. Enough hits would break through and dissolve it.

“Should I cheese this?” Zarian asked himself deliriously. “Nah, let me think on my feet even with a busted-ass brain.”

He kept watch of the minimap. The spiders closed in as a group instead of spreading out to attack from different angles. Zarian let the first intrusive thought become reality.

From the spider’s perspective, they had the human with the strange fleshy cloak pinned behind temporary cover.

The skeletons stayed on the sides, closer to the walls and out of the way. If the spiders moved from the center of the hallway, the skeletons might attack them. With three spiders together, they could shoot one by one consistently in a deadly stream of projectile attacks.

The situation took a sudden change when the human with the monstrous cloak of flesh, bones, and lamprey mouths lunged out from his disintegrating cover. He didn’t go left or right. He went up.

Zarian shot into the air off of a fast-rising pillar of darkness. He went so high he would’ve hit the ceiling if Para hadn’t fanned out the cloak. The added air resistance slowed him down and stabilized him as he aimed at the grouped up spiders.

“Die motherfucker, die motherfucker, die!” Zarian shouted, releasing a hail-storm of long, dark bullets like he was a machine gunner.

The stream of dark bullets slashed through one spider and split it in half. He chopped off multiple legs of the second spider and sent it barreling to its side.

The third spider stood its ground and returned fire before taking the hail of dark bullets to its face. By sheer luck, or Para’s mico-interventions, the hissing acid shot missed him by a few inches to his left.

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That would’ve left more than a mark if it had landed.

Zarian glided to the ground with Para’s help. He noticed the last remaining spider scrambling around with only four legs.

Another intrusive thought came to mind and found no resistance.

Zarian raised his hand and gathered darkness from the floor, up his body, and onto his palm. A straight edge sprouted upward with a slight curve – like a giant katana or nodachi found in eastern fantasy.

It reached seven feet in length before Zarian tightened his grip around the roughly straight handle and sliced down. Despite its thinness, the giant nodachi was immensely dense.

Zarian’s shoulder hurt as he used all of his Strength and his control over darkness to cut through the remaining spider. He even left a cut on the floor.

“Nice!” Zarian laughed until the severe migraine made him shut up.

The pain throbbed from terrible to nightmarish and back. During the rush of combat, he’d ignored it. With everything falling still, he was back to a slow and painful mental death.

Zarian raised his seven-foot nodachi from the floor and onto his shoulder. It was a little weird to control. By having a good hold on it like a melee weapon, he felt less of his skill at work, forcing him to use up a majority of his limited Strength.

In other words, the System was forcing him to get physical if he wanted to play with a giant sword.

Zarian grinned like a madman, his lower face smeared completely with his blood. “Hey, what if I can train up my Strength and Agility this way?”

If he were to train physically with heavy swords and eat Foodie’s meals, then he could gain some physical stats without using points from his level ups.

Of course, that would eat up time he could better spend in perfecting his wizardry.

As of now, there wasn’t much for Zarian to do with a self-lobotomized brain. At most, he could train up his Straight Darkness while maintaining the skeleton spell at the same time.

So it was all working out, at least in his opinion.

Zarian expanded the mini-map. He found four blue dots that were likely Gilbert, Bianca, Hannah, and Loner.

They could see each other’s blue dots far across the dungeon. They couldn’t see enemy red dots unless they closed the distance by a set amount.

Zarian found it curious that Naomi and her minions had remained in the same spot for a while. It was too painful to think long on that with a self-inflicted lobotomy. At the very least, they were blue and alive.

He set a course for Gilbert. Para scouted ahead with thin threads and thinner hairs of flesh. She directed him around traps regardless of his fussing that he could probably use those for training.

Para didn’t listen to him, and Zarian didn’t have the mental capability to fight her on it. His skeleton guard followed in the back, covering their rear.

Para warned of more threats, more shooters. Zarian checked the mini-map. He saw eight spiders scuttling in his direction.

Then his attention shifted to something more interesting. Something yellow appeared north of him, down a side passage.

Zarian loped in that direction, surprising Para and the skeletons. They followed him into a dark and narrow passageway.

His ankle caught on a spider thread placed at ankle height. Panels in the ceiling peeled open. Dark pipes pointed down at him.

Para vibrated in rage and worry as a rushing liquid poured down from the pipes.

Zarian barely gave it much mind, running on pure instinct. He flicked his free hand up and conjured a flat and dense board of darkness slanted down toward the way they came.

The liquid hit the dense board and followed the downward slope to the floor behind Zarian just when the spiders scuttled into the narrow passageway. The liquid splashed onto the legs, faces, and bellies of the monsters.

Zarian found the treasure chest while sounds of thrashing, acidic hissing, and torturous death resonated from behind him. The dark board he’d summoned wouldn’t last long. A few heavy hits would break through it as the acid ate it away.

One spider smashed through, but it succumbed to the hissing acid before it could reach Zarian’s back.

The System notified him of eight defeated spider monsters, all in the late 20s in level. Zarian shrugged before flipping open the treasure chest and looking inside.

Zarian was a happy camper. He hadn’t known if the Infinita Star System liked to dole out random treasure chests or loot boxes like a video game.

Now he was sure this was part of the adventuring experience, just like how dungeons felt like alternate dimensions grafted into the world’s normal reality.

That was a lot to ponder on, of course, which did Zarian no favors.

With no thoughts, only instincts and whims, Zarian exchanged his shredded hobo shoes for the new boots. They were black with white accents and a cool spidery design where the laces would be.

Instead of him having to lace them up, the mid-shin boots secured themselves and readjusted magically, becoming a perfectly snug fit.

Zarian hopped up and turned to see his skeletons panicking. The liquid had stopped pouring from the trap pipes above. But the oozing and hissing acid was spreading in their direction.

Half-melted spider bodies clogged the way in and out, at least when moving on the floor. Zarian smiled as he walked to his left and placed his foot on the wall. Then he placed his other foot on the wall and felt his entire body go tense.

Just because he could walk on the wall didn’t mean gravity stopped having an effect. The soles of his boots stuck, but that was it.

He was still holding the big nodachi, too, so that added some weight on him. Zarian gritted his teeth as he muscled his way across the wall and over the acid spill and melted spider bodies.

As for his skeletons, he conjured a simple bridge leading up and over. The skeletons made it out just fine. They gave him strange looks while he was huffing and puffing, trying to stay perfectly horizontal on the wall with the dense nodachi.

“I will be … the strongest overpowered wizard!” Zarian declared, all heart and no brains.

The skeletons shook their skulls at him. Eventually, Zarian went back to the ground and continued his trek to find Gilbert and the girls. Or he did whatever he fancied the moment the urges came and he had spiders to fight.

For some reason, Zarian pantomimed being a big-sword warrior. It wasn’t easy, and Para mostly helped him by shifting his limbs around and keeping him balanced with strings of flesh attached to the ceiling or walls, almost like a puppet.

Zarian directed where to go and swing, forming pillars, bridges, and panels along the way. Para assisted, and the skeletons rattled up a cheer for him as he soared through the air and chopped his seven-foot nodachi through another spider, this one Level 30.

“Whoa, damn, I’m gassing,” Zarian said, out-of-breath.

All of that physical movement with a tall and dense sword was tiring. Para had to take more control of him to keep him upright instead of falling face first like an idiot.

At least he’d leveled up to 25 and invested his points. All of his skills went up, too. Straight Darkness was at Level 9. Grimoire of Black Magic 101 was at Level 7. And Parasite Cloak was at Level 8.

“I think it’s time we link up with my healer.” Zarian looked at the mini-map. “Oh, whoops, I went in the wrong direction.”

He’d moved past Gilbert and the girls. They were further down and to his left. He’d gone up and to the right, which was the northwest section of the dungeon.

Naomi and her minions remained in the same spot, doing whatever they were doing while staying alive.

Zarian had a single bright idea of going back and finding Gilbert. Then he noticed several yellow dots behind a unique infrastructure ahead of him.

He looked around and found himself in a large lobby-like area. In front of him were twin, black wooden doors with a large white spider painted on them.

A gold notification popped up:

“Wait, no, I shouldn’t. I need to get my brain healed first,” Zarian said while pushing on the doors.

Para vibrated against his back like she was sighing in defeat. She followed her host like any good parasitic cloak would. The goblin skeletons followed just the same, shaking their skulls silently.