Overpowered Wizard-Chapter B4 Ch2: Hit Harder

The Carrowmore Thousand Year Tournament raged like no event the Star System, or its sibling Systems, had ever seen. Billions of Master Rankers from four different universes fought with all of their might and savagery to survive.

No group of Master Rankers suffered more than those from the Star System as contestants from the Assimilation System, Gold System, and Shifter System hunted them down in hopes of finding the Dark Lord.

Star adventurers died or surrendered the fastest. But there was an inverse effect of rapidly feeding the most powerful star adventurers fodder to test their stats and abilities against, raising them up above the chaff.

In a way, the single-minded focus on attacking the star adventurers more than all other contestants led to the star adventurers who could survive and thrive to grow the fastest.

Still, with two out of eight slots already filled for the Final Round, there was a desperation that everyone felt. They all wanted to find the Dark Lord and beat him in some way.

Of those who wanted a win over the Dark Lord, many wanted to either seal him away forever or consume him and take his apocalyptic darkness for themselves.

As for Zarian, he wasn’t concerned about the rest of the contestants unless they offered unique enough challenges. He was inside the Hunter Gorer Super Dungeon, in a Super World called Jumunja.

While inside that dungeon, he was conducting horrific wizard experiments with his best friend Para at his side. She was helping as his more physically endowed assistant.

The tunnel between dungeon rooms smelled of rotten flesh, spilled bowels, and odors that would’ve poisoned and suffocated non-rankers to death. Blackened blood and sloughing meat oozed in a puddle around Zarian, reaching up to his shins.

The gory spillage had nothing to do with his Grand Slime Transformation spell. It had everything to do with the giant monster pig that died a painful death while housing Zarian’s latest menagerie of horrors.

Zarian was having the time of his life as the freaky grimoire squeaked and gurgled from on top of his left shoulder, dancing with the many centipede legs and human fingers sprouting from its cover. The Conquest Wizard kept channeling an immense and nonstop flow of aura through the materialized grimoire, reinforcing the Eldritch Mutilation Hive Infection spell beyond what was necessary.

The hivelings burst free with screeches of triumph and a series of clicks with their sharpened mandibles.

There were large hivelings that could reach the tunnel’s tall ceiling with their big and intimidating scythes on the end of their largest set of arms. There were small hivelings that weren’t any taller than Zarian’s waist and could move stealthily or even blink around with nearly instant teleportation.

The large hivelings had four giant scythes and two humanoid hands, while the small hivelings had six humanoid hands, each finger tipped with a hook-claw.

Then there were the mid-sized hivelings that were as big as elephants, but weren’t physical fighters like the large hivelings. And they weren’t as fast as their smaller kin. Instead, the mid-sized hivelings came equipped with bio-cannons on four of their six arms and a big bio-turret at the end of their scorpion-like tail.

They reminded Zarian of swarming bugs from the video games and movies in his old universe. The hive mind link was vastly simpler compared to the link from his Super Shade Spider System +3, however.

Though that brought up a question.

Were the hivelings as capable as the shade spiders? Or were they just redundant summons that his spiders and skeletons could easily outdo after all the growth they’d gone through?

He still hadn’t found the proper opportunity to use his new skeleton spell just yet, either.

“I like them,” Para said, bouncing about between the carapace-armored legs.

The newly born hivelings shook off the gory sludge they were born from carefully as Para flitted about around them. Some of the hivelings nibbled on the bloody gunk when a few shade spiders appeared to examine the hivelings.

One spider waved its little chitin sword up at a large Hiveling. The bigger insect reached down and crossed the tip of its blade with the sword of the tiny arachnid.

Just like that, the two summoning types seemed to find peace with each other, becoming allies instead of erupting into a competitive dance off.

That was fine and dandy to see, but now Zarian had to decide if he wanted to continue cheesing the dungeon or crawl it properly. Being able to combine his seemingly unlimited aura supply with void spells, gravity sorcery, darkness, lion bloodline, and all of his ridiculous buffs made the challenge lose some of its bite.

But he was already here, so he might as well see things through.

“Lead the way.” Zarian waved at Para to go forth. It seemed proper for her to be at the head of the hivelings.

“Come along, my darlings!” Para skipped merrily to the front while the hive mind link transferred mostly from Zarian’s mind to Para’s mind.

Instantly, the hivelings became more aggressive, mandibles clicking hungrily, the large ones slashing randomly at the air intensely. They were ready to find the next wave of monster boars and tear straight through them. Ɍἁɴo͍ВÊṦ

Following from behind, Zarian cleared the remaining gory mess with Aura Mastery and Void Paradise. Both Void Swords remained in his hands, his grimoires chaining, floating near, orbiting around, or clutching him.

With the pause in action and progression, Zarian wondered how the others were doing.

Was Bianca okay in the elf empire? How was Gilbert’s solo grind? Did Hannah get everything she wanted out of the Forgotten Kingdom Dungeon?

Zarian’s concerns expanded to the others involved with him, from Ruvaria to Reiki to even Ezda. There was his arranged wife, Lucy, who was taking on the risk of slowing Ariana’s awakening.

And there was the woman he painfully loved, Naomi, who could still be in her tribulation, stuck in a coma. The next time they met, Zarian had to brace himself for the potential conflict that might come.

Though it was a little interesting that the two women he was most familiar with in his past were both asleep right now. And they were both harboring some scary power, less-so for Naomi’s case compared to Ariana.

As Zarian mused, shade spiders looted anything of worth behind him. They performed dances and sent the loot through Void Paradise to Para for storing in her pocket dimension.

The shade spiders were efficient adventurers, and the quality of their power had shot up every time Zarian made a gain in his aura abilities. This was especially true for the casters among the adventurous spiders.

The walk was going to be an enriching one, but then all of Zarian’s musing and the spider’s looting ended when a new line-up of monsters appeared.

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Perfect.

The monsters were new types, reaching up to twenty-feet in height. Each of them wore rugged leathers made of human skin and hardened excrement that were somehow mythical quality.

Each of the new boar monsters wielded a single crude axe. The power emanating from the weapons was at the higher end of mythical.

If the spearing boar monsters were the initial guards, then these axe boar monsters had to be the enforcers.

They didn’t even bother using Aura Ignition at first. They shot forward with quick lunges. They clashed directly with the lower scythes of the large hivelings and tried to bully them out of the way to get to Zarian.

The large hivelings barely budged.

Their sharpened legs dug into the dungeon’s soil and bedrock, ripping through high-quality plants for a few inches and no more. They held back the boar monsters, their evolutionary adaptability a counter to the dungeon creatures.

Screeching with battle lust and hunger for flesh, the large hivelings attacked with a flurry of strikes far faster than any strike from a shade spider or advancing skeleton outside of the more roguish types.

Zarian watched with interest as the large hivelings, who were three times taller than the axe-wielding boar monsters, moved nimbly. He watched as their furious and fast strikes landed with a Strength that could knock down castle mountains back in Corma.

The boar monsters replied in kind with their hulking might and axe swings that swatted aside some attacks, but not all. The boar monsters had to rely on their rock-hard bodies to endure the attacks that slipped through.

But the hits that landed left an impression, bloodying the boar monsters, poisoning them, and applying other effects that weakened vitality and slowed them down.

Meanwhile, the mid-sized hivelings lined up their shots. They unleashed volleys of caustic bolts that struck with an oomph and sizzle, forcing the axe-wielding boar monsters to reel backward some.

Following the ranged attacks, the small hivelings stealth-blinked onto the backs of the boar monsters. Then the small hivelings revealed their own trick – they exploded while hooked tight to the monsters. The explosions weren’t large, but their potency was drastic, eliminating layers of mythical leather and high-level flesh.

Only then did the boar monsters reveal their full aura power. 𝕗𝐫𝚎𝗲𝘄𝐞𝕓𝐧𝕠𝘃𝕖𝐥.𝐜𝚘𝚖

But it wasn’t anything Zarian wasn’t familiar with – instead of Aura Ignition, the boar monsters gathered aura around their flesh and kept condensing it from both inside and outside.

Zarian watched with studious interest as the boar monsters achieved a new aura technique. They layered an armored coat made purely of intense aura around their bodies. But the coat was some of the densest layers of aura Zarian had seen outside of some aura maneuvers Ruvaria had shown him.

Immediately, all the immense scythes from the large hivelings bounced off the aura-armored boar monsters. One Hiveling screeched in frustration as it activated abilities to speed up its attack speed and damage.

But the rapid attacks kept deflecting off the boar monster’s Aura Armor, sparks flying in showers that were as big and thick as geysers.

The boar monsters replied, swinging their mythical axes while ignoring the attacks. Three of the large hivelings fell like trees as they got hacked apart.

It was only then that Para jumped in. She rushed one of the Aura-Armored boar monsters and struck with a punch, but it was no simple blow.

Her flesh hardened into advanced-bone armor around her fist. She manipulated gravity and various runic magic to propel her faster and increase her weight. She made her body denser, her flesh thicker, her shape more deadly and ferocious. And she drew more power from her nuclear heart, her lightning storages, and directly from Zarian. That was all on top of the buffs that directly affected her.

With all of that, Para channeled her aggression into one point that struck the midsection an aura-armored boar monster.

The collision was something so awe-inspiring and destructive, Zarian took a step back into the void to avoid the blast. He brought the remaining hivelings and shade spiders with him, too.

No point in wasting good swarm units, right?

When Zarian and his swarm returned from the void, he found one armored boar monster splattered into mulch. Two others were in their death-throes.

And there was a smoky hole in the floor that the super dungeon couldn’t patch up right away. Para had dished out so much damage at once she turned the mythical material into slag.

Zarian looked down into the smoky hole and saw the gap between realms. It was looking really thin down there.

His Devourer of Secrets and Stories trait had an easier time spreading its power now.

A dozen aura-armored boar monsters remained, but they hesitated to engage Para. She stood on the edge of the smoky hole like a hardened warrior.

Para held her Void Sword in one hand while she held up her other hand, flexing it open and closed. Her face, which mirrored his own while looking feminine and pretty on her, wore a look of consternation.

She completely ignored the other monsters as she studied herself.

“What’s up?” Zarian asked.

“I could’ve hit harder than that,” Para said, still flexing her hand.

“The twenty locks aren’t going to let you achieve your full power,” Zarian said. “Want me to remove a few?”

Before Para could answer, the dozen remaining boar monsters attacked, sensing a growing threat they wanted to stop now.

Their bulky weight and power bullied aside the hivelings as half of the boars ganged up on Para. The other half surged toward Zarian.

Smiling, Zarian focused, his mental acuity speeding up. The boar monsters and their axe swings seemed slow in comparison.

With plenty of time, he paid more attention to his two Void Swords. He was no true swordsman. He really shouldn’t be playing around within someone’s reach.

Even with his Super Speed Force +2, melee enemies were usually going to have a leg up in physical stats and abilities.

But Zarian had what was quintessentially unlimited amounts of aura. And he could turn his body into something akin to the void with Wizard Body Conversion +2. Doing so turned him into an all-consuming darkness that was like a human-shaped tear in reality.

Zarian also covered the air in gravity arrays and multiplied the weight of every armored-up boar that tried to rush him, slowing them down drastically.

While that happened, he focused aura, void magic, and darkness into his Void Swords. He slammed them together and created a great Void Sword that was as tall as him and thick at the bottom.

He kept pouring more into the great Void Sword, its edge screeching against the touch of reality and dungeon magic. All that tried to contain the unfathomable power of the greatsword that ‘cannot cut, but would cut anyway,’ sharpened its paradoxical nature.

Then he took a step into the void and came out from behind a slowed-down hulk of an armored-up boar. He slashed straight through its hip, met some resistance, and got his greatsword caught halfway through its body.

That only made Zarian smile more. He unleashed an explosion of void darkness from inside of the boar monster and forcefully tore it apart from the inside-out.

An axe chopped at his head, and Zarian slipped back into the void easily. All the realm magic from the super dungeon was at its weakest after Para’s nuking display, and Zarian’s buffs were as ramped up as they could be, Grandmaster Spellslinger most of all.

The more Mysticism Zarian had, the tighter his control over magic. He lived up to one of his traits for sure this way, Outer Planar Scourge, and kept slipping in and out of the void.

He shoved his paradoxical greatsword through the back of another boar monster’s head and blasted it apart with an eruption of void darkness. Three axes swung his way, but they all missed, with Zarian appearing on the ground underneath their hulking heights.

He braced himself and swung with all his darkened might. His mind whirred with impossible paradoxes. His mystical will desired the sharpest edges of Five Percent Darkness to come forth. And he slashed through all of their legs, debasing them.

As they crashed down, Zarian held up his great Void Sword and applied more gravity sorcery. Then, with more chops, he split up the armored boars until they were nice lopped up pieces that his hivelings could infect and reproduce from. The boar’s Aura Armor and other traits would do wonders for the Hiveling’s evolution.

Zarian turned away from the mutilating infection spree and was shocked to see Para still fighting six-on-one in the more traditional way. Rapid and strident blows exchanged between her and the six boar monsters as they took turns to attack her smaller body.

Para would go as far as not dodging, choosing to hold her ground and parry with her Void Sword or a bone blade sprouted from her forearm. Then she would strike back with a mini-nuke of punches and kicks and even tail whips before switching to using magic enhanced sword strikes.

She seemed more concentrated on improving her melee techniques, as if mixing styles from Naomi and Bianca, without cheesing too much. Zarian left her to it.

He was more interested in the newest boar to enter the fray. This one was only eight feet tall, but it carried a scepter made of human skeletons. It reminded Zarian of a shaman and emanated an aura power that was deadly.

“Ah, nice, a proper wizard duel,” Zarian said, smiling toothily. “But I don’t know if only one of you is enough.”

Four more shamans appeared from the tunnel with skeletal scepters similar to the first. That pitted five shamans altogether against one sorcerous wizard.

Even better.