Overpowered Wizard-Chapter B4 Ch21: Improvise, Adapt, Overcome

“Yeah, definitely overkill. That’s kind of crazy, though. She has Devouring Darkness because of me.” Zarian turned in a direction that seemed random but wasn’t – it was the metaphysical direction of Corma. His Lion Prince skill tingled. The answer came to him. “Absolute Darkness. Ruvaria. She really took after me as my…” Girlfriend.

Naomi was dropping into the friend position, wasn’t she? Maybe that was for the best after the mess they’d caused before her coma. Still, Ruvaria was going into her darker and edgy goth elf era.

He shook his head. “Man, there are too many edgelords cropping up. I thought that was supposed to be my thing!”

He waited for Para to respond.

Silence.

It was weird. The silence.

He wasn’t sure what to make of it just yet. “Well, might as well fuse you boys together. Ready to see what you all become afterward?”

He turned toward his grimoires. They rattled, growled, hissed, and hummed. They were ready to become one and revel in their new form.

Just when Zarian was going to prompt the system to do it for him … he stopped. Under all of that darkness, he screwed his mouth into a frown. A troubling question poked at him. Something that was bubbling up from the pit that revealed a stark truth.

Why was he relying on the System for this?

He’d pumped his stats in Willpower, Wonder, and Mysticism so he could rely more on himself. He’d pushed his aura to greater heights to achieve more with his personal power for a reason. He’d studied sorcery, one of the hardest disciplines of magic, one of the few that could translate over to system manipulation.

Yeah, without Para, he was far more squishy now, but he could handle Thirty Percent Darkness. That meant something.

That meant a lot.

He was capable of so much more.

Zarian growled at himself. “Stop holding back.”

Nobody responded. Ash and debris kept raining down. All four grimoires became still, unsure of him. He wasn’t sure either, but he got to be real with himself.

“No, seriously, what are you scared of? Why are you still holding back? There’s nobody but you now. No Naomi. No Ruvaria. No Para. No Ariana. Not even Gilbert and the others. Nobody.” He told himself.

“What if you end up alone? You’re too strong. You’re too scary. What if everyone you know and love in this life ends up dead just like the last?” Zarian asked himself in return. “You’ve been holding off against this for a long time. For a reason. Without the shackles we put on ourselves, what if we leave them all behind? Or something worse happens?”

He’d seen a vision of the Biggest for a reason. Somewhere down in his family tree, the Biggest Granmama, or Grandma, was so uncontrollably powerful, she couldn’t even hold her attention in any place for long or it would get destroyed. His Lion Prince skill had come from her. The monster inside of him was her fault even though Zarian didn’t want to blame her like that.

But he did want to blame the Funnest for being an asshole with all the knowledge.

“I have parents! We have parents!” Zarian yelled, just realizing that small tidbit had flown right by him while dealing with Grandpa Jay. Zarian had been too shocked to absorb that even with his free evil mind.

Angered, Zarian’s darkness snapped and lashed out around him. One long stand whipped out for many miles and slashed across some undamaged lands behind him. His notifications lit up with the slain, and he might’ve killed a tournament contestant just by accident.

Shaking his head, Zarian clenched his jaw and withdrew his anger. He tried to lock down his darkness and … failed.

He committed to the hand signs, inscribed his aura into runes, and followed through with all that Ruvaria had taught him along with what he’d learned with his own studies. He put all of his Willpower against himself and more.

Reality and magic shrilled. Dark sparks flew from the sheer effort of Zarian trying to bound his Thirty Percent Darkness. It was like trying to move the world. A big, big world.

This thing was a cosmic entity lodged in his soul, and he’d allowed a large and hungry part of it free. Yet, Zarian fought. He found his footing, shifting down Thirty Percent Darkness to Twenty-Nine Percent Darkness. He kept going from there, leveraging success after success like a boulder rolling downhill.

Twenty-five.

Twenty.

Thirteen.

Six.

By the time he got down to one percent, he felt like his aura was going to suffer a hernia. Blood poured down from his nose and from his ears until he finally put the damn thing to rest under his own control. Then immense relief washed over him. His bombastic hat lit up with intense red-blue arcane lights. A surge of aura entered his system again.

“Whoa!” Zarian laughed as he became flooded with aura inside and outside of him. He was also naked. Oh well. He’d get by just…

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“Crap. Para has everything.” The urge to smack himself in the face came and went. He just shook his head and laughed it off. His mood was definitely better. All of that dark edginess could weigh on the mind.

Looking around, Zarian realized he’d drifted back to the ground while focused on locking down all of his darkness. He stood in the debris and ashfall, the scene like a mystical apocalyptic movie. His big, bombastic hat caught most of the fall for him like an umbrella. And his grimoires were still waiting eagerly for the eventual merger.

“Alright, guys, I’ve made you wait long enough. Let’s do this.”

He turned to his grimoires, a big smile on his face. Despite everything else, he could focus on the pure joy of magic and see what happened when maxed-out grimoires combined. He had an idea, of course. Ruvaria had shown her one big grimoire of spells to him as an example. It was as beautiful and complex as she was.

Huh … if her Absolute Darkness is good enough. Maybe she can keep up with me. He couldn’t wait to see her again. But those happy and excited thoughts were a distraction. He’d deal with them – and his concerns about Lucy – later.

It was time to combine–

An assassin in the mid Champion Ranks dropped their cloaking and blitzed Zarian from behind. Kudos to them. They actually got the jump on him.

Unfortunately, they could only get so close until the pure density of Zarian’s massive aura stopped them in their place. With Overwhelming Darkness fully bound, and with Para separated, it was easier for Zarian’s raw natural power to express itself.

The assassin slowed from blitz speed to a crawl and fell to his knees with ten feet between him and his target. The weight increased, and the man dug five feet into the ground as ash and debris kept raining down. Zarian tilted his head, his bombastic hat flopping slightly.

“Dude, it’s rude to go at a man from behind when he’s bare to the elements.” Zarian shook his head. “Sure, I’m a freak, yeah, but I’m vanilla with my practices. I like boobs, ass, and a pretty face on a pretty girl. So, um, no thanks.”

Zarian gave the man two thumbs up. The assassin cried with all his might until he couldn’t cry any further. The weight kept increasing. The density became thicker. Zarian watched as the ground beneath him crumpled downward the more he let his aura hang out.

And he was still recovering his aura. He hadn’t topped off yet. He had plenty of room for more, but what he had already was killing the Level 250. Then the assassin turned into paste, running into the floor.

Zarian watched all of this with some slight disturbance.

“Oh, I’m strong, strong.” He stroked his chin. “Hm. Can I even return to Corma like this? No, I can’t.”

Then, a great big revelation hit him.

Zarian stumbled into the crater of his own making. His aura flared wildly. An explosion of power spread in one big circular wall that smacked away the raining debris and smoke.

Zarian watched as he crushed the ground hundreds of feet downward and created a massive bowl miles wide before he stopped his aura and tried to rein it in. Still, he remained on his bare ass, his dark eyes wide with shock.

“I’m way stronger than Ruvaria now, aren’t I?” Zarian said. “Without my darkness. Just me as I am now. I’ve surpassed her.”

He didn’t know how long he sat there just contemplating his own natural power. He didn’t bother tracking it. For most people, they would celebrate and cry out in joy to be this strong. But for Zarian, the more powerful he became, the more separate he’d become from the people he cherished most.

“I’m too dangerous to go back now,” Zarian mumbled. “I have to keep going upward.”

He’d wanted this, didn’t he? To find greater strength. To risk death and really push himself. He’d said he wanted this. But there had been a reason he’d held himself back for so long. The moment he let go of the restraints, he’d blew past the levels and ranks so fast, so hard, the Infinita Star System could barely keep up.

As Zarian’s grimoires waited for him, he sat there contemplating the turn of his fate. He looked left and right at the barren bowl he’d created from just having a bit of a shock. He’d thought about Racella’s overwhelming fear of him, and how monstrous Para had come out to be from being unleashed from him.

His free evil had grown so much, Zarian decided not to track it anymore. The trajectory was going to hit exponential soon enough.

“Improvise. Adapt. Overcome.” Slowly, he got to his feet. “Improvise. Adapt. Overcome.”

To use a phrase from his short time in the Marine Corps was an unexpected mental maneuver, but it was working. Zarian shifted from away wallowing and focused on what he could do about it. He repeated it a third time, feeling more locked in.

“Improvise. Adapt. Overcome.” Zarian looked up. “Okay, I’m hella powerful. Ridiculously so. I can’t return to Corma like this unless I can get this all under control. I can probably hit the Level 300s in a few weeks. Maybe in less time if I really put my back into it.”

He glanced at his waiting grimoires. “Powering forward like this might break the system a little. But if my trajectory is going to be exponential, I might as well lean into it rather than half-ass it. If I don’t lean into it, it’ll only make things worse.”

Nodding, Zarian let the wisdom flow. “I’ll send a message to my friends. The system can do it for me after the tournament, maybe. I imagine I won’t be going through an Ascension Star Trial. Or any star trials. I can probably punch my way up into the realms on my own.”

He squinted upward. “I can … can’t I? I can do a lot of things just because I have enough power and stats for it. So … what if I speed my run my way up to God Land? And I take the Throne of the Adventurer King? And I solve the problem with my sister once and for all? Then I can wait for my friends to catch up however long that takes.”

Zarian’s heart thundered in his chest. Ripples of aura flowed out. The debris clouds and ashfall moved like waves through an ocean. He was pacing left and right as he realized the truth about what was achievable. He’d been looking at things from such a negative and grounded lens for so long, he hadn’t realized the perks of power came with longevity, and his friends would experience that, too.

“Of course! I can just wait for them! This isn’t the end of us. It’s just … I have to take care of business. The mission comes first. Just like in the Marines. Then we can handle troop welfare. If I go hard and deal with Ariana first, I can save us from Grandpa Jay and save the entire universe and beyond.”

And maybe he could work with Ariana on how to wizard punch the hell out of Jay. That old man had a dark beam with his name on it waiting for him. Regardless of that, Zarian was all smiles now. He felt like a great weight had finally fallen from his shoulders.

His heart felt lighter. His mind felt lighter. He was honestly looking forward to the crazy progression train he was about to embark on. And there was so much he could do while he was making his way up.

He could try to achieve some honest and actual good that had nothing to do with the alignments. Maybe it wouldn’t correct all the wrong, but he could take after Gilbert’s example and just try his best. He could record all the things he’d see and compare notes with Hannah once she caught up. He was pretty sure that Bianca would probably know what was happening and feel it through the vibes because … well … Bianca was Bianca. There was everybody else back home, and then there was Naomi.

“We’ll have that conversation when she catches up.” Zarian nodded.

That should solve that. He was certain of it.

Though there was some wriggle room for doubt. What would he do if he could control his outrageous power output and go back to Corma anyway?

“Then I’ll improvise, adapt, and overcome. One way or another, things will work out. I’ll make sure they do.”