Overpowered Wizard-Chapter B4 Ch24: Ego Check

This guy’s one of the scariest I’ve ever faced, Zarian realized.

He’d fought many people by this point, like those hell orcs from a while ago. Now standing across him was an old orc with the Fourth Stage of Aura Ignition, an entirely different ordeal.

The blazing orange-red, reality-slicing aura surrounding Bukka the Choppa felt like there were a million blades aimed at hacking Zarian apart. He felt it near his skin. All at once. And he sensed it through his magic, especially with the stories that surrounded this orc and his curved sword.

Then again, there was more going on in Zarian’s head than just observing the old orc. A part of his mind was quickly scanning through his spells, unlocking anything between epic and mythical. Going after celestial or above would take too long.

He was also partitioning his mind for another function, working on a complex tapestry of sorceries for different contingencies that were mostly defensive or utility based.

The only problem was that his aura hadn’t filled up yet. The recovery slowed the further he made preparations. There was a point of no return, making it too risky to use Overwhelming Darkness.

Maybe that was the point. As foolish as it was to leave out his strongest weapon, Zarian wanted to–

Bukka chopped off Zarian’s arm in one swift flash of orange-red, blurring into one unstoppable sword strike. The old orc followed up with a mighty punch of his sword hand to Zarian’s jaw and forced the wizard to fall onto his back.

By the time Zarian realized he’d been beaten, Bukka the Choppa disappeared, becoming a contestant of the Final Round. Five spots remained, and Zarian was left on his back stunned from the sheer surprise.

With sorcery, he put his arm back in place, restitching flesh, mending bone, and reconnecting nerves. He didn’t bother fixing the celestial sleeve of his top, which Bukka had sliced through finely. Instead, he stayed on his back, going over the loss in his head.

Para drew closer slowly before stopping next to him and bending into a crouch.

Her face was twisted with contempt, rage, and hurt. She smacked him with her tail lightly, but this was a kindness from her. She was holding back her berserk urges. That was the only kindness she could extend.

“You lost! How can you lose?! You’re supposed to be uber strong! You can destroy a Mega World! But you lost!” Para grouched, tail smacking, teeth gnashing. Was she blaming him or angry at the results? Zarian couldn’t tell. Hearing her outburst was strangely soothing for him.

No … I shouldn’t rely on her to regulate my emotions. Zarian allowed himself to feel angry and embarrassed and even sorry for himself. He stayed on his back and threw a mini pity party for himself while Para ranted at him. Then he moved on, getting back on his feet.

Para created distance fast. Six hundred feet this time. It wasn’t really that far. With their powers, Zarian could whisper under his breath and Para would hear it.

“I think I know why I lost,” Zarian said.

“Tell me!” she shouted.

“I overloaded my mind with multiple actions instead of focusing on one at a time.” Zarian gripped his chin as he worked over the problem that was Bukka the Choppa. “That’s probably how he could beat Ruvaria, too. The two of us are technically way stronger than Bukka…”

“But you could’ve blocked that cut or teleported or used gravity to ruin his engagement. You could’ve struck from far away!”

“I could’ve, and that might’ve made a difference. But I got overconfident because I felt much stronger than him. And I fought him while conditions were less than optimal. Knowing Ruvaria, she probably suffered the same hubris.”

Para growled. “It’s my fault, isn’t it? I’m not a part of you anymore. And I can’t fight alongside you or…”

“You’ll turn on me. Yeah, I get it. And there’s no point in blaming yourself. The fault is mine. You’ve been covering me for my bad habits for a while. In a way … Bukka gave me a gift.”

Once Zarian put his ego aside, he realized Bukka had done him a service.

What if Bukka’d been traditionally good and sealed Zarian? What if he’d been classically evil and consumed Zarian for his bloodlines?

Instead, the old orc had flat out won fair and square with two simple but effective attacks. And in a universe where blowing up planets was definitely possible, it said a lot that warriors could still win through conventional means.

Unauthorized content usage: if you discover this narrative on Amazon, report the violation.

I wonder how strong Naomi will get once she’s out of her coma, Zarian thought, feeling more hopeful for her, regardless of the complex feelings.

“I’m going to hunt down more tournament contestants before the timer runs out,” Para said, turning away, her dress billowing with the wind. “By the way, I don’t just have Devouring Darkness as a bloodline power. I also have Parasite Princess, too.”

That would explain why Cal had fallen so easily to Para’s parasitic touch. That also made Zarian wonder what happened to the Ultra God after his defeat. Their kind didn’t simply expire. Maybe his soul had moved back up.

Zarian watched Para go, rubbing at the back of his neck until she disappeared. His attention drifted to the apocalyptic mess that had ravaged the world for weeks.

How long had he been saying he would do things better? How long had he kept messing that up?

“No, don’t you dare doom spiral. Don’t do it,” he scolded himself. “You made a mess. You have the power to fix it. Go and execute.”

Besides, as badass as melee adventurers could be with simple overpowered attacks, they couldn’t do widespread wizard stuff. And Zarian was in a big mood for getting a win after one of the most embarrassing losses he’d suffered.

Zarian shot into the air with a simple blast of aura. With nothing holding him back and no major active sorceries or spells, his aura recovery shot up drastically. His aura filled him with a power that would frighten most Champion Rankers and make weaker Paragon Rankers worried.

Massive stalks of lightning lashed out. Roaring hurricanes blasted all over. Flying debris and storm-blasted shrapnel assaulted him.

All that he and Para had unleashed here wasn’t just physically chaotic, it was magically influential. Their combined darkness had left a metaphysical impression, keeping the world-dooming storms alive, each equipped with a hunger that wanted to feast and hurt and ruin. As Zarian flew through the mess, he came face to face with one of his accidental creations.

A Mega Storm Elemental with the Level 287 World Shredder class revealed itself fully like a Greek titan, its body made of wind-funnels and thunderbolts that extended as a dozen giant serpentine limbs. Its face looked like a monstrous elemental man with two dark cavities for eyes, each as large as small mountains. When its mouth yawned open, Zarian saw a bright light and the high crackling whine of lightning gathering.

“Dude, I just lost a fight. Get bent.” Zarian pulled up a new spell.

<Abyssal Corruptor Array (Legendary): This spell grants an instant array of abyssal runes that can be further altered with sorcery. Since abyssal runes cannot exist normally in this common existential plane, this spell helps facilitate the use while able to affect multiple powers. Scales by 8 with Mysticism.>

The air around Zarian screamed. Runes that were darker, deeper, and denser than the void appeared around him. More and more appeared, abyssal diagrams swirling as he pointed and fired one simple attack enhanced by the abyss.

Dark Emperor Madness Smite Beam sparked like an engine igniting before coming out fully formed as one massive dark torrent with deep blue-purple edges and an abyssal core. Wherever it passed, including the air itself, all fell screaming into the abyss, the beam aimed at the elemental’s face.

The Word Shredder fired its lightning cannon with the roar of countless thunderclaps. The two beams clashed, and Zarian became the victor. He didn’t outright crush the World Shredder, but his abyssal smite beam pushed back the lightning cannon steadily and grew closer to eliminating its head. It looked like a surefire victory.

Over a dozen storm elementals teleported into the fight, invigorating the world-ravaging storm itself. They were all massive, but each came with peculiar differences in size and shape.

One was fat around the waist while filled with tundra ice circling around its body. Another was filled with fire, lava, volcanic glass, and superheated gases and smoke. Another elemental was made mostly of roaring darkness that twisted around itself in many knots. There was even one that was smaller than the rest but made completely of blood, flesh, and the many corpses of people it hunted down personally to add to itself.

That one had the Level 300 Gore Stormer class, still in the Champion Rank, not yet Paragon Rank.

That didn’t stop the Gore Stormer from being the most gruesome of its brethren. The fifteen surrounded Zarian from all angles and attacked with pre-charged beam-style blasts. Some were electric. Others were fiery or dark or thunderous. The Gore Stormer sent a beam blast made from arcane blood and the concentrated screams of its victims, a definite aspiration to Para’s likeness.

He unleashed thirty abyssal smite beams with the power turned up. He also cast arrays that grabbed up excess magic and chaos in the atmosphere and turned it into more aura. The brighter blue-white aura sorcery contrasted with the darker black-purple abyssal sorcery, creating a circle of darkness and light around Zarian. 𝕗𝐫𝚎𝗲𝘄𝐞𝕓𝐧𝕠𝘃𝕖𝐥.𝐜𝚘𝚖

His thirty beams pushed back all fifteen attacks and razed through half of the storm elementals, obliterating five of them and heavily damaging another five. The Gore Stormer and four others flashed with thunderous barriers or teleported around in their home turf before shifting back into view and attacking from other angles.

Zarian cut off all the beams and came up with a new plan. He kept the Abyssal Corruptor Array spell going and applied a new spell, but this one celestial. He’d been working on cracking it this whole time.

<Gravity Devil Avatar (Celestial): Cast this spell and make yourself the devil of gravity, a fiendish user of nefarious gravity magic. The price is massive and might require a sacrificial ritual. Scales by 4 with Willpower, Wonder, and Mysticism.>

Zarian corrupted his next volley of smite beams, making them sticky and bendy. They curved around and caught five of the injured elementals and two of the unhurt ones. They tried to break free, struggling against Zarian’s hold, their massive size, powers, and stats put to the test.

Snarling, Zarian reeled them all in. His corrupted smite beams traded out their destructive power for unbreakable control, enduring the tension. Zarian used another blast of corrupted smite beams to cover himself in a defense laser grid. The attacks of the remaining elementals faced annihilation.

He’d deal with the others permanently soon, but first, it was ritual time.

Zarian rose into the air faster, higher, snatching up his prizes with him. He conjured more and more sorcery arrays, a multitude of pure runes and abyssal runes forming two separate layers of magic that expanded from around him in massive symbolic circles. His head was running hot from the sheer mental strain, and his bombastic hat turned the air into plasma aura flowed furiously like the opening of a moon-sized dam.