Overpowered Wizard-Chapter B4 Ch37: Para Crushes Bianca

Bianca hacked off her arm with her right-handed blade. She did so at the shoulder. Without hesitation. Already prepared to make the sacrifice. She saved herself in the nick of time.

Her left arm mutated into a pulsating, fleshy, oblong snack. Para grabbed it with a third hand grown from her ribs. Taking her time, Para ate the transmutated flesh one small bite at a time while eyeing the radiant woman from across her.

That silly smile on Bianca’s face remained. That was how it looked at first glance. Upon second glance, there was a touch of strain marring her normally joyful expression.

It was a delicious sight, filling Para’s hollow core with rapacious glee.

“How do I taste?” Bianca asked after Para finished eating a piece of her.

“Scrumptious, mi amor. I’d prefer the whole package, of course. A small piece wouldn’t do.”

“I almost wished I brought Gilbert along. He would’ve healed my arm. Then you could’ve taken another.”

“No need. I’ll have your leg next!”

Para dashed in with an explosion of aura behind her. She led with a shield bash, feinted a low cut, maneuvered into a light high chop for Bianca’s head, and followed up with another shield bash that led to an actual cut for Bianca’s tantalizing left leg.

Bianca whirled away from the shield bash, held her sword back upon seeing the feint before lightly blocking the high chop for her head. She scooted backwards again while pivoting through the air at an off-angle, barely avoiding the next shield bash. Then she swung with desperate strength to block the real cut aimed at her leg.

Her defense was adequate enough, but it took a majority of her concentration.

Para easily cast a few point-blank spells that slammed into the radiant woman’s torso, knocking the air out of her and ravaging her with pain. A curving tendril of darkness followed up, and Bianca barely twisted out of the way. The glow from her magic lost some of its luster as Para’s Devouring Darkness ate from her aura.

It couldn’t be helped. Devouring Darkness easily peeled away Bianca’s defenses no matter how much light and magic she exuded. And if that wasn’t worrying enough for Bianca, she had to be diligent against any contact with Para.

The moment Para’s armaments drew close to touching flesh, her parasitic nature reached out as hair-thin rods with sharpened tips. Each one would snap free upon insertion before rapidly infecting the host.

Hell, Para was almost tempted to fill the air with parasite particles, an even more insidious threat. She only held back because it would make things too easy. She wanted to play with her food. She wanted to see Bianca shine her brightest before getting slowly snuffed.

With that in mind, Para showed off a whole smorgasbord of dark abilities, filling the air with abhorrent, vile, twisted powers, the stuff of nightmares. There was no hope for a mortal like Bianca to succeed, yet she tried anyway.

They clashed and danced. Para chased and laughed as she forced Bianca to tumble about haphazardly through a deranged sky. The world was being bled dry. The mountains moaned, the rivers faded, the skies cried, and the light of the star dimmed.

Para’s leech skill kept engorging itself on aura and life energy. Every time Bianca tried to slash through it, Para easily blocked it with her dark-clad shield. The wards triggered, and a spiteful blood lance ripped through Bianca, making her suffer the utmost of pain.

The radiant woman finally let out a scream, and Para felt the empty space where her heart should be seize up. She stopped and looked at Bianca’s haggard form with wide and shaken eyes. What am I doing? I’m hurting my best friend.

“Don’t stop, Para,” Aunt Ariana commanded from above, her arms folded, her avatar a speck on the edge of the atmosphere.

From further out, beyond the local star, something behemoth flickered into appearance, but it remained largely unrecognizable, like a phantom. Was that the real Dragoness? A ghostly avatar of her true body? Its size couldn’t be measured if so.

Ariana growled. “Go all the way. Commit. Seize your true destiny!”

“Yeah, yeah. Don’t stop. This is pretty good for me.” Bianca forced herself to smile. “It’s going to be okay. I’m holding back too. I can’t show you my best stuff just yet until the timing is right.”

She sounded insane. That was only natural in this environment, the corruption was steep. Her sanity was being scraped raw like Para was taking it to task with a rusty spoon. It was sad to see, drudging up pain that Para couldn’t shake off easily. But the pain wasn’t enough to hold back the foregone conclusion.

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I’m not going to stop. Zarian won’t learn from his mistakes unless I make it hurt. Para shuddered, following through with the deadly task no matter the sadness. I can see it in her eyes. Bianca’s broken. I’ve broken her.

“I’ll take away your pain. And I’ll do my best to honor you.” Para drew closer at a casual pace. She swung her sword, and Bianca replied in kind, but it looked like the body was acting without the mind.

Bianca’s gaze was blank. Her smile hung limply on her face, lips wet with drool. She flew about like a bumbling bee under turbulent winds. Every collision with Para’s sword sent her tumbling about until she righted herself with a few flaps of her colorful wings.

The sadness bloomed deeper inside of Para. But the dreadful sensation wasn’t all she felt. It wasn’t just anger and hunger this time. There was admiration as well.

“You’re amazing, Bianca,” Para complimented, after void-porting and swinging for Bianca’s back.

The parasite woman smiled as the radiant woman swung around and defended herself from behind. She ended up knocked down in an explosion of light and darkness. The light was far dimmer this time. The darkness grew more gluttonous, eating all flashes of defiance.

The world died further, and the light from the sun dimmed further. Before Para consumed it all, the light from each of the moons faded first – the moons were emergency reserves of power. Once those were gone, then the sun would die, and this world would officially be considered dead.

Bianca crashed onto the grayed earth amid the muck, the diseased, and the dead. Nothing but a hell of Para’s making remained around her.

The darkness invited the voices of the mad things that wanted to invade from the other side of Para’s void magic. The plasma-like leech offered a ghoulish green glow that slowly dimmed as it ate the last traces of aura and life of the world.

Alone, the radiant woman stood in a valley of death and darkness. Above her, the Darkruns hovered, casting their judgment upon a mortal who dared challenge their ultra power.

To Ariana Darkrun, Bianca was nothing but a bug to be crushed under the press of her toe. To Para Darkrun, Bianca was the death of a friendship and the gate toward a dark genesis that sorrow and pain could only christen.

Finally, the world’s aura ran out. The star died. The moons faded. There was no more mortal life other than Bianca.

The leech dispersed. And darkness reigned completely. Not even the stars could be seen. Bianca was alone and with no source of light but her own. And in that eternal and impenetrable darkness, the Darkruns only grew more powerful. Ridiculously so. As if Bianca were truly a bug at the mercy of forces far, far beyond her.

“Do you see, Para, dear? How fragile and weak these uppity mortals are? They make decent pets, but you mustn’t let them think they can be more than that.” Ariana’s voice reverberated through the darkness with a wave of power that sent Bianca tumbling despite it coming from a mere avatar.

“I was once a mindless skill. Less than a mortal, really. That’s part of my origins, so it would be hypocritical of me to think mortals can’t rise above their limits.” Para’s voice was somehow worse. Instead of knocking Bianca around, it coiled around her, binding her, squeezing the life out of her slowly like a bundle of snakes.

“That’s in your past. You are a Darkrun, and the most promising one I’ve seen in a long, long time. With you, things will be different. Together, we’ll finally break free of these loops.” Ariana’s declaration struck even harder than the last. Bianca’s body tumbled rapidly across the dead world, smashing through dozens of corpses made of dead mountains.

“Perhaps so. It’s hard to think of that right now. I can’t get over how easy it is to hurt her. I’m not even trying, and yet she suffers so much. It’s kind of sad. Were they always this weak?” As Para spoke, Bianca became even more bound, the darkness coiling with unyielding might. Ribs creaked, bones fractured, organs pulped. Bianca tried to scream but couldn’t.

Then there was silence, and the broken woman collapsed onto the dead floor. The sadness Para felt deepened, but there was no changing course. She and her aunt hovered directly over Bianca’s beaten body. The two Darkruns shared a look.

Do it, Ariana insisted.

Okay, Para relented.

Eldritch voices muttered and cried from every direction. The lack of aura compounded the issues for Bianca, while Para was filled to the brim with stolen power, lacking nothing. The surrounding darkness was eternal, and the System couldn’t reach or do anything to save Bianca. And there was no sign of Zarian, leaving Bianca to her fate.

If Para could cry, she would. She was going to kill her best friend. She was going to kill Bianca, the greatest mortal ever.

With her hand stretched out, she lowered a single strand of her parasitic power from her down-turned palm. It reached toward Bianca slowly as the doomed woman sat up on her knees and looked up into the impenetrable darkness.

It was impossible for her to see, yet she somehow looked straight at Para. With a bloody smile and joyful tears, Bianca reached up with her one arm, palm upturned, as if she was going to offer herself to Para like a faithful supplicant.

Was this your plan? To sacrifice yourself to me? Is this your way of honoring my godhood? Para felt touched by the gesture. Maybe I can take over your body without killing you completely.

Maybe she could slowly and carefully transform Bianca. And turn her into a Darkrun underneath her.

It was highly unlikely. It didn’t feel right. But it should be a possibility. Foodie was technically adopted into the Darkrun Family by some sort of arbitrary force even without an ultra bloodline.

Yes, that’s what this is all about. Para smiled. I’ll hunt down everyone. Make them mine as gently as I can. And we’ll all be Darkruns together.

It was a lovely thought. And a distraction. Para held back from finishing the deed to think out her new plan. That small mercy led to a development that had Ariana screaming in warning, but it was too late.

Regardless of her shattered ribs and pulped lungs, the words Bianca uttered came from a skill that was one of the most magnificent abilities the Infinita Star System could offer. It had been granted to Bianca after saving Corma from the dark tyranny of Ruvaria the Genocider. Because of that, the words refused to be mangled, for it was a power as old as time at the hand of someone far more worthy than most.

“Let There Be Light.”