Overpowered Wizard

Chapter 144: B2: C44: Found You

“I think that should do it,” Zarian said, shutting the grimoire with an echoing thunk, the spectral chains rattling.

“I’m hungry,” Para said, this time speaking from Zarian’s stomach. She had formed a wide, sharp-tooth mouth there.

Zarian blinked down at the mouth on his stomach. “Huh, that’s honestly one of the freakiest flesh transmutations I’ve seen from you. I guess we should feed the beast.”

“I thought you would find this impressive,” Para said through the mouth-stomach.

Looking over himself, Zarian noticed he’d lost some muscle mass. This usually happened when they’d gone days without eating. He wasn’t exactly sure if it was because of his own ravenous hunger or if a small portion of Para was eating him alive to maintain herself.

Unlike most people who would find that horrifying, Zarian took it all in stride. In fact, they should show this trick off to the others, especially Gilbert.

Para stitched his stomach back to normal and dropped piles of food for them both from the pocket dimension. Zarian tore apart his boxed meals, especially the meaty ones. They were hot, steamy, and decently tasty. The cooks from the top gourmet kitchen were quite excellent as a temporary measure.

Para used tentacles and clawing arms covered in mouths to ravage corpse after corpse of beasts, spies, and monsters. She enjoyed the spies the most, taking her time with the human flesh and bones.

Zarian should find more high-quality humans to feed her. He sensed Para was still a little sad that she hadn’t gotten to gorge on the terrorist paladins as much as she wanted.

Once they finished eating, Zarian noticed he’d regained his peak muscular form. He shouldn’t let himself forget to eat and feed Para. But even his High Rune Mindframe couldn’t stop him from being hyper focused on fun magic stuff.

“There may come a time when you should turn me off, Zarian,” Para said, speaking from the hand of a parasite limb made from the battle kilt. She had half a dozen of them encircling Zarian’s waist. “I’m an obvious weakness for you if we’re ever trapped somewhere without food.”

“I’ll gladly bear that weakness,” Zarian said.

“But, Zarian–”

“Para, we’re in this together.” Zarian rolled his shoulders and his neck around. “What’s a man who can’t bear the burdens he’s willing to carry? Is true power to be impervious to all things? Or is it to stand at the top even with your weaknesses?”

Para chuckled through multiple parasite hands, all of them turned toward Zarian. The mouths in her many palms smiled.

He smiled in return as he checked with everyone on Spider Team 6. They were ready to go. He turned and examined all the arcane web formations that spelled out over a hundred runes from his gravity studies.

“One last thing, you’re not a weakness,” Zarian said. “You’re a part of me. And I’m not weak. So you aren’t weak either.”

“Hm, I see why Bianca likes to cry. To hear such words brings me wonderful joy that is also painful. You are the best host,” Para said with a strangled voice.

“I know I am, so don’t you forget it.”

“I won’t. Shall we proceed?”

“Hell yeah.”

Zarian nodded as he pushed his Basic Aura Manipulation harder, harder, and harder some more. He shoved the dungeon’s aura suppression away with so much force, he might’ve caught the dungeon off guard.

The air cracked like miniature thunder claps. Thick strands of aura lightning shot across the space. Aura winds blew hard like hurricane gales, the glowing aura motes in the air caught in a flurry. Zarian roared as he threw back the dungeon’s aura suppression like a giant of magic.

The spider on his side of the time loop triggered the nearest gravity runes, activating one half of the webbed spell array.

A bright purple flash appeared a dozen feet in front of Zarian. The purple flash expanded into a nearly blinding white-purple light. Then it suddenly collapsed inward and created a vacuum that nearly pulled Zarian forward.

Para grew claws from her extra hands and latched onto the floor to keep Zarian rooted.

The collapsing light contracted further and further into itself until it became the size of a molecule.

The nearest roots, mushrooms, dirt, and stone ripped away from the hallway’s surfaces and swirled around the contracting molecule. The air followed the same pattern and seemed to swirl around like going down a toilet. The same happened to the aura motes in the air, especially that from the dungeon.

Finally, Zarian noticed a break in dimensional integrity. Space and time shifted out of place. His side of the time loop trap snapped apart. Then he instantly appeared in the other time loop that held the rest of Spider Team 6.

Before the Faerie Guardian could enact a counter measure, Zarian shoved his aura manipulation outward even further. He wasn’t alone. He’d been unraveling himself gradually and lending more control to Para to where she could use his Basic Aura Manipulation, too.

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Together, they suppressed the dungeon’s aura in return.

The little gravity molecule was about to wink out, having spent its energy to crush one time loop. But then the spiders triggered the other half of the gravity web spell array, which was focused on the opposite end of gravity – entropy.

The molecule expanded rapidly and burst apart with a roar.

The eruption was more than Zarian had expected. He flew off his feet. Para’s arms ripped apart, unable to hold her host down. Zarian tumbled as time and space tore up from around him.

The entire dungeon shuddered. The Faerie Guardian made a bestial roar that resounded from every crack, corner, junction. The dungeon rumbled like it was about to break apart from having the reality of its pocket dimension challenged.

Zarian tumbled and crashed and plowed through wall after wall as the chaotic gravity magic expanded outward and affected more than just the time loop trap. It was making him and other flying pieces of rubble denser and weightier while moving at inhuman speeds that would’ve splattered a lesser person.

Para covered him in bone armor to ease the pummeling as they crashed through many obstacles. Zarian clenched his jaw hard the whole time, his body rattling as he became an object of abuse, until finally it all came to a sudden end when someone caught him in a vice of magic.

“You are one of the most ridiculous and foolhardy young men I’ve ever laid eyes on,” Empress Ruvaria said, floating in the air beside him, arms crossed.

The bone armor peeled away from his face. Zarian gave her a bloody grin.

“But you have laid eyes on me, and kept them there, so that all counts for something,” he said, spitting aside some blood.

He was a little dizzy. His entire sense of gravity was on the fritz. But he was recovering fast.

Once he could see better, he glanced at his surroundings. He was in a hidden grove inside of a colossal cove. There was a tree-like entity with white leaves and green, wrinkled fruits standing on a grassy hill that was surrounded by a shining moat of water.

Various mushrooms, some the size of children, covered the surrounding ground beyond the moat. The field of mushrooms extended well beneath him and the empress and toward the immense walls of the cove.

The air was covered in aura motes that shone in different colors and bumbled around. It smelled sweet here. There was a peaceful feeling in the atmosphere.

Zarian blinked as he noticed he was still being restrained by an invisible magical force from the Sorceress Queen. There was a shining purple layer of gravity magic that still clung to his armored body.

When he reached over toward Ruvaria, the movement felt hard and weighty. He didn’t let that stop him from booping the seemingly annoyed empress on the nose.

“Found you,” Zarian said.

“Young Hannah had described you as insufferable. She is right.” Ruvaria kept looking annoyed.

But that soon faded, replaced by the hint of amusement that sparkled in her shining emerald eyes. “But you continue to fascinate me, so I suppose that is part of your nature, to be insufferable and fascinating.”

Zarian nodded before glancing at some new notifications.

<You’ve leveled up from 84 to 85! Stat points dispensed!>

<Your skill, Para Cloak +2, leveled up from 40 to 41!>

<Your skill, Spectral Spider Network +2, leveled up from 29 to 32!>

<Your skill, Summon Wizard Hat +2, leveled up from 34 to 36!>

<Your skill, High Rune Mindframe, leveled up from 3 to 4!>

<Your skill, Advanced Grimoire of Black Magic, leveled up from 1 to 3!>

Nice gains, Zarian thought. I’m fifteen levels away from Level 100 and reaching the Master Rank, if the system deems me worthy of being a Master.

There was also the question of the First Ascension Star Trial, but that was something Zarian would get to later, after accomplishing some more immediate goals.

The gravity magic finally faded off his body. To his surprise, the empress gently placed him down on the soles of his boots, squishing a few shin-high mushrooms. She continued to hover in front of him, which made him tilt his wizard hat back and look past the brim and up into her eyes.

“I lost Spider Team 6,” Zarian said. “And the other teams. We have to honor their sacrifice somehow.”

The empress snorted softly at him. “There is no need. I saved them all.”

She waved her hand, and all of his spectral spiders appeared, including the brave Spider Team 6.

Strangely overjoyed, Zarian turned away and joined the spiders for a quick celebratory dance. Para joined in, waving about some newly formed parasite arms made from the battle kilt. Once they finished their celebration, Zarian left the dance party and returned to the empress.

“I know what bingo is, by the way,” the empress said. “I’ve learned a lot from my interactions with Outsiders.”

“Do you know how many people want to reach over and rub your ears like a cat?” Zarian asked.

The empress looked at him flatly. She turned away, feet still hovering over the mushroom heavy ground.

She was wearing a different outfit. One that was leafy and a little more revealing, almost like lingerie, but for someone who wanted to look like a wild forest nymph.

She looked at the strange tree in the center.

Zarian used Identify.

<Edulis the Faerie Guardian, Level 90 Dungeon Boss, Best Alpha Skill: Dimensional Network.>

“Hm, no boss fight, huh?” Zarian said.

“Depending on how you set a dungeon, having a boss doesn’t always lead to a boss fight at the end of a crawl,” Ruvaria explained. “This one does his best work by trying to teleport dungeon crawlers into an inescapable prison and drain them of all of their energies. He’s always been good at that, which I found vexing when I was much younger and more absolute in my beliefs.”

Zarian thought of the lore surrounding Corma’s Chosen One and connected a few dots. “He was a former enemy of yours. Maybe a really solid one. As part of your revenge, you turned him into a dungeon boss with a dungeon, didn’t you?”

“Yes.”

“Was it a fair punishment? Or was it for your pleasure?”

“I suppose it was a mix of both. To punish absolutely was to be absolute good, and to be absolute good was the highest pleasure. But all Edulis wanted to do was protect those I would hunt for not being good enough, and for his heroism, I made him into a monster and owned him.”

“That’s fucked up, Ruvaria.”

Para spoke from one of her extra parasite hands. “I understand the pleasure of tormenting an enemy while consuming him, but even I find your actions troubling, empress.”

“Now, now, Para, let’s be fair,” Zarian said. “We can do some cruel stuff, too. Let’s not go too far into being the ones who are the kettle calling the pot black.”

And there might be a day I want to turn someone into a dungeon boss, Zarian thought, with Para hearing it in his head. But we’ll make sure it’s someone who is truly, truly despicable.

“Hm, yes, you are wise as always, my host,” Para replied aloud.