A part of Zarian’s Fractured Mind saw the old Gilbert, a big, blue-eyed, straw-haired, stereotypical American that could’ve played lineman in the NFL. Here in the World of Castles and Caverns, dressed in the runic leather armor of the Wolf Dragon Hunter suits, Gilbert also looked like a half-charming, half-barbaric, warrior prince.
The full beard on his chin fitted him. He shouldn’t shave it anymore. The beard might cushion the force of Zarian’s punches, especially the last one he landed.
For some reason, Zarian struck with way more oomph than normal. He was not relying too much on his Level 0 skills for buffing his body, like Willful Might, Wondrous Speed, and Mystic Toughness.
Yet, he knocked Gilbert off his feet and sent him flying back into a small garrison building, busting straight through the stone wall.
“Huh,” Zarian said, glancing at his knuckles. “I shouldn’t be hitting this hard.”
“Is that because of your ancient lineage showing through?” Naomi asked, standing off to the side.
Zarian shrugged.
Naomi continued to watch from the sidelines. There was nobody else nearby except for one acolyte, Amabel.
The girl hid mostly behind a different stone building while peeking out. She shivered when Zarian’s attention landed on her, but she didn’t run away.
She waved her hand shakily.
Zarian waved back. He turned his attention back to Gilbert as the Knighted Healer staggered through the hole.
Gilbert was red in the face from having chug a lot of magic booze and from taking Zarian’s punchess. He was also raging hard, leaning full-tilt into his Berserk Vitality trait and Sacrificial Blow skill.
The more damage he accrued, the harder he could hit.
However, Zarian was hitting much harder than normal. As Gilbert lunged over the rubble from the busted gatehouse, Zarian quickly realized why he was hitting so hard.
It was because of his Thematic Law.
Zarian wasn’t just stronger and tougher. He was faster, too, hence dodging the heavy punch Gilbert swung with all of his weight. The whiff kicked up a gale force of wind. Dust and grit flew off into the air and over piles of rubble.
The legendary Knighted Healer turned about slower than the Madness Wizard could circle. By the time Gilbert was halfway to facing him, Zarian struck the big man with an overhand punch and rocked him off his feet again, but at a downward angle.
Gilbert smashed a small crater into the stone floor. His body bounced up into a midair tumble. He flailed and roared angrily the whole time as he tried to right himself.
Just when he got his feet under him and touched the floor, Zarian was already there with a shoulder tackle. Zarian planned to pick him up, run him into the cubic wall, and keep the big man pinned.
That didn’t work out as expected.
Gilbert juiced himself with multiple doses of Adrenaline Jolt until he hit a cap. Zarian knew that was happening because Gilbert’s entire body was turning red.
The Knighted Healer’s veins bulged with incredible girth. His eyes turned red around his blue irises. His muscles pumped up with more physical might.
Gilbert went completely out of his mind and hulked out. He slammed both fists like mega hammers down on Zarian’s back with a loud thump that roared and echoed off the walls.
This time around, the Madness Wizard truly buckled and felt some pain.
Zarian pushed aura into his Willful Might and Mystic Toughness skills. Only enough for him to endure, and no further than that.
He didn’t want to cheese the brawl. Hell, he was enjoying himself, leaning into the craziness. The two of them went at it like fighting animals stuck in a cage.
Zarian ditched the tackle, hooked one hand on Gilbert’s bulging forearm, and swung up another overhand punch. Boom. It sounded like two fleshy boulders colliding with an explosion.
That would’ve killed most people.
Gilbert, however, ate the punch and stayed standing. He spat blood into Zarian’s face and swung around a hook that struck like thunder on Zarian’s jaw. Any other wizard would’ve had their head smashed apart like a melon.
Unlike most feeble wizards, the Madness Wizard staggered only once. Then he set his feet and returned another overhand punch. Gilbert ate it and threw another hook. Zarian ate. He swung back.
Overhand.
Hook.
Overhand.
Hook.
They traded punches again and again. Neither man gave ground while locked up together. This was a brutal union of frustration and anger and wildness that they both had to get out. Their vitality, stats, and buffs let them strike at each other and endure despite their superhuman devastation. It was like letting Hulk and Superman duke it out without much restraint.
The stone floor cracked and caved under them. Craters formed underneath their heavy and impactful steps. Each explosive blow sent rubble flying away. The thumping impacts sounded like a constant barrage of cannon fire at some point.
Both men had to dig their heels down into the cratered floor and hold tight to each other to avoid flying away from these punches. The area was a mess after Stony’s departure, but now it was becoming even messier between the Knighted Healer and the Madness Wizard.
Zarian didn’t even care anymore about why he punched Gilbert and why Gilbert was punching him. He was in the fight just to fight.
Every blow was like fireworks in his cranium or down his arm. His face was cut up and bleeding from multiple wounds. His brain was rattling around in his head hard.
Zarian kept going.
He gave as good as he got.
He kept rocking Gilbert’s head around like no wizard should or could.
The further the brawl went, the hungrier Zarian became. The hungrier Zarian became, the more his other abilities bled out.
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A hint of the Uncanny Valley trait displayed itself, making Zarian’s outline shifty, eerie, and hard to predict. A hint of the Dreaded One showed up, adding a foreboding sense of doom to the air.
Of course, Aura Channeler, Basic Aura Manipulation, and his Overpower trait were enormous factors. Without them, Zarian couldn’t push his Level 0 skills higher than their strict beta limits
Zarian became more monstrous. He became less of a magical man and more of the Dreaded Outsider. Eventually, Gilbert’s punches stopped doing much, making the brawl even more one-sided.
Zarian swooped in for the win.
He kicked in one of Gilbert’s legs and brought him down to his knees. He grabbed Gilbert by the hair, yanked his head to the side, and pummeled his face with rapid punches that forced Gilbert to raise his arms and block.
Then Zarian went low with a body kick that threw the Knighted Healer backward like a rag doll across the floor and rubble. Gilbert smashed into the corner of the demolished gatehouse and formed a crumbling pocket for his body to sit in.
He didn’t get up.
A moment of silence passed between them.
Then Gilbert turned over with a groan and vomited. He sat back against the crater he’d ended up in, his chest rising and falling heavily with each labored breath. He spat bile and blood in an equal measure before looking out with one eye that wasn’t completely swollen shut.
“How are we here?” he asked with a grunt.
Zarian didn’t answer right away.
His body was still hot and ready for more action. His hunger was burning like a furnace. He was really warmed up to go the distance and wanted to fight more.
He nearly dipped into his free evil +3 without thinking. It was right there for the taking. It was so, so tempting just to heap on everything that made him ferocious.
Instead, Zarian stood for a while and let himself calm down. He was still running hot when Gilbert’s question finally registered with his Fractured Mind, which was busy getting hyped off the high octane rush provided by his parasitic body.
The parasite and his lawful Floridian Mindset were the reasons he was so much stronger than normal.
The +1 Advancement to Parasite Cloak fused Para with him, increasing his resilience, physicality, and appetite. Para mainly scaled with Willpower regardless of her new partial scaling with Mysticism.
Zarian’s Floridian Mindset improved abilities that were Willpower-based by a whopping 150% added on. The base amount to his Willpower stat was only second to Naomi’s. Having high Willpower and the Floridian Mindset was making the parasitic skill a big deal in Zarian’s profile.
And to think, I chose the cloak mostly to look cool and to use the pocket dimension.
While he kept Gilbert waiting, Zarian looked down at his body.
His sweat steamed off of him in wisps. His muscles felt like they were bulging with the combined might of his physique and the parasitic threads weaved with almost every fiber of his being. If this was a boost for him, Zarian could only imagine how stupidly OP Para was now.
As for Gilbert’s question, Zarian answered with this: “I’m the son of an old lineage of super primordial ultra gods. I’m basically like superman, sent to a mundane world or System or whatever, but on purpose. I think this is all to have me grow mundane before developing my powers.”
Zarian sighed as his body cooled off further. “But my development, along with my little sister’s, is not for us to grow the most powerful. It’s for us to control our power. Or we become the ultimate evil siblings around, a pair of spreading darknesses that are world eaters, System usurpers, multidimensional and multiverse-level threats.”
Gilbert slowly nodded along. He spat to the side again. He waved his swollen hand for Zarian to continue.
“I can’t control my darkness right now. It wants to eat and spread. It’s big and strong. I’ve eaten Corma and you guys. I’ve eaten all the worlds of the Infinita before breaking this universe and eating what remained of the Star System. Ariana broke free after that. She seemed in control of herself. But she was a bit more wicked than me. After watching me for a while, she sought universes to eat as well. The difference between me and her was that I was bigger and stronger while she was smarter and had a habit of playing with her food.”
“Jesus Christ,” Gilbert said.
Zarian grimaced. This was getting harder to talk about. But he needed to say it. He had to get it out there.
He didn’t care about the optics or bad PR.
He’d spent a long time with this stuff even if everything seemed to have reset. He had no idea how many years he’d spent out there trying to fight his darkness as it ate worlds and universes, but it felt like a long, long time.
The horrors and the memories stayed with Zarian.
That was just another consequence Zarian would have to deal with left by the Funnest Granpapa.
Zarian kept going: “So it’s been the two of us for a long time, consuming, spreading, destroying all in our wake. This version of me, my mind, was conscious throughout while I tried to stop myself, my darkness. I slowed it down a little, but not much more. I kept fighting until finally my family intervened and reset everything.”
“Reset everything? Like, with a snap of their fingers?” Gilbert asked.
Zarian nodded. “It was pretty much like that. The one to do it calls himself my Funnest Granpapa. He sounds Floridian and has a Haitian Creole accent. Apparently, a Haitian became a super primordial ultra god. Go figure. Also, I have other family members, or grandparents, known as the Greatest Granpapa, the Strongest Granpapa, and then there’s the Biggest Granmama, who is the wife to the Funnest. I’m supposed to take after the Biggest, and I’ll have a tail because of that.”
The following silence was a long one. Zarian filled it with some more words.
“I need to work on controlling my new skill, Overwhelming Darkness. If I don’t, it could kill me and unleash the Darkrun Apocalypse again. So, yeah, that’s the gist of it.”
Zarian sighed, feeling a little lighter. He should learn to shorten that explanation while telling the most important bits. He figured he was going to repeat that story loads and loads of times.
More importantly, the ones who needed to hear it were here. Naomi was standing off to the side with her hands on her hips. Hannah had arrived during the brawl, her face an icy mask, giving nothing away.
And Bianca was up on her bare feet.
She was mostly back to her usual pretty self. Long straw-colored hair. Amber eyes. An easy, graceful, model-like beauty that could bewitch a man to spending countless money on her.
She’d worked as a rum promoter back in the old world. Still, the nineteen-year-old could’ve easily become a rich housewife once she got close to the right guy.
Zarian didn’t think she was that type of person deep down. Maybe she could’ve been if she hadn’t become the legendary Light Princess with good +5.
Speaking of her alignment, it was acting funny again.
Bianca flicked her hand to the side and conjured a whirring saber made of hard light. The air warbled around the bright blade with radiant heat.
She looked angry.
But even with a scowl on her face, Bianca remained the prettiest girl in miles. She was also the most dangerous girl in miles.
“I must kill you. You’re evil. The biggest evil. I must kill you.”
Bianca staggered toward Zarian slowly, step by step.
“She’s still got some of the tranquilizer in her,” Gilbert said.
Nodding, Zarian waited in place.
Naomi walked in stealthily from Bianca’s blind spot. The Rumble Psion set her hand on the back of the younger woman’s head, almost caressingly, and used a psychic ability or two.
Bianca stumbled to a stop. Her radiant eyes blinked in confusion. Her face twitched with different emotions. Her sabers of light flickered on and off.
Zarian rushed forward with quick strides. He used his Lore Eater trait to remove Bianca’s clear vision of him. But he didn’t stop her from hearing him.
This was a delicate maneuver. He had to dig deep into his free evil +3 to empower his Fractured Mind. Just so he could tamper with Bianca’s head and offer her the invite.
“Bianca, you can do even more good as part of the freedom alignment. You must accept being a Freedom Leader. Fight for freedom. It’s the goodest thing to do,” he argued.
The words sounded cheesy. But they conveyed a simple idea that could stick in the spots Zarian’s Lore Eater left open in Bianca’s mind.
The process was easier with Naomi’s psychic abilities involved. Zarian wanted to ask for a detailed report on her advancements. He imagined her Tranquil Mind +2 was a big factor.
Between the two of them, they pacified Bianca’s crusader insanity. She still twisted and squirmed between the Madness Wizard and the Rumble Psion before honing her focus elsewhere, such as her notifications.
Zarian’s heart hammered in his chest. His cloak quivered in anticipation.
They waited and waited.
Then, finally, the raging goodness, a bonfire of crusader energy, winked out. Bianca was back to being herself.