“What the hell?! What the hell was that?!” shouted Havard, horrified by the sudden deaths and splattered remains of his men. Some were crying out, still alive, having only been caught on the edges of the massive bite.
It would’ve been a mercy for them to have died instantly to the bite.
Unfortunately, Zarian couldn’t repeat the second part of the multi-spell folktale combo again. It all had to stream from beginning to end or he had to reset.
The quagmire disappeared, returning the floor to stone.
Zarian didn’t bother using the spell again. He walked briskly forward while the bandits were still reeling from the sudden mass deaths.
“Gilbert, Loner, keep the others off me,” Zarian said over his shoulder.
“It was you, wasn’t it? You bastard! Do us all a favor and die!” Havard swung the heavy metal ball around on his chain. He hurled the ball hard, aiming to crush Zarian’s head.
A pillar of darkness rose next to Zarian and deflected the heavy ball away. Two spikes thrusting from the floor crossed over each other, trapping the ball and chain as it tangled up with the dark conjurings.
Havard let go of his weapon. He lunged at Zarian and reached out with both hands like the mighty paws of a predator.
Another pair of dark spikes rose and pierced both of his arms. The man cried out as he was held up in a crucified position. No amount of struggle could help him escape.
“Zarian, isn’t that pushing it?” Gilbert asked, shaken.
“They’re human traffickers and the worst type of men,” Zarian said, grabbing Havard by the throat.
“Say no more.” Gilbert joined Loner to mop up the surviving bandits.
“You won’t get away with this! Our boss is Level 50!” Havard spat.
“Good, the rest of you are too weak to entertain me,” Zarian said, thrusting his aura into Havard’s aura, wrecking havoc along the way of finding his best alpha skill.
Havard tried to fight, but he couldn’t break free of Zarian’s dark spikes. The more he struggled, the easier it was for Zarian to trace over the runes to his best alpha skill and copy it into his profile.
It took a couple of tries since this was a skill of higher than normal quality. But the effort was worth it once Zarian succeeded.
“That’s one.” Zarian grinned as he activated the new Level 0 spell. He felt a partial boost to his Strength, but that wasn’t enough for him.
He shoved aura into the skill to overcome the handicap. He felt his muscles bulge with new power, stacking on top of his parasite-fused body and Adrenaline Jolt.
He felt like he could flip a car over with no effort. Now it was time to test his new Strength on a living subject. He released Havard from the double spike crucifixion, letting the man drop in front of him.
With a grunt, Havard lifted to his slightly taller height and forced his bloody hands to ball into big knobby fists. His Willful Might empowered him despite the holes in his forearms.
He threw an angry, defiant punch at Zarian’s face. He was a touch too slow, however. His Agility was less than Zarian’s Agility, and Havard didn’t have a parasitic body, either.
Havard whiffed the punch by an inch, and Zarian countered with a punch to the man’s chest. Zarian’s knuckles landed with a loud thump.
The Bandit Bruiser crashed backward. A rib or two might’ve broken from the hit, but it wasn’t good enough to keep Havard down.
He had decent vitality for a bandit. He’d earned his levels the hard way. Thankfully, Zarian had a solution for that problem.
Zarian pointed his palm forward. He doused Havard with Black Fire, wiping away his vitality.
They traded blows again. Havard moved even slower this time, drained of extra vitality while struggling to breathe. He missed big time on this latest punch.
Zarian’s fist plowed through Havard’s skull and sent chunks flying everywhere. The moment his body fell over headless, the black and gray flames winked away.
Gilbert and Loner were standing off to the side, having finished with their fights. Zarian glanced between them and then back down at his blood fist, which had punched a man’s head apart.
“Two more to go,” Zarian said, walking forward.
“Don’t you want skills that make Mysticism better?” Gilbert fell behind Zarian. Loner trailed in the back.
“Those don’t exist as far as I know. Instead of making Mysticism better, they’re just mystical skills with unique effects. Even then, those are still rare. The most impressive thing I’ve seen here was the guy who can turn invisible.”
“Why not grab that?”
“I don’t want to spread too thin. Not for me or for you guys. If you all can learn to stack abilities like me, then these physical skills will push you head and shoulders above the competition.”
Gilbert grimaced as they turned a corner in the demolished warehouse. “Still Level 0 skills.”
“That’s why I’m going for some with decent quality.” Zarian gave him a cheeky grin. “You can also try to learn Basic Aura Manipulation like me. Fair warning, though. I had to break my brain first before the System gave it to me.”
Gilbert shuddered a little. Their conversation ended when another group of bandits rushed at them from all sides. They’d set up an ambush prior, surrounding Zarian, Gilbert, and Loner with fifty men.
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Hundreds of dark spikes thrust upward from the ground, crisscrossing in a circle around Zarian and his companions. The dark spike barriers held against a few magic bolts, arrows, rocks the size of a man’s head, and other projectiles. The bandits assaulted the dark spikes with an uncontrolled fury, breaking the thinnest ones and no more.
Zarian scanned the fifty men as the bandits stormed at them from all sides. He found one waiting in the back. He was the next target.
“We’re going to rip out your guts and feed them to the dogs, you cunts!” shouted Maximus.
“That’s rude. We just want to give you quick deaths. With maybe a little pain along the way.” Zarian cast the Quagmire Pit once again.
He made it bigger, wider, as far as it could go with him and his companions at the center. He caught the rushing bandits before they could escape, and they all tumbled into the muddy, quicksand-like mire.
The bandits struggled and fought to free themselves from the mire. Only a few had the skill, physicality, or luck to find a way out.
Gilbert and Loner remained unaffected, standing on the surface.
Once Zarian dropped the wall of crisscrossing spikes, Loner ran over to the nearest thrashing bandit and kicked his head multiple times until his cranium broke. Gilbert walked across the surface carefully until he found his confidence.
“I was always fantastic at Whack-A-Mole!” Gilbert shouted, raising and swinging his war club, leaning into the mania instead of shying from it.
He splattered heads with almost every hit. He put all of his size and Strength into the hits to obliterate each bandit he came across in one, two, or three strikes if they were truly tough enough to withstand Gilbert beyond the first strike.
Gilbert was going to grow from this. Of course, Zarian received solid experience because of the quagmire helping.
“Move it. This spell has a hefty cost at this size,” Zarian said over his shoulder, walking down Maximus.
The speedster moved with everything he had to get closer to the edge of the quagmire. The spell kept slurping him down as he used his Wondrous Speed skill.
When Maximus nearly reached the edge, a dozen spectral spiders appeared, spraying him with arcane webbing that glowed a very subtle and hard-to-see blue in the dark.
The spiders were too weak to fight the man directly, and that was okay. Their webbing gummed up his movements and slowed him down drastically.
Now Maximus had to fight the magic webbing and the quagmire if he wanted to escape. It looked like he didn’t have the Strength for all of that.
Zarian walked up and reached down for Maximus’s head. He snatched him by the skull, applying serious pressure with his new Willful Might skill.
Maximus screamed as Zarian stopped short of crushing the man’s skull. This one had little in the vitality department, apparently.
“Give me your skill.” Zarian penetrated his aura into Maximus’s aura.
The more the speedster fought, the easier it became for Zarian to trace the alpha skill and copy it into his profile. Sometimes Maximus went limp, fuzzing out his skill. Zarian shook the man hard to snap him back into action until Zarian succeeded.
“You wouldn’t think bandits would have interesting skills like these.” Zarian chuckled while combining Willful Might and Wondrous speed together with his other abilities.
He felt even faster than ever before. And maybe a touch luckier.
With little effort, he yanked the screaming Maximus out of the quagmire and threw him backward. The Bandit Robbert hit the middle of the pit with a heavy splash, sinking fast.
By then, Gilbert and Loner had stepped onto dry ground. They engaged in some fights against the men who’ve escaped the pit.
Zarian walked off the pit.
A split second later, the Dread Mire Bite activated. Invisible, lightning-fast jaws erupted from the quagmire, the jaws matching its size and chomping on everyone who remained in the pit, alive or dead.
Geysers of blood, tons of gore, and crushed body parts rained in another deluge nearly as thick as the heavy rain pouring through the gaps in the ceiling. The carnage was so large it painted the walls and the ceilings with a fresh coat of crimson and giblets. There were plenty of intestines for any stray dogs to eat later.
The surviving bandits screamed in horror at the brutal sight. Para quivered in excitement and reached out with a dozen tentacles and tendrils. She snatched up the raining limbs and heads before feasting without restraint.
Since she wasn’t doing much other than watching Zarian’s back, he let her eat and bulk up. When she bulked up, a small amount of that buff transferred through the parasitic threads fused with Zarian.
Zarian grew a little stronger and faster. He felt strangely merry. This was his first time killing humans on purpose, and he was unbothered.
Maybe that was the Marine in him. He couldn’t blame everything on his evil alignment. Or maybe he should.
Either way, he was becoming a huge fan of the dread gator folktale spells. It took some set up and slow enemies, but the results were fantastic, leaving some big impressions.
What was a wizard without having an impression?
“It’s raining blood and guts! Oh, it’s raining blood and guts!” Zarian sang, kicking aside a dismembered limb. “I don’t know the lyrics to the rest of this song, but I assure you it’s raining blood and guts, oh!”
“What the fuck is your problem?!” screamed a bandit on the ground, missing both legs and one arm. He was one of the unfortunate victims of the Dread Mire Bite who didn’t die instantly.
Zarian blinked down at the injured bandit. “No problem, really. I’m just enjoying myself.”
The bandit cussed at him. Para used her tendrils, tentacles, lamprey mouths, bone hooks, and even a serrated hacksaw on the rude bandit.
While she had her fun, Zarian looked over his notifications.
Zarian snapped his head aside with surprising speed as a magic bolt passed by his face. He pointed his finger and shot a bandit between the eyes with a dark bullet.
“I got a new achievement!” Zarian called out. “It’s called Junior Manslaughterer!”
Gilbert finished beating a man to death before turning to address the announcement. “Well, isn’t that just fitting! What’s next, genocidal maniac? Or how about murder-crazed psycho-bro?”
“You okay, Gilbert?”
“I’m flipping great, chief! Absolutely great! There’s nothing damaged or damned about me!”
“Cool! Keep up the good work.” Zarian turned back to the achievement. Before he opened it, something new caught his attention. It was something he’d been waiting for.
“There it is!” Zarian shouted. “Hell yeah!”
He felt very proud without realizing what Loner’s new abilities could do. Then he felt a strange stifling in the link between Loner and him.
Following his magical instinct, Zarian ended the spell Raise Advancing Skeletons.
Loner remained upright. He was Self-Sufficient, living up to his new trait.
Zarian also felt he could purposefully turn off Loner if necessary, dropping him into a pile of bones. He didn’t, of course. Not while Loner was busy killing bandits.
But other than that, Zarian didn’t need to keep the necromancy spell running anymore. At least for Loner.
“Yes!” Zarian roared. Now he could really have some fun.