Zarian’s mind was lit with possibilities. What spells should he combine now that he had two spell slots he could run at the same time? Or would those be considered concentration slots?
The answer came to him from the darkest and most depraved part of his Fractured Mind. It was half evil, and half him being creative.
“It’s dark as heck in here, but I’m pretty sure that’s a big evil smile on your face, chief,” Gilbert pointed out. “What’s going on in that noggin’ of yours?”
The surviving bandits of the ambush were dead. Gilbert had leveled up twice now, hitting Level 31. Zarian hadn’t leveled up yet, but he figured he was close to hitting Level 36.
Zarian didn’t answer and laughed like a maniac.
Para joined in on the fun, unraveling into threads, tendrils, and tentacles of leathery flesh and slivers of bone. She wavered and snapped out like a long, ragged, eldritch flag behind her host’s back.
She made him look extra dramatic as he guffawed.
“Woo!” Zarian pumped his fists, feeling the added might and speed of his new Level 0 skills.
He zipped over from one side of his companions, then to the other side.
Gilbert turned about in confusion to keep track of him. “Calm down, chief! You’re acting looney again! This ain’t appropriate with all of these dead men.”
Zarian slid to a stop in a puddle of water and blood. He looked about at the messy section of the factory and shrugged. He didn’t care for them. He didn’t even bother turning them into advancing skeletons.
Then again, they could work as distractions as long as they get destroyed. He wanted his two spell concentrations for something fun.
He looked over at Loner. The goblin skeleton was studying himself. He had changed little except for when he activated his new skill. Then all the runes Hannah had laid on his body glowed with pale white and bluish colors.
Zarian turned toward the latest challenge. An army of one hundred bandits was sweeping in from the next buildings over. His Spectral Spider Network was keeping tabs on the large mob about to swarm their position.
Before he could come up with a more serious strategy to offset the numbers, a new idea bloomed in Zarian’s fractured mind. Wouldn’t Loner’s new skill, Enhance Runes, work perfectly for just about any rune?
Could it enhance the runes of certain spells? Could it enhance the runes the System used for skills and recorded abilities?
Zarian doubted it. The System wouldn’t let something so broken fall so easily into his hands.
Still, he wanted it. He shouldn’t load up so many skills into his limited beta section, but he couldn’t stop himself from trying to copy the skill.
“Dammit, System!” Zarian raised a fist and shook it toward the ceiling. That was the first time in a while he’d felt annoyed toward the System.
“Chief?” Gilbert called with a serious tone. “Come down to the ground with the rest of us simple men. What’s the next move? I’m pushing Tranquil Mind and my Willpower as far as I can take it.”
Zarian could see that Gilbert was stressed. Maybe the gruesome bandit deaths were chipping away too much from his consciousness.
Well, they had one more skill to nab before the operation was over. Then this side quest would be done.
“We’re up against one hundred men.” Zarian walked away from the advancing wall of armed bandits. “And they have some serious skills. All real bandits this time, I think.”
From what he could tell through the Spectral Spider Network, these bandits were the most armed and magical he’d seen yet. Some lit themselves on fire. Others had magic electricity sparking between their hands. A few controlled the nearest piles of stone and conjured bridges over large potholes and craters. Some rode on twisting rivers of water.
It was almost tempting to fill up his beta section with different elemental magic. But that would defeat the purpose of the operation.
He needed skills that synergized with the body and offered a backup plan when all else failed. He wanted to improve the chances of someone like Hannah surviving the most dangerous encounters if her runic abilities failed her.
I’m here to make sure Hannah could punch skulls and survive a hundred foot fall.
And if Zarian could punch giants and survive the strikes of titans when magic somehow failed him, all the better. Besides, he didn’t like the idea of diluting his class as a Black Wizard Apprentice with basic elementary junk.
“It’s too much for you to fight upfront,” Zarian said seriously.
Gilbert flicked his arm to the side. The silky bracer on his arm expanded into a big, boxy shield.
“They have fire and lightning,” Zarian said.
Gilbert paused as they walked over some rubble. “Can you get rid of those guys?”
“Sure. Let me lead them around with bread crumbs.” Zarian waved his hand and used Raise Advancing Skeletons.
Thirty skeletons rose out of their fleshy shells. They ripped off their faces and scalped themselves free of their hair. They reached between their oozing rib cages and pulled out their useless organs.
The skeletons shook off the weakness of their flesh. They became loyal creatures of ivory bone, slick with blood and rain water.
They all turned out Level 24.
Loner glared up at them. Then he hopped onto a pile of rubble so he could stand taller than the human skeletons.
Gilbert shook his head at the mess the skeletons made dumping their human flesh. Zarian hoped the war healer could endure the bloody mayhem and stress a little longer.
“All of you human skeletons, go out with a fight. Hit. Scare. Make a bunch of rattling noise. Lead them down this path toward the factory over there. It’s okay if you get destroyed.”
The skeletons gave all thumbs up. Then they turned and ran toward the bandit army, rattling the whole way.
A few minutes later, Zarian heard bandits shouting in alarm and fear through the heavy rain. The skeletons had reached them.
Zarian imagined under the low illumination of faint magic lights, the skeletons and their rattling bodies must’ve sounded horrifying. Zarian hoped the skeletons jumped out of the shadows for the classic haunted house scare.
Thanks to his Spectral Spider Network, he watched a couple of slapstick moments that were worth replaying on a highlight reel. One skeleton scared a group of bandits so badly they threw a fireball that was too close and blew themselves up.
Now that was a classic magical blunder if Zarian had ever seen one.
While the human skeletons threw a wrench into the bandits’ march, Zarian set up with his companions in a new section of the impoverished district. They found a factory filled with rusted runic devices that wouldn’t work anymore.
It looked like they used magic to run conveyor belts, which were highly industrial for a medieval-like kingdom. More importantly, it had multiple floors and crumbling supports.
Ten minutes later, a man burst through the old factory with a skull gripped in his hand. He squeezed his grip and crushed the skull, destroying the last of the raised skeletons.
Zarian watched while draped in deep darkness in the middle of the factor.
He used Identify on the man.
“I felt that, you little gnat!” The skull-crushing man bellowed.
He walked in with nearly fifty men following him inside. The other fifty surrounded the factory from all sides.
Stolen from its rightful place, this narrative is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.
“Who are you? What makes you think you can mess with the Bramblevale Bandits without facing consequences? The lord of this entire township wouldn’t even dare. Do you have any idea of who we’re connected with?”
“I don’t care.” Zarian’s voice reverberated from every dark corner, surrounding the bandits. “Are you the leader here? And do you have the skill Mystic Toughness?”
The one Zarian couldn’t Identify bent back and guffawed. “You can’t be serious? Are you one of those old bounty hunting adventurers who can’t let me go? You’ve tracked me down because you heard of my unbeatable skill? Well, it’s true, I have Mystic Toughness, and you’ll soon realize why nobody can beat Dax the Unbeatable!”
Dax looked around at his men. “Torch this place!”
The bandits with fire and electricity skills lit themselves up. They emitted gouts of fire or strings of electrical bolts in multiple directions. They hit the walls or the equipment themselves.
Sparks flew everywhere. Flames built up. The shadows danced. Zarian let the finicky and weak light reveal him standing in the middle.
Dax roared, pointing ahead. “Get him!”
The more physical bandits howled and rushed forward. Some used speed boosting skills. Others lunged across the factory in one powerful bound. Zarian scanned them, using Identify, and saw that most of them were in the mid 30s or early 40s in level.
“RAH! Come get some!” Zarian roared, reaching out with one hand.
Darkness coiled up his body and down his extended arm faster than the eye could blink. A man rushing at him with a knife ran neck first into the tip of Zarian’s seven-foot nodachi.
The thin, super dense blade of darkness felt lighter and easier to use than ever for Zarian. It only took him a simple flick to eviscerate most of the bandit’s neck, the head hanging by a string of flesh as blood fountained out from the gory wound.
Meanwhile, another speedster tried to jump at Zarian from behind.
Para snapped out a bone tendril and plunged it deep into the bandit’s chest, catching him off guard while he was overly committed. Before the man could even scream, Para turned the tendril into a tube.
She slurped the man’s innards into herself. She drank him empty like a thirsty child slurping from a juice pouch.
She tossed aside the ragged husk of a corpse. A dozen tendrils and tentacles covered in lamprey mouths, bone spines, hooks, hacksaws, and more snaked and wavered in the air behind Zarian, covering his back.
That gave the bandits pause.
Then Zarian gave them more to think about when he lit himself and Para on fire with black and gray flames. Then he pushed it further with an inner red glow shining through their united flesh.
Together, Zarian and Para looked like a demon arisen from the most violent depths of hell.
“What the fuck are you?!” shouted a frightened bandit.
“A black wizard!” Zarian shot forward, becoming a blur of movement while swinging his nodachi wide.
He aimed for the slowest bandits. The sharpened edge of his dense, dark blade swept around horizontal and at waist height.
He sliced through a dozen men, bisecting them all in one go.
The upper half of their bodies flipped through the air. Black Fire stripped them of vitality. Bloody Lifesteal drained their life energy straight into Zarian.
He felt as high as a kite. Life energy was a drug. Combining that with his Fractured Mind, Adrenaline Jolt, Willful Might, Wondrous Speed and many other abilities, especially the Overpower trait, was more extraordinary than the fight itself.
The fight was plainly gruesome and shockingly one-sided. Anyone who was too strong for him to hit directly, he outpaced them and hacked them in two.
Anyone who was too fast for him to catch directly, he let Para set up snares and tripwires to bring them down. Sometimes, Para let the ones she caught live after ripping out their tendons. She used their screams to hurt the bandits’ Willpower, a classic move in psychological warfare.
The bandits lost their nerve. They hesitated. Zarian and Para had an easier time bringing them down that way, eliminating their numeral advantage, letting Zarian focus on fighting.
He brought down the dense blade. He split men from shoulder to hip so smoothly it was like slicing through warm loaves of bread. He swerved around their attacks while Para entangled and shredded the fast ones, sometimes using their own bandits as screaming meat shields. Together, they cut down and tore apart bandit after bandit, laying upon them the fury of their dark and gruesome powers.
Zarian was close to breaking them completely.
“All of you, get in here! Rush him now!” Dax roared.
The remaining bandits crashed into the factory. They abandoned the thought of keeping him penned. They used ranged tactics and more coordination against him.
Zarian ducked under a fireball. The projectile exploded behind him, washing him in warm light. He noticed a bandit aiming his palm at him and slid out of the way, moving just in time to avoid a bolt of electricity.
His feet touched a puddle of water, his first mistake. Someone turned the water into a trip hazard and sent Zarian tumbling around fast. He wasn’t used to moving this fast and with so much power.
Zarian gritted his teeth as he lost control for a second. Para slapped around her tendrils and tentacles, snatching some of the old runic assembly machines to bring Zarian to a stop.
For a second, Zarian was vulnerable while regaining his composure. Another bandit appeared in that window of opportunity, swinging around a huge log of wood with all of his skill-enhanced Strength.
Para was too stretched out to offer proper defense, so Zarian manipulated the darkness close to his body, thickening it, reinforcing it, making it as hard as he could with the limited time he had. Para raised some pieces of flesh as quickly as she could to help dampen the blow. The enchantments on Zarian’s gear turned on for max effect.
None of it could stop the oncoming hit from landing like an avalanche.
The enchantments blew out, overstressed. Zarian felt his shoulder explode into fragments. His ribs crunched inward, ripping up his organs and turning his innards into pudding. His neck whipped to one side and then the other, the spine nearly dislocating. He felt his brain thrash around hard inside of his skull from the huge collision to his body.
The tendrils holding onto nearby machinery ripped away with metal chunks as Zarian flew off. He sailed around like a battered rag doll. He hit a wall, burst it apart, and kept skipping across the flooded floor until he rolled through a garage size doorway and slid to a stop.
“I fucking got him, boss! I got that stupid black wizard!” shouted the man with the smashed log.
“You’re getting a raise for that, Tiny!” Dax shouted back.
Numerous men ran over to look at the damage Tiny had wrought to Zarian. Their pounding feet slowed until they came to a stop. Dax was at the front with Tiny, the one who struck down Zarian.
In front of them was nothing but flood water and rubble. There was no sign of the body landing there. Not even a droplet of blood. Zarian was gone from sight, but he was not gone from this world.
Zarian’s voice resonated from everywhere inside of the old factory. It sounded like a wheezy, wet cough. Then the wheezy coughing became laughter that was half drowning in blood.
“Come out and face us!” Dax roared.
Instead of that, spears of quiet and highly dense darkness shot through the factory. They flew past the bandits with so much force, their passing tossed men off their feet.
Each spear struck a part of the factory with boulder-shattering hits, but none of the bandits themselves suffered such a fate. When the volley of attacks ended, everyone could hear an unmistakable groaning, followed by the collapse of the surrounding walls and the floors above them.
Zarian was already outside by the time the multistory factory collapsed on Dax and his bandits. Some bandits made it out in time. Most didn’t.
Zarian smiled ghoulishly while the last of his life drained away nonstop. He didn’t have enough vitality to heal. Tiny had crushed that with his log swing. The only thing keeping him alive was surplus life energy from Bloody Lifesteal.
He sat on a throne made from Para, counting down the seconds.
Gilbert showed up from his hiding spot the next building over, rushing like a man on a mission. He sent his Healing Force ahead of him and engulfed Zarian’s busted body with the skill.
Immediately, Zarian felt more secure with living. His vitality was revived and kicked into rapid recovery mode while under Gilbert’s care.
Zarian’s neck healed. His rib cage popped and snapped back into place, making a crackling noise. His punctured organs patched themselves up. His shoulder returned to its former shape.
Everything that was broken became whole. Yet, the Healing Force didn’t stop there. The bullet that had stayed lodged in his back shoulder shot out of him, the wound sealing up.
All of Zarian’s scars disappeared.
Before the bullet fell lost somewhere, Para caught it with a thread.
She dropped the bullet in Zarian’s raised palm. He looked down at it in wonder before passing it back to Para for her to keep in her pocket dimension.
“God almighty, Zarian, you nearly died!” Gilbert shouted, huffing, pale in the face. He turned around and looked wide-eyed at the destruction. “Why didn’t you just blast them apart with your Straight Darkness from the start?”
“It wouldn’t have been challenging enough.” Zarian turned and spat aside some loose blood. “I wouldn’t have earned solid vitality with my new levels.”
“Still, there’s a difference between a challenge and asking for a death wish. You’re a wizard, remember? I’m smart enough to know they aren’t made to be that tough!”
“For now, I’m not.” Zarian smiled fiercely, letting go of the near death experience.
It wasn’t the first time. It wouldn’t be the last. He stood up from his parasitic throne.
Just in time, too. There were still plenty of survivors.
They were hurt and beat down severely. But they still had some fight in them.
Zarian scanned the surviving bandits quickly and noticed only one bandit with a detrimental skill that could hurt Gilbert. He decided not to shoot that one with a dark bullet.
Gilbert should learn to handle some unfavorable adversity. He also had Loner’s help as backup.
The Self-Sufficient skeleton walked over to Zarian and reached up to tap him on the head with his knuckles. It wasn’t a hard hit, but Zarian feigned as if he was hurt anyway.
“What’s that for?” Zarian asked, rubbing at his head.
Loner shook his skull at the wizard and faced the remaining enemies. Gilbert heaved a heavy sigh, resting his war club on his shoulder. The rain kept pounding down on them.
“I’m going to rip out your heart and give it up to my boss,” said Dax. He stood at the front, huffing and puffing with rage. He was a big guy, too. Nearly as tall as Gilbert, while much wider, like a true hog of a man, especially now that he was shirtless, revealing a canvass of scars over his muscled flesh.
“The name is Zarian Darkrun,” said the Black Wizard Apprentice. “If any of you live after today, tell your boss I live by a code. It’s quite simple. ‘Fuck around and find out.’”
“Let me find out then, gaaaaaaaaah!” Dax stomped his foot forward and roared.
His muscles tensed. His body bulged with new vigor. The energy in the air snapped, crackled, popped, and moved with a frenzy.
Before Zarian grasped what was happening fully, the atmosphere felt stifled, pinched, and drained before Dax released a burst of energy. A wave of force sent Zarian reeling as he felt the bonfire of power surrounding Dax.
Zarian knew that power.
He dreamed and obsessed over that power.
Aura Ignition.