“You know how bad this would’ve gotten if you attacked at night,” Zarian said, while waiting for the White Roses of Purgehunt and Purehome to recover and prepare for the next round. Zarian yammered away with little to no concern: “It’s morning. I’m bathed in sunlight. I have to burn aura to conjure darkness when I don’t have enough nearby. This is your best opportunity to kill me up here on the surface.”
A few minutes had gone by while he sat on his throne and let the enemy White Roses figure things out with themselves and their gods. The distant fighting between his party and the Royal Guards had winded down.
News flash.
His party had won.
The duel between Arnold of Ambrose and the White Rose of Kingsblood was finishing up with a dramatic last stand and crossing of blades. A part of Zarian’s Fractured Mind watched through his spectral spiders as Arnold sliced off the head of his rival and claimed victory as a representative of Serveserf.
Zarian chuckled as Naomi’s Aura Ignition petered out, leaving her to fall down face first. She was covered in a wide array of injuries from broken hands, bruises, cuts, and more that were mostly self-inflicted.
Gilbert’s Healing Force +1 was working on patching her up. Though the healing process wasn’t without some pain.
That didn’t seem to bother Naomi much. She rolled over with a big smile beaming from her face and heart-throbbing thrill glinting from her eyes.
Leaning back into his throne, Zarian shook his head at the sight of his murderhobo of a Rumble Psion. Granted, he shouldn’t be the one to judge. He was literally giving two of the most dangerous men in the kingdom time to set themselves straight and game plan.
“I’m getting cocky again, aren’t I, Para?” Zarian asked.
“No!” said the parasite throne, with a voice that sounded like a flesh-chewing monster.
“Are you sure?”
“Yes!”
“Why are you sure?”
“Play with food. Play is fun. Fun is tasty. Food is more tasty!” explained Para, her fiendish words holding a kernel of truth.
“Yeah, I suppose you’re right. Playing with your food would lead to relishing the experience more. Well, in this case, it’s really your food.”
“Yes!”
Chuckling, Zarian noted how far Para had advanced in conversations. Part of that was a consequence of higher Willpower. Another part of Para’s advancement was that the Parasite Cloak +1 was up to Level 21 while staying as a permanent fixture in his alpha section.
The next skill upgrade happened at Level 25.
Hm. What would Para get next?
“The hardest thing to do would be to use you for this fight, Para. That might bump you up a few skill levels, but you don’t really scale with my Mysticism. So against these guys, you’re at a disadvantage. But you know what? Maybe we can try to make it happen if we’re creative enough.”
“Yes!” responded Para.
It was time to get the ball rolling again anyway. Zarian had been spying through his spectral spiders the whole time to keep track of the White Roses. They were finishing up their own planning in the darkness of the storm drains.
Hell, if he focused a little more, he could feel them in the darkness down there. Instead of acting on that, he waited for the eventual ‘surprise attack’ from under him.
Let’s go.
Zarian and Para rolled out of the way of a thirty-foot crescent slash of white heat rising from the underground.
As the Madness Wizard skidded across the floor and entered a shaded spot under a crooked wall and broken ceiling, his cloak transformed. Para became four wicked insectoid bone scythes that arced around from his back.
As a bonus, Zarian gave each scythe a blade insert of darkness. It was like sticking a sharpened razor blade to a shaving handle, but many times bigger.
Once Para fixed each dark blade along the bottom edge and beyond the tip of her scythes, the parasite ran the scythes together and made intimidating sharpening sounds.
“Fun!” roared Para.
“Alright, Darius, Rickard, I really want to see you try.” Zarian grinned as both men catapulted out of the crater and slammed down on leveled ground across from him.
Darius, the White Rose of Purgehunt, stumbled in surprise that the Madness Wizard knew his name. Zarian also knew his class was a Level 71 Burning Guardian, and that Darius’s best alpha skill was the White Flame Weapon.
Rickard, the White Rose of Purehome, held his bearing better. Rickard was a Level 78 Barrier Guardian, and his best alpha skill was Barrier Force.
“How did he use Identify without us knowing?!” shouted Darius.
“It’s possible to scan us without our notice while we’re under duress,” answered Rickard. “Keep your wits about you, Darius. He’s a terrible fiend. But he’s a foolhardy one. We’ll outmatch him soon.”
Darius growled as he gripped his flaming weapon tightly, transforming it from a sword to a long spear. His muscular form was still rippling with grand might and toughness, like a true warrior made for upfront conflict in the middle of a blaze. He had the military look, too, with buzz cut gray hair, steely eyes, and a permanent scowl.
Darius reminded Zarian of senior leadership from the Marines. The ones he didn’t like. The same could be said for the other man.
Rickard acted with a cooler head compared to his companion, and he looked better off, too, if only a little scuffed up while having some bruising around his neck. He wore a mixture of plate armor and robes. He held no weapon because his barriers were the only weapons he truly needed, at least before facing Zarian.
Rickard also had grayish hair and was probably somewhere between Darius and Arnold’s ages, older than the former and younger than the latter. As of now, Rickard was the older and wiser man between the pair as the White Roses faced Zarian and Para.
“Answer me this,” Zarian said. “Why sacrifice your own young men to the gnolls? That’s not good.”
“We don’t answer to you!” Darius shouted.
“You think you alone can fight the gnolls? Or control them?” Rickard asked. “They have countless numbers in their horde. They could overrun a kingdom filled with innocents and there wouldn’t be enough guards, soldiers, or White Roses to stop them. And their elders are some of the strongest creatures in this region of the Walled Continent. You should know this, evil one, so what game are you playing?”
“Didn’t you get the report?” Zarian tilted his head to the side. “My party stopped the gnolls. They won’t attack. I’m literally a Hero of the Eternal Garden Kingdom, and my friend is a princess with good +3. Here, I’ll give you this chance to stand down if you’ve got some sense.”
Darius growled.
Rickard’s face grew darker. “And there lies the problem. Whatever manner of deal you struck with the gnolls serves you and not our kingdom and gods. It matters not if you’re a hero, if you have a princess, and if she’s good +3. You are a disruption to order and the ruling powers, and we cannot allow evil to reign supreme in such a way.”
Zarian sighed.
Technically, he’s got a smidgen of a point. I’m a gnoll elder now. And I did bargain that I’ll make their rising gnolls stronger and help them become more fortified and scarier so they could dominate the region further. So … he’s not entirely wrong.
Of course, Zarian wasn’t going to admit that, nor would he admit that he would work out the gnoll situation further down the road. Instead, he shrugged at the White Roses.
“It’s always a shame that these fights are born from such prejudiced notions instead of being learning opportunities that can lead to diverse friendships.” Zarian sighed miserably. Then he fixed his face with a sharp smile. “Oh well, I guess I’ll have my fun killing you. And if your corpses survive, I’ll feed them to Para.”
“Feed me!” roared the scythes arced from around Zarian’s back. All four stretched forward in anticipation of slicing, dicing, and feasting.
The fight was on, and the White Roses struck hard.
Rickard flung a marble-sized barrier at sonic speeds toward Zarian’s front. If it wasn’t for his enhanced vision provided by the updated monocle, Zarian would’ve missed the compressed white flame trapped inside the mini-barrier ball.
Even without the monocle, he’d spied on them and knew what was coming.
A dark pillar rose in front of the marble, and a destructive explosion of white flames blasted the pillar to smithereens.
Zarian and Para suffered no damage by backing away. Their backside smashed through a wall without slowing them down.
Through the furious white explosion, Darius lunged with his long spear thrusting forward. The white flames from the explosion circled around his thrust and shot ahead as an intense, super heated beam.
Para dug a scythe into the ground and redirected her host in a new direction, dodging the white hot beam by a few feet. Darius’s attack sliced through multiple walls and buildings behind them. Walls of roaring white flames rose in the aftermath of unrestrained annihilation and fury.
Before the wizard and his parasite moved far, a large barrier appeared half completed in front of them. Then multiple marbles containing more compact white flames flew in at the flanks of the wizard and parasite.
Zarian cast Void Step to slip away from the explosive trap and enter the secure darkness of the storm drain. The surface above rocked and bucked from the immense explosions that would’ve left some harsh damage on him if he hadn’t fled.
He waited as both Darius and Rickard turned about quickly to look for him, not finding him anywhere on the surface. Zarian continued to wait another few seconds to raise the tension and disrupt the rhythm of the fight before using Void Step again.
The air wrinkled as Zarian appeared to stride into a gap between Darius and Rickard, both men pivoting as they sensed the magic at work. Darius moved faster with his divine flaming spear extending as it swung around.
Zarian vaulted himself over the swing with a short jettison of darkness from his heels. He landed in front of Darius before the Burning Guardian readjusted.
Zarian smiled wolfishly in the darkness under his wide-brimmed hat, and Para went to town, scything, stabbing, cutting, going absolutely savage. She ravaged the chest, gut, arms, legs, and even the head of the White Rose of Purgehunt in a rapid blender of bloody attacks.
If that wasn’t bad enough already, Zarian had the Bloody Lifesteal spell activated. Each drop of Darius’s blood touching Para’s scythes fed life energy straight into Zarian, which was one hell of a high. It was also a nice way to shore up Zarian’s raggedy life energy after what Sinfeast had done to him.
Too bad Zarian couldn’t stay there for long. He had to cast Void Step again to avoid the volley of explosive marbles thrown by Rickard from behind. Again, Zarian stepped down into the storm drain as the upper level rocked with multiple eruptions.
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Darius remained alive even after getting hacked up badly by Para and damaged by friendly-explosions. The flaming man was one of the toughest enemies Zarian had ever fought. Still, the Burning Guardian wasn’t looking too good.
Zarian waited in the dark to let Rickard turn and search for him. The Barrier Guardian would see the Madness Wizard was nowhere to be found, while having to expect an attack from any angle.
The man had lost his cool. His only partner was screwed up and barely hanging in the fight. The power of their gods wasn’t enough to stop the Madness Wizard and his Parasite Cloak.
Zarian’s domination of them was growing, and because of that, he could unleash the effects of his epic Lore Eater trait. He cast Void Step once more and appeared to Rickard’s right. Then Zarian used Lore Eater to its full extent.
He chomped away at Rickard’s surface memories and observations as things happened. Zarian’s trick wouldn’t hold mustard for long, but it lasted long enough. Rickard was completely unaware of the Madness Wizard standing next to him.
Rickard was also unaware of the fence of pillars Zarian raised around him before the Madness Wizard released a supercharged dark bolt from the void. The bolt squeezed through a gap in the fence before Zarian closed that up and ducked away.
The resulting eruption from the sheer impact obliterated the pillars and the ground underneath, with Rickard at the center. The entire area rocked as more nearby walls and foundational supports crumbled, sending buildings crashing down.
Zarian didn’t get away unscathed. His own explosive impact had sent him tumbling across the broken warehouse grounds.
Para stuck her scythes into the ground to help her host get up onto his feet and stabilize him.
After thanking Para, Zarian looked ahead and saw a massive crater where the Barrier Guardian had stood.
Impressively, Rickard wasn’t dead yet. More importantly, Darius was making a bloody charge straight at Zarian once again.
It looked more suicidal this time based on how there were tongues of white flames shooting out from every wound and opening in Darius’s body. His veins shone with blazing white flames. More white flames roared out from his mouth, his nostrils, his ears, and even his eyes as they burst apart with boiling blood, smoke, and fire.
“WITNESS ME, PURGEHUNT!” Darius roared before his voice box turned to cinders.
Darius gained a sudden boost of speed and power, increasing the heat and potency of his flames. His intention was known, but a force that was far above them interjected itself.
Zarian felt like he was getting drawn into a climactic murder-suicide that had his name on it. It was by far the most blatant abuse of divine powers Zarian had seen yet. Nobody should be able to survive something like this, not when the gods were really trying to push their weight, even from a cosmic distance.
Instead of resisting, Zarian braced himself and charged forward. He cast Void Step prematurely with no intention of escaping, blinking in and out mid stride. He had a new weapon that was perfect for the occasion.
A void-made nodachi.
He hacked the seven-foot sword down with all of his Strength and Agility, taking full advantage of numerous abilities he’d gained and stolen.
The void nodachi entered Darius by the crown of his skull, sliced through the middle of his angry face, continued its journey through his neck, down through his chest, while treating the sternum like it was made from a loaf of bread, then carrying on down through the midsection, groin, and out between the legs.
Because of Darius’s momentum, both halves of his body passed Zarian with a horrendously hot white conflagration spraying out from the sliced sides. Zarian and Para came out burnt up as Darius’s two halves flew beyond them and struck the wall of an old warehouse.
Then, with little to no preamble, Darius’s remains exploded. The explosions had so much terrific force, Zarian was forced to stumble forward.
Para used all four scythes on the ground to keep them from getting flung around as their backside was scorched up. Zarian’s Wolf Dragon Hunter suit would need some repairs later.
Thankfully, he didn’t look back, since it would be improper to look back at an explosion. All the classic action movies from the old world had taught him that.
He also had a nice notification popping up in gold waiting for him.
Zarian held off on distributing stats. He turned to where Rickard sat cross-legged while looking worse off than ever.
Rickard placed himself in a barrier with his eyes closed. He didn’t seem phased at all by the death of his companion. Instead, Rickard had something else in mind that required some sort of meditative maneuver.
Zarian was wondering what Rickard was doing when he felt a weird shift in the aura near his face.
He jerked his head back and saw a near-translucent barrier appear where half his head had been. He felt the same strange phenomenon near his left shoulder and jerked out of the way.
Another barrier appeared, which would’ve cut into his shoulder if he hadn’t moved a split second prior.
Eyes widening, Zarian realized what Rickard was doing. The tricky Barrier Guardian was forcing Zarian to pay close attention to his aura and dodge away from barrier conjurations before they fully formed and hacked into his flesh.
If it wasn’t for Basic Aura Manipulation and the high amounts of points invested in Mysticism, Zarian might’ve gotten caught outright. Granted, he was probably a little luckier and more perceptive than most wizards, since he had a solid chunk of points invested in Wonder, too.
For now, he juked and dodged and ran around as barriers kept forming where his body had been a split-second ago. They kept aiming to cut into his legs, torso, and head especially.
Clearly, Rickard had his own heightened sensory abilities that allowed him to track Zarian without looking. He’d shored up his mind so Zarian’s Lore Eater trait couldn’t scoop away information and memories as easily now.
To test Rickard’s main barrier, Zarian threw a decently strong dark bolt and saw another problem come up. Multiple barriers formed in the way of the main barrier protecting Rickard. The dark bolt couldn’t break past.
Up next, Zarian reshaped his void nodachi into a void javelin and threw that instead. He found better success, but Rickard survived it with more barriers wrapped over each other and in front of him.
The defense was nearly impenetrable, and the man clearly had the help of Good Goddess Purehome. Worse yet, Purehome sounded like the type who would be a defensive expert, so Rickard was at his greatest as he concentrated on defense while trying to form barriers inside Zarian’s body.
“Okay, let’s try this!” Zarian cast all three spells he’d learned from his Grimoire of the Dread Mire Hell Gator.
First came a body-slurping bog that was covered in noxious hell flames. Second came the jaws of the invisible predator that lurked in the bog, snapping viciously over Rickard and his bubble of safety. Third was the Dread Mire Bellow, which resounded like a bomb and had the effect of traumatizing victims.
Zarian smiled viciously as Rickard waited in his barrier and endured the destructive combo of ancient folktale magic. In the aftermath, Zarian lost his smile.
Rickard survived. The Barrier Guardian had to stop harassing Zarian and concentrate all of his magic on defense, which nearly broke down after the Dread Mire Bellow. Still, Rickard and his faith in Good Goddess Purehome saw him through to the end.
Another notable detail was his alignment being good +2, the second highest in the entire kingdom. After Zarian’s latest failed move, Rickard squeezed out every bit of cheat juice from his goodness and raised the effectiveness of his barriers, which put him at a growing advantage.
His defense was becoming impregnable the longer he withstood Zarian’s attacks.
Seeing that, Zarian slowed to a stop and thought about how he’d wanted to end this. Para sharpened her scythes, but Zarian didn’t see her attacks as the solution.
He had to run around again even faster when more barriers tried to form inside his body. They appeared with greater swiftness and subtlety now, trying to cut into his brain, heart, limbs, and even his groin.
Zarian kept running until an idea came to his Fractured Mind, which was something he’d wanted to try out not so long ago. Zarian cast Void Step before Rickard ripped him apart with flesh-seeking barriers.
This time around, Zarian went farther out and exited the void next to his party.
“Hola, did you win already?” Bianca asked.
“The White Rose of Purehome is playing turtle, and he actually has a good shell. Want to team up with me?” Zarian asked.
“Sure! Are we going to do our combo thing?”
“Yeah, that’s what I’m thinking.”
“What combo thing?” Gilbert asked while he was rubbing around the neck and face of his eight-legged horse. “Oh, and do you want some healing? You look like you made love to a flame thrower, chief.”
“Yeah, sure, I won’t turn down free healing. And the combo thing is something Bianca and I can do as light and dark.” Zarian nodded at the Light Princess.
Bianca performed a funny dance in her excitement. A dozen spectral spiders appeared around her feet and danced with her.
Hannah perked up while sitting on an expanded Roller, the evolving dungeon core in her lap. All ten skeletons were gathered around her, with Glowy and Darko paying the most attention.
Naomi was sitting in a cross-legged position when she opened an eye, interrupting her Earth-Sky Meditation. She was still in the middle of healing and resting from the strain of Aura Ignition/First Stage.
“You don’t need help,” Naomi said.
“Maybe you’re right, but it’s always good to practice with friends when you have the chance.”
Naomi nodded and went back to her meditation.
As Gilbert healed up Zarian, Bianca strode upward on steps made of hard light. She waved her hands in the air above Zarian dramatically. Then she used her Refraction skill to split the light and create absolute darkness in a tower over the Madness Wizard.
There were many ways to capture darkness. One way was how Bianca’s control of light, ironically, allowed her to create zones of darkness. And these zones were pure as the void, since Bianca was specifically moving all light out of a specific space.
It was an interesting effect, which made Zarian realize the old Sunflower Helper skill would’ve been a redundant choice. They both were better off having chosen what they wanted. That was nice to know, as Zarian yanked all the darkness Bianca created into his hand as a condensed javelin.
Bianca created another zone of peerless darkness for Zarian, and once again, he condensed it into his javelin, which grew heavier and denser with each addition. After the tenth time, Zarian gestured for Bianca to stop with his free hand.
The javelin was heavy. Oh, so heavy.
He took his time to aim using his monocle’s scope-like features while triangulating the exact coordinates with his spectral spiders. Then he lit the super dark javelin with Black Fire.
“Wait,” Hannah said.
Zarian froze.
The Runic Engineer pointed her palm and cast multiple advanced enchantments on the super dark javelin. Thus, the conjured weapon became the enchanted super dark javelin in Zarian’s hand.
Hell, the black and gray flames coating its immensely dense form seemed to snap with more ferocity, hungering for vitality. This thing was a weapon of mass destruction.
And if that wasn’t scary enough, it technically had the blessing of Princess Bianca, whose alignment was good +3, the highest in the kingdom.
“You’re good to go,” Hannah said.
“Send it!” Bianca chirped.
“I can’t help but think this is overkill and it might backfire somehow,” Gilbert said, his trusty steed snorting in agreement.
“Oh, yeah.” Bianca frowned. “Maybe send it softly?”
“I would say screw it all, but I didn’t contribute,” Naomi muttered, breaking her meditation again.
She sounded upset, since she lacked utility with her battle-focused profile, or she would’ve thrown her hat in on making the enchanted super dark javelin. Zarian didn’t blame her. But he couldn’t truly pity her.
She had Aura Ignition.
More importantly, he was well aware of the immense danger of this conjured and heavily layered weapon. I better keep in mind the potential collateral damage.
This was the reason he held the big fight in the old stomping grounds of the destroyed Bramblevale Bandits. Most, if not all, the beggars had moved out or come over last night to the charity event. The poorer district was perfect for destructive maneuvers and big anime fights.
The moment Zarian launched the enchanted super dark javelin forward, he cast Void Step. He walked out of the void further beyond Rickard’s location and at the end of the poorer and emptier district.
A notification popped up, but he couldn’t look at it as he hunkered down and raised his hand like a catcher. He watched multiple buildings explode, their walls, innards, and ruins tumbling in the wake of utter destruction created by the zooming javelin.
Zarian growled as he intercepted the javelin’s flight path with pure magical will and sent it curving upward. He could’ve attempted to catch it, but that thing was so powerful he would’ve torn himself apart.
He was left to endure all the tumbling and flying debris trailing after the javelin. Thankfully, his Mystic Toughness and his other defensive abilities helped him out. Para helped, too, by dropping her scythes and transforming into a wall of impenetrable bone.
While he couldn’t see directly because of the cascade of flying debris and Para’s protection, he used a distant spectral spider to watch the javelin skim past a tower and fly over rooftops. Then the javelin took out some portion of the ramparts on top of the big wall.
Afterward, the javelin winked away in the far distant sky, never to be seen again.
Maybe it would dissolve after some time or destroy an entire hill upon landing. Zarian didn’t know, and he didn’t bother to take any further action or responsibility.
Instead, he came to a sudden conclusion.
“Let’s get the hell out of here. We’ve overstayed our welcome.”
“Food!” Para roared.
“Okay, okay, we’ll check to see if there’s anything left of the White Rose and grab up Royal Guards on the way out. Then let’s get the hell out of here!” Zarian declared as he checked his latest notifications.
He paused when he realized he came away with a hell of a haul, which was part of the reason he held off from killing the White Roses automatically. Because of the extended battle, all of his skills that weren’t Level 0 went up.
One of them advanced.