Let’s go! Zarian cheered inwardly.

Four from Morph:

Three from Gator:

Three from Black:

Three from Voidling:

At long last, Zarian acknowledged all the hard studying and patience of the past two months. The grind had turned out enormous, even with their study-enhancing abilities and the intellectual boost from free evil +4.

Some of these spells should’ve taken years for wizards to learn. Maybe even decades.

But Zarian and Para had crunched the time down to two months. There were still some incredibly hard spells waiting for them in the future.

Voidling had one spell that seemed as impossible as the gravity spell. Black had the gravity spell and another seemingly impossible spell.

Gator’s folktale-style spells had exploded in complexity and grew into sprawling epics that Zarian and/or Para had to remember perfectly to reach the next part of the lengthening combo spell.

Morph’s four spells came out the easiest even though they were the strangest.

Morph’s catalog of spells were a broken, haphazardly written, and utter messes. Para not only had to mother the grimoire, she had to connect the discordant pieces and scraps together while learning the spells.

Somehow, Para related to Morph better than Zarian and figured out how to learn the messy spells. The results spoke for themselves.

I have so many spells! Zarian felt like a little kid on Christmas day. I have so many options of how to play wizard!

Zarian looked at all twenty-four spells with some slight adjustments to their arrangement. Voidling came first before Black, Gator, and lastly Morph.

Spells: Void Authority (Epic), Void Layer (Legendary), Void Waltz (Legendary), Void Shout (Legendary), Void Madness (Rare), Void Acid (Epic), Minor Void Portal (Legendary), Bloody Lifesteal (Uncommon), Deploy Expert Skeletons (Epic), Black Fire (Rare), Torturous Lightning (Epic), Graven Glacial Tomb (Epic), Arcane Artillery Platform (Legendary), Quagmire Pit (Uncommon), Dread Mire Bite (Rare), Dread Mire Bellow (Epic), Dreadnought Hell Gator (Legendary), Hell Gator Quake (Epic), Hell Gator Crush (Epic), Hellish Breath (Legendary), No Hard Walls (Uncommon), Water to Slime (Rare), Animate The Thing (Epic), Bad Polymorph (Legendary)

Zarian’s enthusiasm dimmed a little when he noticed he still lacked direct damaging abilities. His Arcane Artillery Platform spell facilitated a way for Zarian to strike directly once a day, but other than that, none of his spells were point, click, and die spells.

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He had spells that drained life energy from their victims. He even had a torture spell. But those would still act with indirect means to kill someone.

Twenty-four spells in total. And none of them deal damage directly without some setup. Is this the great joke about my wizard path? Without Overwhelming Darkness, I have to find creative ways to kill people?

Granted, he was so uber powerful and ridiculous, he could snuff someone’s life with a solidified press of his aura. He could invade someone’s profile, block their skills, and consume knowledge from their minds, leaving them mostly lame.

Or he could let Para do that aura invasion stuff.

She was better at being an aura devourer and profile destroyer once she could get her hooks in and dominate. He was better at bending the elements, solidifying his aura, and empowering himself and his friends with Aura Mastery.

You know what? All this sets me up as a scarily effective support wizard to a party of badass adventurers, Zarian realized. In the end, I’m kind of like Gilbert, and I didn’t even realize it.

He would need to get drunk before he would admit that to Gilbert. Knowing that guy, Gilbert would hold on to it and use it to thump Zarian over the head with his holier-than-thou attitude.

Is it the people around us who help us define our personhood, regardless of their faults? This is the basis of what I thought made me who I want to be. Should I question that? Should I tear it down and start anew? Para asked via mind.

Yes, question, but don’t take what you have for granted, Zarian thought in answer. I like people. Maybe others don’t, but I do. Some people are assholes. But the ones who aren’t can be really awesome and helpful. So don’t throw that away.

Thank you, Para said. You should finish up, by the way. Everyone is waiting for you now.

Well, could they blame him? He had a lot to look over.

At least he finished with his skill advancements and spells. The next things were small matters. He had a new Level 0 skill.

Zarian didn’t blame Para for getting a little overeager when she’d devoured the mind and knowledge of the Destruction Wizard. She’d gone as far as copying his destructive grimoire into Zarian’s profile, which had led to this Level 0 skill.

It was practically useless except for serving as extra study material with a ton of holes in it.

The most unfortunate part was the considerable aura drain from having a broken Level 0 grimoire in his profile. It was a gas guzzling thing, burning through Zarian’s aura for no clear reason other than for existing in his profile, like a cancerous tumor.

Zarian and Para had attempted to get rid of it, but couldn’t.

It was stuck there. Like a tumor.

I apologize, Para said via mind. I shouldn’t have done that. But we’ve never copied a grimoire before, and so far, Level 0 skills have been great boons. Whatever aura inefficiency they cause has been little trouble. Clearly, that isn’t the case with all Level 0 skills.

Zarian took his time to answer. Honestly, consider it a lesson learned. I’ve mentioned before how I wanted to avoid getting too many Level 0 skills, and now we get to see what happens when we think we can copy whatever we want. Let’s be more choosy next time.

Para gave him an impression of deep sorrow and sadness.

Zarian sent an impression of him hugging her and giving her head pats. He tried to withhold himself from doing it where the others could see in case Para wanted to keep her issues to herself right now.

At the very least, Zarian knew how they could deal with the cancerous skill and flip a negative into a positive. But that was for later.

He did a quick scan of his natural growth and saw he’d earned 40 stat points from sheer effort. He called out to the others to share his natural stat growth and hear about theirs.

The biggest reason they’d withheld their reviews was to help promote growth through effort and training. This was especially important with achievements, since they needed to be opened before they dished out their rewards.

Naomi had earned a little less than 30 extra stats.

Bianca had earned 50 extra stats.

Gilbert had earned about 90 extra stats.

And Hannah had leveled up twice, from 84 to 86, and earned a whopping 110 extra stats. If that wasn’t incredible enough, she also had a new trait, Aura Mechanic.

Her struggles and efforts from the past two months, especially when she placed herself in situations most crafters would’ve avoided, were well rewarded.

Naomi didn’t hide the look of disappointment that struck her. Two months of work hadn’t produced as much as Naomi would’ve preferred.

To be fair to the others, they didn’t have her and Zarian’s immense OP-ness. Or that was how Zarian thought of it until Bianca opened her mouth and mentioned something hugely important. And stupidly OP.

“I leveled up from 79 to 80 and I’m free good +6 now,” said the legendary Light Princess.

Everyone, even the envious Naomi, celebrated for Bianca and Hannah.

Naomi couldn’t get too mad. Zarian had overheard she’d gotten a trait upgrade from her achievements. Bianca had gotten the same.

The spiders danced and waved their little wizard hats around. Gilbert busted out some strong beers. Naomi grabbed one and downed it fast.

The hype was real. They had a lot of workshopping and theorizing to do to figure out how everyone could best serve the team and each other.

Before that, Zarian turned his attention to his traits to decide which one to upgrade.

I think it’s time to push my overpowered nature even further, Zarian thought.

He selected the Overpower trait.

Oh, that’s disappointing. Hm. Okay, let’s try this. He chose his first trait, Dark Affinity.

Wow! What the heck! What should I choose then? Zarian pondered for a bit before picking one of his most helpful abilities, Aura Channel.

You know what? That’s awesome. That’s hella awesome.

The Level 0 cancer skill was less of an issue now. They could bear that minor mishap until it was time to make their skill section more refined, more efficient.

Zarian chuckled. He threw himself into the air and flexed his magic to float around like an astronaut. He checked his origins.

It’s there.

He had Wizard Hunter in his origins now.

He still had no idea what the titles meant when added to his origins. The Star System made no mention of them, and Zarian wasn’t going to beg or force an answer.

Maybe it’s attached to our Feats of Adventure? I’ll ask Ruvaria about it later.

With his review finished, he joined the others for a fun and critical brainstorm session to meta-game their places in the party.

As they did so, Zarian jotted down notes by hand with some inked quill and paper. He put together journal entries for the other profiles with his own thoughts.

He liked what he was hearing as everybody theorized. A big grin crossed his face. When we rescue Foodie, it’s going to be like someone sent the hypermagical version of the A-Team.