Overpowered Wizard

Zarian’s heart and brain were racing.

Seeing all the numbers go up and coming to terms with the growth and changes gave him a pleasant buzz. Lowkey, he knew that the skills had gone up and advanced in the background.

However, the changes felt dull without acknowledging them fully, as if they were stuck in purgatory until he finally looked and accepted them.

Now Para felt way stronger. His spiders felt way stronger. A lot of him felt way stronger, especially Overwhelming Darkness.

Zarian was certain he had better control over the apocalyptic power. But when he looked inside of himself, he also noticed the tiny bead that represented his darkness was … larger.

Or more of his soul had become stained by the darkness.

As of this point, it didn’t seem like a big deal. But he wouldn’t know how much his darkness could affect him until the next time he used one percent.

Other than that, there were no advancements for Overwhelming Darkness. Not only was it the leading alpha in his profile, it didn’t need advancements. It was the apex of powers. The rise in levels merely measured his control over it.

Or could the rise in levels mean how much it’s corrupting me in return?

He focused on the nice stuff. There was lots of nice stuff from his skill advancements.

Hell, Zarian had felt disconnected with the advancements just like the skill levels. Without acknowledging the System’s notifications, the updated abilities felt like they were there and not there.

It was the same case for the new spells he and Para had learned. There was even a chance that the spells could fail if he’d tried to cast new ones without acknowledging them through the System, which was an interesting limitation.

It wasn’t necessarily something he wanted to break, either.

The point was to withhold as much as he could for increased interests compounding on the gains. Now he was reaping the rewards for being patient, such as what he’d gotten from his newly advanced skills:

<Parasite Cloak +3 (Level 54): Summon a parasitic, amorphous, shapeshifting cloak with a hunger for flesh. The cloak can take in objects to hold in a pocket dimension. Scales mainly with Willpower and a portion of its last meaty meals. Advancement: +1 allows the cloak to fuse more with you, increasing your resilience, physicality, and appetite. +2 enhances the cloak’s ability to do magic and scales partially with Mysticism. +3 enhances the cloak’s power of existence and scales partially with Wonder.>

<Spectral Spider Network +3 (Level 50): Summon hand-sized ghost spiders who are linked to a phantom network with you. They are highly proficient in stealth, distraction, and using rare arcane webbing, and you can use them for observation and communication purposes. Scales with Mysticism. Advancement: +1 enables the spiders to phase into the minds of your allies for a more direct networking approach. +2 improves all the qualities of the spectral spiders and enables partial scaling with Wonder. +3 grants all spiders wizard hats with the same benefits and advancements as your hat.>

<Summon Wizard Hat +3 (Level 54): Improve your aura manipulation, aura channeling, and aura power by summoning a wizard hat that’s soul bound to you. This apparel can blend with other items you wear. Scales with Mysticism. Advancement: +1 improves aura recovery. +2 makes spell study easier and faster. +3 improves your aura range.>

<High Rune Mindframe +2 (Level 28): Use this skill to conduct mental workloads faster, easier, and safer. Your mind is more structured, like the runes of high-speed magical intelligence. Scales with Mysticism. Advancement: +1 can provide the same benefits to others mentally linked to you, but the aura cost will get steeper depending on the amount of additional workload. +2 enables you to flip this skill into a mental jammer that affects any foe within your aura range for an extremely high cost.>

<Grimoire of Weird Freaky Morphs (Level 20): Through study and practice, you can evoke some weird spells from this accident of spellcraft and odd magic. The grimoire must be summoned as a medium. It’s more physical than the usual grimoire manifestations, but that makes it bolder and more freakish. You currently have 4 learned spells: No Hard Walls, Water to Slime, Animate The Thing, Bad Polymorph.>

Zarian had to pause and soak in the changes. He’d already seen examples of +3 advancements from the monsters he fought at the former Chimera Tyrant Lair.

Now he had them, too.

Next up was Level 100 and the possibility of +4 advancements or a total evolutionary skill reset. But that was far ahead. Zarian wanted to focus on the current progression.

Only one skill advancement came out simple enough, which was the case with Summon Wizard Hat +3. But even that had a profound change. Zarian’s aura range extended outward from thousands of feet to over two miles in all directions.

You could be reading stolen content. Head to Royal Road for the genuine story.

Anything within that range was his to affect and screw with as naturally as it was for him to breathe. If he narrowed his aura in one direction, his range increased much further.

As for the other advancements …

Para, are you okay? Zarian asked through their mental bond.

I once thought myself a person through logic and by examining you and others, Para answered cryptically. She went on a rant from there:

Oh, how wrong I was. I was not a person. I was a construct who thought of itself as a person. So I must wonder if even now I’m not quite a person.

Will I ever truly be a person? Or will I ever only be a skill who thinks and dreams and crafts facsimiles of feelings that are not natural to what is essentially a parasitic monster of an ability? Ṝ

Or maybe I am taking those first correct steps toward personhood now, stripped from what I thought I knew, like a baby who hadn’t learned to crawl before they tried to run.

I do not know where this journey will take me, and I do not know how this will change us, but there is power in this process, perhaps for good and for bad.

Once Para finished her rant, she faded to the background.

Naomi looked in Zarian’s direction a few times, her brow arched in question.

When he said nothing, she didn’t press him for answers. She went back to her own review.

Zarian didn’t know what to think about all that Para had thought and questioned. She seemed like a person to him. She’d acted in ways that made her a better person than most people.

Yet, there was still more to her path of personhood that Zarian couldn’t truly hope to grasp without a risky dive.

Even his Unraveled Mind was a little stumped.

He probably shouldn’t let his mind unravel too much during this time. Para sounded like she’d submerged deep in her own madness. Any attempt to weave himself into that would mess them both up.

Nonetheless, her philosophical issues seemed to grant her existence more power, not less. She also scaled with Wonder now, which made Zarian think the Parasite Cloak +3 was truly the most powerful skill second to Overwhelming Darkness.

Zarian’s highest three traits were Willpower, Wonder, and Mysticism, with the latter being chief among them. Para drew power from all three now, which made Zarian’s body even greater in result, which also increased his appetite by a lot, too.

Sooner or later, Para and I will need to eat titanic meals to satisfy our hunger.

Foodie could cook mythically delicious dishes out of titans, couldn’t she?

We need her so much. I’m drooling just thinking about what she can cook and how great it’ll be.

She was the Indomitable Cook for a reason.

Turning his attention to the other changes, he wasn’t sure how useful the jamming option from High Rune Mindframe +2 would be.Nôv(el)B\\jnn

Its original purpose and +1 advancement seemed more helpful for him and the party. Besides, he and Para could already do things with their aura that could screw up most people.

Thus, out of all the advancements, he favored the +2 for High Rune Mindframe the least and felt a little disappointed. He would’ve preferred a simple aura cost reduction, honestly, to make the skill easier.

But that was the only disappointment.

One of the other big winners that thrilled Zarian was Spectral Spider Network +3, which had its description streamlined. Better yet, the +3 advancement for the spiders could be the most impactful upgrade ever seen from the sheer potential alone.

I can summon more of them. Much more. And they’ll be more self-sufficient now. They won’t need me for aura anymore, won’t they?

Zarian was stunned.

The sheer potential was immense.

After he slowly recomposed himself, he looked down at a spider on his lap and saw the mini wizard hat on its head. The spider went as far as grasping the hat with the tip of its front leg and waving it around.

A few more spectral spiders appeared on Zarian’s body. They waved around their new wizard hats, released pulses of little aura bubbles they could better control, and had a wizard hat dance party.

It was an astounding sight, and Zarian wasn’t seeing it alone.

From across the other side of the room, Bianca noticed the party and the spider’s little wizard hats.

She squealed.

She bum-rushed Zarian, snatched up a bunch of spiders, and danced around on the tiered elevations.

Zarian glowered in her direction, remembering how she used to fear the spiders. Now Bianca danced around with them as if they were her own, the spiders waving around their little wizard hats.

“Okay, I have to admit that is cute,” Hannah said, breaking her concentration on her review.

Zarian sighed. “Yeah, they are. But Bianca stole them away.”

Hannah shrugged one shoulder. “You know how Bianca is.”

“Yeah, yeah.” Zarian conceded and let Bianca be Bianca.

At the very least, Zarian had one more upgrade he could feel happy about. The Grimoire of Weird Freaky Morphs was bolder and freakier now, although Zarian didn’t exactly know what that meant.

The grimoire’s prior cowardice had made it hard for Zarian to take it seriously despite it having some useful spells. But Para’s two months of consistent mothering and gentle parenting had resulted in twenty levels, an advancement, Morph having a better attitude, and new spells.

Way to go Madre Para.

Speaking of spells, it’s time to check those new ones next! I know Para’s in her own world right now, but we did tag team to learn eleven spells the past two months!

Zarian was brimming with enthusiasm as he finally checked the spell descriptions provided by the System.

He started with the least badass and gradually climbed the badass tree to the top. He was so hyped he was bouncing up and down in his bean bag chair, almost ready to rocket off with a push of aura.

This was the reason he chose the evil wizard class. Because the spells came out fucking awesome.