Overpowered Wizard

Hannah pushed her hands down on the rune cart’s roof and sat up. She breathed hard and deep, eyes squeezed shut, before she committed her aura in what must’ve felt like an impossible battle against an aura titan.

Zarian stood over her the whole time, barely easing the pressure until he felt Hannah giving it her all.

Only then did he pull back bit by bit, making her work to gain ground and find an equalizing point. After a long enough while, Zarian let Hannah overpower his invasive aura a little. She barely had much room to rest, and pushing Zarian out was slow going.

Still, Hannah used all of her mystical abilities to scramble, claw, and shove at Zarian’s aura to get him out. She was practically crying by the time Zarian was finally out of her.

He eased the pressure back some more, but kept pouring a constant stream down on Hannah. He forced her to use her limited aura control to secure herself in a bubble.

“I’ve never gone through something so horrible,” Hannah muttered. “I think a few blood vessels burst. I might have a hernia or two, even, just from the strain.”

“Vitality will heal that right up,” Zarian said. “Good job, though. I know that was tough, but I think you want it this way. Right?”

Hannah glared at him before gulping loudly. She slowly nodded. “Yes, please, I … I really want this. I want more power. I must … become a badass goddess.”

Zarian nodded and floated away. He barely caught the last thing Hannah muttered under her breath. “Whatever it takes, my insufferable king.”

Zarian tried not to show how that bothered him. Hannah could be quite determined. Maybe not as much as Naomi, but once she had her mind set on something, whether it was an idea or her perception of someone, it became fixed in her head.

Even when she hated him right now, she still thought of him as the future king of Infinita.

Zarian hoped to prove her wrong with enough hardcore training. Maybe she would become the future queen instead.

It’s most likely Naomi, though.

Zarian glanced at his fellow Marine as she sat calmly on the edge of the rune cart. She looked down at Gilbert and Bianca who were sparring harder than they usually would.

The big, blue-eyed, blond raised his shield as Bianca dashed in and struck with a flurry of slashes with her sabers of light. Then she dashed away before Gilbert could respond with a shield bash or punch. She dashed back in and forced him to duck behind his shield again as she attacked with both her sword constructs and some laser beams.

The force of her blows on Gilbert’s shield created mini-shockwaves, left craters in the old weathered road they were taking between stony trees, and made the surrounding landscape quake as if they were a pair of dueling giants.

Bianca had an easier time than Gilbert because of her build and how she could dip into a small portion of free good +5. But Gilbert had the right combination of abilities to hold his own just long enough until his tranquilizer skill slowed Bianca and evened the fight out.

Neither of them were having much fun, though, not under Naomi’s watch. The cruel Rumble Psion was throwing her psychic abilities into the mix.

Tears of blood fell from Gilbert’s and Bianca’s eyes. Blood poured from their nostrils. They kept suffering psychic spikes to their minds whenever Naomi could land them after a cooldown.

She also layered her Psychokinesis +2 on them, making them wear it like a superheavy weighted vest. This was worse on Bianca than it was on Gilbert.

The fight evened out some more to where Bianca had to scramble around to avoid getting crushed by Gilbert. The man could last for a long while despite him being the ‘least dynamic’ on their party roster.

It got to where Bianca flagged more than Gilbert after a few hours of straight battle training without rest. Of course, Naomi introduced another insidious element to her brutal training regimen.

“Heal her. Jolt her up. Keep going,” Naomi ordered.

Gilbert healed Bianca and applied his Adrenaline Jolt +2. Bianca snapped awake. She used the extra juice to get back into the fight with another rapid flurry of strikes and lasers.

Again, Gilbert dropped back into a bad position. He had to defend as best as he could and endure the powerful hits from Bianca that slipped through.

Then Gilbert ran into a roadblock when he had to save up on aura to avoid bottoming out. He found himself less effective, which gave the Light Princess too much leeway.

Bianca beat the shit out of him while he was low on aura, which was kind of ironic. It was a known issue for Bianca to run low on aura most of the time. But that was an issue she was always working on, too.

It was rare for anything to push Gilbert to the point of wasting all his aura, so Naomi let him suffer for quite some time. Then she asked Zarian to pump more aura into Gilbert so he could hold his own better against Bianca’s intense flow of attacks.

Rapid flares and sparks of light showered the area as Bianca rampaged and Gilbert stood his ground behind his shield. Minor fires caught on the hedges and fields of flowers that were around them.

Naomi snuffed out any potential wildfires using her psychic abilities. She kept flinging out her Mind Spike +2. She kept Bianca and Gilbert weighed down with Psychokinesis +2. She made them fight and fight even when they were past the point of exhaustion. Even Gilbert was straining, having taken enough abuse to hit his limits.

Finally, Naomi let them rest. Bianca climbed onto the cart. Fell off. Landed in a heap. Then tried to climb back on and lay down like a living corpse.

Gilbert rested on Slip’s back. The Sleipnir had trotted close by the whole time, unless he caught sight of a monster. Then he’d run off to stomp it dead under his hard hooves. With his rider on his back now, Sleipnir let Loner and the skeletons deal with the monster population.

Naomi nodded at Bianca and Gilbert. Then she turned and said, “Hannah, you’re with me.”

“Fuck,” Hannah cussed.

She looked miserable. She’d been pushing away Zarian’s aura the whole time while trying to work on her spatial research.

She put everything away and jumped off the rune cart. Zarian peeled his aura pressure off of Hannah.

She caught a break, free to stretch and recover while Naomi warmed up from across her. The Rumble Psion still suffered from her debuff, so maybe Hannah wouldn’t get thrashed too much. It was doubtful, but there was still a chance Hannah would come out alright.

Just like Gilbert and Bianca had earlier, Hannah and Naomi faced off while moving with the rune cart.

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Anyone observing from a distance would see the metallic cart and its six wheels as odd. They would notice the eight-legged horse running about in the fields like a wild thing. Then there were the skeletons following from behind, with a black skeleton leading them.

If there were observers, they wouldn’t know about the spectral spiders that were spread so far out that most of them were beyond Zarian’s aura perception range. Scouting beyond Zarian’s range was their top priority outside of dancing and conducting webbed spell arrays.

For miles and miles, Zarian had his party covered because of his spectral spiders. That way, Naomi could bully Hannah with little worry. The only monsters that drew close were the ones Zarian allowed in because the skeletons or Slip could handle them.

The Runic Engineer threw herself into the offensive to make use of her newest skill, Mystic Rush Tank. She forwent her smart golems or any pre-made enchanted gear, as demanded by Naomi as they faced off.

Instead, Hannah had to fight offensively while making things on the fly. She had to do it while Naomi liberally threw her Mind Spike +2 into her head and weighed Hannah down with a heavy coat from Psychokinesis +2.

Consequently, Hannah’s existence became nothing but pain and misery. More so than any training exercise they’d done before.

Hannah hit the dirt hard with her face after taking a kick from Naomi. When Hannah picked herself up and swung out her newly made cubic crafts, she watched them get obliterated by an unfazed and unstoppable Naomi.

The debuff didn’t seem to matter right now. Naomi was that scary strong compared to Hannah in this close-quarters challenge.

Naomi’s unrelenting nature despite the debuff was both a testament to how strong Naomi had become and how far out of her element Hannah was. The chance of Hannah having to do much upfront combat like this was low, too.

But Hannah didn’t quit.

She seemed to recognize that this could only help her, especially in the off chance she was caught in melee situations. So she accepted getting her ass kicked and her face shoved into the dirt again and again. She got up again, and she got up again, and she pushed herself.

Meanwhile, Zarian placed some aura pressure on Gilbert and Bianca while they were resting. But he didn’t commit to it as much as he did with Hannah. Helping them grow their Mysticism wasn’t a top priority compared to improving their Willpower.

He maintained the pressure to keep them uncomfortable. He slowly introduced them to other traits: Uncanny Valley Effect, the Dreaded One, and Frenzy Zone. Bianca groaned and cried. Gilbert nearly fell off Slip’s back.

Zarian didn’t stop there. He let Para introduce her hungry aura to nibble on their own and drive up the creepy factor.

Yes, both Bianca and Gilbert had their own defenses against Zarian and Para. But with time and persistence, the Madness Wizard and his Parasite Cloak +2 reigned supreme. They made Bianca and Gilbert’s momentary respite a horrendous one.

What of Zarian’s training?

It was quite simple during the day. He selected one of his grimoires, specifically Black, and skipped past the gravity spell to work on the others.

Para took care of Morph with some gentle reassurances despite the loud and semi-destructive training the others did. Eventually, she had Morph open up to her. Then she was tracing her fingers over the runes and symbols of Morph’s first spell, using a combination of touch and aura perception to read.

But that wasn’t all. Zarian and Para were also playing a dynamic game against each other.

Zarian had better control and more variable tricks with Aura Mastery. Para had an extra attribute when she used Aura Mastery, her hunger aura.

They wrestled one aura against the other in a constant battle for supremacy.

Surprisingly and unsurprisingly, Para had a slight advantage. The hunger attribute in her aura chipped away at Zarian’s aura. Every bite of his aura made Para’s aura stronger and more gluttonous.

However, Zarian could bend the environment easier than Para could. With his aura, he conjured unique effects that Ruvaria had shown him. His Aura Mastery still didn’t compare to Ruvaria’s, but it was still grand and mystical.

This was all while Zarian and Para studied separate grimoires and used their combined traits to pressure their party members.

For the rest of the day, the land shook and roared from the impacts of Naomi and Hannah duking it out. The air around the top of the rune cart wavered nightmarishly while Bianca and Gilbert had to endure invasive and dreadful auras pressuring them and their sanity. Then there was the sky above where a wizard battled his own cloak as they studied from two dark and evil grimoires.

Twisted and malevolent darkness covered the skies and feasted on the beaming light of the twin suns. The occasional clap of roaring thunder resounded.

A mystical, dark bolt of lightning cracked through the air. Sparks of friction and crackling energy gathered around the darkness in the sky.

Bolts of fire appeared from thin air and rained down like drizzling fireworks. A howling twister formed from out of nowhere and sucked up the sparks and smoke.

A blaring impact, like a giant clapping their hands, reverberated for miles. The twister disappeared like the fingers of a titanic god snuffed it.

These elemental aura tricks were not something Zarian would’ve normally done in combat. It was a colossal waste of aura and highly, highly inefficient. But that was the point. So Zarian unleashed his dark and vengeful wizardry against Para’s hungry, hungry aura while the two studied and pressured their friends.

All the nearby beasts that were mostly harmless fled away from the intense activity. Even the braver and more dangerous beasts, and some of the lurking monsters, turned tail and ran. Anyone who was observing this from a distance would think a calamity or giant Tier 4 event was thumping its way toward the Blood Prairies.

Loner and his fellow skeletons found themselves with nothing to do. After watching the Floridians train and cause immense chaos for a while, Loner turned and threw out blasts of runic force at his fellow skeletons, making them train, too.

Slip and the spectral spiders were the ones left mostly on guard duty all the way from daytime to nighttime until Naomi ended the training day. Only then did things settle down.

Zarian switched to cultivating while Bianca, Gilbert, and Hannah gathered on top of the rune cart to sleep. They were beat.

Naomi held watch with Slip, the skeletons, and the spectral spiders lurking about.

“I got something for you,” Zarian said, floating in the air with his legs crossed, hands pressed together in front of his navel.

Para had assumed the battle kilt form, leaving his torso bare.

Inky, dark, and symbolic whorls of sealing runes covered his arms. An intricately laid spider web glowed bright violet with gravity magic on his muscular back. And the dark night seemed to ripple and twist around Zarian, as if he was the center of all things that went on in the night.

Naomi looked up at him with her arms crossed, her feet set in a runic circle that drove the cart with intention and minor aura control. She glanced around in search of danger before paying attention to Zarian again.

“Will it help me grow?” Naomi asked. “I’ve been thinking about that lately. I might’ve overdone it in the Blood Prairies. Now I have to wait for a while for another solid grind.”

“Before I say what I have for you, I was honestly thinking you’ll take a shot at me,” Zarian said.

“I thought about it. But maybe later. I’m not strong enough, and even without Overwhelming Darkness, you have ways to shut me down.” She shot him a glinting white smile.

“Clever girl,” Zarian said, chuckling. “But do note, the longer you wait, the more I’ll build up my bag of tricks.”

“Fair. So what do you really have for me, or was that it?”

Zarian didn’t say right away. He let his spectral spiders go from invisible to visible around Naomi. There were a hundred of them. That was more than enough for Naomi’s needs.

“Ever heard of a gravity chamber?” Zarian asked.

“No,” Naomi said, her smile widening. “But it sounds badass and tough.”

“I will make you strong, Naomi Washington. I will make you so strong, even I will feel a little scared when I consider your limitless potential,” Zarian said.

“Just answer me this. Why go so hard for us? Most people want themselves to be the strongest. You’re making me feel hella selfish compared to you.” Naomi softened, showing some rare vulnerability. “You can just focus on yourself and deal with your sister on your own.”

“I don’t like my little sister’s moral philosophy. There is no other way to beat it unless I show an example of something else or she’ll be right. I can’t allow that.”

“Damn, Zarian.”

“I can’t be all talk, Naomi. I gotta walk that walk. Or I might as well say nothing truly matters outside of my family’s bullshit. I can’t give in to that.”

Naomi laughed softly. “Yeah, I feel you. That’s what I like about you. You act like a real king.”

Zarian rolled his eyes. “It won’t be me.”

Off to the corner of the rune cart, while curled up into a tight and tired ball, Hannah mumbled under her breath. “Truly, an insufferable king.”

“King, king, king,” Bianca said tiredly, while curled up next to Hannah.

And over in another corner by himself, Gilbert snored like a truck engine.