Overpowered Wizard

Chapter 135: B2: C35: Tell Your Gods

Zarian shoved his remaining free points into his Wonder Stat, pushing it from 267 to 302. He felt luckier, more faithful, and more perceptive of the supernatural. Then, with his Basic Aura Manipulation trait, he pushed aura hard into his Level 0 Wondrous Speed skill.

He ran faster than he’d ever ran before. His grimoires jerked after him as he became a human streak of luck and speed.

Spectral chains rattled. Metallic hums resounded. A swampy presence groaned. And Zarian grunted as he maxed his physicality and dodged the first solid attack from Metatron.

The Arch Cherub shot a beam from one of its many mouths. The radiant torrent of celestial energy scrubbed the air clean of anything that wasn’t good and struck the cavern floor where Zarian had stood a second ago.

The entire cavern chamber trembled from the single impact.

Rock, sediment, and many high-quality materials became sparkling vapor under a bright and thunderous flash as the celestial beam kept burrowing further down below.

By the time that single beam finished, Zarian could tell it dug thousands of feet into the ground and left its heavenly mark. If that attack had struck the village up above, multiple towers would’ve fallen and thousands of people would’ve died.

The Arch Cherub flapped its dozen wings. Rhythmic storm winds blew out in all directions, all howling deeply with a monstrous bass.

The beating wings and storm winds almost sounded like a choir of deep-voiced men providing the bottom tone of a song. The altos came from the many mouths that covered the hard, white flesh of Metatron’s spherical body.

By combining all its singing voices, the Arch Cherub produced a musical symphony that was like the orchestral tracks Zarian would hear in dungeon boss battles.

But unlike the superfluous mood music a dungeon could provide him, the Welcoming Voice of Good was singing to invade Zarian’s mind.

It had no shot of succeeding there. Zarian’s Thematic Law/Floridian Mindset denied the power of the invasive music. However, the Arch Cherub’s other magical traits and skills weren’t so easy to thwart.

More celestial beams shot at Zarian as he moved around at blurring speeds. His back itched as the bright and thunderous volleys destroyed the cavern floor behind him with rock-rumbling impacts.

Metatron’s beating gold wings sent more bass-filled storm winds around the cavern chamber to slow him down or throw him off his feet. Zarian clenched his jaw, leaned into the storm winds, and pushed through as he ran in zig-zagging patterns with the celestial beams trailing after him along with other mighty powers of the Arch Cherub.

That was all fine with Zarian as long as Metatron kept its attention on him and off the spectral spiders. The little guys were forming a decently large spell array with numerous arcane webs and gravity runes.

While the gravity spell was still a long-term project for Zarian to complete, his studies had borne fruit in other ways, such as teaching the spectral spiders to be their own little wizards and enchanters.

“Do not run,” Metatron said through multiple mouths. “You will not be destroyed, only harmed and incapacitated. Then you will be sealed for the greater good.”

“Fuck off!” Zarian shouted, throwing up double middle fingers.

Metatron concentrated even more on Zarian. More of its mouths switched from casually singing to shooting celestial beams.

With Metatron fully distracted, the spectral spiders triggered their trap. They created a purplish zone that encompassed the entire Arch Cherub.

Heavy gravity fluctuations crashed into the creature from below and knocked it toward the cavern ceiling. Its volleys of celestial beams and beating storm winds died down, letting Zarian plant his feet and focus on wizardry.

In the meantime, Hannah took her shot from the opposite side of the cavern chamber. A massive rectangular barrel fired with a loud thump that nearly challenged Metatron’s choir of voices.

The payload struck the Arch Cherub’s side with a brilliant eruption of heat and force that even Zarian could feel as the blast turned the entire chamber from being a dark space to being the brightly lit home of a solar flare.

Zarian and Para continued to prepare their spells while observing the results of Hannah’s big bang attack. The light and flames dimmed away. The smoke cleared.

Metatron remained unharmed.

The air around the Arch Cherub looked thick and wobbly. The platinum rings encircling its body were vibrating. They seemed to have conjured a barrier to defend from direct damage.

“Lay down your arms and your magic. You must surrender to the demands of the Ascended Heavens and the Greater Good,” Metatron demanded, its many mouths speaking with a tone that was more magical and divine. “There is no chance of you defeating me. Lessen your suffering and be sealed away. The Good Gods demand it so, and so it must be done.”

Metatron’s orders had no effect on Zarian and Para.

The spectral spiders, however, weren’t immune to the unyielding orders of divinity. Metatron forced many of the spectral spiders to stop their arcane webbing, and the gravity trap lost its consistency.

Without maintenance on the arcane webs and new gravity runes, the spectral spider’s ingenious spell array was breaking down fast.

Metatron kept making orders to crush the will of the spiders completely.

Eventually, the purplish zone dropped all the way, freeing the Arch Cherub. The horrific World Boss flapped its dozen gold wings, stirring up more bass-filled storm winds that propped up its song of heavenly wrath.

It sang with an invasive psychic voice. It shot volleys of celestial beams that curved through the air, now targeting Hannah’s makeshift cannons and Zarian’s position.

The Arch Cherub kept demanding for their surrender. It kept demanding for them to be obedient for the greater good.

Zarian remained disobedient, and he didn’t run this time. Instead, he and Para finished their preparations for a hardcore combination of wizardry. They stood their ground and went all in with their first big countermeasure.

“Void Authority! Void Layer! Black Fire!” Zarian shouted, his arms thrusting forward, his aura flowing hard, his mind burning.

“Quagmire Pit! Dread Mire Bite! Dread Mire Bellow!” Para shouted quickly, her hands flipping fast through the gator grimoire.

Casting two void spells with a black magic spell counted as three simultaneous spells. Para casting the folktale gator spells counted as one continuous spell.

Altogether, that was technically four spells happening at once. And unlike traits and skills from the Star System, multicasting wizard spells together was a ridiculously hard effort.

This was the furthest Zarian had ever pushed, which made Para’s help a great boon for him. Their combination of mental and aura enhancements supported the great workings.

Meanwhile, Hannah lost some of her cannons, but not all. She deployed more cannons that rolled in on rail-like tracks through openings in the cavern walls. Another newly made cannon fired with a quieter retort, which struck before Zarian and Para’s spells landed.

Hannah’s newest payload erupted with a warping effect. Metatron’s barriers distorted and unraveled as the air around the platinum rings twisted violently in on itself.

The flickering barriers didn’t fall apart completely. But Zarian’s void fire technique had an easier time chewing through what remained, especially with how the Void Authority spell enhanced the void fire attack to make it even stronger.

The aura-eating flames consumed the warped barriers. Then the void flames spread fast around the platinum rings and caught some of the gold wings.

Unfortunately, Zarian had to trade blow-for-blow to light Metatron up with the ghastly void flames.

The celestial beams were still raining down on him.

But that didn’t mean Zarian was going to take those hits flush.

A part of his Unraveled Mind split away and focused on pumping aura into his Level 0 Mystic Toughness skill, filling it with as much as it could take. Para toughened every part of Zarian’s body with her parasitic threads.

Then Zarian and Para helped each other even further. Zarian unraveled fractured parts of his mind until it could merge further with Paras consciousness. Para formed mouths on the sides of Zarian’s throat along with extra vocal chords.

Then they both cast Void Shout together, pushing to five simultaneous spells. Their combined vocals filled the cavern with a haunting and dreadful noise.

It was a sound born from the deepest depths of the void, where only the most horrific creatures of the abyss could lurk.

Zarian burned through so much aura that if it wasn’t for his high Mysticism stat, Aura Channeler trait, and wizard hat skill, he would’ve bottomed out instantly.

Instead, his aura endured while he attacked Metatron’s magical abilities with the void fire technique and Void Shout spell as volleys of celestial beams broke down and became weaker above him and Para.

Consequently, his Unraveled Mind was a swirling, liquidated, barely conscious mess that was spilling further and further into Para’s consciousness. Yet, regardless of the risks, the parasite did all she could to support him as Zarian did most of the grunt work.

At the very least, the spells from the hell gator grimoire were giving Metatron even more trouble.

Zarian reached into the worming threads covering his chest and pulled out a skeleton from Para’s pocket dimension. The skeleton came from a kobold, and it wasn’t an advanced skeleton, so he had to maintain his necromancy spell to deploy it.

But that was okay.

The skeleton was covered in a unique set of runes Hannah had designed into a special array of enchantments.

Zarian tossed out half a dozen more skeletons with the same enchantments.

The skeletons assembled themselves from their piles of bones, looked at the Arch Cherub, and ran toward it. They made their excited bone-on-bone rattling sound as they charged full tilt at the angelic monster.

“Surrender,” Metatron ordered, sending out a wave of psychic divinity.

The psychic wave struck the skeletons.

And did nothing.

Skeletons didn’t have working minds even if they could act sentient. The psychic compulsion had no effect on the dead.

“Surrender!” Metatron screamed, uniting many of its voices.

“How about you go back to the heavens and tell your gods to fuck themselves?” Zarian snapped his fingers.

The skeletons blew up their legs and launched into the air like rockets. They latched onto the injured lower half of the Arch Cherub.

Then they erupted completely, the enchantments granting them some control of how and when they blew up. Naturally, they blew up all the way.

The suicide skeletons were just one of many heinous ideas Hannah had come up with that fitted Zarian perfectly. The damage wasn’t much.

But Zarian had a lot of spare skeletons with explosive enchantments on their bodies. He also had a lot of spare skeletons with other enchantments for more sacrificial plays.

He reached into the worming threads covering his chest and threw out more. The skeletons assembled themselves and ran merrily at Metatron to fulfill their purpose.

Metatron roared in anger.

Its gold wings glowed a brighter gold. Then the Arch Cherub showed off a new trick and phased out of sight.

Zarian felt a familiar ripple through the immaterial fabric that held reality together. Something nearby kept swimming through the multidimensional folds of the universe and beyond.

It was an ability similar to Void Waltz.

Zarian clucked his tongue. “Tut. Tut. That’s my domain.”

He cast Void Authority and yanked the entire Arch Cherub away from a nearby plane of existence and back to normal reality.

The angelic creature screamed in rage at the rude interruption, spinning about as a giant dervish ball of sharpened gold wings.

Metatron slashed through cavern stone and suicide skeletons in equal measure. Each time a suicide skeleton fell to the angel’s bladed wings, it exploded, even if it wasn’t for much effect.

Zarian smiled as he used Void Waltz in the middle of the chaos. He danced in and out of the void and in and out of the whirling edges of Metatron’s sharpened wings. He kept tossing out suicidal skeletons that exploded themselves on Metatron.

Meanwhile, Para formed blade-tipped tentacles from Zarian’s back. Each one glowed with the familiar crimson light of the Bloody Lifesteal spell. Then she took things a step further by coating the crimson tentacles with black and gray flames from the Black Fire spell.

Fully prepared, Para lashed out with her sharpened tentacles while maintaining two spells on her own, which led to the next phase of the battle came – a giant, spiraling melee.

Zarian kept on the move while in the thick of things, only one mistake away from getting cut down and petrified. His skeletons exploded all over as they chipped at Metatron.

Parasite tentacles coated in blood magic and dark flames whipped at the Arch Cherub’s body as Para chipped away at the World Boss’s vitality and life directly. Every time the massive wings chopped through the tentacles, Para grew more from Zarian’s back and kept going.

After a few minutes of this, it became obvious to Zarian that his skeletons and parasite seemed to struggle with leaving an impactful impression. He had the same issue. Without his darkness, he didn’t have a heavy hitter ability.

Zarian and Para kept dancing and chipping at their foe anyway.

Metatron kept spiraling and cutting.

The Arch Cherub seemed to have an endless supply of everything. Hell, its aura was still being burnt by void flames. Black Fire lit up its vitality. Bloody Lifesteal drained its life into Zarian.

Yet Metatron refused to slow down.

This was turning out to be a very long dance. The longest Zarian had ever faced.

Yet, he didn’t mind.

He was too invested now. He might as well play the endurance game and test himself like never before.

All in? Zarian thought with a savage and bloody smile.

He felt a hunger inside him that was stronger than ever. It felt like his body was burning from the inside out.

The next thought came from Para. Yes, all in!

For however long it took, Zarian, Para, and Metatron danced. Things seemed alright for Zarian until he later realized he had one major problem.

He didn’t have a big enough pool of vital stamina in this type of game, which was a big drain on his already damaged vitality.

Vitality was one half health, and one half stamina. Without Gilbert, Zarian’s vitality was sufficiently low in both. And Metatron refused to flag still.

Overwhelming Darkness would be the great equalizer right now.

It would win the fight easily.

Not yet, Zarian thought. I can still go further without Overwhelming Darkness.

This is becoming dangerous. But I will support you as always, Para thought.

We’re going to be the best wizards ever, Para, the absolute best, Zarian thought.

Yeah, he was a child of the ultimate nepotism, but that didn’t have to define him. He really liked being a wizard and wanted to push that as best he could.

Hell, he didn’t even care about the Throne of the Adventurer King.

He was here for the fun times, the big stakes, the adventures with his best friends, and seeing all that Infinita had to offer him. All while having a hell of a crazy time like any proper Florida Man.

Zarian let himself unravel a little further, dangerously so, to grant Para more power. Para took over more and more of his mind, which enhanced his body and made them hungrier.

He became less a man, and more of a beast, more of a suit of flesh for Para to wear. He practically put his life in Para’s parasitic hands just for a bit more juice, trusting her all the way.

Yet, that still wasn’t enough against the unyielding Arch Cherub.

So Zarian unraveled further.