studiobondurri Chapter 86: Overkill
Chapter 86: Overkill
Chapter 86: Overkill
“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.
“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.