Overpowered Wizard

Chapter 214: B3: C4: Save The Cook 3

The gravity web magic stopped working on the shattered temple. The smashed remains fell back to the cavern floor as hurtling pieces, some as large as trucks, others as large as multistory buildings.

It was a destructive mess, and Zarian was in the middle of it while missing an arm, both legs, and half of his face.

But he had more than enough of him left.

He could physically see with one eye. He could smile. And he had a fist wrapped around the handle of the big black thing that was his new sword.

He was also latched onto a large boulder that was tumbling fast toward the cavern floor. However, he wasn’t the one doing the latching.

That would be Para, who’d grown eight spider legs from his back to do the real latching.

Para was awesome like that, the best article of parasitic clothing and personhood a man could have.

Zarian got to sit happily for a little while, take in the hellish views, and enjoy the ride until something – or someone – tried to rain on his parade.

“YOU BASTARD!” roared the draconic Tarx.

He slithered between plummeting boulders in a form that looked like a large dragon mixed with a wormy gecko. He was busted up, too, with blood pouring profusely through broken patches of his scaly flesh, his wings twitching as crumpled things.

His heavy injuries wouldn’t last for long. Zarian could already see the godly dragon devil was healing because of his vitality.

Staying on their rock, Zarian and Para combined their Aura Mastery with twinned fusions of Tortuous Lightning, Black Fire, Void Shout, Void Madness, and Void Authority.

They did not use the Void Layer spell. This specific combination of Aura Mastery merged with black magic and void magic needed to hit with some physical oomph that Void Layer fusions lacked.

Tarx opened his mouth and breathed a gout of destructive orange-purple flames.

Zarian opened his mouth and roared a torrent of bright red lightning, deep black flames, and a quietly eruptive void force that wreaked mad havoc on magic, skills, and boons.

Red lightning and black flames spiraled around the void torrent. They punch through Tarx’s dragon breath like a big man’s fist through a soft breeze. Then the mega spell combo slammed into the devil’s chest, striking with lightning and thunder that forced Tarx to suffer tenfold the pain.

The deep black flames did little to burn his scaly dragon flesh, but it ravaged his vitality fast, much faster than anything before. Tarx barely had time to recognize the danger of that as his wounds healed slower and slower.

The concentrated power of the void ran through him, wreaking havoc on his mind, his skills, his divine magic, and whatever enchanted items he relied on. What were dragons without their magic trinkets, even while in dragon form?

All of that sent Tarx tumbling down in shock. His paralyzed, black-wreathed body fell along with the epic debris of the shattered temple for a little while.

Eventually, he broke out of it after some time, pushing past the torturous pain of the red lightning and ignoring the big dent in his chest. He regained control of his skills, even with some struggle, and released a blast of devilish orange-purple dragon force.

The blast removed the black flames at the expense of heavy amounts of aura, no doubt. He could do nothing about his trinkets, such as the rings and bangles he wore. Their intricate enchantments had fallen to disrepair, dismantled.

That was the least of his concerns, really.

Before he could pursue another attack on the Madness Wizard, Tarx fell into invisible webbing strung between numerous debris of different sizes.

The arcane webbing had powerful magic weaved into their threads that reinforced them. None snapped easily before the dragon devil found himself wrapped up by a bunch of sticky strands and heavy boulders. ɽ₳ꞐȪʙÈṨ

Tarx roared and roared, thrashing with confusion and rage. His blind rage and tantrums made the spider trap even stronger, catching himself in more webbing, pulling himself down with more falling debris.

Despite his worsening situation, the pride of a divine dragon wouldn’t let Tarx stay put without raging at the indignation of it all. He even hurled flames as he roared in anger, burning off much of the webbing, but not at the speed he needed to break free before the inevitable happened.

The spectral spiders had thought ahead, of course, by also making the arcane webbing very burn resistant.

So Tarx roared out some trash talk as a last measure. “You think you can get away with mocking the gods of this universe! You can’t hide all of your secrets! We know you are a weak man! You cannot control the full darkness! No matter what alignment, evil or good, we will beat you! We will make you suffer, ZARIAN DARKRUN!”

That was all Tarx got out before falling into the awaiting maw of the Dreadnought Hell Gator. The dragon devil cried in horror as he and the boulders webbed onto him got snapped up, crunched down, and swallowed into the churning gut of the monstrous demon predator.

Meanwhile, Zarian remained latched onto his original boulder, watching the remains of the temple crash down on the forces of Hidden Hell. The epic debris rained on the Dreadnought Hell Gator as well, but the big guy didn’t seem to mind it much.

Zarian and Para’s personal boulder fell much slower.

They had the benefit of gravity web arrays laid all over their boulder, reducing its weight. Multiple webbed parachutes held onto the sides, catching on the hazy and hot air.

They slowly fell toward the battlefield near the big hellish portal.

Although, there wasn’t really much of a battle left. The mile-long gator did whatever he liked with creatures that couldn’t fight back very well.

Off to the side, Zarian spotted bright and eruptive flashes of a fight that grew more competitive between Naomi and Jack.

Zarian used the spider network and noted how Naomi still hadn’t used Aura Ignition yet. However, she was reaching a certain limit that would trigger the bulk power of her divine trait prematurely or force her to use her Aura Ignition.

Jack was powering up gradually and making things more difficult for Naomi.

That was great. Naomi could use the workout.

Zarian didn’t muse about the fight between the mythical hater and epic psion for long. He looked up and saw a bunch of spectral spiders riding their little spider boards through the air.

The spiders waved about their little wizard hats in celebration and dance. They swooped and swerved around Foodie’s four-foot body held in a hardened basket of webbing with webbed parachutes tied to it.

Gently, Para reached out with two spider legs as Foodie drew close. She caught the basket and used a third spider leg from Zarian’s back to help Foodie step softly onto their slowly falling boulder.

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Zarian held his breath, which wasn’t hard. Half his lungs had collapsed.

He watched as Foodie looked around with cat-like mannerisms. Her yellow, almond-shaped eyes and slitted irises took in his fucked-up body with a curious nature. Her big, leafy ears waved up and down.

Then she showed an expression he’d never seen from her.

She frowned deeply. Her ears drooped. The corner of her eyes misted.

“You did all of this for me?” she asked in a scratchy, hoarse voice.

Zarian slowly nodded. “Yeah, yeah I did.”

“Why?”

There were multiple answers to that question.

Zarian could say he was completing his party’s main quest. He could say that Foodie’s mythical nature as a stat-growing cook was the most prized thing in this Lesser World, other than having the strongest Master Ranker as a teacher.

He could also say that freeing her was in his nature as a Freedom Leader, the first of the relatively new freedom alignment. To bring about freedom in the Infinita Star System was almost a necessity.

But Zarian said something that felt true to him, which differed from his usual sayings. Maybe it was a little more profound.

“Because I wanted to,” Zarian said. “So that’s what I’m doing. I’m doing what I want.”

The boulder landed with a quiet thump. Para picked Zarian up and walked with him beside Foodie, who knew where she was going.

In all directions, they could see aberrations attacking the remaining imps and demons that fled away from the Dreadnought Hell Gator.

The forces of hell lost all cohesion and a sense of purpose. They became easy pickings for Shadowfell’s creations, making her forces grow even more rapidly.

None of that seemed to matter to Foodie, and the same could certainly be said about Zarian right now.

They walked over to where Foodie wanted to go. Then they found the corpse of the Grimrock Warlock. The lower half of her body was sticking out from under an immense boulder.

It seemed ridiculous for a Master Ranker above Level 100 to die from something like a rock fall, but Zarian remembered one of Foodie’s first lessons. Vitality grew the most by earning levels the hard way, especially through physical grit and effort.

Upfront fighters would naturally have more vitality than distant spellcasters.

Zarian had done a lot of upfront fighting at such high levels that his vitality was greater than it should be. Hell, his vitality was far above the average warrior.

And I still get fucked up when I fight World Bosses and Regressors, Zarian mused.

The Grimrock Warlock had turned out to be too fragile to survive the utter chaos the Dark Lord could produce. He hadn’t needed his Overwhelming Darkness for this, either.

“Huh,” Foodie said, looking down at the legs of her mother.

“Anticlimactic?” Zarian asked, leaning on the big black thing that he’d dragged along.

Foodie’s ears lowered even more, falling behind her shoulders. “I’m sad. I still remember when I was her favorite. I was still her favorite even when she was being cruel to me.”

Well, shit.

Zarian sighed. He did the cruelest thing he could to Foodie. He said the truth. “After the spectral spiders got you free, and before the temple struck the ceiling, your mother called out for you. She sounded concerned for your wellbeing in the end.”

“Oh. Oh.” Foodie’s voice grew shakier. “Well. I guess it doesn’t matter now. Evil shouldn’t care.”

Zarian laid the sword against the boulder. Para then lowered him down next to Foodie. He offered his hand.

A soft and free cry from a familiar bird resonated in the background.

Foodie joined the freedom alignment, but not as a Freedom Leader. It wasn’t ideal to make her a leader of anything right now. She was also leaving behind her original alignment for something far different.

Foodie joined the free for real sub-alignment. Switching from traditional evil to free for real meant she had a reset to her alignment growth, starting her as basic free for real.

At the very least, Foodie was a free goblin now, much, much freer than before. Her slave mark was gone, too. Her new sub alignment would boost her agency as a person, ensuring she wouldn’t be easily enslaved again.

She was now free to feel all the emotions her previous evil alignment had dulled.

The little goblin girl fell to her knees. She bent over and lay her head on her mother’s bloody lap.

She cried and cried.

Zarian used Para’s help to sit down next to Foodie and rub his only hand on her back. He did his best to comfort her while they took a break at the bottommost layer of the Grimrock Hell Gate.

The Dreadnought Hell Gator slowed his rampaging. He waited, standing guard over his summoner and the little goblin.

The initial cost of summoning the gator had turned out so massive Zarian was glad to have his Aura Magnificence and Hannah’s Aura Generator. Beyond that, the gator wasn’t too difficult to maintain, which made him a great and terrifying protector.

None of the imps and demons dared interrupt Zarian and Foodie.

Meanwhile, the other Floridians continued with their own objectives.

Bianca, Hannah, and Gilbert were on the other side of the portal to shut it down. Naomi occupied herself with fighting Jack and teasing out more of his mythical power and good +5.

There was more action to be found, but Zarian wanted to be there for Foodie and take some time to relax.

After a while, the little goblin girl stifled her own crying. She looked up at him with big watery tears and streams of snot.

Zarian felt himself dying and resurrecting again, but as something slightly new, as he looked into Foodie’s face. In his chest, he felt an inferno of relentless feelings that cared deeply about Foodie. He had never felt such strong and protective feelings before, not to this degree.

He’d felt something similar in brief moments when overlooking the kiddos back at Ride-or-Die Village. He’d also felt it when Bianca acted especially bratty, which was slightly different in context.

But this feeling right here awakened a side of him that was quickly becoming a part of his core identity. It felt like he was becoming … a father.

“I don’t want to slow you d-down.” Foodie sniffled. “And you’re hurt. You need a healer to get back your vitality and fix your injuries.”

“Don’t worry about me. Take all the time you need … child.”

“But I am worried.”

Zarian hesitated. He looked deep into the wet and worried expression on Foodie’s face. He felt his chest ache.

He took care of himself as per her wishes.

Para passed him the Lesser Star Shard Flask from the pocket dimension. He popped off the top and poured the sweet and magical elixir into his mouth.

The moment he started, he finished, as if the bright and sunny contents of the flask needed to be drunk whole, compelling the drinker. That felt like more of a game mechanic than anything, a hard-coded rule.

Maybe Zarian could break it when the time called for it.

As of now, he needed all the elixir to recover his vitality, which led to some healing. It still wasn’t enough. His body struggled to bring back his limbs, at least in a short time.

That was no problem when the battlefield had tons of corpses all over the place. Para could help promote recovery with her parasitic nature.

Spectral spiders, the best ninja ghost wizard spiders a man could ever have, piled up quite the feast for Zarian and Para. Most of the pile came from the collection of dead imps. After all the damage and danger the wizard and his parasite had suffered, they really needed to eat.

Zarian’s stomach roared like a great and giant beast. It sounded like he needed more meat than this. Almost like a pile the size of a small hill.

His hunger was almost too painful to endure otherwise.

I’m sorry, Para apologized via their mind. My hunger is your hunger, and it’s not something you are meant to handle. But we’ve become so fused at times this consequence was an inevitability.

It’s okay, he responded thoughtfully. I’ve gone starving before. Plenty of times before. I’ll learn to adapt.

“Oh, you really need to eat.” Foodie wiped furiously at her eyes and nose. She still had a stained mess on her face, but she turned her attention quickly to the pile of bodies. “Okay, I can help.”

“But you don’t have a kitchen,” Zarian said.

“I am the kitchen.” Foodie snapped her fingers and summoned a big industrial series of cooking stations around them.

She had a long kitchen island. She had a dozen ovens and stoves. She had cabinets, shelves, cold boxes, and racks filled with ingredients and appliances galore.

Puta madre,” Zarian and Para said together.

Foodie nodded with a serious expression, regardless of the tear and snot stains on her face. “I’ve read many stories. Mostly about cooking. But there were stories about adventurers who fought hell’s forces and divine devils for good causes. Like saving a princess. They liked to save the princess a lot in those stories. None talked about adventurers who do all of this to save the cook.”

She clapped her little hands together with determination. “So let me give you a taste of what your hard work has gotten you.”

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