Overpowered Wizard

I think I’m going to wait until I have a sit down jam session with my fellow nerd in magic, Hannah, before deciding on the grimoire upgrades for Voidling and Black, Zarian thought.

I agree. It sounds like Bianca, Hannah, and even Gilbert have made great strides in their growth the past ten days, Para shared via mind. Bianca especially, if the words of our dear queen are the tip of the iceberg, as you say.

Bianca could say a lot while explaining a little. Every crucial point she had about the past three months or the past ten days came with what she was doing, how she was feeling, what she was thinking, and what she ate or thought about eating. She also erupted into tears at random, for seemingly no reason.

Sometimes she’d diverted into a side story that had nothing to do with what Zarian wanted to know. Now and then, Para interjected to help guide Bianca back on course with their conversation.

Still, Zarian listened to everything the Radiant Queen said, within reason.

He wanted to focus on the crucial stuff, but merely having Bianca around again was thrilling already. Hearing her, seeing her be her usual emotional self, and just feeling her adoration for them fed the two something they hadn’t known they were starving for.

She is the best of friends, Para shared via mind.

I agree, Zarian thought in return.

It would’ve been easy to just fly through the half-sunny sky, amid blocks of slow-moving clouds, and fall under Bianca’s friendly charm. It would’ve been easy to just cruise for a while.

Not when there was new and interesting magic involved. Not when Zarian and Para finally heard enough to understand what their fellow Floridians had gone through in the Windy Strider Kingdom.

Basically, Bianca, Hannah, and Gilbert were crossing the Stone Sea River when the Dark Quarrel of Mountain and Moons happened three months ago. They’d barely made it to the island cities before mutated monsters came ashore to lay siege.

Bianca had taken over from there, slaughtering mutants left and right, daily.

Gilbert had helped heal as many people affected by the damage as possible, though he didn’t get involved in much fighting because he was quite upset with Zarian back then.

Eventually, Gilbert had become more productive and became a Master Ranker, but that came with some strange changes in attitude.

In Bianca’s words, “You just gotta see it for yourself, papi. Gilbert’s all different! It’s so weird!”

As for Hannah, she’d taken Dawson, Gisella, and the Vulture Adventurer Guild all the way to the capital. From there, she’d killed everyone who got in her way. When the most powerful guilds had created a mega adventurer army with ships set to rain cannon fire upon the capital, Hannah responded in kind.

She’d unleashed her most powerful artillery upon them. It was only three weeks ago when she slaughtered some of the best guilds and their ships, killing somewhere up to twenty thousand adventurers in the most horrific battle the Windy Strider Kingdom had ever seen near their capital.

That’s our Hannah, Para thought.

Fuck yeah! Zarian returned.

The capital and the grand island cities surrounding it now saw Hannah as their tyrannical ruler. Nobody currently dared to mess with her.

Now she was spending most of her days researching in her penthouse suite in the most expensive hotel the kingdom could offer.

Apparently, she hated it. The Radiant Queen had convinced the Runic Artificer to let the non-rankers take care of them instead of upgrading everything with Hannah’s crafts and enchantments.

It sounded like a punishment for Hannah, as if pretending to live like a non-ranker would atone for wiping out the kingdom’s most combat capable people. Bianca still thought it would be nice to get pampered by others and that Hannah needed more time to adjust.

Zarian had his doubts about that, but kept them to himself.

He was a little relieved that he, Naomi, and Hannah were catastrophic together. Though, he was by far the worst of them. Whatever weird thing was going on with Gilbert, the man was probably pushed past his limits of patience.

Unauthorized content usage: if you discover this narrative on Amazon, report the violation.

“Where’s Gilbert right now?” Zarian asked.

“Oh, he’s all the way to the far east. He’s helping Dawson and Gisella take on crazy monsters from outside of the Walled Continent. The monsters have been slipping through a gap in the big ocean wall.”

The Walled Continent literally had a giant wall surrounding the entire landmass. Apparently, it helped keep out the massive monsters that would eat up the low-level people and crush all the low level areas.

Maybe there were monsters out there that were scarier than the stuff in the Harrowing Mist Isles. Zarian wouldn’t mind going through a crack inside the continental wall and seeing what was out there.

As if reading his mind, Bianca hopped while midair and slapped her cheeks. “Oh, I nearly forgot. Hannah told me to circle around to get Gilbert after we’re done playing with the paladins. And you look like you need Gilbert’s help, anyway.”

Zarian looked down at his bare torso where parasitic threads filled many of his gaping wounds. Yeah, he still needed a lot of healing help, especially from Gilbert.

Bianca giggled behind her hand, her golden eyes flashing. “Alright, I’ll make what I have to do here quick. But not too quick. You want to see my stuff, don’t you?”

Bianca waggled her eyebrows. Clearly, she’d talked about everything else but her own progression on purpose. The new regalness underneath her silliness was a clever addition to Bianca.

Zarian’s tail flicked from side to side with zeal. “Yeah, I do. Show me what you got.”

“Yas! Si.

Zarian clenched his hands into fists. His heart thumped fast. His blood turned hot.

Para became angry with him, her appearance flashing on and off like a flickering light, revealing a chaotic sphere of monstrous snakes, scaly claws, and the faceless outline of a ghoulish woman, with Zarian at the center of the ghostly chaos. Bianca remained unaffected, waiting for Zarian to calm down.

“Did you have an easier time against them?” Zarian asked grimly.

“Yeah, I did. I killed them really fast. And all of that moon magic increased my experience gains. So I leveled up really fast and came away with some more personal growth, too.”

Zarian nodded. Once his anger faded, Para calmed down with him. The phantom flashing cut off abruptly. The air returned to its dim setting.

It made sense that Bianca could slaughter those creatures quickly. She was a bane to most, if not all, of Shadowfell’s creations.

The moon magic had only made that worse for the corrupted. They’d fed Bianca into becoming more of a monster than she already was, which made Zarian wonder if Shadowfell had done that on purpose.

Zarian looked with a baleful glare down at his marriage ring. “What game are you playing, Luciana?”

There was no response. Shadowfell remained distant and unresponsive after the world-shaking fight.

Clearly, his shadowy wife was acting super shady.

Shaking his head down at his marriage ring, Zarian looked up in time to catch Bianca squishing his damaged cheeks with her palms. The ragged flesh and parasite strings holding him together didn’t bother her whatsoever.

“Papi! Don’t be so serious all the time, si? No bueno. Let me lighten things up for you.” Bianca released his face and patted him on the head.

Then she whirled around, performing a quick fancy step following the many others she’d performed during their entire journey to the north of the Windy Strider Kingdom.

Bianca was moving aerial by two means: creating platforms of light and by dancing. Zarian suspected the stupidly bright, glittery, high-heeled, open-toed boots on her feet were the reason for that.

They weren’t made like boots should be. They seemed more ethereal, more magical, almost like an ability similar to Zarian’s Intense Arcana Hat +1.

Zarian was trying his best not to identify her with his Devourer of Secrets and Stories or dive into the mind spider in Bianca’s head to get more information.

Instead, he watched as the Radiant Queen frolicked through the sky.

The other thing that caught his attention was the dress Bianca was wearing. It reminded Zarian of her old elven princess dress, but this one was clearly legendary. It looked like a bounty of gem-like flowers bound in a fluttering gown that billowed around her long and tanned legs.

Zarian sensed that the dress was specifically focused on enhancing Bianca’s light and aura abilities, and nothing more, which was unusually focused on something that seemed elven-made.

“Where did you get that dress?” he asked.

Bianca giggled as she descended from the skies with a twirl. “Hannah! She made it! She knows how to use elvish runes for enchantments that work best for me!”

Zarian blinked. Hannah can replicate elvish now?

There were different styles of runes, just like how there were different languages. Elvish runes were some of the most sophisticated and artistic.

Zarian was still learning elvish from Ruvaria as part of his wizard studies.

For Hannah to enchant a high grade legendary dress for Bianca with elvish runes was astounding. Zarian could feel the difference. The dress was both artistic and more complimentary to Bianca. That and he felt Bianca’s aura was extremely powerful. Like a loaded cannon ready to go off.

“Bianca, I can’t wait anymore,” Zarian growled. “Show me what you got. I want to know.”

The Radiant Queen giggled girlishly, just like her usual self. Then her mood switched so fast, Zarian nearly had whiplash. Bianca’s regal side appeared with a golden look that could melt legendary steel.

“Dale,” she said with authority. “Come and see.”

Zarian immediately cast Void Domain and Void Waltz with a fancy spiral through the air. Before he slipped into the void, Bianca became a blinding solar eruption of light without affecting him.

Somehow, she made the light bend around him so smoothly it was almost shocking. Her control was the most perfected he’d seen from her.

She also gave away the description of a new skill through the spider network. This one had come from combining Wondrous Speed, Summon Wizard Hat, Gather Aura, and Light Step +3:

<These Boots Are Made For Dazzling (Level 7): Summon a pair of dazzling footwear. Once worn, your Agility is boosted to an extraordinary degree. Your aura abilities also get a boost when you move with pizzazz. Scales with Wonder.>