Overpowered Wizard

Okay.

Zarian was geeking the fuck out.

Operating a big, meaty, magic monster bio mech was awesome. Like pulling up in a distinctly 80s-90s anime, but with less Evangelion angst and more ‘Fuck yeah! Let’s upgrade and kill shit!’

He had to create some separation between the outer body and the inner body at the nape of his monster neck to fully appreciate their work from a different angle. He’d even reshaped the place into a spherical pilot chamber with him reclining in a seat, the nerve links hooked to his back.

Obvious but potent wards hummed with various protective effects from the walls surrounding him. The safety fluids Para had poured into the pilot chamber sluiced around him while keeping him warm and nutritionally fed. Small vibrations passed through the warded walls and warm fluids with every titanic thump hundreds of feet below, which had Zarian grinning painfully wide.

No direct magic screens, unfortunately. He couldn’t craft that stuff just right without it being more of a distraction. But he didn’t need to when he could fully assume his role and look at the Super World of Steam, Jungles, and Claws from high in the air.

They had the extra meat.

They had the sorcery and aura.

They had a freaking nuclear reactor in the big boy’s chest.

First, Zarian had launched more shade spiders as fast as he could to reinforce the battalions out there.

He’d given them the standard shade spider unit types: warriors, rogues, mages, archers, berserkers, and bards. Then he’d added two more unique types: clerics and paladins.

The special types could pray or beseech power directly from Zarian or Para for different reasons. But their numbers were limited as special elites among the battalions, so they wouldn’t overwhelm their quote-unquote ‘gods/patrons’ with too many requests.

The reinforcements had traveled through Void Paradise before arriving where they were needed many miles in every direction the shade spiders had explored so far – and they’d explored very far.

Zarian swore they’d reached what would’ve been the limits of the Walled Continent, yet there were still plenty more sweaty and edgy jungles with challenges gradually growing in difficulty further out.

While that was happening, Para had burned through her storage of extra meat to plump up, build up, and expand their current devilish creation. They’d shot up in height, in weight, in physicality, and in the need for more sorcery calibrations to give the square cube law two giant middle fingers.

Before Para ran out of material, the shade spiders sent corpse after corpse to rain down in a heavy downpour upon their dark and hungry patron gods. So much so, Para had to grow more tails with more mouths to accept the offerings.

Even Zarian had to eat directly with his monster mouth to help get the food down and keep Para’s demands fed.

And when that had seemed overwhelming already, the shade spiders made it rain legendary and epic gear they’d robbed off the contestants who refused to surrender. Zarian had chomped through so many enchanted items so quickly, he could barely recollect all the runic magic that ran through his mind, overwhelming his free evil +11.

He’d buckled, switching Super Speed Force +2 to beta and bringing Intense Arcana Hat +3 back into alpha.

With the hat on the head of his true body, everything had become vastly easier for Zarian and Para without removing certain challenge aspects. He’d chewed through legendary gear like they were candy. He’d absorbed their alien knowledge like he was dying of thirst until there was no more.

Still not satisfied, Zarian had gone a step further.

He’d accessed Para’s pocket dimension. He’d pulled out scrolls. He’d pulled out enchanted gear Hannah had made. He’d pulled out stuff he rarely touched or had planned to keep for a rainy day.

He’d committed fully, eating and learning, maximizing his free evil +11 and his intensely studious mind. He’d even synchronized with Para to break down the more complicated sequences of runes and enchantments they had ever seen. A few of those scrolls were mythical, after all, and eating those while trying to solve their magical makeup gave his real brain multiple hemorrhages.

Then he’d hit an eureka moment that felt like touching on nirvana.

Hours after that glorious moment, Zarian’s true body shivered, the fluids sloshing around him in the pilot chamber, as his monster body took a heavy and shaky step. Aftershocks of euphoria passed through him and made the bigger boy outside shake a little too, getting all wobbly.

Zarian laughed giddily, to where he even sounded maniacal to his own ears. He was no longer wearing the intense hat for the sake of ‘challenge’ and ‘change.’ For the sake of giving others a fair shot while pleasing the straining demands from Lion Prince.

But one of his latest notifications didn’t seem to care about fairness.

<Your freedom alignment (Free Evil +11) grew: 13!>

Shaking his true head, Zarian deepened his synchrony with his monster body and became the three-hundred-foot Fox Kaiju in full.

He felt the weight of his steps as his broad feet crushed the smaller jungle trees caught in his shadow. He felt the thousands of arrays and enchantments of his design, some small, some large, work in concert to smoothen the biomechanics, to manipulate weight, to control various forces, to redirect myriad energies, and to make it possible to keep this impossible thing going beyond prayers and dreams.

His foot came down again and sounded like a thump that shook everything and everyone around him. Only the most frenzied monsters came running out of their nests and lairs to see what was causing all the commotion. They all came to a halt once they’d reached a clearing with thinner steam clouds and no treetops in their way.

There, towering over the jungle, the Fox Kaiju walked and shook the patch of the world that could barely contain him. The metallic and fleshy mask split around the mouth, revealing teeth the size of people, each sharp enough to slice through epic metal with ease. Then, with his eyes of One Percent Darkness, he looked upon the stunned monsters, smiled sharper, and waved down at them as he took another jungle-shaking stomp.

The monsters turned tail to flee, but it was too late by that point. It only took a few out of eighteen massive tentacle tails to whip down and catch the foolish monsters and grant them a grander purpose, feeding the titanic meat machine.

Para was eating nonstop, either picking up new monsters from the patches of jungle nearby. Or by reaching through Void Paradise where a shade spider cleric prayed for aid against a meal that was too tough or bothersome. It hadn’t taken long for the clerics and paladins to understand their roles.

The clerics called for Para’s tentacle-tail grace to bless the jungle inhabitants. And the paladins smacked things harder by calling out to Zarian, which came with a nudge from Lion Prince and some extra aura juice.

With these additional roles, the shade spider army became even more effective, leading to a vicious grind cycle of feeding the Parasite Phantom +2 while giving aid when needed through Void Paradise.

Could they grow larger?

Not really. Their nuclear reactor was at its limit. Zarian regretted not asking for another one before Hannah went on her solo adventure. He could wear his arcana hat as a replacement for a second nuclear reactor, but there was another issue.

Their demand for food would outgrow the steady supply. So there was no point to go beyond three hundred feet. And that was fucking dandy, because who would’ve thought being a Godzilla-sized Fox Kaiju would be so fun.

And the size was the least impressive part.

Zarian was still retooling his sorcery up and down the construct’s body of repurposed meat and digested gear. Para was making more updates to the flesh-and-bone mechanics, copying both what she’d seen from Hannah while also adapting from the bodies of certain humanoid specimens she’d eaten.

Zarian’s adaptations stayed strictly magical, especially now that he had free evil +13, his head filled with runes from four different universes he could mix and match.

It sufficed to say their stride toward a promising Super Dungeon was an eventful and fun one. Their Tournament Points racked up constantly. New ideas came up, and Zarian eagerly implemented anything that was decently viable and could fit the thousands of runic arrangements spread about the entire kaiju body.

Sadly, he ran into a wall – arrays needed some maintenance and they certainly needed aura to run, and his enchantments were still limited and simplified compared to Hannah’s, which was a drain on efficiency.

The nuclear reactor was tapped out. Zarian’s efficiency was maximized. Anymore runic additions, and their aura supply and aura recovery would fall dangerously into a consistent decline.

The temptation to use his Intense Arcana Hat +3 hit like an asteroid. Somehow, Zarian set aside the urge and focused on the world itself.

The edgy plant life had grown taller as he traveled further from his starting point, but they stopped at navel height of his kaiju body so far. Scouting data from his shade spiders revealed monstrous jungle trees that were thousands of feet tall and came with their own horrific designs. He was excited to see them and the hardest Super Dungeon his shade spiders had found so far.

Until he reached the higher difficulty area, he had some ways to go, even with his strides moving at three hundred miles per an hour. Then again, he wasn’t exactly in a hurry. He had a lot of Tournament Points because of his shade spiders, and he trusted he was far ahead of the curve compared to others.

He could just stride and enjoy the niche fantasy of a super geek. Every footfall was a promise of ultimate destruction being imminent. Every minute that the Fox Kaiju remained functional against the impossibility was a small enjoyable blessing, because he hadn’t gone into this tournament to make a kaiju meat mech, but here he was anyway.

He was enjoying himself so much he and Para ignored the little contestants scurrying for dear life under them. They seemed more like desperate survivors, too insignificant to provide much in a game or as food.

He and Para did help out a few of them, only because the Fox Kaiju pushed the nearest monsters into frenzied activity.

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Instead of letting the little contestants suffer for being in the wrong place at the wrong time, Zarian cast some magic and Para reached out with her tentacle tails. The duo dealt with the monsters while the weaker contestants ran off to live and fight for another hour or so.

After a few more hours of striding and being all big, Zarian’s attention turned sharply to an area filled with overt magical activity of a violent kind. By this point, the steamy and edgy jungle trees were up to his shoulders and getting ever taller.

Zarian slowed his strides and directed his supernatural senses where a thousand contestants fought a pitch battle a few miles to his one o’ clock. They were close enough that they could certainly feel his titanic steps, but the steam between them was so thick, they wouldn’t be able to see him between the gaps of the jungle trees.

Zarian’s unfair profile already made it difficult for people to sense him properly. Pushing that further, he activated arrays and enchantments for stealth, reducing weight, and becoming practically a ghost.

Then, with a quick cast of Void Paradise, he crossed miles of distance and stopped at the treeline to look down at the battle.

He had to make a snap judgment. Para wouldn’t eat while they were in stealth mode. And it didn’t take long for her to get angry when she wasn’t filling up on something.

After .04 seconds, Zarian’s free evil +13 and Devourer of Secrets and Stories figured out who was worth protecting and who was worth going big bad kaiju on.

One side was smaller and had star adventurers and shifters working together to defend themselves. The other side had an overly large presentation of gold diggers who were corralling and viciously attacking the smaller side.

Out of all contestants, gold diggers seemed more prevalent and more dominant, at least in Jumunja. That gold status of theirs, while jacked up by legendary gear, made them menaces for the other contestants.

For the Fox Kaiju, the gold diggers were walking snacks, their meat for Para, their legendary gear for Zarian.

“Let’s play a game.” Zarian strode out, dropping all stealth.

His kaiju foot landed hard enough to knock down the nearest contestants as he suddenly appeared and towered over the bloody field they fought on.

Eighteen tentacle tails, each one nine hundred feet long, swept and waved from behind him or overhead. They moved in and out of the steam, making the entirety of their appearance all the more horrifying while framing him as the ultimate end of their lives.

Of course, Zarian applied a pinch of Void Paradise to darken the area and add that extra skin-crawling, reality-thinning, uncanny effect that most of them couldn’t easily shake off.

The few who could push back the reach of the void garnered Zarian’s attention immediately, but he didn’t act like any of them were worth more than being unwilling participants.

“The game is simple. You must destroy this shiny green power source in my chest.”

Heavy plates of bone armor reinforced with legendary metal slid out of the way. Meaty radioactive steam hissed free as a neon-green light throbbed from the opening in the Fox Kaiju’s chest.

Nobody attacked immediately or attempted to escape. Whether they knew it, the power of Lion Prince was in effect, bending reality, centering the importance on the game.

Just as easily as Lion Prince could affect Zarian, the skill could also affect others, and Zarian loved being aware enough to abuse the flow of causality.

“If you hit this, my whole body would explode, and you’ll get a neat prize. If you don’t, I’m going to slaughter all the gold diggers who can’t escape. The star adventurers and shifters could play along, or stay out and watch. But if you decide to play, you must pay a price if you lose.”

“I’m not playing that stupid game with a big ass monster like you!” shouted a gold digger.

“The game has already started.”

Zarian laughed monstrously as all eighteen tentacle tails whipped down with blurring speed and caught over seven dozen victims at once. Not a bad haul, but now all the gold diggers were running instead of fighting.

There were six hundred of them total, and since they were all Master Rankers, they were all capable of fleeing faster than most.

Unfortunately for Zarian and Para, catching them all with Void Paradise alone would’ve been too much of a drag on aura, especially with the more resistant gold diggers. Zarian showed off a different spell he’d gained after combining Quagmire Pit, Dread Mire Bite, and Dread Mire Bellow.

<Hell Gator Death Swamp (Legendary): Transmute an area of your choosing into a hellish death swamp that’s fitting for hell gators. This swamp comes with hell flames, boiling devil’s blood, and toxic sulfur fumes. It comes with biting and bellowing baby hell gators that will hunt your enemies within the borders and on the shores. And you can swim in its thick and soupy waters while choosing who remains unharmed and who might get dragged under to meet their hellish end. Scales with Wonder and Mysticism.>

Zarian turned the field, the jungle-encroached area beyond the field, and miles further into a death swamp. While the spell was legendary, the folk-tale context he needed to recite mentally was a long and thick one. And the power of this spell was so far into peak legendary it was practically a fraction of a step away from being mythical.

In other words, Hell Gator Death Swamp was both difficult and powerful, and Zarian handled it flawlessly and timely.

The grounded gold diggers fell into boiling devil’s blood. They screamed as hell flames caught them alight. The ones who could keep afloat or run across the swamp with magic had sulfuric fumes strangling every breath, blinding them to the real dangers – the baby hell gators.

Each baby hell gator was the size of two eighteen wheeler trucks with full trailers placed front to end. The babies snapped their toothy jaws over the liveliest gold diggers, or the babies released bellowing blasts that could stun and make the gold diggers easier prey.

From there, the fighting between gold diggers and the horrors of the death swamp became even more drastic, even bloodier, but not exactly as favorable to Zarian’s side as it might’ve looked.

Baby hell gators were a poor replacement for the Fox Kaiju or a real hell gator.

Still, it was kind of amusing to watch the little guys snap and death-roll their way into bloodying some Master Rankers. The slower and weaker gold diggers put up enough of a fight that the baby hell gators could get some practice in.

While they did that, Zarian used Void Paradise to yank back the swiftest and/or most aerially gifted gold diggers.

Para fanned out her curses with more intent to weaken their enthusiastic game participants drastically. It was almost too late for the gold diggers to realize their attempts to run were worsening their chances.

Even if the slower and more swamped gold diggers could kill the baby hell gators, there were plenty more surfacing from the death swamp. Zarian could keep them coming for a long, long while.

Finally, a few gold diggers, the strongest of them, turned to strike at the exposed neon-green core in Zarian’s chest.

Zarian lifted his arms and extended two curved blades from each forearm, both a hundred feet long and legendary. Each blade had runic enchantments from multiple universes that covered the basics of tempering, sharpening, deadliness, precision, and more to a supernatural degree plus heavily unique effects.

They acted like supersonic saws, and they released magic cutting pulses that traveled in multiple alternate vectors as he swung them. He also formed into the air multiple amplification arrays that would enhance all the enchantments to what he dubbed the Butcher Blender Blades.

The braver and stronger gold diggers burst like balloons filled with blood and little sausages with one swing. Even their gear became heavily chipped and ravaged to nearly being unserviceable unless they had self-repair enchantments.

Using aura, Zarian quickly gathered the remains for him and Para to feast on, nothing going to waste.

“Huh … that was surprisingly disappointing,” Zarian said, tonguing a mangled breastplate from between his kaiju teeth.

“Let’s hurry and eat the weaklings before the swamp eats them,” Para urged, massive tentacle tails whipping about hungrily.

“Or I can stop channeling the swamp.”

“That too.”

Zarian dismissed the death swamp and returned the ground to its natural form. He strode forward casually, which was earth-shaking for anyone else, Para’s tentacle tails snatching up the dead and the survivors. She ate her fill of little meat snacks and separated any gear of worth for Zarian to eat as they moved about and collected all they could.

“Hm, I think a few gold diggers got away somehow. Must’ve had some mythical escape options,” Zarian said. “Whelp, I’ll consider that as my win still. Nobody struck the core.”

The heavy bone and metal plates on his chest slid back in place, sealing up the nuclear reactor. With that protected, Zarian turned with far more grace than a three-hundred-foot monster should be able to achieve.

He then crouched down, getting as low as he could, his forearm blades sheathing without leaving a mark. On his haunches, he still had a hundred feet over the miniscule guy remaining by himself in the field that had once been a battle before becoming a buffet.

Why did the guy stay while the other star adventurers and shifters ran?

Para finished eating the gold diggers and taking their stuff. The steamy air darkened and a new supply of monster corpses came raining down for Para’s tentacle tails to feast upon with ravenous delight.

She crunched up bone, shredded flesh, slurped blood, and feasted with such volume, it would deafen normal-sized people. To Zarian, it was a distinct and lovable background track.

The lone little guy waited on his knees while taking it all without much fuss.

“You got any special attachment to those bodies.” Zarian pointed at the dead star adventurers and shifters the gold diggers had killed prior to his arrival.

The little guy, who had a black mask around his eyes like a raccoon, turned his frightened gaze behind him. He trembled as he looked back up at the kaiju and shook his head.

“Mind if we eat them?”

The little guy shook his head again.

“Much appreciated. I’m Isiah the Fox Kaiju, and behind me is Starlight the Fox Kaiju. We have a symbiotic thing going on, by the way.”

The little guy, who was no taller than five feet, tried to talk, but all that came out was a squeak. He had a knife in his hand that didn’t seem like it had ever tasted blood before.

But Zarian knew that wasn’t true.

The knife in his hand was weird, and he couldn’t taste its secrets and stories.

The raccoon kid had a blocked profile, too. Something about him kept denying Zarian’s devourer trait.

Interesting.

Keeping a curious eye on the kid, Zarian and Para cleaned up the field and left nothing usable behind. With that out of the way, Zarian focused more on the kid while Para fed on repeated sacrifices that fell from the darkened paradise in the steam clouds above.

Sometimes a few eldritch things made the mistake of falling through and getting eaten by Para, but they weren’t very satisfying meals. Their reality-screwing nature made them too ephemeral and unsatisfying to feast on, unfortunately, or they would’ve served as an endless supply of meat instead.

“You are … the Dark Emperor,” squeaked the little raccoon guy.

Zarian sighed through his monster mouth and his real mouth.

“I can neither confirm nor deny that. But if you want to play a game, I suppose we can.”

The raccoon guy jumped to his feet.

Zarian curled his hand into a giant fist and prepared to flatten the kid. He stopped when the kid sprouted the most shocking nonsense Zarian had heard in a while.

“Please, Dark Emperor, take me as one of your pack!”

What?

The kid kept going. “Teach me to wield the cosmic darkness to hunt and devour my enemies like you, please!”

What?

Then the kid fell down to his knees and pushed his face into the mushy ground, full-on kowtow. “I’m a Level 112 mythical Abyssal Knife Master with a raccoon +15 as my shifter sign! I know that’s not much compared to you, but if you allow me a chance to show my devotion, I’ll sacrifice my arm for you!”

“What?” Zarian asked aloud.

“Is that not enough? Then I’ll sacrifice both arms! I’ll learn to fight and defeat all our enemies with only my mouth and feet! Please believe in my devotion and give me a chance!”

Zarian sealed his mouth, worried the kid would try to sacrifice all of his limbs. He was still stunned and unsure of what to say.

Para’s feasting tentacle tails slowed. The situation had stumped her, too!

The Abyssal Knife Master sat up, eyes trembling with tears. He wasn’t taking their silence and slowness so well.

He doubled down instead. “Witness me, Dark Emperor! My arms and legs are yours!”

Zarian pointed a single finger and shot a nonlethal magic bolt to the raccoon kid’s head, knocking him out. Then, with a heavy sigh, he collected the little guy into his palm and went on his way to the hardest Super Dungeon around.

“You do know by taking him like this, he’s practically our responsibility now?” Para asked.

“I can already feel the Lion Prince doing its thing. Fucking aye. What is this supposed to be? A disciple arc? A new protagonist?” Zarian grumbled.

“He seems more like one of those cultists you keep ignoring,” Para said.

Zarian didn’t even bother to respond to that statement. He ignored his cultists for a reason, quickly putting them out of mind, just like now.

Zarian raised his hand, palm up, his monstrous claws uncurling from around a little raccoon kid the size of a bug. “This is too cliche even for me. Maybe I should just throw him away. Could break the trope that way.”

“Would you?”

Zarian grumbled under his breath, which was still loud, but not loud enough to wake the kid up.

The raccoon boy remained in hand, and the power of the Lion Prince flowed around him with more intent.