Zarian’s heart was pounding like thunder, almost in rhythm with the thundering happening above. The Super World of Steam, Jungles, and Claws blanketed the jungles and the cliffs and supersize claw mountains with so much steam that it led to the creation of super storms. The behemoth weather phenona could pave over kingdoms in Lesser Worlds effortlessly.
Thunder rumbled with shocking volu and force that would’ve turned most non-rankers into mush. Lightning forked down like crystalized starlight that tore through the steam blankets and struck the jungles around Zarian, lighting so of the hardy plant life on mystical fire that burned regardless of the thick and soaking humidity.
Fractal bolts forked and snaked through the steam with malicious intent, with many spearing points focused on Zarian as he remained out in the open on the cliff’s edge.
Making her presence known from nearby, Para’s body radiated with eldritch and runic magic, tilting the hyper-mystical thunder and lightning to seek her instead of Zarian.
The fractal lightning converged with a devastating force that would’ve killed most Master Rankers at Zarian’s level. Against Para, it seed to tickle her, mostly.
With a smile, she ran her fingers through her scaled locks and bathed inside the super lightning shower as she waited for Zarian to co down from his revelation.
And what a fucking revelation he had.
It almost made him want to break down from the sheer madness of it all. Because the revelation behind learning his gravity magic ca with a whole host of surprises.
Before he could get into the juicy bits, he needed to acknowledge the smaller growths. For example, many of his skills had leveled up, chief among them being the ones who recently advanced: Parasite Phantom 3, Super Shade Spider System 3, and Force of Sorcery 1.
Para’s entire existence was becoming the biggest cheating-ass summoning power Zarian could imagine right now.
The 3 advancent eliminated most of the drawback of Para possessing another person or body, making it easier for her to draw more power from Zarian and cast his magic while possessing soone else and using their magic. The implications were as fascinating as they were complex, because Zarian had already practiced using his magic to enhance and alter the abilities of allies.
But now anyone who Para possessed would get the benefit of becoming instant wizards on top of all of their own abilities that could be mixed and matched.
But that wasn’t really the biggest concern right now because Para’s mysterious high-quality body was already the peak body for her to possess as of now. Thus, the 3 advancent made it so that Para could have an easier ti casting spells if she wanted.
There were a few spells in Zarian’s toolkit that interested her the most. And if nothing else, this made it easier to use spells that could only be cast once between rest periods a second ti.
Zarian looked back as more wild super thunder strikes ca down and tore up the clawed jungle. Flaming earth and wood rained from everywhere. The cliff shook as malevolent lightning fractals spread with points aid for sothing to sink into.
Each bolt that neared Zarian bent away as Para cast magic to make her body into a lightning rod. She humd and sashayed her hips under the shower of lightning, draining more power than what most Master Rankers knew what to do with. She stored it all into mini-storage pockets in her body to go along with her freaking nuclear magic heart.
Ah, yes, the body-modifications didn’t quite stop just because Para went from kaiju size to human size. In fact, because of the changes from using polymorph, void magic, runic magic, and plain mad magic science, Para was even better at modifying herself than ever.
Zarian barely could calculate her limits, and he was pretty sure her body had more secrets to reveal once he could get past her unknown quality.
Apparently, the spiders could get busy propagating and replenishing their own numbers.
Zarian wasn’t sure how to feel about that.
So he decided not to feel or think much other than dumping even more shade spiders in every location where they’d set base or were in the middle of tough campaigns. They’d grown more savvy lately and the Tournant Points kept going up no matter what.
He left them to it and made sure not to peek in on them without asking.
This power-up was the stupidest one of all! It was busted as hell! And the timing for that couldn’t be any perfect, which had Zarian wondering if Ruvaria had secret etings with the Funnest Granpapa to set this up.
The triple scaling was insane, and it only got even more insane because of Zarian’s recent key growths in spellcraft and in a few new achievents.
First, there was his new gravity spell.
Yup! That was his big, bad scary spell. The gravity spell. It was … unknown. Because it was a quality far above mythical, and he wasn’t allowed to see what that was until he t a minimum level/rank threshold.
Which brought an interesting idea to the fold.
Divine quality was a flex quality.
He’d hypothesized this was the case for a long while. But there was no doubt about it now.
Getting a divine achievent or divine quality anything wasn’t the greatest. No, there was so quality stuff or two or three above mythical that would probably blow so of his divine gains out of the water just from how hard it would be to get them.
Did that an Thematic Concepts and Thematic Laws would beco obsolete? Zarian doubted they would. His Floridian Mindset had shut down nurous cases where he would’ve gotten mind-controlled without it, so it remained a solid power to have. But he wouldn’t be surprised if rare/higher qualities gave bigger nurical buffs.
He was pretty sure Ruvaria had one of those unknown abilities, which made him think the Infinita Star System had more depth to it than he realized even with all the Ultra God shenanigans it had to wrestle with. Granted, the other Systems shared almost everything except for their alignnt feature.
Zarian had plenty more thoughts about that, but kept moving onward with his review.
Zarian had upgraded the unknown gravity spell because he wanted to see if there would be any changes in the thick volu of pages that made up the gravity section in the black magic grimoire.
To his ever-growing and magic-loving glee, he’d noticed the changes, and he couldn’t crack them despite how far he’s grown in wizardry and sorcery. But that was okay, because Zarian had learned so much from the studious grind of trying to solve the unknowable gravity spell that he didn’t need the spell itself right now.
Because he had a stupidly strong skill in Force of Sorcery 1.
And he had so new achievents that ca with new goodies, one of them a trait that was beyond unfair.
Para was already strong enough to stare down mystic lightning and win. But now that Zarian’s Willpower was at 1696, Para’s already extraordinary capability with that unknown body of hers was pushed up to another tier of insanity. But that was not as insane as the next achievent that had Zarian tilted in all the right ways.
This was why traits that gave direct stat buffs were so strong in these higher ranks. Even though Zarian needed to use spells to trigger Grandmaster Spellslinger, the 600% to Mysticism affected every ability that scaled with that stat, especially Force of Sorcery 1, a skill that had triple Mysticism scaling.
This didn’t include the other buffs from other traits on a stat that made Zarian’s aura recovery godly! Or at least far above most Master Rankers and so Champion Rankers no doubt!
Zarian collapsed to his knees on the edge of the cliff. His hands clenched his knees. He was cracking up, completely losing it.
The flimsy Leo the Battle Mage disguise couldn’t take it anymore. He tried. He really, really tried. But the truth of him was too powerful for disguises, breaking it completely. No more Darkrun Debuff.
“There it is. That infamous madness of ours. Laugh and dance and have a good ti, kid,” said the Funnest Granpapa from next to Zarian’s side.
He turned to look, but the Funnest wasn’t there anymore. The old Ultra God was gone as soon as he finished saying his piece.
Zarian put it aside for now as he felt the entirety of his true power slam back down into the place where it belonged. So much so, Para froze up and forgot to maintain her lightning-rod act.
Fractal currents turned their jagged edges toward Zarian.
Without even trying, the unburdened wizard cast Void Paradise and Grand Sli Transmutation, the latter coming from combining No Hard Walls and Water To Sli before advancing further to its current form.
Once combined with Void Paradise, the possibilities of sli magic went as far as Zarian’s imagination. And with the Grandmaster Spellslinger trait activated along with other buffs, he easily turned the nearest lightning fractals into a spreading cage of hardened void sli.
The eldritch gunk absorbed the destructive magic like it was drinking its favorite delight. And the more the void gunk drank, the more it spread through the steamy jungle, across the landscape, and into the thunderous sky.
The void sli beca a nace that broke the superstorms up, killed off all their clamoring, and drained them of their power until the superstorms made horrific wailing sounds like living souls suffering a terrible death.
Then the supernatural phenonon of magic and weather was replaced by spreading stalks of void sli that wanted to keep spreading and absorbing all the intense magical energy it could get. The jungle was going to beco its next target, but with another wave of Void Paradise, Zarian shunted the entire structure into the void before it grew too fat and botherso.
Para was mildly upset with the lack of lightning showers to wash her body with, but she quickly moved on with a shrug and assud her position beside him.
“No more disguises?” Para asked.
Zarian slowly stood to his feet and let out a long breath. “We’ve crossed the point of no return with our quality of power. The Funnest even paid a visit, saying so weird nonsense directed toward this mont. So, yeah, no more disguises.”
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Para smiled. “Mm, well, I didn’t get to see the Funnest. But we must be on the right track. And I enjoy being our true authentic selves anyway.”
Zarian was still up in cloud-nine, but losing the Darkrun Debuff brought him down to a sobering reality. “I … need more challenges.”
“Then let’s move fast. Let’s go find them. We’ll face Champion Rankers if we must. But as our true selves.” Para tapped a claw on his chest. “It was a nice attempt. But we were never the type to stay hidden and undercover for long, were we?”
Chuckling, he said, “No … we weren’t. And aren’t.”
Zarian unlocked Five Percent Darkness with little difficulty.
He cast Void Paradise and turned the imdiate air around him eldritch, darker than dark, perfect for boosting his Five Percent Darkness. Then he cast Void Sword and felt sothing marvelous happen as Grandmaster Spellslinger activated.
A one-handed sword that sharpened its edges on paradoxes ca to exist from the void. And it didn’t cost him much at all.
All that he lost replenished itself so quickly it was as if he had Hannah’s Aura Power Plant trait. No, maybe what he had was greater than even that because he had enormous reserves in Para’s giga-powered body, too.
Zarian checked the description again for Void Sword. ‘Nearly impossible to pay for those in the Master Ranks and too heavy for the Champion Ranks.’ Yup, that wasn’t the case with him.
Nodding, he conjured a second Void Sword, because why not have two for himself? Then he summoned a third sword for Para to hold, but no more. It was best that Para had an open hand for whatever devious thing she wanted to do.
“Zarian … I’m getting excited,” Para said with a teasing smile.
In so ways, she reminded Zarian of Naomi. In other ways, she reminded him of Hannah when she was being critical. He could see a lot of Bianca inside of Para when she danced around and acted silly. And when Para stood ten toes down and firm in her beliefs, she was immovable like Gilbert.
Para was a child of all five of them, but most of all, she was Zarian’s child. His first skill choice.
“Let’s push it, Para. Let’s go even further beyond.”
Zarian used his Force of Sorcery 1 and all the buffs that enhanced it to greater extres than he’d ever imagined. With all of that sorcery power, he wielded the magic he’d studied for years like a madman.
Gravity.
He didn’t need to know the proper spell to use gravity magic. It would’ve been preferable. But just like how Para could continue piloting her unknown body without knowing its quality, Zarian could use gravity magic by achieving the ultimate work-around through his studies and sorcery.
All that ti spent under Ruvaria paid off as the area seed to flip from around Zarian, down becoming up and up becoming down.
Countless arrays flashed on and off, altering gravity per his whim, making him orbit around randomly in the air as if he was a satellite rounding an invisible planet, and Zarian barely felt any challenge from any of it.
With aura and sorcery, he could technically cast almost any magic. But certain magical elents worked better with him than others.
Gravity was one of those elents that worked really well with him. He’d just hadn’t been pushing it as hard as he could’ve.
He had thought he couldn’t do much without the actual gravity spell outside of special scenarios. That false notion was broken now, because he had all that he needed to use gravity along with all of his other magic powers, at least for now.
Para generated gravity magic with her bodily runes and launched into the air. She entered Zarian’s orbit and passed the gravity controls to him.
They spiralled randomly around each other through the steamy air, above a destroyed jungle, and below an empty sky that had once been filled with tumultuous storms. Para smiled as she made one more pre-dungeon preparation and cast Void Paradise on herself, shing it with her eldritch nature.
“Standard entrance or nah?” Zarian asked.
“Nah!” Para shouted.
Zarian used darkness, his void spell, and gravity sorcery to create a wormhole into the Hunter Gorer Super Dungeon. He didn’t even have the ti to blink, because the dark and elongated embrace of the wormhole drew them inside the mont it ford.
His last thought was that this shouldn’t work because it was mostly a theory he’d learned from his studies. But it worked anyway, drilling a hole through the Super Dungeon’s realm defenses and bypassing its domain-specific rules.
By the ti Zarian and Para landed in the soft-felt bushes of the first jungle room they’d seen, his free evil 13 went up to free evil 14.
Zarian looked forward as he battled the super dungeon’s identifying defenses with his devourer trait. He was losing that battle, but it was still great practice that could advance Devourer of Secrets and Stories eventually.
Testing the information block didn’t take up too much of his attention, so he easily spotted the thrown spear aid at his chest.
Zarian cast Grand Sli Transmutation once more. He infused the spell with his Void Sword and Void Paradise. Then, with two supersonic cuts, he sent forth x-shaped slashes of eldritch sludge that collided with the flying spear.
It would’ve still ripped through, because the super dungeon was prepared for all sorts of weird magic. It was not, however, prepared for Five Percent Darkness and hyper competent gravity sorcery.
The eldritch sludge collapsed into a tiny eldritch dark hole that destroyed the spear outright and cost Zarian’s aura a hefty amount, at least at first. His aura soon replenished like the cost was no big deal, and the fancy move ended with the eldritch dark hole winking out of existence.
By then, Para had already slashed the boar monster into minced at.
The creature fell to pieces that didn’t bleed because of the paradoxical cuts of her Void Sword. And the monster remained alive, even as a pile of pork slabs that couldn’t put up much of a fight anymore.
Para quickly consud the remains with aura and curse magic. The neatly cut slabs turned into whirling particles that drained straight into her open mouth. Once finished, she licked her lips and smacked them twice.
“More,” she said.
“What do your omni-instincts tell you?” Zarian asked.
Para sniffed at the air, using one more of those new unknown abilities of hers. Though this one was specific to her current body.
After she sniffed around enough, she smiled like a great predator with too many teeth behind her full red lips, her reptilian tail lashing from side-to-side behind her.
“The dungeon feels violated. Enraged. But uncertain. No ti to set up a proper response. The prey rushes without thinking,” Para explained cryptically.
Nodding, Zarian saw that there was one earthy tunnel that would lead them out of the first room. He summoned his shade spiders and sent them looking around for loot or to collect interesting materials.
The entire place was mythical, so they were bound to co away with a great bounty. If anything, they could feed lots of this stuff to Reiki’s dungeon if they weren’t able to get the super dungeon core.
As the shade spiders looted, Zarian and Para moved calmly to the tunnel, their bodies oozing reality-saring darknesses and horrors that blinked and twitched and gnashed around their outlines because of their twin use of Void Paradise.
They were both reliant on Zarian’s darkness to dress them, since none of the useful gear that remained in Para’s pocket dinsion could survive mythical challenges like these. Thus, they didn’t bother with anything else but void magic and skin-tight darkness serving as pants for Zarian or a two-piece set up for Para.
Even with them showing more skin and scales than the usual adventurer, they moved like a cosmic hunter and huntress, a pair with the utmost confidence. Especially when there were tasty pigs on the nu for one of them who was a glutton.
The boar monsters squealed from the other end of the tunnel by the ti Zarian and Para moved deeper past the entrance. Multiple explosions of blue, green, yellow, and orange flashed from the other end. Three monsters with boar heads and twelve-foot-tall fras flew at them with bad intentions and power from Third Ignition.
The boar monsters threw their spears far harder and faster than before, yet Para responded to that with even more speed and gusto. She flashed purple with gravity rune magic and twirled through the air with her Void Sword slashing out.
The intent behind the spears was to phase through flesh and pierce magic obstacles before hitting their targets. Para’s counter-move along the sides, regardless of how fast they all moved, cut away the advantages of the spears.
The spears shot past Zarian in pieces, missing him entirely, and struck the bushy area behind him with a heavy bombardnt that did nothing more than shake things up.
Completely unbothered, Zarian pointed one Void Sword with a tiny charge of void darkness and gravity on the tip. With another cast of Grand Sli Transmutation, he shot a thin and fast lance that pierced one of the boar monsters in the shoulders.
The slimy magic exploded violently, ripping the boar monster’s limb and torso apart. The void magic sucked up the aura from the ignition to weaken it. The gravity magic triggered a singularity event that yanked the still-flying pieces back together.
The boar monster’s destroyed remains slamd into a yellow-orange orb of gore. It still had so willful life and magic that wanted to resist an excruciating end, but that was it.
Zarian’s magic won out, and the boar monster beca a dense at ball packed with an enriching and juicy aura. The Aura Ignition was still going as it fell right in front of Para’s awaiting mouth. She was practically drooling already, her excitent clear through her connection with Zarian.
With a girly cheer, Para chomped up the aura-rich pork ball before clashing with the remaining two boar monsters at once.
Yellow-orange aura sparks and lightning flashed and lashed out from around the ignited boar monsters as they attacked with a frenzy that would’ve torn apart the old Naomi. Their stable Third Ignition tilted reality around their bodies, enhancing their demand to gore and hurt and kill. They had an endurance that could keep them going nonstop.
Every spear and energy strike ca down to unleash as much painful damage as they could on Para.
The full-bodied parasite replied in kind with no Aura Ignition, only the unknown power and brutal physicality of her new existence. She slashed her Void Sword against their spears and parried their attacks, using moves Bianca had taught them. She endured explosive energy strikes against her body with a brimming rage that kept her going.
Her green eyes flashed as she drew more power from her nuclear heart and so reserves of stored energy packed inside of her body. And she moved even faster, while swinging heavy sword strikes, applying more blatant pressure that put the two boar monsters on the back foot from sheer surprise of Para’s tenacity.
It was amazing to watch.
Para fought like a devil and forced two monsters with Third Ignition to backpedal and react to her instead of the other way around. She probably would’ve won outright with ti, but she and Zarian had to be efficient with their ti, too.
Zarian said the words that pushed everything over the edge.
“Twenty Master Locks Sealing Style: Aura Ignition Lock.”
While the dungeon and the monsters could block much of his devourer trait, they couldn’t pour out so much power without him tracing it back.
And Zarian knew very well how Aura Ignition worked.
Very, very well.
He placed twenty locks on the leftmost boar monster, centering his sealing style on the greatest mass of aura channels that burned at a stable and high rate.
The boar monster’s yellow-orange energy snuffed out completely. It found itself too slow and weak for the current conflict that was happening with Para at the forefront.
Para ignited her free fist with gravity and eldritch magic while transforming it into a gaping snake mouth. She punched straight up into the groin of the weakened boar monster and yanked back.
The boar monster’s body folded, crunched down, and drained completely into her transford hand as another quick al. With only one boar monster remaining, Para went full-tilt in testing her lee prowess against the creature’s mythical nature and Third Ignition.
Para had her fun as she kicked, punched, and sliced apart the boar monster with a killer smile on her face. Zarian nodded before looking past the unfair one-on-one fight and seeing in the darkness where three more boar monsters tried to creep forward.
They seed more obvious to him than before, which Zarian figured was because of him and Para putting constant pressure on the dungeon.
He hadn’t stopped nipping and biting and clawing at the dungeon’s identifying defenses with his Devourer of Secrets and Stories, sharpening the legendary trait with a relentless savagery. Maybe that was why the boar monsters were easier to track for him now.
Smirking, Zarian pointed both swords at the incoming party. He gave them the double sli-explosion and at-singularity treatnt, turning two out of the three into more pork balls for Para to eat. The third threw itself to the side while trying to rush up the stages of Aura Ignition.
“Lock.”
Zarian stepped in and out of the void next to the dood boar monster that found its trump card sealed.
When it turned to attack physically, Zarian moved even faster and shoved a Void Sword through its groin. He stepped in and out of the void again and ended up in the air behind the creature, stabbing his second Void Sword through the back of its skull and stunning it.
Then with a vicious growl, Zarian brought down a column of void darkness and gravity sorcery from the air. Lion Prince joined in by enhancing the flow of causality in Zarian’s favor.
The dark gravity hamr blow shook the entire super dungeon and put a dent in the floor. The boar monster ended up as a splattered ss, its blood and pulped remains pooling in the crater.
The only things that remained whole were the two Void Swords, which Zarian gladly picked up.
Looking back further down the tunnel, Zarian found no more enemies. Checking the other direction, he found Para standing next to him with an excited and hungry fervor in her irradiated green eyes. Her gaze flicked down to the splatter before she turned it all into cursed particles and inhaled it deep into her gullet.
“Happy with the results so far?” Zarian asked, trying to hold back from smiling.
“So far, yes, but I feel the dungeon is going to throw its most horrid monsters at us now. It’s not bothering with traps. It’s making adjustnts to truly hurt us.”
“The feeling is mutual,” Zarian said. “I have a couple of spells I haven’t had ti to use, but we need so high-quality specins. So …”
Para pouted. “I … will avoid eating the next ones.”
Zarian reached over with his tail and patted her on the head with the tuft. She gave a feisty hiss before reaching over and patting his head with the end of her own reptilian tail.
They both laughed before turning back to their objective. The next room was beyond the tunnel, and the super dungeon probably had sothing even more monstrous in store for them.
Zarian hoped it could put up a proper fight. He needed the greatest challenges. The toughest monsters. The most overpowered bullies.
He needed growth and conflict and change. He needed to beco stronger, and if not that, he needed to beco greater.
Because he refused to let his sister go off the deep end without him checking her. And he refused to let himself fall to weakness and cost everyone else their lives again.
He had to do his best in every way. He had to work harder instead of cheesing…
“Wait,” Zarian said, his free evil 14 whirring. “Why go to them … when we can bring them to us?”
Para giggled. “It’s almost as if there was a part of you that was missing this whole ti. And now we’re unraveling it every ti you use gravity.”
“They shouldn’t have let learn gravity.”
“Their mistake, our gain.”
“Hell fucking yeah. Co on. Let’s do this together.”
Zarian pointed both swords forward like they were both wands. They might as well be. They made for great focusing diums.
Para followed his example by holding her Void Sword with both hands. Her body flashed with runic gravity magic and heaps and heaps of power, a mighty ocean’s worth.
Next, Zarian filled the surrounding air with countless gravity arrays that washed the tunnel with ultraviolet light. Then Para pushed her side of Void Paradise forward while Zarian fused his Five Percent Darkness into her eldritch magic.
Together, they concentrated on how to guide it all with gravity.
They created another wormhole, and the entire dungeon scread and raged and tried to crush it, but it couldn’t. Their combined power, mastery, and runic magic was beyond the super dungeon.
Zarian and Para yanked the monster from the next room straight to them. It didn’t fit quite well in the tunnel with its imnse body, and it was so thoroughly shocked by what happened, the ga boar monster just laid there in front of the wizard and parasite.
“Hold it down, Para. It’s about ti I cast one of my freakier stuff.”
“With pleasure, Zarian.”
The overly big pig squealed and thrashed, but it was to no use. The wizard and the parasite were too overpowered, and their potential was scarily unknown.
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