Overpowered Wizard-Chapter 291: B3 C81: The Dark Emperor

Before the Late Winter suns arrived, Zarian snapped awake, an hour rested, body as energized as it would get. He sat up and looked around as Gator gnashed the jagged teeth arranged on his spine toward the centipede-like Morph.

Why? It was probably Morph’s fault, making Gator justified to threaten the freaky grimoire.

Letting the two grimoires hash it out on the bed covers, Zarian looked above his head at Voidling orbiting and chiming with an eerie metallic hum, just like always. In front of him, with spectral chains making a soft ghoulish rattle while the ends were tethered to Zarian, the thick and diabolical Black waited in a hover.

Zarian smiled toothily at the damn thing, Black, his first grimoire. The bastard remained the most elusive and labyrinthine of them all.

You wouldn’t know it with Black for how he acted so nonchalant, always floating patiently like a well-behaved wraith with the ephemeral weight of a shadow’s stain on reality. Compared to the other grimoires, Black seemed the least special, but Black was the only one he hadn’t completed in the past two months.

The twenty-three-year-old wizard carefully extracted himself and his grimoires by floating above and over Ruvaria, the Sorceress Queen peacefully asleep. No doubt, a part of her, some specific segment of her magical abilities, kept a watch of everything. But Zarian hadn’t confirmed that just yet.

She was still great at hiding her deeper secrets regardless of how far Zarian had gone to explore her.

As Zarian reached the other side of the legendary bed, he noticed Ruvaria rolling toward him, the bed layers peeling off her miraculously with a hint of noticeable magic. Her pale and lithe body went uncovered except for the thin lingerie she wore, a soft dark green material, as her hair flowed down one side of her body like a silver-gold river.

Zarian stopped and felt an urge. Her free evil +5 was serving her well, nearly catching him. He hadn’t a minute to spare this morning, though, and Ruvaria demanded nothing less than ten or she would get upset.

Leaving behind the tempting bait, he flew through his spacious room, going over the atrium-style and sunken-seating area that was his living and entertainment spot. He freshened up in his spa-size bathroom before zipping over to the open kitchen dining area. Using aura alone, he opened the runic fridge before pulling out a box covered in instant heating runes that contained leftovers from last night’s feast.

He entered his walk-in closet that could’ve served as an expansive hall for a king on his throne as supplicants came to visit him. Instead, Zarian had racks on racks on racks of clothes, ninety-nine percent of it picked out by Bianca and her well-trained Freedom Fashionistas.

He hadn’t worn more than one percent of the outfits, and to Bianca’s chagrin, he stuck with the basics. Heavy boots. Rugged dwarven pants with more spatial pockets than he knew what to do with. A tight sleeveless body shirt compressed to his muscular torso. And a coat with a dark red gator wearing a wizard hat on the back, all tribal print while encircled by the words “Fuck Around and Find Out.”

Dressed, and with food heated, Zarian savored every scrumptious bite, tasting the little extra spice and sweetness that came from Foodie’s cooking, then flew back to his bed. He caught Ruvaria fluttering her long eyelashes, stirring awake, and planted a vigorous kiss to her soft lips before she had the chance to yawn.

He tried to snort in her morning breath, and got sweet berries and floral herbs, but he held his nose and feigned disgust anyway. Then he used Void Parade to get the hell out of there, only to get smacked in the back of his head while halfway through the void by a simple bolt of aura. Again, he still couldn’t figure out how she did some of the unique tricks she could do, but she had the benefit of ten thousand years, so go figure.

Zarian entered reality, letting the drizzling snow land on his coat and his grimoires as he touched down at Rose Knight Memorial Park. The snow disappeared on the sacred grounds, leaving no water, no mark, no stain.

Zarian walked the stone tiles between tall and durable Dragon Moon Winter Flowers. Each legendary plant looked like sunflowers with a winter aesthetic and scaly dragon petal edges. Just one of these could buy up large swaths of land from across all the kingdoms of the Walled Continent, but there wasn’t much point in buying anything right now.

Zarian would take it all sooner or later.

That was neither here nor there while on these sacred grounds.

Looking left and right, Zarian admired the statues that stood over the graves of the many adventurers who died for the Ride-or-Die Empire. Regardless of their affiliations and their origins, anyone who fell under Zarian’s banners would get their flowers and their names written in legendary stone, none forgotten thanks to meticulous records of their Princess Administer and her well-trained staff.

A shadowy presence flickered near Zarian’s left side, staying close to him, just enough where they were touching arm to arm. The presence had to hang over him a little, the shadowy specter taller than him by an entire head while remaining an unclear and nearly shapeless figure.

That was fine with Zarian. His wife didn’t need to be clearly defined for them to have a decent winter morning walk at a grave.

The statues and monuments didn’t necessarily represent any one person – they had statues for the gods, statues of family crests, statues of emblems from other kingdoms. But at the center of the memorial, three types of sculptures represented the foundations of the capital.

One depicted the original people who had lived here before the wolf dragons and their wolf kobolds slaughtered them. Men, women, children, all set with hard faces looking outward while placed as the perimeter of the central monument.

The second depicted Stony the Giant, who dug the ditches and helped set down fortifications, and whose statue served as the main foundations at the middle of the monument. Last, standing on Stony’s shoulders, Roland of Wood, the Rose Knight, with a sword raised gallantly toward the sky and armor wreathed in roses and vines, stood like a gallant hero of the greatest fables.

With a smirk, Zarian looked up at Roland’s face, the helmet open, even though that wasn’t completely accurate.

“They made you way more handsome in death than you had the right to be, Roland.” With a shake of his head, Zarian huffed. “I kept badgering the Star System about you. It still won’t say shit because of parameters this and parameters that. But I think Ruvaria’s theory about our alignment holds merit and there is only one path for those of freedom.”

Rebirth.

Reincarnation.

Restart.

However it happened, those of freedom were untethered from the controls of the traditional alignments. The Ascended Heavens and Hidden Hell had no jurisdiction to snatch up those souls like they could with those traditionally aligned or in the neutral alignment. The souls of freedom had to go somewhere somehow, and the Star System wasted not, so why not recycle?

“Maybe it’s not now. Maybe it’s not in the next hundred years. But there’s a chance I might see you again out there in the greater universe. But for now, I’ll settle with paying you a visit here and there at your monument, kiddo. Oorah.”

Zarian watched the twin suns peek over the horizon and shine their light on New Florida, the beams filtering through the snow. He waited until the light touched the sword Roland’s statue was holding up heroically, and upon receiving a glance of light, the upper statue bloomed.

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Dashing reds, pinks, blues, whites, greens, and many more colors blossomed on snaking vines that seemed to appear from nowhere, layering themselves over Roland’s raised weapon and his armor and stopping when it reached Stony’s back. Even in death, there was beauty, and Zarian didn’t dare shame Roland’s efforts by not introducing something wondrous in it all.

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The shadow representation of his wife shivered and quaked. On these sacred grounds, she was a nebulous stain, a witch of corruption, as evil as a goddess could get while so young.

She shedded her tears, and Zarian reached out with one hand, the marriage hand, and caught her tears for her. He let her cry, just like the last times she’d cried, and the Rose Knight Memorial Park remained pristine and joyous.

While she was having her fussy moment for whatever reason, Zarian summoned his wizard hat, closed his eyes, and opened up hundreds of thousands of eyes beyond his usual pair. His wizard hat, free evil +7, and devourer trait ran straight through the information deluge and found the things he cared about most.

He saw his daughter starting her day, going out on an early exercise session with Wallen and others of the Dragon Slayer Corps. The corps was bigger than the old Ride-or-Die Guild, and specialized for the most arduous of challenges, and it had more than just the original youngsters.

There were rising gnolls, prodigious goblins, and teenage trolls in the corps, all young mainly, and all ready to grow under the fiercest training regimen the nascent empire could provide. Other than that, the corps remained selective, leaving the old guild retired while more power was passed on to Foodie.

Zarian turned his attention to other sets of eyes and looked down upon the streets of the inner districts, where neon-lit towers surrounded the base of the Central Library Continental Artillery Tower.

He saw the more well-to-do and dutiful citizens of his nascent empire go about the start of their day, getting their morning coffee from the few shops sworn under oath to harbor the secret ingredients of the nearly addictive bean juice.

He watched them head to the factories, to the new academies that were recently finished, to the market squares, or to other places of commerce and services. Most of the work was factory based now, processing a plethora of resources New Florida could access as the central frontier of humanity.

They didn’t need to rely on outside adventurers as much as before. They could rely on themselves as their expansion ramped up steadily.

So much to do. So much to look out for when raising a baby empire.

Through his many eyes, he caught sight of Ezda in her giant bestial form, padding down the snow-clad streets, her fur coat dusted with light snow. On her large back, she carried a cultural exchange group of humans and gnolls, one of many budding programs that was promoting cross species relationships.

Technically, gnolls were adventurers, too. So were goblins, trolls, and other sapient races. They had the same System stuff that humans had, except they were born in the evil alignment.

No worries. Freedom aligned parents birthed freedom aligned children, though they had to follow in the same sub alignment of their parents.

However, there was a fresh crop of baby gnolls that survived the trials of the Spider Bear Dungeon and were on the verge of reaching Level 10. Zarian had prodded at the Star System for people born of freedom to get the option to realign their sub alignment when they select their classes.

Interestingly enough, the Star System had agreed, the parameters showing some flexibility for once. That was a change Zarian could petition for as one of five Freedom Leaders.

Going back to the case with Ezda, Zarian smiled, glad that she was getting more involved in inter-species affairs, bridging the gap between humans and gnolls. All while she panted down the back of Arnold’s neck, the old man struggling not to lose his composure as he walked ahead of Ezda.

He was making it his duty to monitor her and the gnolls, still nursing an old grudge. It didn’t burn hot like it used to.

The relationship between those two as former enemies becoming begrudging coworkers gave Zarian endless amounts of amusement, especially with Ezda’s other ‘human-centric’ developments when she wasn’t in giant gnoll form.

With a breath from his human body, Zarian flipped through his many eyes, doing his usual checks, noting some discrepancies and crimes, but holding back on acting on them immediately. He had skeletons for that. Many, many, many skeletons. A few of them were experts, just like Loner.

All the advanced and expert skeletons gained experience by doing their job, so it wasn’t always wise to have the spectral spiders intervene unless it was dire.

Other than that, he watched the first people of his budding Ride-or-Die Empire go about their winter morning, most of them well above Level 10 and in the Level 20s. They had plenty of work and side quests to help them grow further than most human populations across the Walled Continent.

It wouldn’t sit right with Zarian if his entire empire wasn’t strong enough to fend for themselves a little. That and he liked bragging about how his citizens could kick ass.

“Still small as shit,” Zarian said, opening his human eyes. “We’ll grow though. Freedom will spread.”

Luciana stopped crying. Quick to change moods, he could hear a smirk in her voice. “Empires rise, and empires fall. They will want your empire to fall.”

Zarian answered her appropriately. He laughed. His wife loved being a doom soothsayer, ‘A sword of Damocles’, as Hannah had once put it.

That didn’t mean he wasn’t taking Luciana seriously. On the contrary, Luciana was scary as hell.

A fragment of her was giving the Enslavement System the biggest ‘fuck you’ any universe could see, but slowly and chaotically. The problem was Luciana’s theme to remain cryptic and not give away what her fragment was doing exactly. Since he couldn’t always trust his wife when she was being a schemer, Zarian played the best card he had

Act like a fool.

So he laughed at her, being joyous and loud.

The shadowy specter that was his wife huffed at him. “I can’t wait to play with you when you leave this civilization. I have new ways of making you suffer, dear husband.”

She faded off after giving her warning, and Zarian took his time to admire the main display at the memorial. He smiled as the array of colorful roses spiraled and twisted, like rippling waves, under the shifting light and drizzling snow.

He found Roland’s face uncovered in the beautiful mess. “I know, I know. I’m constantly flirting with danger. And I got an empire to grow. Why would I do such a thing, you ask?”

Good question.

Finger to brim, Zarian tipped his wizard hat back, his void-like eyes deepening as rare scants of aura light shone. “Because it was bound to happen. It won’t do anyone any real good if I try to ignore it or stick my head in the sand, ass up like a bitch. So, let’s conduct a philosophical experiment, shall we? What does it take to create a mostly good and somewhat loveable empire?”

He used Void Parade again, his grimoires following him, Morph clenching his finger-legs on his tail. The comforting nothingness swept around them like a curtain before parting just as quickly.

Zarian entered a large square in between residential and school towers. There, children of many ages waited in neat columns with adults stationed at the corners of each group.

“Children,” Zarian said, standing in the middle of the wide square.

“Oorah, Dark Emperor!” they shouted in return.

The emperor smiled toothily as he looked at the many faces with his human eyes. He scanned them all, letting them feel acknowledged, before he carried on with the small event.

“You’re all wondering why you’ve been summoned into the cold of Late Winter? Don’t worry, it’s not to put you through anything terrible. It’ll feel a little nippy, but there’s a side quest for this that’ll net you a nice return.”

He paced to the left.

“You’re here because I want to expose you all to a few scary possibilities that adults tend to hide from those we deem too young and impressionable. There’s a kingdom that’s on its last legs that likes to keep their young weak and ignorant, just for the sake of cannibalizing their own, and I don’t mean that in the literal sense.”

The children shivered at that. They looked mad, as if thinking that kingdom dumb, not because they realized the problem, but they were mostly on his side.

Ah, kids, bless their easy to incite hearts and very easy to mold minds.

“So, instead, we’re going to show you something freaky and scary now! No worries. We’re under System Suppression and we have enchantments and wards placed down to keep the truly, truly scary stuff from touching you metaphysically. If this becomes too much, you can always head inside. You will not be punished or secluded from anything. You only get to look a little less brave compared to your peers.”

Was that manipulative?

Yeah, it was.

But he wasn’t lying. The ones who ran and hid would lose face with the others. That wasn’t nice whatsoever, and the adults knew to look out for bullying and resolve that. Zarian was quite adamant about that when he’d spoken to the people who would work with young minds last week.

If anyone was going to give kids some childhood trauma, it would be him.

But only a little bit of trauma. Just so they could get a piece of that main protagonist treatment. Might increase the odds of their survival, after all.

“Alright, let’s do this. Everybody welcome, Princess Para.”

“Oorah, Princess Para!”

Upon the children’s cheerful cries, the sky above the capital city turned reddish, the morning suns shining with a bloody light. Then a dark red serpent came down like blood pouring from a sanguine storm cloud. Thousands of faces squirmed with silent screams while shaped as scales around the blood serpent’s face, the maw gaping wide over multiple city blocks.