Overpowered Wizard-Chapter Ch62: Sacrifice

They didn’t talk any further until they arrived at the biggest cathedral Zarian had ever seen. Very gothic. Very on theme. Inside, more corrupted gods hung on chains from the ceiling. He recognized a few. The ones who’d antagonized him since the beginning were suffering a hell like no other.

Further ahead, Lucy sat upon a throne that spilled her dark tears like an oil spill. She was completely covered in a gothic outfit that veiled her face and the rest of her body except for the edge of her thick boots. She was also quite large, mountain-sized, as if the throne wanted to make her bigger to represent how much of a monster she was. Zarian and Bianca followed Reiki through the air before stopping at a reasonable spot in front of the face covering.

“Hello,” Lucy boomed.

Zarian sighed. “You know what I’m feeling?”

The Adventurer Queen tilted her head ever so slightly. It really was like watching a mountain shift.

“The feelings of the good conversations we’ve had. For what it’s worth, I don’t hate you, Lucy. And if things hadn’t been forced the way they were, maybe things could’ve gone differently. But I hope there’s a way we can make amends and turn things around.”

“Kill me then,” Lucy requested.

“No!” Reiki shouted.

Lucy twitched her finger, and Reiki fell like a doll cut from her strings. Bianca grabbed her before she hit the corrupted sea below. Once they were back at his side, Zarian straightened up and looked firmly into Lucy’s covered face.

“I’m not doing that.”

“Why? I’ve helped Ariana. Many have died because of me. If you and all of your little friends work together, slaying the Adventurer Queen would make you God Rankers automatically.” Lucy shifted again, her every movement sending rumbles through the air. The sea of shadow tears below had tsunami waves rolling over the surface. “I don’t care anymore, Zarian. Death is the least permanent for Ultra Gods. I’ll end up somewhere else, perhaps. Maybe I’ll be married off to someone who’ll want me. A second attempt is worth a go.”

Her voice grew hoarse. “Please. End me. If you ever cared, do me this last favor and–”

“She wants you,” Bianca said, holding up Reiki’s inactive body.

Lucy chuckled thunderously. “She wants to use me for my–”

“No, she actually wants you. She wants you to be powerful. She wants you to feel better. She wants you to be safe from Ariana. She both worships you and hopes for your affection and has ideas for dates that you’ll like.”

Lucy shifted her head slightly and studied the little specks before her. Zarian could tell her attention was on Reiki specifically.

“I’m supposed to belong to the strongest.”

Is she still going on about that?

Wow. Zarian wasn’t a genius Casanova, but even he cringed at Lucy’s romantic stupidity.

“How about you try liking someone who likes you? It might help cut through all the bullshit, aye?” Zarian remarked.

Lucy slowly slumped back in her seat, making the throne quake. When she became unresponsive for a long time, Zarian wondered if they had to leave and find another avenue to defeat Ariana. Then Lucy moved again, bringing up her massive gloved hand.

Bianca floated down and placed Reiki in the middle of her palm. Once Bianca was back at Zarian’s side, Reiki jolted awake and stood up, facing her mistress.

“Is it true that you like me? Deeply? Affectionately? Regardless of my power.”

“Of course!” Reiki chirped. “Even if you don’t see me as a partner in love, I wish to be your best friend at least! I want to read in the dark corners of the library with you! Drink late night coffee and speak of naughty and tragic stories. I want to watch you corrupt and twist those who deserve your most awful attention. And then let me pull their strings as we laugh and are merry. I know I can’t replace Lovewar. Nobody can! But I want to be here for you. I want to be wicked and in love with you, my Ultra Goddess, my Lucy!”

“Oh.” Lucy sounded dumbfounded. “After so much tragedy … I’ve been acting as if there’s no real love for me. But there is. You, Reiki. Hm. Now I’m embarrassed.”

Zarian turned to Bianca. “I seriously have a knack for attracting evil girls or setting evil girls up together.”

“You’re just nifty like that, papi.”

Reiki sighed pleasantly with all six hands on her hips. “We can talk more about this later, Lucy. We also need to talk about how you shouldn’t just shut me down before I can speak my piece. My body and soul may be yours, but please give me more autonomy. It’ll be important for our future together.”

“Uh, yes, of course, apologies,” Lucy said, flustered, which was hilarious coming from a woman the size of a mountain while they got scolded by a tiny spider girl in the palm of her hand.

Reiki nodded, satisfied, before turning to Zarian and Bianca. “By now, you must know that we are in leagues with Ariana only for the sake of saving ourselves from her. We do not mind changing allegiances to help you. Though, there’s more to it than just that.”

“We were slowing you down on purpose,” Lucy explained. “Ariana’s reserving all of her energy to eat you, God Land, the Star Core once you become God Rankers and settle onto this place. Though I suppose slowing you down or letting you speed up doesn’t matter if you didn’t know about the trap.”

“We’re here now. What’s keeping her from lunging in?” Zarian asked.

“I think I’m sensing the answer there,” Bianca said. “She wants you at your peak of power in this universe. At Level 500, you’ll be your strongest. Then she can have the biggest feast this universe can offer while powering herself up to the peak.” Bianca shuddered. “I can’t see much further, but I can guesstimate that would make Ariana so strong, she might escape the loops as she terrorizes other universes and more beyond that forever.”

Zarian sighed. “So, it’s like that, huh?”

Ariana hadn’t been trying to stop them at all. She’d never wanted to stop them. She’d pretended to play as the obstacle to their growth to make them grow faster. It would explain so much about why Ariana hadn’t gone for the kill when she could have done so this whole time. She’d been playing a long game the whole time.

This text was taken from Royal Road. Help the author by reading the original version there.

“I’m sorry, Zarian,” Bianca said.

Zarian looked hard into Bianca’s eyes. “I think she’s been planning to eat me from the start. Ever since I opened that portal in the mall. Ever since this loop became a thing with her appearing as my ghost of a little sister. This has been her plan the whole time. And the worst part is, I don’t want to believe it. But I can’t keep acting like a fool just for convenience’s sake.”

Zarian looked up and let out one long, painful breath. Bianca, Reiki, and Lucy waited for him as he bore the weight of his disappointment, shame, and other dark emotions.

“Alright.” He nodded. “That’s that. I’m going to go deal with Ariana now.”

Lucy jolted, tossing Reiki about in her palm. Once she stopped moving, Reiki flew into the air.

“Are you serious?” Reiki asked.

“He can’t be,” Lucy said.

“He is,” Bianca said before swooping in and giving Zarian a huge hug. “You can do this as you are now. You don’t need God Rank.” She backed off a little while gripping his shoulders and looking dead into his eyes. “You are Zarian. You are an Ultra God. Show us what that’s supposed to mean.”

“There is one more thing I need to do.” Zarian smirked.

Bianca smirked as well. “Do it!”

He switched to free good.

His rank switched, marking him as a hero.

Half an hour later, Zarian floated at the edge of space above God Land. Above him, the Star Core shone dully, the System gutted, its power waning. Some of that power was being poured carefully into him with the Adventurer Queen’s Blessing. It wasn’t much, but it helped.

Other than that, Ariana was making her final approach. She must’ve sensed a shift in fate. Or she noticed how Lucy commanded all the worlds and stars to move out of the way, saving the lives of everybody else between Zarian and Ariana.

The Dragoness was moving faster now, far faster. She would be here soon, and then everybody here, mortal, god, Ultra, even family, would all be eaten by the mad Dragoness. Unless someone stopped her.

“Was this always supposed to go down?” Zarian asked. “Were we always meant to kill each other?”

“No,” said Jay Luckrun, standing right next to him. “Honestly, other than some destruction here and there, we were hoping you two would reconcile and help each other overcome your problems. But instead, in the many loops that have happened, you’ve gotten worse and worse. It was too late to stop it after we’ve signed you up for this as a trial of the Ultraverse System.”

“So were you serious about putting us in jars or killing us?”

“Jars don’t hold for long. And I can kill you and her, but the deaths might not stick. Ultra Gods have a hard time dying permanently in every sort of dimension. Trust me. I’ve killed many Ultra Gods, and I usually have to kill them at least three times before they conveniently disappear. But I’m mainly talking about the ones that matter.”

“What is the Ultraverse like?”

“Well, you got world tier. Then the galactic tier. Then the universe tier. Then the multiverse tier. Then you must ask yourself, what’s bigger than the multiverse? The Ultraverse. It’s the peak of power. Dynasties stand above all verses while jockeying to see who’s better than whom while developing new talent or younglings to become powerful Elites among the Ultras. From there, the Ultraverse System judges us in all things that can be judged over. The winners ascend further, and the losers descend until they are fully subjected or forced into obscurity.”

Grandpa Jay sighed. “The Ultra System measures you two to have some of the highest tiers of potential we’ve seen. The type of potential if matured could help an entire Dynasty rise further, faster, especially if you can watch each other’s backs and cover each other’s weaknesses.”

“What went wrong with us?” Zarian asked.

The old man shrugged. “You two struggled. That’s it, really. You two struggled so much it caused incredible damages across our patch of the Ultraverse and in our neighbors’ patches. We’ve lost whole multiverses and got dinged up bad by the Ultra System for that. I was serious when I said I couldn’t save all the loops. You may wonder why we didn’t just cut things off for you two then and there, but there was the sunk cost fallacy. We were really hoping for a sign that it was all worth it.”

“Too many people have suffered because of us.”

“Yeah.”

“We need to atone.”

Grandpa Jay raised an eyebrow at that. “How do you plan to do that?”

Zarian smiled. “A bit of martyrdom is in order.”

“Whoa, kid, wait. Don’t toss the baby out with the bathwater!”

“Later, Grandpa. Oh, and screw you.”

Zarian threw a half-hearted punch into Grandpa Jay’s chest. It didn’t seem like much, but ONE HUNDRED PERCENT DARKNESS gave it that added little push.

Zarian ejected the old Ultra God out of the universe with that one tap. It was only an avatar, not the real thing, unless that was what Grandpa Jay wanted him to believe. It was hard to know with that one.

Jay gave crazy trickster vibes.

Shaking his head, Zarian focused on Ariana’s approaching maw as it stretched open and seemed to cover half the universe. There was no escaping that thing unless you were pressed far to the side limits of the universe.

Zarian wasn’t planning to avoid this anymore. He continued to feed into One Hundred Percent Darkness, and not with just power from the core of the universe. He needed more than just that.

He shuddered as achievement after achievement fell into the maw of his gluttonous skill. He’d gathered a lot over the years. So many that it would take ages to read over his profile. Watching them disappear as sacrifices, one by one, was a little disheartening. But he knew it was for a good cause. It was pushing his darkness to break its limits.

Because that was the one thing he’d never thought about. He’d always focused on controlling his darkness, going up the percentage little by little. But he’d never thought about what happened after reaching one hundred percent.

So, after convincing himself to take the plunge, he’d twisted the rules of the Infinita System, targeted his profile for sacrifice, and gone to town. Achievements were easy to give because they were already spent, but there was still some magic in those opened gift boxes. They disappeared, eaten up by Overwhelming Darkness, until there was no more.

Next, Zarian targeted all the names in his origins. He stopped short of his own name and switched to reaching out further for the nebulous Feats of Adventure that would’ve weighed on if he was worthy for the Throne of the Adventurer Whoever. It made for good eating in his darkness.

After that, he dove into the deep end and tapped into his abyss to draw out as many sacrifices as he could drain into his darkness. Fortunately, he’d already passed out a few favorites like Loner, gator, and the spiders to others to keep. Because after he drained the abyss for all he could reach, he sacrificed his bibliothecas.

That hurt some. So did the other skills as he sacrificed more. He was shaking at that point. Things were getting real. His profile felt so light, but Zarian kept going.

He stopped short of Lion Prince before realizing he could go further. He handpicked the traits that he could go without, and he let his darkness eat from his own soul.

At that point, he was screaming. The pain was almost too much. But he was an Ultra God, and he was made of sterner stuff. He stopped short of the important traits, especially aura manipulation and sorcery.

Now onto the hardest part.

Stats.

He gave up Strength. He gave up some of his Agility but not all. By that point, as he worked out how much he could shave off the top from Willpower, Wonder, and Mysticism, he was on the verge of passing out. He might not make it. He was fading.

A big hand clapped down on his shoulder and filled him with a burst of energy, waking him up.

“I’m here with you, brother,” Gilbert said.

“I told all of you to get away,” Zarian grunted.

“And miss out on you going out like Jesus H Christ? No fucking way. I’m a lot of things, Zarian, but I’m committed most of all. So, like I said, I’m here with you, brother. I’ll carry you all the way through.”

Zarian’s eyes stung. He smiled the cheesiest smile and raised his fist to connect with Gilbert’s.

The Godsent Commander put all of his magic into propping up Zarian as the wizard carefully sacrificed as much as he could. With the loss of power and cannibalization of his own profile, Overwhelming Darkness felt like it was on the verge of breaking free.

But here was the thing. It was a bloodline power attached deep within his soul. The profile and stats and mechanics helped keep it in check, but it was his power, and he was the sole ruler of Overwhelming Darkness. His power wasn’t the sole ruler of him.

It also helped that he had some major help.

“I’m giving you the best system support I can, Zarian,” Hannah said from far out in the opposite direction of Ariana. “It’s a horrible thing you’re doing to yourself, but you don’t have to be all macho and suffer it alone when you can have my help.”

“What the hell, Hannah? I’m here in the shadow of the valley of death with him!” Gilbert shouted.

“I really was trying to be macho,” Zarian muttered.

“Stupid boys,” Hannah muttered.

“Hey! Let us boys be boys! We’re being valiant and awesome and doing God’s work!” Gilbert argued.

“Oh, hello, we’re patching into the comms for an important update,” Foara said, still on the escaping ship with Hannah and the others. “We, uh, just gave our best meal we can conjure to Naomi. She’s awake.”

“Where is she?” Zarian rasped. He could feel it. His darkness was on the verge of something major. It just needed a little further push.

“I just need you to understand why I/we didn’t stop her, okay?” Foara said shakily. “We couldn’t stop her. We just couldn’t. She did it. She actually did it! She has achieved–”