Overpowered Wizard

Zarian remembered times in the barracks when one Marine would set up nights for drinking and watching epic fantasy movies. There was a lot of booze, of course, and hours spent marathoning Lord of the Rings, Star Wars, the Chronicles of Narnia, and so on.

In those movies, he remembered how the heroes were cornered, their backs pressed against the wall, while the enemy forces seemed too big and scary and ruthless for anyone to fight.

He’d even felt dread for some of his favorite characters even though he knew the heroes usually made it out in the end, or he thought he knew. There were a few surprises here and there, which was why those big budgeted and chaotic battles were some of his favorites.

The suspense had always sucked him in deep. And even if he’d already watched the movie and seen the epic battle, he’d go back online to re-watch it just so he could catch anything he’d missed the first time.

The first battle of the Wolf Dragon Invasion, a Mythical Regional Event, was both exhilarating and anticlimactic at the same time. Most of the exhilaration came from Zarian living vicariously through the actions and reactions of the young soldiers and acolytes.

The young men and women were panicking, mumbling the first thoughts that came to mind, or praying aloud to their gods as they stood on the ramparts facing the horde of kobolds. Their hands shook wildly, making it a struggle to keep hold of the uncommon bows and arrows the dungeon had given them.

Each armament had their own minor enchantments for easier shooting and more penetration. That should give the acolytes some confidence in using bows and arrows even if they were still novices.

But their confidence, even after having tasted the hot chocolate, was washing away with the heavy rain as the kobolds drew ever closer. Since the kobolds weren’t in range just yet, the young soldiers and acolytes had to wait, and as they waited, the fear compounded.

One acolyte nearly broke away from formation.

Naomi’s High Intimidation trait flared up, and the acolyte who was about to run stopped and turned back to her position. The girl cried as her friends barely held it together next to her.

Zarian observed all of this through his Spectral Spider Network.

He had hundreds of spiders spread around the fort, most of them along the north wall, but he also had spiders keeping a lookout on the flanks and the rear. It was through the spiders that Zarian had his vicarious enjoyments, enough so that he wanted to ask Reiki if she had a book on making popcorn.

He couldn’t move from his position on top of the gatehouse roof, unfortunately. Because not only did the soldiers and acolytes pray to their gods, they looked back to Zarian with furtive glances.

Some were angry, looking for an easy scapegoat to blame. That would be him.

Others looked to him for confidence and bravery, and they might find that with how he stood in the heavy rain with arms crossed, his Parasite Cloak stretched out far behind him like a huge, tattered, and monstrous flag.

Or they looked at him because they thought he was scarier than the kobolds, and they would be right to think so. It turned out the kobolds were so pathetic their charge broke apart far easier than Zarian had expected.

He had spectral spiders on the battlefield as well. They scrambled quickly to the wall while staying invisible in their ghost forms, keeping ahead of the kobold’s halting and sluggish advance.

Zarian had expected he would lose some of them by mere happenstance, but that wasn’t the case at all. Everything was perfectly fine, and Zarian’s disappointment in the kobolds, at least for the first wave, was growing immeasurable.

Five hundred fell to the ditches and died instantly on the spikes waiting at the bottom in the first minute. Zarian found that strange at first, even though he had ordered Bianca to blind them, but he figured they would tread with more care.

Instead, the kobolds kept barreling forward. They did slow down, but only because they kept falling for the ditches in front of them or because they tripped and bumped into each other.

Things would’ve been easier for the kobolds if they corrected themselves and got some semblance of order. They didn’t. They became more savage, more mad, and more chaotic.

The kobolds struck at each other with their old and trashy weapons in random spurts of self-destructive anger. They shoved forward, continuing their reckless assault and falling into giant ditches filled with webbing and spikes.

There was more webbing that waited on the muddy floor outside the ditches, too. Zarian’s spectral spiders had placed those down between the ditches to trip kobolds who were smart enough – or lucky enough – to avoid the spiked pitfall traps.

When the kobolds hit the surface-webbing trip-wires, they came crashing down in bunches. Enough of them piled up where the kobolds behind them broke like a river in front of a boulder and split off to the sides.

If the piles were big enough, then the kobolds streaming around slipped down the edges of the ditches and impaled themselves on the spikes below or became entangled with the webbing at the bottom. With the heavy rain, the threat of drowning in mud and water became a reality for the kobolds stuck on arcane webbing at the bottom of the ditches.

By the time the kobolds started getting closer to the desired arrow-shooting range, nearly a thousand of them fell dead in the ditches. Once the ditches filled up enough for kobolds to run over their own dying comrades, they barreled forward and … fell into more ditches!

Zarian shook his head while getting a live tally of deaths contributed to him. The System updated the number in a notification box in the corner of his vision.

There was a reason Stony had the right to take a nap. The giant had dug a lot of deep and wide ditches around the fort, and all the ditches were staggered. It was nearly impossible for the kobolds to keep a proper charge going without killing themselves in their haste.

That’s literally a fifth of the wave, and it hasn’t even been ten minutes yet. I haven’t even done anything but stand here and look cool.

Even with the experience-boost from the Mythical Regional Event, Zarian doubted he was getting much experience. If the Star System had a parameter for doling out experience based on difficulty factors, and that parameter was on a sliding scale going up and down, then Zarian was getting the most bottom-of-the-barrel experience, if he was getting any experience at all.

Being Level 64 was nice-and-all, but he wouldn’t grow much by taking out thousands of severely weak enemies. Hence why he was living vicariously through the kiddos.

His disappointment in the kobolds couldn’t sour his mood too much, not when the soldiers and the acolytes had some interesting takes.

“My good gods, be with me on this hallowed day, for we face the endless horde of evil!” shouted a scared soldier.

“I think I just wet myself,” an acolyte said. “It’s hard to tell with all the rain. But if it’s warm, then that must be me. If I die on this day, will that be the way I’m remembered? For adding to the wetness of my gear?”

“Look at them. They’re a brutal lot,” a different soldier said, his grip shaking around his bow and arrow. “They just keep going no matter what. I can even smell them through the rain, and we’re all the way up here when they’re down there. The blood and flesh of their victims are still rotting on their weapons!”

“Is this my punishment for leaving the garden? I should’ve waited like a good flower to be picked! Why did I choose this barbaric life? What’s power compared to comfort?” an acolyte cried.

“Can I kiss you? I don’t want to die without ever feeling the kiss of a beautiful flower like you,” one soldier said to an acolyte next to him.

Before the acolyte could reply, Naomi’s High Intimidation flared up again. Zarian almost wanted to wince, but he understood why Naomi had to be a major cock blocker.

The romance could wait for later. The war needed fighting now.

The surviving kobolds finally wised up and moved in zig-zagging streams around the ditches. They also learned to slow down whenever an arcane trip-wire appeared.

The kobolds who had fallen to the trapped webbing became stepping stones for their brethren and were crushed to death for the sake of the siege attack.

They sped up a little, but not by much, since they had to move like they were in an old school game of snake – Stony had truly done a good job of digging the ditches staggered, so there were no straight lines toward the wall. In a way, the defenses had forced the kobolds to become more organized, flowing in seven streams of fur, scales, and old armor.

Unfortunately, this level of organization would be their undoing, as the kobolds were finally well within the preferred shooting range.

“DRAW!” Naomi shouted.

Hundreds of bow strings were stretched taut, their arrows pulled back as the bows flexed against the tension.

“AIM!” Naomi shouted.

Despite their terror of the advancing kobolds, the soldiers and acolytes feared their Lady Instructor Washington more, especially the acolytes. Naomi had trained them a little harder, so most of them stopped with their shaking and complaining and firmed up their grip on their bow and arrow as they aimed. Zarian held his breath in anticipation of their week-long build up to this moment.

“FIRE!” Naomi ordered.

Two hundred and eighty-nine arrows shot forth, slicing through the rain, all of them concentrated on the kobolds leading the seven lines streaming around the ditches. Zarian watched through various spectral spiders for a multiple point-of-view experience, and he wasn’t disappointed.

Even basic arrow-shooting was fun to watch as they sunk deep into the kobolds like pins through a pincushion. He watched kobolds have their heads punched through, their chests riddled, their limbs punctured and made useless.

Lots of blood splatter mixed with the rain. Then the pile-up began, blocking off the streams or slowing them down.

Naomi didn’t give the soldiers and acolytes time to think or react. She sped up the pace of her orders while staying on rhythm. “DRAW! AIM! FIRE!”

The kiddos followed through and fired another volley. They struck down at the kobolds who were trying to clamber over the top of their pin-cushioned dead only to suffer the same fate.

Arrows planted themselves in their skulls, broke through fur and scales on their toros, and sent others scrambling back and crying out before they stumbled off to the sides and fell dramatically in the yawning ditches.

A few kobolds with bows and arrows staged themselves behind their piles of dead and tried to take pot shots at the shooters on the walls. It was the best counter-offensive move Zarian had seen from them, and would’ve been mildly threatening if it wasn’t for the boon he’d already asked from Lovewar.

An anti-air barrier flickered into existence, shimmering with gold and white divine power. The retaliatory arrows bounced off and fell uselessly to the ground outside the northern wall.

Naomi kept shouting, “DRAW! AIM! FIRE!”

The soldiers and the acolytes kept drawing, aiming, and firing arrows without thinking, only doing as commanded by their fearsome Lady Instructor Washington.

Things were working out so well a new problem appeared. They’d killed enough kobolds at the head of the streams that the many kobolds behind them couldn’t progress forward. The pace of the siege turned out even more sluggish.

Naomi didn’t let that slow the youngsters down. They had way too many measures to combat moments like these, some of which Naomi had already expected, showing the brilliance of her militant mind.

“Switch bows!” Naomi ordered.

They had two types of bows at their disposal as gifts from the dungeon. There was the medium long bow, which required some decent amount of Strength to draw and enough Agility to aim accurately.

Then there were the long-distance bows that required even more Strength to draw back. The soldiers had the Strength for the long-distance bows. Many of the acolytes had to struggle to shoot one arrow from the bigger bows in the time it took the soldiers to shoot two.

Naomi didn’t give a fuck.

She wanted everyone to shoot the more powerful bows. If the acolytes had to suffer stinging fingers and sore backs in the effort, then so be it.

At the very least, Gilbert rode his steed at a trotting pace behind the firing line. He gave out small but potent doses of Adrenaline Jolt to each of the acolytes, perking them up radically.

Zarian watched from multiple point-of-views as the long-range arrow fire rained down at a consistent pace.

Naomi kept shouting, “DRAW! AIM! FIRE!”

The soldiers and acolytes kept following through without having enough time to think or realize what they were doing.

And the kobolds died by the bucket loads at a steady rate. Now they were stuck with too many behind them to retreat, too many ditches around them to move laterally, and too many dead in front of them to keep up forward progress.

On the first day of the siege, the kobolds never made it to the wall.

Once more than half of their numbers died, they had the wise idea of retreating more aggressively, which went against what Elder Edza had told Zarian. Regardless of their infamy, their alignment, and the gods they worshiped, every intelligent creature had a breaking point where they wanted to preserve their own lives.

Even the gnolls, despite their savage reputation, had breaking points. They wouldn’t want to cross the wrong enemy and risk annihilation.

The wolf kobolds were the same way, but they were still dumb and couldn’t retreat properly in a mess of ditches and dead bodies.

Naomi kept yelling, “DRAW! AIM! FIRE!”

The soldiers and acolytes kept making it rain long-range arrows on the panicking, stuck, and confused kobolds.

Zarian observed it all with a near-omniscient presence.

He listened to the twang of the bow strings when released. He heard the whistle of arrows cutting through the dull roar of the heavy rain. He took in the sounds of kobolds dropping and struggling in the bloody mud amid corpses before the arrows struck with heavy, flesh-sinking, armor-penetrating thunks.

The kobolds screamed, cussed, and even fought among themselves, turning their rage on their nearest brethren before they fell to their doom under another shower of arrows. Then, finally, the kobolds broke away properly once the ones at the back realized their first attempt at the siege was unsalvageable and they all needed to reverse course.

It took them a while before they faded from direct vision.

In the end, Zarian estimated close to four thousand kobolds had died. Around seventeen hundred had died in the ditches. The rest had died to the efforts of the soldiers and acolytes.

This would’ve been the time most warring armies would celebrate, but Naomi was ruthless.

“What are you waiting for?” She barked out. “Get down the stairs and out to the battlefield! You think all of this equipment and food comes from thin air? We have a dungeon to feed!”

She was being pragmatic. She had to move them all fast before the realization and emotions got to them, the acolytes especially.

Zarian waited, arms crossed, cloak extended behind him like a flag, as Naomi moved at a frenzied pace around the soldiers and acolytes to keep them on the move.

“Stony, shift over and let our people out past you,” Zarian said through a spectral spider in the giant’s ear.

“Hm? Oh. Okay.” The giant shifted, causing a small rumbling quake. Now the way out was clear.

Obviously, there were too many dead for them to take in at once or even on a couple of trips. Thus, most of the spectral spiders went to work ahead of the soldiers and acolytes.

Despite their small size, the spectral spiders were all Level 46 now based on Zarian’s overpowered Mysticism. They could all haul around a body or several behind them on strings of arcane webbing.

More importantly, Loner and the other runic skeletons went out to make sure the kobolds were really dead. There were some still withering about in the mud.

Hell, there were so many still clinging to life that they had the Ride-or-Die Guild outnumbered. There was a lot to cover. Zarian decided to make things easier.

He uncrossed his arms.

The Parasite Cloak flapped with more force, sounding like a muffled thunderclap.

Taking in a deep breath, Zarian pushed his hands forward, fingers arched, palms rotating up toward the rainy sky.

The spectral chains rattled. The Grimoire of Black Magic 102 hovered to a spot above his hands, the pages already turned to the appropriate spell while shining with a ghastly black and green light.

Zarian flooded his brain with aura. He pushed and pushed his Fractured Mind to divide itself multiple times, over and over again.

With each fractured piece, he copied the knowledge of bone necromancy and saw many versions of the same symbols and text scrolling through his head.

It was one thing to cast multiple different spells, but it was another thing to cast the same spell in one vast array of wizardry might.

The grimoire emitted a far-reaching black and green flash that illuminated the bellies of the heavy rain clouds above. Zarian roared out the name of his spell as the finishing touch and linchpin to this mighty work:

“Raise Advancing Skeletons!”