Overpowered Wizard-Chapter 295: B3: C85: The Darkrun Truth
“Fuck, you’re really strong when you get serious,” Zarian said, half-laughing.
“With you as you are now, there is nobody else stronger and greater than me in this universe,” Ariana said. “I’m perfection personified. I’m destructive given shape. I’m the queen of all the gods and goddesses, of all the worlds and stars and galaxies. I’m the ultimate power there is, with none equal to me. And that’s why I’m trapped.”
Zarian nodded slowly. “Without my Overwhelming Darkness…”
“Nothing can free me from my dragon form,” Ariana finished. “Unless…”
“You break the Star System, escape, and find something outside who can free you,” Zarian finished for her.
“I’ll need to wake further before that.”
“Tick Tock, huh? Is that what you’re telling me?”
“I would prefer it to be you, big brother. I want to follow you, but only in your true form. I’m sure we can overcome the limits placed on us if it’s us Darkruns.”
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“Our family says otherwise. I’m a Sainte-Darkrun now.”
Ariana staggered back, eyes opening wide with shock. Then her eyes flicked down to the lion tail extending from behind him, truly seeing it for the first time.
A growl that shook the air reverberated out of her throat, her dragon teeth gnashing, her crown of horns growing. The shadow of great wings appeared on the walls, wrapping entirely around the giant temple’s interior, with her at the center and very far from her Sunday best.
She roared. “So they wish to meddle?! To put a wedge between us? Fine then. I’m going to tell you the truth about these loops. Damn the rules. I don’t care anymore!”
Zarian felt something inside of him shake as the air inside of Ariana’s temple quake even more. Then he felt like he was tilting, and so was the air, and so was Ariana. They were all tilting slightly, placed a little off balanced, just enough to make it unnerving.
Clearly, Zarian wasn’t supposed to know the truth. Just the threat of the Darkrun Truth seemed to make reality suffer, the Star System’s magic waning, struggling to correct the issue.
Ariana snarled. “You can’t hide this from him forever! You can’t shut me up while we’re in conflict!”
Reality tilted just a little more. Someone, something, was unhappy with Ariana’s trifling. But that wasn’t exactly Zarian’s problem.
“Yeah, I want to know. What is the truth?” Zarian pressed forward, pulling Two Percent Darkness out of the Void Sword while blasting beams and bolts at Ariana’s figure.
For whatever reason, they needed to keep fighting for the truth to come out, because something was restricting Ariana. He could sense it like magma building up pressure inside a big and rocky volcano that wanted to blow.
Ariana rushed back into combat eagerly.
She slashed through each beam and split them into weaker streams that collided with temple-shaking impacts in the background.
She batted aside every bolt as if they were little balls, despite them having the power to plow through castle mountains and deep into the earth.
She negated his darkness with her own darkness, and showed an expertise that was marvelous, beautiful, and deadly.
Para didn’t give a damn as her phantom hand came around with the Void Sword. She connected with a scream and warble against Ariana’s destructive flame sword.
Warped cracks and streaks that defied space and time forked out, making their teetering reality even more fragile, even more tilted, until the Star System had to blast out a warning.
<Damages to the existential plane in a Lesser Realm have breached current containment and repair parameters. All adventure-capable inhabitants of the World of Castles and Caverns must prepare for a worldwide evacuation in case the bout between The Dragoness and the Dark Emperor leads to a Dying World catastrophe.>
Zarian didn’t read the warning outright, but he caught enough to get the gist. Things were getting too dangerous. But he couldn’t stop now. Ariana’s relentless approach pushed him and Para across the edge and further than that.
And he wanted to know the truth!
Zarian resorted to using spikes, columns, and whipping tentacles with sharpened ends to slow Ariana down and keep her dancing around, even at mach speeds. He and Para tried to cast spells from their grimoires, but either Ariana’s divinity would get in the way or she would destroy a cast with a destructive fireball.
Eventually, Ariana found a hole in his defense and slipped close to punch the pommel of her darkness sword into his gut. An explosion of pain racked his torso and nearly blinded Zarian to Ariana’s next action, but that didn’t matter too much as his feet left the ground and his spiders activated a speedily made gravity array centered on this very moment.
The Dragoness was strong, but she wasn’t exactly the smartest. She could be tricked.
Zarian flew and tumbled backwards as purple gravity magic slammed down on Ariana, stopping her in her tracks. By the time Zarian finished rolling, catching himself with Aura Mastery, he blinked his vision clear and saw Ariana take a simple step forward.
Shocked, Zarian watched Ariana move while pressed by the biggest and strongest gravity trap he’d conjured yet. She kept going step by step, drawing closer to leaving the trap that even had the floor of her legendary temple sinking into a crater.
“The loops aren’t necessarily temporal,” she said casually, as if the trap made for slowing Naomi was barely a hindrance to The Dragoness. “The loops are only temporal when the Funnest steps in fully. And even then, it’s only for a few instances.”
The air to her temple quaked even further.
Something flickered in and out of Zarian’s peripherals, and he felt little claws from many little arms and legs crawling along his arms and back. He checked behind him, but he couldn’t see anything directly. But he felt something was there, right on his back. And he knew Ariana’s feeling the same sensation.
There was something on them, something with little claws and many arms and limbs, and with little teeth and many beady eyes that clicked loudly like dolls, and they couldn’t do anything about it. They could only feel it through their powers as Ultra Gods.
“That’s the Creepiest Matant,” Ariana introduced. “Ignore her. She’s a servant to the Funnest. She won’t intervene as long as we’re in conflict.”
“Why is that? Why do I feel like we have to fight just for us to talk honestly?” Zarian asked, wheezing, his torso bruising from the prior hit.
Ariana took another step closer to escaping the gravity trap. “Because in our family, challenge and change are our core identity. All Ultra Gods have rules they must follow that abide by concepts that grant them their power. But those rules don’t apply as heavily when we’re weaker, especially with your case. So you’re the most flexible of us.”
Zarian knew that everything Ariana’s saying was true. He felt that deep down. He saw Ariana felt it, too, as if they were both sounds of music in tune with each other.
Their sounds were grand, angry, destructive, and maddening, yet they were in tune, even with their frustrations.
So Zarian kept fighting while Ariana slowly walked out of the anti-titan gravity array. He threw bolts and beams of Two Percent Darkness at her, and they landed with some punch, making Ariana grimace and frown, but she walked through them nonetheless.
Zarian hesitated.
“You can power up further, if you want. I’ll show you how truly weak your mortal form is against me,” she said.
He thought about it. He thought really hard. Then he went for it, curiosity winning over caution, unlocking Three Percent Darkness.
The past two months included sessions of deep cultivation and work updating parts of his sealing style. Now Three Percent Darkness came to his call much easier than before.
With a power that could remodel moons and flatten mountains, Zarian struck Ariana with a beam of his best stuff and hoped her divine temple could keep it contained.
His hope was the correct one, but what he saw next shook him to the core.
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Ariana stomped her way out of the gravity trap and slashed her darkness sword through his Three Percent Beam. With one stroke, she broke his greatest power into weaker streams that collided with the back of her temple and shook the structure so hard, Zarian fell to the ground.
He didn’t stay there for long as Ariana moved quickly to take advantage. Para’s Void Sword swung forth and got batted aside with a roaring wobble and explosive scream that created a fissure through reality so large it reached Zarian.
And he fell.
Into another world.
Zarian gasped, choking as roiling clouds of smog and smoke collided with his body and entered his throat. His Mysticism stat and aura abilities strained, complicating matters as he saw a break in the thick smoke and found a roaring conflagration covering the world from horizon to horizon.
He’d fallen into a Dying World, and all the decent aura was being burnt up by the endless masses and oceans of flames.
Para responded quickly, pulling out aura-generating orbital golems from her pocket dimension. Zarian felt some relief from the circling golems, but not for long. His sister was following right after him, both her swords of darkness and destruction swinging at his limbs.
They continued their fight across the skies, between the burning masses and oceans below and the atmospheric clouds of smoke and smog above.
The heat was blistering. The air was in short supply. And despite being outside of her temple, Ariana’s avatar remained ruthless, strong, and great.
She even spoke steadily as they fought.
“The Funnest can only reset so much, because the damage we can unleash goes beyond space and time, beyond reality and spirit, beyond the power of most gods. We are beyond the limits of most universes, and when we get big enough, we are true multiverse eaters.
“That is what it means to be an Ultra God. To sit above multiverse and universe level entities. And the two of us are destined to be among the best of Ultra Gods.
“But our family refuses to let us be what we’re meant to be – weapons of mass destruction. Instead, they wish for us to blunt our claws and de-fang ourselves. And the only way they think they can is to keep trying to make you learn from weak and pathetic mortals by living countless loops as a human.”
Zarian got thrown full body through a conflagration covering a truly immense civilization tree, snapping the flaming structure in half and sending the top piece crashing down upon its Dying World.
He got to his feet on a pyre and pulled out more of the aura-generating orbital golems to replace the last ones he lost. Ariana hadn’t even aimed to destroy them. They kept getting broken from the clashes, but without them, Zarian would lose control of his Three Percent Darkness.
“What about the jars? What about what will happen to us if we keep failing?” Zarian asked, voice hoarse, his mind abuzz with Para’s panic, his legendary gear all torn up, his body a canvas of bruises and burns.
“They’re lying about the jars, if that’s what the Funnest told you.”
Ariana flew across the sky without wings. But her presence sent the great flames and dark smoke into an uproar, making them form worldwide wings in the background behind her, spanning from horizon to horizon.
“They’re lying, big brother. There are no jars to contain us. They are lying about me being able to change if you try hard enough. I’m evil to my core, and that’s okay with me. My only weakness is you, and that’s a weakness I’m fine with bearing.”
Zarian sweated, gasped, and ignored the pain from the roaring flames and suffocating smoke around him. He felt the Creepiest Matant crawling all over his back with a frenzy, but not intervening.
“And they’re lying if they told you it’s a time loop,” she said.
“They never mentioned what type of loop it is.”
“Then you should know what the loops are. I’ve said enough about that. You can figure out the rest.”
Zarian didn’t want to say it, because the implications would be too terrible. But there was no point in denying the truth after hearing so much from Ariana directly.
“It’s partially temporal by resetting my age and partially spatial by placing us in a different corner of the Verse,” Zarian grunted. “Every time I’ve failed so catastrophically that the Funnest can’t fix the damage … I get a hard reset and you get a soft reset. Then we’re placed in a new location … leaving the damage behind.”
Ariana came at him with another swing of her swords, and Zarian synced up with Para. Her little phantom tendrils hooked to his brain synapses, their minds running together as one and becoming greater than the sum of their parts.
His grief became her grief, so neither suffered alone.
With a Three Percent Sword and a Void Sword, Zarian clashed with The Dragoness and entered a stalemate, but one that couldn’t last.
Ariana shifted her sword placement to leverage her greater Strength and talent, putting Zarian/Para on the back heels.
Zarian’s lion tail whipped around to catch Ariana’s ankle and disrupt her footing, maybe even go as far as tripping her or creating space. But her own tail appeared with a dark flash, one of draconic toughness and mightiness, countering his tail move.
Blade to blade, tail to tail, face to face, his little sister hissed through her flesh-ripping fangs with inches to spare between them.
“I remember it all, Zarian! I remembered you when you were happy. I remembered you when you were arrogant. I remembered you when you were surrounded by mortal families who couldn’t carry our bloodline. I remembered your past friends, past enemies, and past lovers! I remembered you when you were a knight, a slave, a thug, an astronaut, a president, an assassin, a murderer, a serial killer, a psychopath, and sometimes even the lowliest scum of the rotten world. And through all of that, one thing remained the same. We stuck it through as a family! As Darkruns! You and I, forever! And that’s because of me. Always supporting you. Because I remember everything while you always, always, ALWAYS FORGET!”
She separated, throwing off his and Para’s balance. Then she swung her swords once more and forced the wizard parasite duo to clash while they had the weaker footing.
The collision shattered reality like it was made of glass, catapulting Zarian’s body right through. He returned to Ariana’s temple with a crash that knocked the air out of him, broke his ribs further, and left him in a crater on the bone floor.
Ariana jumped through the fissure in reality as the Star System struggled to seal it behind her. The last thing Zarian saw through the fissure were the worldwide dragon wings arched above the Dying World of Forests and Friendship. Then it was all gone, and only Ariana’s temple remained, with reality left raw and bruised and tormented.
In a mere ‘spar’ between Ultra Gods, between the Darkrun siblings, they’d broken the rules and made the Star System struggle between two Lesser Worlds to keep things from spiraling out of control.
Zarian could understand why the Star System had made the declaration about preparing to evacuate. The Darkruns were an overpowered mess who could bring worldwide doom while only using a fraction of their true power.
Zarian dismissed the Void Sword. He disconnected his complete synchrony with Para. He focused on sealing his darkness.
Ariana knelt at his side, her hand laying on his arm. “You don’t have to anymore. The only way for us to win is to become too big for them to reset us. It has always been a race of outgrowing their control, because the Funnest can only intervene at one or two pivotal moments within a loop, and I think after so many attempts, after so many loops, I know how to stop the Funnest. I can break us free of his grip and force our family to let us do as we please. All I need is for you to trust me.”
Zarian saw a tremble in her eyes.
She really wanted this. She really believed in this. She believed in him.
He sucked in a shaky, wet breath, struggling to breathe. Then he continued sealing his darkness until he had One Hundred Percent Sealed, Full Control.
By then, Arian had stood up and walked out of the crater. The feeling of the Creepiest Matant was gone, and the truth was out.
“It’s taking me longer to wake,” Ariana said, her voice dead, unfeeling. “Something is getting in the way, and I haven’t figured out what. So … I guess you and your little pets have more time. But I will wake up fully one day, and I will break free, and you won’t be able to stop me unless you unleash your true form.”
“The Throne … of the Adventurer King,” Zarian said with a rib-busted gargle.
Ariana chuckled darkly. “You know why the throne sits empty? The original dragon ate the last guy. Nobody wants that throne. And it won’t help you stop me. Nothing from this little universe can stop me.”
After a few minutes of lying in a crater of defeat, Zarian crawled to his feet and staggered out.
He saw Ariana lounging on her altar, her sharpened eyes watching him intensely, claws flexing. Sometimes, her tail would appear, swishing slowly from side to side over the altar’s edge. The shadow of great draconic wings covered the walls and ceiling, and the pressure of Ariana’s divine power rested solidly on his shoulders.
If she wanted, she could kill him twice and unleash the darkness with brute force, and they both knew it.
The tension between them was so thick it would crush most mortals.
Zarian shook his head as he drew in a weak breath. “I don’t think I’ve been beaten like that in a while.” Zarian slowly nodded. “Yeah … the last time I got beat this bad, I was still under the Petersons’ roof.”
“Ah, yes, the foster family with the teenage daughter that tried to get you in trouble. I haunted her dreams to get her to leave you alone,” Ariana said.
“And I got beat by Mr Peterson until I ran away.” Zarian huffed painfully. “Yeah … it’s been a while since I’ve lost outright .”
“I’m not sorry,” Ariana growled.
Zarian shrugged one shoulder, ignoring the pain, and made for the exit. He stopped before crossing the threshold, looking back once more. “Well, as perfect as you think you are, you aren’t. You lost one to Bianca, who really is like a little sister to me sometimes.”
Zarian stumbled the fuck out of there as Ariana screamed in rage, her temple shaking so hard the entire city felt it. But from what he could see, there were no obvious damages.
Despite the immensity of the fight, and the threat of turning Corma into a Dying World, Ariana’s temple had contained all the destructive powers and breaks in reality.
Zarian’s capital remained perfectly fine, except for how there were barely any citizens in the central square now. Only advancing skeletons and personnel from the Dragon Slayer Corps waited with a militant perimeter set around The Dragoness Temple.
“Father, are you okay?” Foodie chirped, braced to run into the temple.
Zarian stood woozily on his feet. He looked to the side at the neutral expression on Evelyn’s face, The Dragoness Head Acolyte remaining by the entrance.
“Get yourself some sturdy knee pads and a helmet. You’re going to lay it on so hard you’ll kowtow a tunnel to hell just to make her happy,” Zarian said.
The witch said nothing, and Zarian stumbled into the awaiting hands of his people, barely paying attention to what was being said and who was saying it. The truth was out. And little by little, Zarian felt something unravel as his Floridian Mindset and Willpower failed him.
Someone was healing him, and he was feeling better, but his increased health only made the wrongness of the truth uglier and torturous. The pain of losing a fight was a decent distraction from the truth. He almost wanted to punch himself to keep the pain.
Pain was better than the truth.
“Oh fuck me,” Zarian said, walking like a zombie, as his personal world came crashing down upon him. “Oh fuck me, oh fuck me, oh fuck me, FUCK!”
