Overpowered Wizard B3 Ch78: Good Old Oorah

Wallen rolled underneath the sweep of a curved blade that would’ve hacked him in half. He barely had enough time to get his back off the snow and settle his feet down before fleeing from the large wolf kobold that picked him out of everyone else.

The Bug Alchemist scurried away, bounded high over a male troll who was slamming fists and horns against three kobolds at once. While midair, Wallen twisted about as acrobatically as he could, and threw half a dozen potent stink bombs behind him that made the wolf kobolds sneeze and cry.

Then he landed with a roll, got back to his feet, and found Hoodah the Hulk Meister on his side, bleeding like a stuck pig.

“Open your mouth, Hoodah!” Wallen shouted, throwing a health potion at the Hulk Meister’s face.

Without seeing if Hoodah had taken the potion or not, Wallen was running off again. The Bug Alchemist scurried for dear life as stronger people than him waged battle all around him.

The cold earth kept shuddering and booming with every immense impact between the strongest combatants. Destructive flames and an array of magical spells flew over his head in colorful streams, some dazzling, some horrifying, as many creatures clashed and died around him.

The gnolls died the most, running face first into the kobolds, not shying away from death and danger and harm. Without their greatest elder, Ezda the Voracious Blood Beast, the gnolls tossed aside all strategy and attacked with savagery despite dooming themselves.

Right behind them, hordes of helpful skeletons and the dregs of the remaining advanced skeletons sacrificed their bones against the advancing wolf kobolds horde.

The worst part was that Wallen’s side of the conflict outnumbered the wolf kobolds. The Ride-or-Die Army had slaughtered their way through many of them days before.

But the universe-wide boon of The freaking Dragoness had pushed the kobolds over the edge just enough. The evil draconic creatures continued to hold their own and hammer at the Ride-or-Die Army until their numerical advantage disappeared.

Then there were the wolf dragons themselves, who came running out of their dungeon and harassing the army’s flanks constantly with hit-and-run bites at speeds so fast, Wallen could hardly believe he hadn’t gotten snatched up by a wolf dragon yet

Instead, Wallen’s luck continued to run to his favor as he dodged attacks by a hairbreadth and kept finding the most important people in the retreating battle who needed his alchemy. Every now and then, he threw a bomb down for his own defense – stink bombs were surprisingly effective in disrupting the savage concentration of a wolf kobold.

“Slip! Mouth open!” Wallen shouted, finding the eight-legged horse limping away from a brutal fight that he’d barely scraped out of as the victor.

The spirit steed of Lord Gilbert had done nothing but fight and fight, while others had either fallen for the final time or had to flee after taking too many injuries.

Wallen ran up with two potions in hand already popped open. Slip dashed at him suddenly and checked the Bug Alchemist with his equine chest, knocking Wallen away, the precious potions spilling on the muddy, bloody snow, losing their magic.

Wallen rolled to get back to his feet. He felt a warm and muggy gust billowing over him that smelled rotten. He looked up and saw glistening teeth oozing with saliva and blood that were gnashing down right in front of him, where Slip should be standing.

An immense wolf dragon rolled its baleful glare down at Wallen before wrenching back and taking Slip’s mangled body with its foul teeth. Then the horrible monster snapped and crunched down on the Sleipnir, its maw filled with unfurling black and green smoke that came from the boon of The Dragoness.

There was no defiant cry coming from Slip. The creature was out of the fight, and Wallen felt a horrible sense of dread from the sight.

With his Willpower weakened, the Bug Alchemist failed to remove himself from the scene as the wolf dragon’s paw came down to crush him. Something green and blue streaked across the air, and the wolf dragon suddenly jerked its huge body back while its separated paw landed with a weighty thunk near Wallen.

Warm dragon blood rained down, waking Wallen up as he noticed the blue green streak exploding off the ground to his side before hitting the wolf dragon again in the chest, knocking it off its remaining feet and sending the huge creature flying across the air with a whopping impact on top of its own kobolds.

Then Princess Foodie Darkrun appeared on the bloody snow in front of Wallen with aura burning around her like a bonfire, increasing the pressure in the air, making Wallen feel like he was getting crushed somewhat.

Snapping out of his shock, Wallen blurted out, “Potions. What do you need?”

“Everything that you can spare,” she said.

Wallen didn’t question that. He popped open the vials to potions for vitality, aura, physical buffs, mental buffs, and even aura buffs. Some of these shouldn’t get mixed in the same body at once, but Wallen poured them down Foodie’s waiting mouth nonetheless.

He had to reach up a little now that she was a few inches taller than him these days. She was as tall as her adopted father from when Wallen had last seen him, and her figure was striking, demanding of attention, so much so that Wallen found himself surrounded by eager kobolds desperate to take the princess’s life.

“Thanks, Wallen.” She gave him a rare smile that had his heart hammering. “Don’t die again, okay? It’s fun talking about recipes with you. Now kneel for me.”

“Yes, princess.”

Wallen dropped to a knee, and a split second later, the carnage was roaring and exploding all around him.

Powerful shockwaves battered him from the front, the back, the sides. Hot splashes of blood rained all over him in a deluge. Roars of carnage, some coming directly from the savage and powerful goblin princess, rattled Wallen down into his soul.

He couldn’t stay on his knee from the powerful forces being emitted by Princess Foodie and her would-be killers, which sent him down on his side, forced to curl up as clouds of earth, flying limbs, embers of magic, and gory torsos landed on top of him.

By the time there was some stillness, Wallen was digging himself out of a pile of scorched death, only to find Foodie’s hand hooking under his shoulder and pulling him out.

Why do I keep getting treated gently by princesses? Wallen wondered, finding some black humor in the arrangement as he relied on Foodie to get his feet under him.

His entire body was shaking as he looked at the devastation the princess wrought upon numerous wolf kobolds. In fact, he couldn’t find any more kobolds standing. They were all … dead.

“I think you killed off the last of the kobolds,” Wallen said, feeling a flutter of relief. “Wolf kobolds are natural creatures. They can’t reproduce as fast compared to monsters. We can breathe easier, can’t we?”

Foodie picked a piece of kobold flesh off of Wallen’s cheek and ate it. Her half-lidded gaze, with yellow eyes and slitted irises, seemed to cut straight through him. It only took only one look from her to carve out the silly notion that things would get easier. After all, he had free evil +3.

“They were mere pawns to the dragons.” Wallen slowly turned away from the visage of the tall and powerful princess, as hard as that was, and faced the horrible truth waiting for him and the others down the road. “With all of their pawns spent, the dragons will come out in full force.”

There were thousands of them. Some were sleek and fast, like arrows in flight, while still the size of a tavern. Others were bulky and colossal, with thick pelts of metallic fur and jaws so large they could snap up five carts and the beasts pulling them.

There were wolf dragons covered in various elements – ice, fire, lightning – that all had a touch of black and green destruction magic. There were wolf dragons that stood like giant men and wolf dragons that had two mouths and wolf dragons that had giant grimoires trailing behind them.

Never had Wallen seen such a variety of one monster type come out in full force like this. Now that the kobolds had spent their lives to the last, it almost seemed like their deaths had triggered the true form of the mythical event’s greatest danger, a wolf dragon onslaught.

“Leave us, princess,” Wallen said, his shaky legs walking ahead.

He wasn’t the only one. He looked left and right and saw the remaining trolls, gnolls, and skeletons coming forth. He saw Lord Hoodah the Hulk Meister hobbling toward certain death while balanced on a club. Then Wallen saw members from the Ride-or-Die Guild stream into the defense at the rear of the carts. They all bore wounds still, and many of them were weary, but their faces were hard with a rebellious zeal.

In each of their hands, the Ride-or-Die Guilders had Wallen’s last stock of mass produced potions. They must’ve waited for this moment where they risked little from the overdose drawbacks so they could down the magical drinks and regain a semblance of their true power. They all knew that wouldn’t be enough, but they moved forth to get ahead of the princess.

Then Wallen looked further behind them and up into the air. He saw a dot floating in the sky. He knew who was up there … Ruvaria the Sorceress Queen.

He wondered if she would intervene in the event and save them if too many of their lives were at forfeit. Or would she let them die to the last? What would it take to end this lost battle?

“So, this is how I die, huh?” asked Clotilda the Axe Rager, her hands gripping tensely around her white and red weapon.

“I feel bad for Wallen here. He’ll never get his own wizard hat. You can’t be as awesome as us without a wizard hat,” said Osbert, the Power Brawler, as he cracked his cestus-wearing knuckles before adjusting the leather wizard hat on his head.

“Let’s make them all hurt for Roland,” growled Amabel, the Shadow Saboteur, her hands gripping two dirks dripping with oily shadows.

“For Ride-or-Die!” said Elanor, the Lightning Amazon, her tall and built body humming with an electric whine.

“For Roland!” shouted Lora, the Logistics Duchess, both hands dressed in runic gauntlets as the last half dozen roller golems followed behind her.

Wallen felt pride and courage fill in his chest despite how scary the situation was. He felt so tense with emotion that he couldn’t help but sprout a poor joke.

“For Reiki’s hot choco-coffee!” Wallen thrust his fist up, joining in despite expecting to be ridiculed.

Instead of being looked at as ridiculous, Wallen watched his fellow guild members cheer with him. They didn’t mock him or tossed in jokes. They stood side-by-side with him as they looked the armies of death and destruction head on, despite being on their last legs.

Wallen let himself laugh. He ignored the stinging at the corner of his eyes. He’d gotten some snow in there somehow. Instead of wiping at them, he glanced at the stoic princess again.

“You should leave,” Wallen said. “Your life is the most important. Take Prince Loner with you, too.”

She gave no response. She didn’t even say no or something that would further embolden them. Instead, their princess dropped her cleaver and took a seat on the frozen ground.

That took the brave air out of everyone’s chest as they all turned to look at her. A long and pregnant pause took over, with only the creeping and crunching steps of the wolf dragons crossing the last hundreds of feet filling the air.

Then the battered and splintered bones of the black skeleton, Prince Loner, took a seat next to the princess. Wallen’s first instinct was to call them mad, but he didn’t think himself wiser than the two most pivotal fighters of the Ride-or-Die Army.

So, Wallen took a seat next to the princess. It was from this angle he noticed something rare on Foodie’s face. Before he could reconsider what he was doing, he reached forth and moved aside a light purple braid from out of Foodie’s gaze.

Her eyes flicked in his direction, and the grumpiness shone through, making him freeze under her intense glare. But Wallen pushed through and placed a comforting hand on the beautiful goblin princess’s shoulder.

“What’s wrong?” Wallen asked.

“Father is here,” Foodie said, sighing. “We are not yet strong enough to continue this event alone. So this is not our battle anymore.”

Wallen froze. The others froze. It was like the air was frozen in all of their lungs. Then they all felt a collective shiver crawl along their spines.

They were all too distracted by the news to pay attention to the minor threat of thousands of wolf dragons barreling down upon them at such speeds and with such destructive force, they could kill the Ride-or-Die Army and rip apart their retreating caravan in minutes.

If it wasn’t for free evil +3, Wallen would’ve stayed on the ground, ignorant of the minor danger. With his sub alignment, he shifted to a knee at the last split second, his hand on Foodie’s shoulder, and looked through the crowd surrounding him to glimpse at the blurring forms of the charging wolf dragons.

For that moment, he feared the wolf dragons a little more than the news from Princess Foodie. Then he crushed that silly notion and tossed it aside.

There was nothing scarier than the Dark Lord, and to prove that point, a voice spoke from all the shadows. From all the pools of darkness. From the darkened skies where winter flurries twisted about. The voice even spoke from underneath their feet, from the darkness of caverns below.

“Two Percent Power Unsealed. Growing Darkness. Unlimited Dark Spikes.”

Wallen watched as pure black spikes erupted from under the snow. He saw spikes raining down from the darkened skies. He saw spikes shooting forth from the nearest patches of stone forests. Spikes appeared from the shadows they all cast, shooting straight at the nearing maws of the slavering wolf dragons.

Each spike was thicker than a human was wide, while longer than the height of trolls. Each spike was so sharp at the point that they pierced the thick pelts, scales, and muscles of the wolf dragons like a knife through weak fat.

Wallen and everyone else watched with eyes wide, bodies tense, butts clenched, spines ramrod straight as a thousand wolf dragons fell almost instantly to one barrage from the most powerful man to exist in the Infinita Star System.

“Hm, that’s a lot of dragons,” said a dark, nonchalant voice. He resounded from close to Wallen’s ear and from the landscape where the shadows darkened. “Imagine all of that dragon blood and dragon meat for the taking. Better yet, if we get the core from their dungeon, that’ll be nice, won’t it?”

The Dark Lord appeared from thin air like a wraith. He looked like one, in fact, with a face showing a skull instead of flesh and ribs showing through the gap of his unbuttoned coat. A golden tail with a black tuft at the end wagged slowly in winding patterns behind him. A crooked hat glowed with intense blue-red magic, sitting on top of his curly hair and muscular six-foot frame.

Then there was the aura about him, which Wallen could feel traces of spiraling around him and the others, spanning everywhere. How far did the aura of the Dark Lord go? Wallen had no idea, but the Bug Alchemist imagined it being vast now that the Dark Lord wasn’t holding back like the last time Wallen had seen him, which was scary to consider.

The Dark Lord was already scarily strong, and he must’ve grown stronger recently. So how much more could he reveal when he wasn’t holding back?

“Kiddos,” he addressed, ignoring the howling, dying, and injured wolf dragons. He hadn’t scored a hit on all of them, but he stopped their first charge and didn’t even bother to follow up right away. Instead, he focused on his guilders. “Where’s Roland?”

The question was scarier than getting attacked by wolf dragons.

Only Princess Foodie had the power to stand before her skull-faced father and look him in his uncovered eyes.

She frowned, her ears dipping low, a rare weakness poking through. Then, someone’s hand came forth and gripped her shoulder reassuringly, and that hand belonged to Wallen, surprisingly, who didn’t want to bear the disappointment of the Dark Lord whatsoever.

But he stood by Foodie’s side with his hand remaining on her shoulder anyway.

The direct attention of the Dark Lord was crushing. Wallen buckled a little, clearly not as strong as Princess Foodie. He remained at her side anyway as the princess gripped his hand gently in return before saying the truth.

“Roland died and was taken by the wolf dragons. Ezda and Arnold went to go get his body, but they haven’t returned. They might be dead, too,” Princess Foodie said bluntly. “We lost much of our army, Father, and I take the blame for not having us retreat earlier the moment we saw the notification about The Dragoness.”

The Dark Lord let a full intense second pass before turning away from the princess and the alchemist to face the remaining wolf dragon attack. “Whelp, let’s go find their bodies. Come along, kids. We’ll do this together, Barney style. The rest of you trolls and gnolls and whatnot can join if you want.”

“We come! Let’s find Elder Ezda! She’ll never die!” said a ratty gnoll covered in wounds.

“Ezda lives forever!” cried another gnoll.

“Until the battle is won, we trolls won’t stop fighting. We’re here to scrap,” grunted Lord Hoodah the Hulk Meister.

“We’re sorry you had to step in, milord,” Amabel said with a sniffle. “We’re still weak.”

The Dark Lord paused before turning his skull face toward Amabel. The Shadow Saboteur, who was the creepiest of the entire guild, shivered under his lid-less, void-like gaze.

“You are not weak,” said the Dark Lord. “You are becoming the strongest young army of the Lesser Worlds. You have no idea how far you’ve come and how much more there is to gain ahead of you.”

He reached over and patted Amabel on the head as he looked at all of them. He had more to say – but the wolf dragons tried to interrupt with a repeat charge that was much faster and fiercer than before.

Still, they weren’t fast enough and fierce enough to outdo the Dark Lord.

Without even looking at them, the Dark Lord cast his powerful magic and turned thousands of feet of snowy ground into a burning marsh pit with hellish flames and noxious fumes rising and bubbling up from the pit.

The wolf dragons slipped and fell in the sudden transmutation spell before something immense snapped up and crushed a great many of the wolf dragons in one bite. That was then followed by a great bellow that bent around the remnants of the Ride-or-Die Army without harming them.

Instead, all the remaining wolf dragons ended up staggered back, tossed off their paws, and left squirming like worms. Wallen and the others could do nothing but gawk at the raw power, immensity, and size of the Dark Lord’s spells, which Wallen had only heard of but never seen himself.

He recalled being told about the Dark Lord’s hell gator grimoire, but seeing it was another thing. And yet, the Dark Lord had more to show when something erupted out of the immense hell marsh and came crashing down as a titanic beast that was so large, Wallen could hardly believe something so big could ever exist.

“Don’t look at this as a failure,” the Dark Lord said, his voice resounding clearly despite all the roaring and rumbling noise from the hell gator. “You’ve gone further than anyone else would’ve been able to on this one continent. This is only the beginning of your journey. We have an entire universe and beyond waiting to see how strong you are all. Now come along, let’s go find some of our friends. They may yet be alive.”

“Um, milord, what if the big gator ate them?” Osbert asked, which had everyone hissing at him to shut up.

“I already checked. I think we have to go back to the Wolf Dragon Dungeon. Now, who wants to mix their powers with my Void Domain and get some hits on these half-dragon mutts? If so, then give me a good old oorah.”

“Oorah!” they all shouted, following the Dark Lord to certain victory.

“That’s the spirit!” The Dark Lord cheered, leading the way, which had Wallen feeling excited until the Dark Lord looked at him specifically with a horrifying glare. “Oh, and one more thing. Wallen, you princess-stealing, multiverse duplicate bastard, give me my POV back.”