BXBX NOVEL Chapter 57: Walk of Domination
Chapter 57: Walk of Domination
“No,” Naomi said.
“No to what?” Zarian asked.
“You were thinking about making yourself weaker to make this more of a challenge. I’m telling you no. This isn’t supposed to be a challenge. This is Operation Domination.”
Naomi looked like a deadly phenom. The dress was tight, sleek, and killer on her body. She only applied a light layer of makeup to make her face pop. She owned the angry look as she walked with a strut that flaunted the shape of her body.
Ready to step on any enemy, she moved with superiority next to Zarian’s right.
“I agree with Naomi. It’s safer this way if you’re in absolute control. If not, we might kill people when we don’t intend to. Please, papi, dominate them for the greater good.”
Bianca had blossomed from the past days of luxuriating at the mansion. It was almost surprising how much of a difference it made. She was both radiant because of her abilities and because of her personality and easy-going beauty.
The glamorous elven dress made her seem unreal as she sauntered next to Zarian’s left.“Yeah, you’re both right. I guess I’ve gotten too deep into having a thrill-seeking habit.”
Zarian was dressed up fancier than what he’d worn as a service uniform back in the Marines. He’d never gone to high school prom or any fancy event that required a nice suit and tie. He’d gone to his graduation in street clothes, ignoring the sneers and ridicules of his high school peers.
They’d called him Bargain Bin Zarian once upon a time.
Now he was wearing a fancy and expensive suit and tie. He’d made some adjustments cutting small slits in the back for Para to reweave herself into a proper cloak, but other than that, Zarian felt dapper.
It was a striking look on him, honestly.
Sleek, dark, and with some renaissance style frills on the front shirt and sleeves. Lastly, there was a small pin with three roses placed on the left side of his suit jacket’s chest.
It was the mark of a High Rose.
“Head Acolyte Lora and Hannah make for a dynamic duo in this symbolic political stuff.”
Zarian was speaking casually, acting bored, but in truth he was keeping busy enough. There was more to this than just walking down the central road to the Bramblevale Keep and making a scene.
His alpha section had another interesting addition compared to the usual: Spectral Spider Network.
Zarian’s Fractured Mind was lit with a far-reaching and extensive surveillance system tracking multiple sites. The spider network worked brilliantly and far easier as an alpha skill than it did as a beta skill.
He could view half a dozen visual feeds at once without getting confused. He could increase that to a dozen if he wanted. He didn’t have to since he could feel when his spectral spiders wanted his direct attention through the network.
That worked out way better for him. The spectral spiders were more responsive to his whims. Each one had bumped up from Level 14 to Level 23 because of his growth in Mysticism. Everything about them was sharper, faster, stronger, and stealthier.
“Sitrep?” Naomi asked. That was military lingo for requesting a situation report.
“The city’s defenders are slow to our change up,” Zarian explained. “We have four major units my spectral spiders have found so far:
“Unit one, the soldiers at the barricade around the Lovewar Mansion are just getting news of us now. They’re having trouble deciding on how to maintain the barricade and send forces our way.
“Unit two, the guard garrison is responding the fastest at the cost of abandoning their posts. They’ll try to cut us off in a few minutes.
“Unit three, their largest patrol of soldiers is chasing us from behind.
“Unit four, their strongest guards are forming up at the keep.
“I’m also tracking multiple other agents who might play as wildcard factors.”
Zarian performed a thorough sweep through the spider network. Yeah, his sitrep was on the money.
<Your skill, Spectral Spider Network, leveled up from 6 to 7!>
“What are those wildcards?” Bianca asked.
“Street gangs who want to make a name for themselves and random nobles with some fighting experience.”
Zarian looked ahead as the morning populace carried on with their day, mostly ignorant of what was happening. The news of Zarian’s domination was spreading, but it wasn’t spreading as fast as he’d hoped.
Well-dressed men and gaggles of good-looking women slowed or paused their usual activities to turn and stare. They gawked at the obvious foreigners among them.
Zarian and Naomi looked straight ahead, ignoring them. Bianca smiled and waved radiantly, adding a perky skip to her steps.
Sometimes Bianca let slip a pulse of goodness that placed people at ease while doing the opposite to Zarian. It didn’t help that he was exposing himself to sunlight.
It didn’t damage him.
But it did aggravate him a little.
The things I do to leave an impression like a proper wizard.
Zarian decided to let the people see him and his companions before the operation became especially busy. They were in a pleasant part of the town, too.
Statues depicting famous warriors and gods from past eras stood on the corners. Colorful murals of grand battles covered some of the walls.
There were loads of gardens. Some small. Some large. Each one had a fountain to accentuate their beauty and draw people to stroll about. The water spraying from the center pieces caught the morning light and glistened like droplets of jewels.
Since it was Early Autumn, the plant life was shedding their greenness and changing colors. At some point, the central road transitioned into a forested park with thick but squat round towers covered in red, orange, and yellow leaves.
Zarian smelled a lot of beer and ale in the air. Apparently, people would drink at any time in this world. They lacked coffee, but it was always happy time.
The townspeople moved about at ease except for when they noticed Zarian’s company and stopped to stare. A gaggle of children kicking around a ball came to a stop in front of Zarian.
Their jaws dropped as they gawked up at him, Naomi, and Bianca.
“Go along, cuties. It’s about to get dangerous soon.” Bianca turned to Zarian. “Can you please do the thing?”
“For the greater good, huh?” Zarian shook his head. “Fine.”
He let out a pulse of his evil alignment and spoke in a chilling voice, “Run away or my evil magic will get you, booga booga wooga.”
The children screamed. The nearest townsfolk screamed. Chaos erupted. With a sigh, Zarian added, “Be more orderly with your running, or I’ll booga booga wooga harder.”
They moved about in a panicked but more orderly fashion.
Bianca nodded in satisfaction, beaming a bright smile.
Naomi scoffed. “You good and evil types are so dramatic.”
Zarian smiled as a majority of the forested street cleared. He watched word spread a little faster up ahead and the street sections leading to the Bramblevale Keep cleared up gradually.
Good, because his first actual speed bump appeared as three hundred men rushing across the city with an all-out sprint. They were going to turn at the four-way section up ahead without slowing down much.
“Three, two, one…” Zarian counted down.
He smiled as spectral spiders lifted the thick and near-invisible arcane webbing they created in the way of the charging guards. The spiders quickly plastered it to the stone buildings on either side of the road leading leftward and reinforced their trap as fast as they could.
They finished right before forty men ran shin-first into the webbing and tripped over it in one epic crash and tumble of superhuman bodies.
The men behind them were too slow to react and tripped as well, tumbling over their fellows. The men after that didn’t know what was happening and were still too slow to react and tripped just like the ones before them.
Finally, the fourth wave of men came to a stumbling stop. In front of them, their companions struggled to untangle themselves from each other and get ready to fight.
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Zarian and his escorts walked by without looking at them. Before a man could point, shout, or utter a word, their shadows darkened.
A dozen blunted poles shot up and knocked a dozen men into the sky. Then two dozen dark poles formed from more darkened shadows and sent even more men flying skyward and crashing down in a heap of muscle, weaponry, and armor.
They didn’t just rain down to the ground, either. They fell upon their comrades, adding to the confusion and pandemonium. By the time Zarian sent a hundred men flying up and crashing down, an officer wised up.
“Move if you see your shadow darken unnaturally!” shouted the wise officer.
A second later, the officer’s own shadow darkened. He jumped out of the way, and for a miraculous moment, it seemed like his shadow would be free from the dark conjuration.
That didn’t come to be, however. A string of darkness remained attached to his shadow.
While that was discouraging, the move to dodge seemed like the right one. The dark spot on the ground weakened slightly while out of cover and under the full light of the suns.
“If you keep on the move, you’ll weaken his power of darkness!” The wise officer shouted, ecstatic.
The slightly weakened dark spot burst apart into a dozen small bolts flying in all directions. The same happened to all the shadows Zarian had darkened regardless of the guard force moving aside or staying put.
Each one blew up like a landmine. Small, blunt, oblong bolts flew everywhere, causing havoc, hammering the guards short of killing them. Most, if not all, of the victims could do nothing but endure or seek their own luck through the maelstrom of darkened shadow eruptions.
A hundred men fell battered and bruised. Another hundred endured the chaos after having been thrust into the air and hurtled to the ground. The last one hundred watched as Zarian’s company continued across the four-way and on their way to the Bramblevale Keep.
“Down this alley. We’ll ambush them!” someone said. “Follow me now or you’ll get hanged for insubordination!”
The voice wasn’t recognizable to any of the nearest soldiers or officers. But the person spoke with a sharp authority that scared them.
They rushed into the alleyway, leaving behind the shine of the sun. It was shadowy here. In fact, it was darker than usual.
Then one man asked, “Who was it that ordered us down here?”
“Who else but the spider who makes the web for the flies?” said an invisible voice.
The shadows darkened. Then blunted poles lunged at them from all sides. The poles attacked from the floor and the walls. There was no escape.
The last one hundred men were pummeled into submission. Zarian watched them collapse in a somewhat broken heap through his spider network.
<Your skill, Spectral Spider Network, leveled up from 7 to 8!>
“That’s three hundred men,” Zarian said through his own mouth. “I just beat three hundred men with my hands in my pockets.”
“I should’ve known I would work under such a turd,” Naomi said, smiling sharply.
“What? Why would you call him that?” Bianca asked.
“It’s a joke among us Marines,” Zarian explained. “In the Marines, it’s frowned upon to have your hands in your pockets. It doesn’t matter if it’s cold. You’ll get in trouble.”
“Oh.” Bianca frowned. “I don’t usually wear clothes with pockets.”
“It’s disturbing that you’re technically stronger than me,” Naomi grouched.
“That’s okay! We’re friends anyway!” Bianca cheered.
Zarian turned around and walked backward. The patrol of a hundred men running at them from the rear was only a few streets down. They would be easy to put down. But he didn’t want to use the same tricks.
He racked his Fractured Mind for an appropriate way to deal with them nonlethally.
Then he came up with something so ridiculous he wasn’t sure if it was possible. He went for it anyway.
Zarian took a big and slow inward breath.
The nearest shadows darkened. They raced across the ground and streaked up Zarian’s legs. They slipped up his body and drained into his mouth.
The longer he inhaled, the faster and more numerous the dark streaks appeared as he took in more and more. At the apex of his inward breath, the streaking darkness covered the street around them like rushing oil, defying the solar light of the Corma Star and Star Core.
Then Zarian breathed out a big beam of darkness.
It was the least destructive of attacks. It was all size and motion, lacking the hardiness and deadliness of his usual Straight Darkness tactics.
It was still a big beam of darkness that was wider than a man was tall. When it struck the patrol of a hundred men, the dark beam thrashed them off their feet and hosed them backwards like they were caught in a powerful current.
By turning his head slightly to the left and the right, Zarian’s dark breath beam washed away all one hundred men and sent them scattered backwards, slamming across the stone floor, into the walls, or through fields and hedges of various gardens. One man flew through a fountain and obliterated the centerpiece before crashing down in a painful heap.
Shutting his mouth, Zarian cut off the beam and let the remaining darkness dissipate. He nodded in satisfaction and smoothly turned back around to face toward their destination.
His hands remained in his pockets.
Naomi looked back at the wreckage her party leader left. A smile cracked across her normally cold and harsh expression. She erupted into laughter, hand over her eyes, the other on his shoulder.
For this once, she let it go. She let out her devilish side, like any Marine who enjoyed the pure insanity of chaos. She sounded like a witch while she laughed so openly, scaring anyone who was looking out from a nearby shelter.
“How’s your aura holding up, Zarian?” Bianca asked after Naomi calmed down.
“Eh, it’s doing alright. Hannah stuffed three Recharge enchantments into the suit. My Mysticism is at 252 for the base amount. Thanks to my Overpower trait, it’s hitting 315 when I want to recover faster.”
The best part was how fast he could switch from boosting his stats to boosting a single skill. Sometimes it was better to boost that single skill – like Straight Darkness +1 – for the best results.
Sometimes, it was better to boost all of his stats with Overpower for a good spread of extra juice and to increase his aura amount. If he really wanted to push it, he could do micro switches in the middle of a maneuver for the best of both worlds.
“It helps that I have Aura Channeler and Aura Manipulation as well. I’m not maintaining a spell like Raise Advancing Skeletons right now. I can put all my focus on my best skill. I’m jacked up like crazy with how much I could efficiently put out to overwhelm people.”
Zarian yawned.
“It’s boring, though. I’m glad we’re doing this in the morning or it’ll be too pitiful.”
Bianca reached over and gave him a hug. It was sickly sweet and filled with terrible goodness.
Zarian appreciated it anyway. He knew Bianca meant well. She was encouraging him to stay the course with Operation Domination.
“Sitrep?” Naomi asked.
“They peeled away half of their soldiers at the barricade. They’re going to bolster their defenses at the keep with two thousand men. Leading that are a hundred of their strongest people. That actually might give me a challenge.”
Zarian glanced to his left, past Bianca. “See that empty storefront over there. It’s a local city gang. Hm. That’s interesting. These types are evil. So there really are evil humans in the kingdom.”
They had classes called Urban Murderer, Urban Torturer, and even Urban Defiler. There was one who differed from the rest. He was an Infernal Demonologist and looked the part with his ragged robe and jewelry of human bones.
It was a good thing Zarian could use Identify through his spiders. Better yet, none of the evil men could sense the ability scanning them.
It was a small group. Only twenty. But the way they conducted themselves made them look like experts at their nefarious crafts. They were a cut above the common soldiers and uncommon bandits. Their classes might be rare, especially the Infernal Demonologist.
They were hiding in wait inside the empty storefront across a small park filled with flowers and pruned bushes. Their ambush might’ve spelled trouble if Zarian’s Spectral Spider Network hadn’t found them first.
Bianca’s eyes flashed with zealous light after hearing Zarian’s sitrep. She whipped her head around as her entire being glimmered and glowed.
The brighter she became, the more glamorous and colorful her dress looked. She was still walking barefoot. They still hadn’t found the right shoes for her elven dress. Fortunately for Bianca, the Lovewar Acolytes were very good at providing enchanted pedicures, keeping every aspect of her nearly as flawless as she was deadly.
“Can I … go?” Bianca was breathing deeply now.
“Should I go with her?” Naomi asked.
Zarian reached behind him and pulled out the Lighthouse Falchion from his cloak’s pocket dimension. He tossed it to Bianca who grabbed it and drew the blade in one smooth motion.
Next, he grabbed out of storage a pair of dark leather gauntlets and shinguards Hannah had enchanted. Naomi removed her heeled shoes and traded them for the gauntlets and shinguards, slipping them on and tightening the straps in record time.
Zarian nodded. “Yes, the both of you go. Bianca, remember to conserve your power, support, and pick your shots for max effect. Naomi, give them hell. Try not to get hurt. Operation Domination looks less like a domination if any of us get damaged.”
“Understood,” Naomi said.
Bianca nodded rapidly. “Dale! Let’s do this thing!”
Zarian kept walking forward, but at a slower pace, as the ladies broke away and headed straight for the den of evil humans. He could see the excitement in both of them.
Bianca wanted to wipe away evil. Naomi wanted to push herself to outdo Bianca, the second most powerful of Zarian’s party.
To be on the safe side, he covered the area with spectral spiders. He double-checked the alpha skills of the murderous gang.
Two spectral spiders, one for each woman, crawled up to their shoulders and told them what to watch out for. This would be an interesting fight to watch so Zarian could compare himself to others of the evil alignment.
At the same time, a portion of his Fractured Mind wondered how he would break through a blockade with over two thousand men being led by the town’s strongest one hundred guards.
Another part of his Fractured Mind flicked through his Spectral Spider Network and caught sight of a dozen nobles ganging up on a tavern’s rooftop up ahead. They were setting up an ambush.
They were all aligned with good, and they seemed more experienced even if they weren’t serving in the kingdom’s military. A few of them might’ve been prior army men.
Zarian chuckled as he kept track of multiple events at the same time. He opened up channels to speak to the distinguished gents.
“Aren’t you supposed to be sitting lazily and reading the newspaper while your wives cook and clean?” Zarian asked through a spectral spider.
The creature remained invisible and intangible to them.
The gang of silver foxes jolted in surprise. They prepared an interesting array of skills.
One man charged up a green and leafy ball of magic in his hands. Another man formed a long, leafy thorn that served as a sword. Several others unsheathed their own swords and invigorated themselves with physical skills.
The one who seemed to be the leader wore a medieval top hat and a monocle. He controlled a nearby tree branch to sit back on and was the only one Zarian wasn’t able to use Identify on.
The monocle man revealed a smoking pipe with leaves at the end and lit it with a square runic lighter. He took in some drafts before exhaling a long cloud of smoke.
“What is it you want, villain?” asked the monocle man.
“To stop hostilities and for my party of adventurers to do what we need and leave,” Zarian answered.
“You wish to stop hostilities by acting as an invading force?” The monocle man chuckled. “I say, boy, you have a strange way of doing things. I suppose you’ll live to your calling.”
“Your kingdom sacrifices young men to your savage neighbors and turns a blind eye to those suffering on the streets. Some of which are veterans of your fights.”
“That is their purpose in the grand scheme of a good, functioning society. We’ve stood strong for fifteen hundred years just like this while in the Dark Era of all things. That’s a testament of what’s proper and long lasting.”
“Wow, you guys are warped. Okay, how about this? You have men in your society with classes like Urban Torturer and Urban Defiler. You even have a demon guy. Seems like nasty stuff. My girls are going to wipe them out. Can we break bread over that while I explain how it’s in Bramblevale’s best interest to let me do what I want?”
The other men shook in surprise and disgust at the mentioning of the city’s most evil criminals. The monocle man continued to smoke his pipe peacefully while sitting on the tree branch.
“Those are some heinous men, yes. No matter how bright good shines, evil will fester in the smallest of shadows. However, it matters not if your party of illegal adventurers consumes the criminals of our society. We must stop you here for the sake of our Eternal Garden.”
“Okay, you chose the ‘find out’ option,” Zarian said. “When I’m done, I’m taking your monocle and your top hat. I can’t be a good villain without those.”