Overpowered Wizard

Twenty-five hours after Operation Skill Steal, Zarian found himself frustrated while sitting at his study desk. It was dark out in the early morning hours. If he listened closely, he could hear the occasional siege blast getting repelled off the Lovewar Dome.

There were a few hours to burn before Operation Domination began. But that wasn’t Zarian’s focus.

Aura Ignition was still beyond his capabilities to grasp.

In fact, having observed and felt the nature of Dax’s Aura Ignition the night before might’ve made things worse once he ruminated on everything he learned. Zarian now had a working theory of what led to Aura Ignition, which was upsetting, since it required some advanced science to conceptualize the theory.

Zarian was a geek, but not exactly the nerdiest of nerds. In fact, he was a B or C student back in his formative school years. He was pretty sure the guys who’d aced everything in academics would run laps around him if they had his opportunities.

Well, a lot of those guys had stable homes and at least one caring parent.

Zarian had grown up in foster care and ran a gauntlet through different flavors of bad foster situations. It had been hard for him to focus in school while he worried, stressed, or raged about things happening on the home front. That and he’d run off a few times and only show up at school.

He’d honestly needed Ariana’s help to look at other students’ test sheets and feed him answers back in his school days. Passing those tests kept him from failing.

This is actually the first time outside of the Marines where I’m somewhere stable and I can focus on studying for something.