Myst in Worm (Gamer) part 3 (Patreon)

“Found it!” Victoria shouted as she picked up a car and tossed it at the bookstore.

Amy winced as the compact car went through the glass windows and door. “Yeah, you’ve created a monster.”

“As long as she doesn’t do that in the real world, it’s just stress relief,” Myst offered as he started walking across the street.

Amy snapped two shots off at Victoria’s behind then pushed ‘energy’ into the paintball gun to recharge it. “At least I’m getting some progress toward my next point of magic and my marksmanship skill.”

“It shouldn’t take all that long before we can turn you into a proper witch.”

“You’re going to make me wear a witch’s hat, aren’t you?” Amy asked with a touch of amusement.

Myst smirked. “I’ll certainly try to talk you into it.”

“Hey, why are all off the books blank?” Victoria asked a touch surprised that the books were blank.

“My power doesn’t have enough detail,” Myst explained as he walked over. “On the upside, they’re blank so we can try something I’ve been wondering about.” He held his hand out for the book.

“What’s that?” Victoria asked as she handed him the blank paperback.

Myst turned to look at Amy. “Can I borrow a pen?”

Amy opened the front zipper on her bookbag and pulled out a ballpoint pen and handed it to him. “Sure.”

“Let’s see, Scribe Cold Resistance.” Myst shivered slightly as his hands started moving without his direct control, quickly copying words into the book and dropping his available mana by 20. He glanced at the progress bar on the convenient popup that appeared, rather happy to note that it was quickly counting down.

Victoria blinked when the book changed into a large children’s book with a picture of a child with fluffy winter clothes building a large snowman. “Was it supposed to do that?”

“Not so much which means I need to work on leveling my scribe skill,” Myst explained as he opened the book to check if it gave him a skill. “Yeah, not even remotely helpful.” He set the book on the table then walked over and picked up another blank paperback. “Let’s see if it works this time. Scribe Cold Resistance.”

Amy walked over and looked over the book. “Looks a bit boring and generic.”

“Yeah, I’m fairly sure I’ll need to work on my art skill…” Myst trailed off. “We have a lot of blank books and pens, you might as well work on your drawing skills while I’m working on scribing books.”

Victoria smirked as she held out her hand. “Pen.”

Amy grabbed two pens out of her bag and handed one of them to her sister. “Any idea what we should try to draw?”

Myst scowled as he looked at the diary his power had created. “Thirty ways to keep warm and get away with it.” He flipped the diary open and glanced through the girl’s notes, “Stealing the covers, sticking hands in shirts, snuggling… yeah, completely useless.”

Victoria snickered. “I don’t know, there might be some useful bits in it.”

Myst snorted as he opened his crafting window and tossed the diary into it then hit the salvage button.

Warning: Destroying illusionary objects will result in lost material. Continue Y/N?

Myst selected yes, not really caring what happened to the book. He smirked as a locked diary option appeared on his crafting list. “Okay, I guess that wasn’t completely useless. I figured out how to make locked diaries.”

Victoria frowned slightly as she finished the stick figure drawing of her sister when the timer hit zero. “Great, I’ve been reduced to drawing stick figures.”

Amy smirked as she looked at the halfway decent drawing she’d drawn of her sister. “That just means you need more practice at it.” She flipped to the next page in the blank book then started drawing another sketch of her sister. 

Critical Success: Luck increased by 1!

Myst blinked as the paperback changed into a journal. “Fumble’s Ultimate Guide to Frost Magic!”

Amy glanced at the old fashioned looking leather bound journal. “Anything good?”

“No clue,” Myst replied as he warily opened the book. 

Learn Fumble’s Frost Beam? Y/N?

Myst carefully closed the book. “It teaches Fumble’s Frost Beam which might be useful.”

“I’m not sure I trust anything written by someone named Fumble,” Amy replied sarcastically as she started a new drawing of her sister.

“Fair point,” Myst replied as he grabbed another blank book off the shelf and tried to copy the Frost Beam book.

Victoria snickered as she posed dramatically. “How dare you spout such vicious slander about my good friend Fumbles Lord of Frost!”

Myst laughed then smirked as he managed to create a decent copy of Fumble’s book. “Damn, I think that actually worked.”

“Might as well test it,” Amy agreed as she continued drawing, already seeing improvements as her skill picked up a couple of points. “If I pick up a blaster rating from this I may just shit myself.”

Vicky laughed so hard she snorted. “Great visual there, Ames.”

Myst opened the book and hit accept then pulled up his skill page. He glanced down the list until he saw the entry for a new general frost skill set rather than a single spell. “Higher skill grants a bonus to frost damage and a reduction in mana cost.” He brought up his magic page and looked at his new spell. “On the upside we don’t need to grind each new spell which is good.”

“What’s the downside?” Victoria asked as she absently floated off the ground a couple inches.

“The beam doesn’t grant the user any inherent protection from cold which means you can give yourself frostbite or freeze your hand off if you aren’t careful.”

Amy snorted. “That sounds less than useless.”

“Unless you have a forcefield,” Victoria said smugly.

“Or we get our frost resistance to a reasonable level,” Myst replied as he pointed his hand at the back wall of the shop and unleashed a quarter sized beam of ice shards and fog. He winced as his health and mana bars started dropping. “Feels like sticking my hand in ice water.” He pushed more mana into his beam until the ‘beam’ was the size of his palm. He nearly bit his tongue as his health and mana bars plummeted, quickly reaching the halfway point. He frantically dropped the spell then started grinding his recovery spell until his health was back to full, gaining a few points in his healing skill.

‘Are you okay?’ Taylor asked over the chat function.

Myst twitched, having almost forgotten that Taylor was in the other party and would be able to see his health bar. ‘I’m fine, I was just testing a new ability and forgot to warn you about it.’ 

‘Okay, sorry for bothering you. I was just concerned when I noticed your health dropping,’ Taylor sent back, hoping she hadn’t offended him.

‘Don’t worry about it, I should have sent you a message. Now that you’ve figured out the party chat function, how are you doing with your control?’ he asked as he grabbed another blank book and started scribing a copy of the frost beam book for Victoria. “At least my frost resistance increased.”

“That’s something,” Amy agreed as she went back to sketching the wrecked car behind her sister.

‘I’m working on it,’ Taylor replied, not sure what else to work on as her skill growth had already drastically slowed down just from moving groups of insects around.

‘Have you tried talking through your swarm?’ Myst asked mentally as he handed Victoria a copy of the frost beam book. “Here.”

“Thanks!” Victoria exclaimed as she opened the book and learned the new skill. “Yes! Bwahaha! Ice beam to the balls you nazi punks!”

“Yeah, this is going to go well,” Amy muttered sourly, but was unable to stop herself from smiling slightly.

‘I’ll give it a try,’ Taylor replied as she started gathering enough bugs in the alleys to make an attempt at talking.

“Legend 2.0!” Victoria squealed as she pointed her hand at the wall then focused and unleashed a blast of cold. She pouted as the blast cut out after a second. “Or not.”

“More like zero point two,” Amy replied with a snicker as she finished drawing the wreck behind her sister.

“Yeah, it takes mana.” Myst glanced at Amy’s bag. “I don’t suppose you have a blank notebook I can have, so I can make a permanent copy?”

“Sure, I have a new history notebook I can rip a couple pages out of,” Amy replied as she searched through her bag for her notebook.

“Is there any way I can increase my mana pool?” Victoria asked hopefully as Amy ripped out two pages then handed a practically new notebook to Myst.

“Yeah, practice which should boost your basic magic stat, giving you a greater magic pool and a faster regen rate,” Myst said as he copied down the illusionary book, finding his scribe skill was noticeably higher when working from a physical copy rather than a memory, “of course a good meditation skill should help by increasing the speed it regenerates allowing you to use it more and increase it faster.”

“Got a book on that?” Vicky asked hopefully.

“No… but I have some ideas, I may be able to scribe to try and get one,” Myst said with a grin, sticking the book in storage, and handing the illusionary copy to Amy before he snatched a stack of blank books off a nearby shelf and took a seat at a booth. 

“How can you know it but not have the skill?” Vicky said as she recalled him saying he could scribe his skills to books and wondering how he could scribe a skill he didn’t have, unless it was something like the cold beam he got from getting lucky.

“I have theoretical knowledge of a lot of random stuff,” Myst said, “but I haven’t tried any of them since getting my power, so no skill. I scribe a possible skill from that knowledge and my power will tell me what effects it will have, if any.”

“That is so cheating,” Vicky said with a blinding grin.

“Yes, yes it is,” Myst said smugly.

“Vicky,” Amy said, “have you noticed that you haven’t accidentally used your aura lately?”

“I… No, I haven’t,” Vicky said before doing a little dance in mid air. “This is awesome! I can enjoy a movie without having to force myself not to blast the audience! I can get mad at someone without causing any heart attacks! I can finally masturbate without having to make sure no one is within a three block radius!”

Amy and Myst turned and stared at her. 

“Um, Vicky,” Amy said, “overshare.”

“I…” Vicky blushed. “Ahem, I need to go do something in the next building over, I’ll be right back.” She quickly flew off.

“Do you think she’s going off to hide in embarrassment or….” Myst’s voice trailed off.

“I’m not sure. We’ll probably know when she comes back by how sweaty her hair is,” Amy replied.

“Sweaty her hair is?”

“Yeah, she doesn’t get sweaty throwing cars because her power does all the work,” Amy explained, before realizing that now she was the one that was distracted and oversharing.

“And on that note, I think I’ll just get to scribing,” Myst decided.

“Yeah,” Amy agreed, opening up the book she’d been handed and exploring her new skill. Instead of sending a beam of cold shooting from her hand she cautiously formed a ball in her hand which rapidly condensed into a snowball. She juggled it from hand to hand with a grin before nailing the wreck with it. “At least I’ll never have to worry about my drinks getting warm.” She formed a second snowball in half the time and it followed the first with pinpoint accuracy. 

“That’s certainly an upside,” Myst said with amusement. He focused on what he knew about The Flame and The Void technique from the Wheel of Time series and started scribing hoping that he’d get something useful.

Myst looked at the book. “Inner City Boy Scout's Guide, Arson Made Easy.” He snickered, amused at his power’s ‘failure’. 

“Not what you were looking for?” Amy asked as she slowly formed a dagger of ice in her hand, the blade slowly growing as her hand reddened from the cold.

“Not remotely, but it does provide bonuses in basic fire making and safety; apparently you have to know how to do things right to successfully hide the fact that you are intentionally doing them wrong,” Myst said, as the book dissolved into sparks and he gained a clearer understanding of some of the lessons he’d received as a kid and some of the reasons behind the way arson scenes were set up in the movies. “Ice knives?”

“It’s cheaper to condense water vapor into ice or snow and shaping it takes more time, but the skill seems to be increasing faster the more complicated I make what I am creating, plus it’s never a bad thing for a young woman to have a knife handy in this town, I just wish I had some gloves,” Amy explained as her dagger finished forming and she threw it at the car, shattering the side window. “Shit! I didn’t know it would work that well.”

“Ice is pretty solid,” Myst replied, “and illusions a little less so. I think things are easier to break in here. You could probably find gloves in the sporting goods store next door, they wouldn’t be real, but they’d be real enough to keep you from freezing your fingers off in here. I’ll work on the cold resistance book again.”

“Sounds like a plan,” Amy said as she headed for the door.

Myst worked on trying to scribe a cold resistance book while Amy went looking for gloves and Victoria blew off steam one way or another… He forced his mind back on his work and cursed his hormones, which he hadn’t had to deal with at this level of strength since he was quite a bit younger, as the book he was scribing came out as ‘Learning to Love Yourself or Better Mental Health Through Masturbation’. “Okay, lets try this again,” he said, setting the book to the side. He wasn’t sure what skills it would give, but he was sure now was not the time to try them out. 

Amy returned several minutes later wearing a pair of white fingerless gloves, a baseball catcher’s chest protector, a classic hockey mask, and carrying a golf bag filled with various sports gear.

“You know that stuff is going to vanish, right?” Myst asked amused.

“Yes, but I never get to put on costumes like a normal hero and break stuff... so I figure I can have a little fun,” Amy admitted. “Carol would freak if I did this in real life,” she explained, before taking out a golf club and attacking a set of innocent bookshelves with abandon. “Four!”

“A healthy way to relieve agressions,” Myst muttered thinking briefly of what Vicky was up to and forcing himself back on task once more, managing to scribe his cold resistance book without screwing it up, much to his relief. “And another point to scribe.”

Amy collapsed next to him a minute later. “That was exactly as much fun as I always suspected it would be,” she said pulling off the mask, her hair plastered to her forehead with sweat.

“Yeah, I think I’ll wait until I’m near a china store to try it out, possibly with a shotgun,” Myst decided, copying the cold resistance manual once more.

“Learning to Love Yourself?” Amy asked curiously.

“Don’t ask,” he replied, blushing slightly.

Amy picked it up and a second later her eyes widened as she read what skills she could learn from it. “I need… erm want a copy,” she admitted.

“Sure,” Myst agreed, picking the book up, a pop up appearing describing the additional skills he’d gain from reading it causing his eyes to widen. “I can always use a little more dex, and breath control,” he said scribing a copy for Amy before using the original himself.

“Yeah, dex is good,” Amy agreed as her book vanished.

Vicky flew in, her hair plastered to her forehead with sweat and a smile on her face. As she spotted Amy and saw the way her hair was she grinned. “What did I miss? Um, why are you dressed like Casey Jones?”

“Stress relief,” Amy said, causing Vicky’s jaw to drop.

“Wow, I didn’t know you ‘rolled’ like that,” she said in disbelief.

Amy groaned. “I meant I was destroying stuff with sporting equipment, not that I was doing a vaginal monolouge.”  

“Ohh good one,” Vicky said, “I would have gone with ‘auditioning the finger puppets’ myself.”

Myst burst out laughing. “If you two ever get tired of being heros you could get a job as stand up comedians. Man, you two are more fun than anyone else I’ve run into so far.”

“That is what we’re known for,” Amy deadpanned, making Vicky burst out laughing.

“Cold resistance books,” Myst said, passing them each a book. “It’ll help with the cold, hence the resistance.”

“Cool, no pun intended this time,” Vicky said using the book. 

“It should also help while you’re flying,” Myst pointed out.

“Or being carried,” Amy said, pleased. She turned to her sister. “Want to see a new trick I worked out?”

“Sur-” *splat* Vicky was interrupted by a snowball midword. “You are despicable,” she said with a grin, “now show me how to do that so I can retaliate.”

One three way snowball fight later…

Vicky shook snow out of her top. “I am so glad we don’t have snow based villains around here. I have no idea why my power didn’t protect me from that.”

“It was moving too slowly,” the absolute winner who had dominated the other two said smugly. “A handful of snow shoved in the cleavage is not an attack it will block.”

“I curse my morals for not trying myself,” Myst said with a sigh, dancing around to get snow out of his underwear, from where Amy had stuffed it when he wasn’t looking.

“You need less morals,” Vicky said solemnly, “but don’t worry, as a champion of truth, justice, and the Canadian way, I will help!”

“I’m not even going to touch that… Canadian way?” Myst asked.

“If you are fighting with snow you have to be Canadian to gain any advantage,” she assured him.

“I would make a Mounty joke, but all the ones I can think of are dirty, despite the snow balls I seem to have at the moment,” Myst fired back.

Amy’s phone buzzed. “Time,” she announced, “we need to pop out and let our phones check for messages.”

“We should duck into the alley,” Myst suggested.

“What if someone is already in the alley?” Amy asked.

Victoria smirked as she picked up the pair and flew toward the alley, sitting on an invisible chair with the two sitting in her lap, smushed together.  

Myst waited until they were in the alley then checked his mask and broke the illusion barrier. He blinked slightly as Amy’s extra gear vanished leaving him pressed up against her. “Hi,” he said awkwardly.

“Nice to meet you,” Amy replied, “it’s not often I find myself being fondled by two people at once in mid air.”

‘Something I could get used to,’ Myst thought as he adjusted where he was holding onto the pair. “Oops, sorry about that, there was some armor over them a second ago.”

“I know, it’s not a big deal,” Amy assured him.

After a few seconds of the three just sitting there listening to the sounds of the city, Vicky asked, “So, is that long enough?”

“Should be,” Amy agreed, “the phones would have beeped if we’d missed any messages, back into Wonderland we go.”

“I need some actual notebooks and pens and things first, then we can have some fun killing mobs.” Myst wanted to be able to save copies of useful books as it was a lot easier to copy a book than scribe one from memory. 

“Groups of people or video game mobs?” Vicky asked, seemingly content just to float holding the two and making no move to land.

“The second,” Myst assured her, “though I suppose they could be mobs of video game people, I haven’t tried it out yet. I just raised enough skill to try out the first tier. I’m guessing, goblins or maybe zombies.”

“Down girl,” Amy told Vicky with a raised eyebrow when she noticed her expression. “Store first, then fun.”

“Okay,” Vicky said, lowering them to the alley floor. “Let’s do a little light… Do they have coffee here?”

“Yes,” Amy replied having stopped at the bookstore a few times over the last couple months.

“Great, I’ll have a hot chocolate and a maple bar if they have them,” he said as he pulled a five out of his inventory.

“Not a fan of coffee?” Victoria asked as she set them on the ground and took the five.

“It’s an acquired taste, I never acquired it,” Myst admitted as he headed for the door to the bookstore.

“Yeah, Amy doesn’t function in the morning without her coffee,” Victoria replied as she followed Myst.

“I like the taste,” Amy lied, knowing it had more to do with her late nights.

Myst did his best to ignore the people looking at him strangely as they walked into the store. ‘They’re probably not used to people wearing masks while shopping, at least I didn’t go with a ski mask.’

Amy barely managed to avoid scowling at people as she grabbed two baskets then followed Myst over to the section of the store with cheap notebooks while Victoria headed for the cafe part of the shop. It’d been nice being able to forget her fame for a bit. “How many are you going to grab?”

Myst glanced at the price tag over the stacks of spiral bound notebooks, twenty five cents was probably the best price he was going to get for the notebooks which meant he might as well buy a decent stash while he was here. “At least eighty of them, that should hold me over for a while,” he replied in a voice just over a whisper as he started filling up one of the baskets.

“Might as well be prepared,” Amy agreed as she grabbed a rather cheap used chemistry book off the shelf and opened it. She carefully closed the book when she saw the popup as she didn’t want to accidentally use it and shoplift when it was dirt cheap. She stuck the book in her basket then worked on browsing the shelves, looking for cheap skill books.