Myst in Worm (Gamer) Part 9 (Patreon)

‘Fuck this shit, I’m out,’ Myst sent to Amy and Victoria’s group chat as he glared at the black haired, vaguely Italian man, sporting a mustache that wouldn’t have been out of place in a 60’s porno carrying around a comically large bazooka and wearing blue overalls, a green shirt and a recognizable green hat with a green L on it in a circle of white.

‘What’s the matter?’ Amy asked, curious what he’d run into.

‘I ran into Luigi, he has a bazooka,’ Myst complained as he started carefully edging away from the lunatic that looked like a live action version of a video game character.

‘Who?’ Victoria asked, not sure why Myst was worried about a bazooka when he could just walk up and stab the guy in the back.

‘Luigi, Mario’s brother of the Mario Brothers games,’ Myst explained as he dashed around a corner, wanting to put some hard cover between him and the knockoff on the off chance that he started shooting.

‘Sorry, I’ve never heard of him,’ Victoria joked as she landed in the square near where the minimap said Myst was heading towards.

‘Yeah, she’s lying, she always made me play Luigi,’ Amy added as her sister set her down.

‘He can’t be that bad, he’s a plumber and you have a stranger rating, just sneak up and steal it,’ Victoria suggested.

‘Yeah, no, I’ve seen way too many people with guns, maybe the mall will be safer,’ Myst complained as he saw yet another idiot walking down the street waving a gun around like it was a pom pom at a game. ‘Baggy pants, way too much bling and no common sense, it’s like they want to get shot.’

‘Who are you talking about?’ Amy asked.

‘Just a random gangster,’ Myst replied as he stole the man’s gun out of his hand when he walked past. 

“Yo! I'm goahng ta fuck ya gahrl!” the man shouted as he swung around wildly a couple of times.

‘Screw it, he’s not real,’ Myst grumbled as he spun around, stepped forward and put the gun close to the back of the man’s knee and pulled the trigger, glad that he still had his earplugs in as the gun was annoyingly loud. ‘I really need a silencer.’

‘Fuck!’ the man shouted and started screaming as he fell to the ground.

Myst stepped on the man’s wrist then put the gun close to the man’s elbow. “Elbow.” He pulled the trigger, blowing the man’s elbow apart. “Other knee,” he said calmly as he lined up his next shot on the man as he flopped around and pulled the trigger when he stopped moving for a second.

“Congratulations, you’ve unlocked the Called Shot skill!”

Myst kicked the man in the temple, knocking him unconscious then used his left foot to roll the unconscious man over, a touch disturbed that he didn’t feel anything despite the fact that he’d just shot someone multiple times in a simulation that looked completely real. 

“Did you get him?” Victoria asked.

‘Yeah, I shot him.’ Myst stared at the man, wondering if it was his Gamer ability screwing with him or if it was just that it was a simulation. ‘Worst part is, I’m not sure if I’d feel anything even if it was real.’

‘Now you know how I feel, some of the idiots are just asking to get ganked,’ Vicky assured him.

“Vicky,” Amy complained.

‘Just remember, you’re a hero, save putting people in the morgue for those you can live with, like the Slaughterhouse Nine.’ He shot the man in the head, causing him to turn to motes and drop a cheap looking gold necklace. ‘At least they’re dropping loot.’

‘Speaking of loot, how do we get in there?’ Victoria asked excitedly.

‘You don’t, we’re heading to the mall.’ Myst dropped the gun and necklace into his inventory then broke the ID barrier and waved at Amy and Victoria. “Over here.”

“Shouldn’t we just fight our way there?” Victoria asked as they walked closer.

“Considering the number of guns I had to deal with, not a chance,” Myst grumbled as he pulled his earplugs out and stuffed them in his back pocket.

“Wouldn’t the mall have the same problem?” Amy asked.

“No idea,” Myst admitted. “That’s why I’m going to check.”

“You could always hide out in one of the shops while I clear everything,” Victoria suggested.

“Considering you’re not actually bulletproof, I don’t think so,” Myst replied, glad he’d said something before they were in the air considering the look on her face.

“What do you mean I’m not bulletproof?” Victoria demanded, wondering how he’d figured it out.

“One of my powers lets me identify powers, I know how your power works, it’s a shield and it has a recharge window if it tanks enough damage, which a high powered firearm can dish out.”

Amy grinned. “Pay up,” she told her sister with a grin.

Victoria groaned and dug some cash out of her costume. “I don’t know how you figured out he would guess that.”

“Guess? I wasn’t guessing, he already told us about his Thinker ability, which makes figuring out little things like how your power works elementary,” Amy said with a shrug. 

Victoria facepalmed. “Fine, I missed that.”

Myst pulled the group into an empty ID barrier. “So, we might as well start walking while we figure out if we want to hunt mall rats or something more interesting.”

Amy pulled the paintball gun out of the party inventory and shot the streetlight. “I’ve always wanted to do that.”

Victoria grinned as she flew over and kicked a parked subcompact car, sending it tumbling down the street. “Kick the can!”

“That wasn’t a can,” Myst noted, amused by her antics.

“Can, car, it’s just one letter off,” Victoria waved it away.

“Four, it’s four letters off,” Amy corrected her.

“Details,” Victoria waved it off unconcerned by Amy’s obviously questionable math and got a paintball in the butt. Being the bigger person she bent over, smacked her ass and stuck out her tongue before having to dive out of the way of a barrage of paintballs. 

“I need to get another one of those,” Myst muttered as he walked over to one of the cars on the side of the road and tried the handle.

“Are you going to hotwire the car?” Amy asked eagerly, as she followed him over to the car, taking potshots at her sister.

“It shouldn’t be that hard, gang members do it all the time,” Myst replied as he pulled out his lockpicks and got to work. 

“If you know about Vicky’s power, you know about mine, right?” Amy asked hesitantly, not sure asking was a good idea but fairly sure he already knew that she wasn’t just a healer.

“Sure, you’re a biokinetic,” Myst replied as he continued working on picking the annoyingly difficult lock.

“It doesn’t bother you, does it?” Amy asked, not sure he really understood the full extent of her powers as he wasn’t running.

“Which part? The part where you’re under using your power or the fact that you’re one of the most dangerous capes alive?” Myst asked, knowing that she needed to talk to someone about her powers before she snapped.

Amy stared at Myst for a couple of seconds then snorted. “Blunt much?”

“Sorry, sometimes it’s better to rip the bandaid off. You’ve been so focused on the ethics and worst case scenarios that you’ve missed the possibilities.”

“What do you mean?” Amy asked as she took another potshot at her sister who had just flown back around a building.

“How much do you think people would pay for bioluminescent roses or for cacti that produce medical grade rubbing alcohol or something people can drink that won’t get them more than buzzed?”

Amy shook her head. “People would freak out if they realized I could do more than heal people.”

“Considering the stuff you’ve done, the doctors would have to be terminally stupid if they didn’t at least suspect that you were a biokinetic rather than just a healer.”

“That would explain a couple of things,” Amy admitted, thinking about some of the looks she’d gotten when she first started healing and whenever one of the hospitals got a new doctor.

“Besides, I’m not saying that you should tell the world about your powers,” Myst replied as he worked on the stubborn lock. “I’m just saying that doing the same thing everyday gets boring.”

“Carol would flip if I used my powers for anything other than healing,” Amy grumbled.

“If you give me a couple of days, I can probably find a couple of spells for manipulating plants and I know a girl that I can talk into helping set up an extra identity, there’s no reason anyone would assume that you’re Flower Power if they’ve seen you with her.”

“Flower Power?” Amy asked with a raised eyebrow.

“Flower Girl?” Myst asked with amusement as he put the lockpicks in his inventory and stood up. “Rose Bloom? Crescent Rose is a gun… how about Rainbow Girl?”

Amy snorted. “You’re worse than my sister at naming things or you’re messing with me.”

“I plead the 5th,” Myst replied with amusement as he gave up on trying to hotwire the car and started running towards the mall. “We might as well work on endurance training.”

“This isn’t remotely fair, you have longer legs,” Amy complained as she broke into a sprint so that she could keep up with his pace.

‘Just use your healing spell when you can’t run anymore, it should restore your stamina and help you train,’ Myst replied over the party function, saving his breath for running.

“Yes sir, drill sergeant sir,” Amy replied sarcastically and shot Myst in the behind, glad that he wasn’t freaking out about the fact that she was a biokinetic.

‘Okay, I probably deserved that,’ Myst admitted as he put on a burst of speed, forcing Amy to step up the pace to keep up. ‘I need a water breathing spell so we can go swimming with weights for endurance training.’

‘Can you find a spell for breathing underwater?’ Victoria asked, knowing it would help with Leviathan.

‘Probably,’ Myst replied as he opened his auction account and ran a search.

‘Are you still awake?’ Taylor asked over her group chat. 

‘Yeah, what’s up?’ Myst asked as he looked through the list of available spells that dealt with water breathing.

‘Nothing, I’m just bored and stuck here,’ Taylor replied as she worked on sketching out costume ideas.

‘You could always try getting some sleep,’ Myst suggested.

‘I’m still a bit too awake for that,’ Taylor complained.

‘In that case, give me a second, I might have an idea,’ Myst replied as he added a fifty dollar pamphlet to his cart that taught a spell that created a film over a person’s nostrils that turned anything they inhaled into clean air which would help underwater or with smoke or chemicals. He quickly ran a search for a meditation skill that would restore the user’s mana.

‘Sure, it’s not like I’m going anywhere.’

“Junk,” he muttered after reading the description of the first book, he wasn’t going to pay a thousand dollars for a first edition book that gave him a skill that was barely supernatural considering he already had a skill for manipulating ki. He glanced at the next book in the list. ‘Spiritual Yoga, yeah, no thanks, that’s not remotely worth the price tag considering it restores less mana than sleeping and doesn’t help with fatigue. ‘Healing trance, if it wasn’t over a thousand I’d grab it, but soul recovery is better.’ 

The next couple of books weren’t any better, he’d almost given up when he saw a pamphlet that had a picture of a blond haired Goku on the front of it in his orange outfit. ‘Super Saiyan Power Up Meditation.’ Myst jumped the curb he’d almost tripped over then glanced at the disclaimer, not the least bit surprised that it was quick to claim that it wouldn’t actually turn the reader into a Saiyan, super or otherwise, that they weren’t responsible for any injuries caused by the levitation cutting out and that the amount of mana they regenerated was barely more than it cost for the lightshow and levitation.

“Screw it, it’s only 30 dollars,” Myst muttered as he added it to his cart then flipped over to the checkout page and bought both of them. He opened the package that appeared in his inventory and looked over the two books, a touch surprised that the Super Saiyan book offered an actual skill. “I need to stop for a second.”

Amy slowed to a stop then cast soul recovery on herself to recover her stamina. “What’s up?”

“I picked up a weird meditation skill, I need to make a copy real quick.” Myst closed the book then grabbed one of the notebooks out of his inventory and quickly copied the meditation book with his scribe skill.

“What does it do?” Amy asked as she glanced between the two books sitting on the hood of the car.

Myst opened the copy then carefully closed it when a popup asked if he wanted to learn the skill. “It should give us a skill for regenerating mana and levitating. I’ll get you a copy when we hit the mall, I figure I can work on scribing things while Victoria smashes rats or zombies.”

“Not to sound greedy but is there any way we can turn that into flight?” Amy asked hopefully.

“No idea, I’ll give it a try when we get to the mall.” Myst dropped the copy into the party inventory for Taylor then stuck the original back in his inventory. ‘I found something that should help you practice magic, it’s a meditation skill that causes you to levitate. If nothing else, it’s something else to play with,’ he sent the message to Taylor then pulled out his Breathe Anywhere book and worked on scribing a copy. 

Taylor opened the party inventory, grabbed the book and opened it. She glanced over the skill description then hit accept. She moved some of her bugs so that she had a better eye on the hallway then activated her new skill, causing her skin to glow with a yellow light and her body to rise off the hospital bed two inches before her concentration broke and she fell back onto the bed with a soft thump. 

Myst finished scribing a copy of the book. ‘Did it work?’

‘If you lose concentration you drop like a rock. It’s going to take a bit of practice,’ Taylor replied, thinking this was a very strange power, but eager to master it.

‘You’ll figure it out,’ Myst offered as he dropped the copy of the Breathe Anything spell into the party inventory. ‘There’s also a spell that covers your nose with a film that should let you breathe underwater or deal with smoke that you can practice with.’

Vicky flew over and landed. “What’s the hold up?”

‘Thanks,’ Taylor replied as she grabbed the extra book, knowing it would help search and rescue.

“I was just copying some spells for another cape,” Myst replied as he put the Breathe Anywhere book in his inventory.

“When do we get our copies?” Vicky asked with a pout.

“I’ll make some copies when we get to the mall…” Myst trailed off as Vicky scooped him up with one hand and Amy with the other and flew towards the mall. “I guess that’s one way to do it.”

“You were taking too long,” Vicky complained as she picked up speed.

‘In that case, don’t break anything,’ Myst warned over the party chat as he wanted to make sure the girls heard him. ‘I’m going to be breaking and creating ID barriers until we get to the mall. I want to see if I can increase it enough that I can get a safer dungeon.’ He broke the ID barrier then promptly recreated it as a rat dungeon.

Amy twitched as the world seemed to break a couple of seconds later as they left the dungeon. ‘That’s a little disconcerting.’

‘Just a bit,’ Myst agreed as he broke the barrier and recreated it as a dungeon with people.

Vicky twitched and dropped a foot when someone shot her in the back, almost causing her to drop her passengers before Myst broke the world again, leaving back in the real world. “Yeah, that dungeon sucks.”

‘Sorry, I wasn’t expecting them to look up,’ Myst grumbled and pulled the group into a rat dungeon. 

Amy raised her gun and shot a pigeon with a paintball as it flew towards them, causing it to crash into the side of a building. ‘You should probably skip the dungeon with people until we can get better armor.’

‘Sounds good,’ Myst agreed as he broke the ID barrier. He pulled them into an empty barrier then broke it after several seconds and pulled them into another rat dungeon figuring he’d alternate every few seconds until they hit the mall or he got a new dungeon.

0o0o0

‘What is it with flickering lights and zombies?’ Amy grumbled as she looked down at the horde of zombies milling around the badly lit parking lot filled with abandoned cars that gave the zombies plenty of places to hide.

‘If you could see everything clearly, you wouldn’t be scared when the zombies jump out and try to eat everyone,’ Victoria replied as she floated towards the roof.

‘Except the zombies shouldn’t last more than a couple of weeks or months before they’ve fallen apart unless you’re using magic to keep them together,’ Myst complained.

‘Keep your logic out of my zombie movies,’ Victoria teased as she floated toward the ledge of the roof where she could see several zombies milling around. “This should be easy…” she trailed off as one of the zombies charged the group and promptly ran right off the roof without a second of hesitation or understanding. “Huh, I was expecting them to be slightly smarter.”

“Why? They’re zombies,” Myst replied as he worked on destroying the broken zombie on the ground with his ice beam.

“Your zombies are defective,” Victoria complained when the other three zombies on the roof also ran off the roof in an attempt to reach them.

“Would you rather have zombies that can sprint, climb on walls, and dodge bullets?” Myst asked sarcastically as he watched the four zombies charge the brick wall and start clawing at it in a rather pathetic attempt to scale it.

“It would be more of a challenge,” Victoria complained as her hopes of a decent fight were dashed then burned as she watched the zombies try and fail to do anything productive.

“This is why you’re not in charge,” Amy snarked.

Victoria stuck out her tongue at her sister then looked at Myst. “How sure are you that they’re not infectious?”

“I wouldn’t eat them or anything else without scrubbing my hands after getting near them, but they were animated by magic not a zombie plague, so you should be fine,” Myst replied as he worked on destroying the zombie he’d been trying to freeze, hoping to level his Cold skill up enough that the spell was actually worth using in combat.

“In that case, Vicky smash!” Victoria shouted enthusiastically as she flew down, grabbed one of the compact cars from the lot and tossed it at the zombies that had immediately swapped directions and charged her.

Amy shivered as the car came to a stop within inches of the wall they were standing above. “Yeah, the sooner you figure out a flight ability, the better…” she trailed off as her sister casually ripped a section of pipe off the cart rack then went to town on the zombies, splattering everything she hit that she didn’t send flying. She grinned when she saw one of the zombies vanish and leave behind a pink crystal and a bill of some sort. “So, how are we dividing the loot?” 

Myst turned to check the access door. “I figured we’d pool the cash and split the rest after I buy an enchanting book. Beyond that, I don’t really care though I should be able to sell any healing potions for a decent amount on the auction.”

“Sounds good, we should probably pick up an alchemy book if you can find one,” Amy mused as she worked on tossing snowballs at the zombies charging towards her sister, working on her Cold and Ranged skill. “How much are the enchanting books?”

“I’ll take a look,” Myst replied as he opened his auction house account and typed in enchanting. “Gregori’s Basic Enchanting Theory, 20,000 dollars,” he muttered.

“For a book?” Amy asked in disbelief.

“Yeah and it’s not even a large book,” Myst grumbled as he looked over the list of books, finding nothing that was in his price range that he thought would actually unlock the enchanting skill. 

“I’d say that was unreasonable but you’re basically buying a power which is a license to print money,” Amy replied as she watched Victoria use a car to pancake a group of zombies, causing them to drop cash and pink stones. “I know the PRT would pay extremely well for magical items that anyone can use.”

“True,” Myst agreed as he ran a search for magic boosting gear. “At this rate, I might be better just robbing the Merchants,” he grumbled as he looked over the prices the people wanted for even low end magic boosting gear. “Five hundred dollars for a crappy friendship bracelet that only boosts magic by 1 point? Yeah, that’s highway robbery.”

“Or enchanting is more complicated and expensive than you think,” Amy offered, knowing how expensive tinkertech was because her sister had asked about Dean’s armor.

“Point,” Myst admitted reluctantly. ‘Let’s grab the loot then make our way to the bookstore, I want to do some scribe farming and see if Amy and I can snag a flight skill.’

‘On my way,’ Victoria said cheerfully as she flew back over to the roof.