Myst in Worm (Gamer) Part 11 (Patreon)

“Critical success: Create Artificial Spirit Book created. Luck increased by 1!” the system’s ethereal voice announced.

"Huh, weird," Myst muttered as he grabbed another lab book and started scribing a copy of his new spell.

"What did you get?" Amy pulled her attention away from the bathroom door and looked at the small stack of books on the end table next to the expensive leather couch where Myst was sitting. 

"No idea, let me check," Myst replied as he finished copying the book. He opened the copy of the book and hit accept after reading the information, causing the book to vanish. "It teaches a spell to give a construct intelligence which means I'm going to have to find a book on animating golems."

Amy shook her head. "You might want to avoid telling the PRT about that skill or just not use it, they get really twitchy about Masters that can make permanent minions."

"I can't say I blame them," Myst replied as he put the other book in his inventory then glanced at the bathroom door. "How long does she normally take in the shower?" he asked, raising his voice a touch so that Victoria would hear him.

"If she doesn't have to wash her hair, a few minutes, but we have unlimited water and we just fought a bunch of zombies… so somewhere between ten minutes to ten days? I'm surprised you haven't grabbed a shower yourself." Amy grinned as the shower shut off. "Apparently she heard us."

"You're not exactly being quiet," Victoria called out as she grabbed a fluffy and expensive hotel towel and started drying off.

"I'll grab a shower before I crash," Myst replied, not seeing a reason to worry about it until after they'd finished the second zombie dungeon. "Besides, all of the zombie bits and gore vanished when we stepped out of the ID barrier to grab the burgers."

"I don't care, I had bits in my hair," Victoria complained as she grabbed the fluffy robe that probably cost more than her outfit and slipped it on. "I could get used to this," she said as she walked out of the bathroom after tying her robe closed.

"It's not the nicest place I've ever stayed, but it's probably the most expensive or it would be if we weren't in an ID barrier," Myst said as he turned to look at Victoria. "Feeling better?"

"Much," Victoria replied as she walked over and sat down on the couch so that she could look through the collection of books on the coffee table.

Myst jumped slightly as something beeped as he was reaching for the stack of books. "Huh, that might," he grinned when he heard two beeps in rapid succession, "be the potions." He opened his auction house menu and looked at his balance. "Nice, 30,038 in my auction account," he said cheerfully as he quickly ran a search for enchanting books. "Now I just need to find a decent enchanting book and we'll be able to break the world."

"Are we sure he's a hero?" Amy asked, trying not to laugh.

"No, but I'm reasonably sure he's not a villain and we get to kill zombies, I'll take it," Victoria replied with amusement as she pulled her burger out of her inventory and started unwrapping it.

"Gregori’s Basic Enchanting Theory, Demonic Enchanting 101 and a journal on making cursed blades looks decently reasonable," Myst mused as he bought the three books as the rest of the stuff on the list was out of his price range. "This better be worth it," he muttered as he pulled the three books out of his inventory.

"If it isn't we can just have Vicky beat up a bunch more zombies until you can afford something that is," Amy offered. "Besides, if it doesn't give you a skill, you can always try scribing it until you get something useful, with your insanely ridiculous powers," she snarked.

"Point," Myst agreed as he carefully opened the leather journal on top. He wasn't the least bit surprised when a popup informed him that he needed basic enchanting before he'd get anything out of the book. He picked up the thick old fashioned encyclopedia sized book and opened it then closed it when it asked if he wanted to learn enchanting.

Victoria smiled when Myst pulled a notebook out of his inventory and started making a copy. "Aww, I was hoping for some maniacal laughter."

Amy shook her head. "You're not supposed to laugh maniacally until you're sure your plans can't be ‘foiled."

"Pretty much," Myst agreed as he finished copying the book.

'Trumps are such bullshit,' Victoria mused as she glanced between the identical looking books and smiled as the copy vanished. "Anything useful?"

Myst’s smile was almost painfully wide as he looked over his enchanting window. "I'll say, it comes with salvage and reverse engineering buttons, which should let me turn junk into useful components and patterns which is good because it didn't actually come with any patterns."

"How much does it cost?" Amy asked.

"No idea," Myst replied as he pulled out another lab book and started scribing the journal about cursed swords. "Give me a second and I'll tell you."

Victoria tossed her burger wrapper in her inventory. "I wouldn't mind a bit more vitality or defense for when my shield goes down."

Amy frowned when she noticed the title of the journal Myst was scribing. 'I guess that's one way to level your skill, we'll just have to recycle everything… or trick Kaiser into stealing one.'

"It's on the list," Myst replied as he finished scribing the book and opened it. "Nice, it's a collection of patterns." He hit accept then looked at his list. "Berserking, huh…" he trailed off as he looked at the total price. "Six hundred points for a blade that increases aggression and strength by 50 while you're holding it, that might be useful for clearing dungeons. Huh, sweet, the Blade of the Weeping Frost looks like a fantastic way to increase our cold resistance."

"Let me guess, it has a cold aura?" Amy asked, not sure why Myst was enthusiastic about a cursed weapon.

"No, it's just cold enough to freeze your flesh and removes your ability to feel cold or damage from cold and deals 10 points of cold damage to everything in a five foot radius when you hit something with the blade which means we can train our cold resistance without any pain." 

"I'd have trouble with my shield," Victoria grumbled.

Amy glanced at her health bar. "Fighting zombies in melee with something that decreases my health sounds like a really good way to die."

"Lucky, it doesn't actually say you have to hit monsters, we can probably just hit a post a couple of times then heal," Myst replied smugly as he looked at the next enchant.

Amy sighed as she realized that it would help with training. "What do you need to create it?"

"600 mana and a sword… and fuck some of these are nasty," he complained.

"What did you find?" Victoria asked.

"For the low cost of 9,999 souls and 99,999 mana I can make a soulbane weapon," Myst said sarcastically.

"10,000 souls?" Victoria asked in disbelief.

"9,999 but yeah, close enough," Myst replied as he looked at the next cursed sword. 'Yeah, I don't care how much extra damage it does, it's not worth losing my sight.'

"You're not planning on making that, right?" Amy asked.

"Of course not. Even ignoring the massive ethical concerns, I'm fairly sure there aren't that many gang members in the city and I'm not creating an army of golems to sacrifice either which means yeah, it's basically useless." Myst frowned slightly as he realized he could probably use the soul gems from the zombies. Of course, the fact that it cost an insane amount of mana that even Ji-han would have trouble paying, made the pattern completely useless.

"What does it do?" Victoria asked, rather curious about the cursed blade.

Myst shrugged. "It constantly drains your current health and mana in order to slowly increase your maximum mana, it doesn't actually say how much it drains or how much it increases your mana pool so yeah, I can't see bothering with the blade."

"Anything else useful?" Amy asked dryly. "Because that sounds problematic at best."

"The Vagrant's Blade is probably the best, it starts off as a rusted piece of crap and slowly improves the more monsters you kill with it."

"Wouldn’t it break?" Victoria asked.

"Nah, it's unbreakable, it just does negligible damage to start with and the maximum stats depend on the material you make it out of."

"Unbreakable, that's worth some effort," Victoria said cheerfully, happy at the idea of having a weapon that she didn't have to hold back with.

"I also have a strength enchant that I can stick on gear, it gives a +1 strength per 100 mana after paying the initial 500."

"I'm not sure an extra point of strength is going to help, that's what... an extra five pounds we can carry around?" Amy asked thoughtfully.

"Per slot," Myst replied. "Which means you could get an extra fifty pounds of carrying capacity or an extra hundred if I can grind my magic stat up a couple of points."

"That’d make shopping with Vicky less tiring," Amy said snarked.

"It's a start," Myst replied as he took a notebook out of his inventory and started scribing a copy of the Demonic Enchanting 101 book.

"Should you really be using a book on demonic enchanting?" Victoria asked.

"Probably not, but I might be able to figure out something useful and it was cheap," Myst replied, fairly sure his Gamer's Mind and Iron Will would keep him from getting corrupted, at least from just copying it.

"Maybe you should take that as a warning," Amy suggested.

"If I took everything as a warning, I'd never get anywhere," Myst replied. "Besides, the Iron Will ability covers a multitude of sins."

He made a copy and set it aside pulling out another and scribing it once more.

Thirteen copies later...

“Critical success: Bound Weapon Book created. Luck increased by 1!” the system’s ethereal voice announced.

Myst blinked as he looked at the book he'd just finished scribing. "That's interesting." He pulled out another notebook and got to work making a copy. 

"Bound Weapon?" Victoria asked.

"I'm hoping it lets me conjure weapons," Myst replied, not seeing a point in explaining more until he actually used the book and could see how it worked.

"That sounds more useful than messing around with demons," Victoria grudgingly conceded.

'I've played Elder Scrolls, there's a suspiciously similarly named spell in that game series, in which bound weapons are daedra,' Amy sent to Myst in a private message.

"Pretty much," Myst replied with a grin at Amy once he finished making a copy. He opened the copy of the book and looked over the popup then hit accept after reading through it twice to make sure there wasn't a hidden cost. "Yeah, you're binding a demon into the form of a sword for a minute per five of magic."

"Actual demons?" Victoria asked warily.

"Maybe?" Myst replied with a shrug, wishing the book had given him more information about the history of the spell.

"And you don't think that's a problem?" Amy asked dryly. "What happens at the end of the spell, do they rip your heart out?"

"For all I know, they're actually just bits of mana and not actual demons," Myst replied as he pulled out another lab book and worked on copying the Bound Weapon book. "According to the spell the ‘demon’ just returns home when the spell ends."

Victoria shook her head. "In other words, you have a shiny new spell and you want to use it despite the possible danger?"

"Pretty much," Myst admitted.

"Yeah, no," Amy complained.

"What do you mean no?" Myst asked, trying not to laugh at the look of amusement on Victoria's face.

"Demonic weapons are famed for whispering into their wielder's heads if not taking them over completely. I mean, you have a skill for dealing with this type of crap, it's called Iron Will. Is it maxed out yet?" Amy asked pointedly, fairly sure that it wasn't.

"No, but my other mental defense skill is," Myst replied as he finished copying the book.

"Yeah, I don't care. Demons are bad and two layers of protection are better than one," Amy argued. "Besides, we have Vicky, it shouldn't take us all that long to finish maxing out our skills with her help, and then you can start testing your new, and dangerous, skills."

"I can’t say you’re wrong without lying…” Myst agreed with a sigh. “In that case, let's head back to the mall and kill some zombies while Victoria cranks up her aura, we should have enough time to finish the run before you should head back and get ready for school."

"I've already read the books," Victoria grumbled. “High school is going to be boring, even more so than usual.”

"I don't see them caring that you've already read all of the books," Myst replied with amusement as he dropped the rest of the books in his inventory. 

"Aren't you going to at least test the strength enchant on something?" Victoria asked.

"Sure," Myst grabbed one of the shirts inventory that he'd picked up in the dungeon and dropped it in his enchanting window then added strength. "Huh, that only comes to 540 for some reason, weird." He added another point. "Huh, that gives me 2 points of strength." He hit the enchant button and grinned when he saw a ten second timer that was quickly counting down to zero as his hands went through the motions of enchanting the shirt.

Amy raised an eyebrow once Myst finished moving his hands around. "Is that it?"

"Yeah," Myst replied as he focused on the shirt. "Observe? Observe!" he ordered, trying to get the universe to cooperate.

"New skill created, Observe: Identifies the properties of magical items and the stats for people or creatures."

"Observe: Amy," Myst said as he looked at her.

"Anything?" Amy asked, curious what his new ability would show.

"It says that you're a cat and that your vitality is 16," Myst joked as he got to his feet. 'I'm going to have to level the hell out of Observe if it's just giving me her highest stat.' He used his new skill on the t-shirt. 'At least it's listing the strength.'

"That's half right," Amy said after looking at her character sheet.

"So, what's your vitality?" Victoria asked Amy 'innocently’.

Amy glared at her sister, who burst out laughing.

"Not high enough," Myst muttered as he opened his abyss auction menu and ran a search for Magic boosting gear then started snickering when he saw a pair of cat ears that boosted the Magic stat by 1 and mana regeneration by 1 a minute for 500 dollars. He hit the buyout option as none of the rest of the items were anywhere near that cheap and weren't good enough to tempt him into spending the tens of thousands of dollars they wanted for them.

"It wasn't that funny," Amy grumbled.

Myst dropped the cat ears from his inventory into his enchanting box and hit the reverse engineer button and waited for the 10 second timer to hit zero. He grinned when he realized his reverse engineering ability didn't eat items. "Nice, that gives me magic and mana regeneration enchants."

"What does?" Victoria asked.

Myst pulled out a pair of cat ears and tossed them to Amy. "Here, this should help with your magic and mana regeneration."

Amy stared at the cat ears a couple of seconds then sighed and put them on. "No pictures."

"What makes you think we're agreeing to that?" Victoria asked.

"Because I'm the White Mage and I said so?" Amy offered.

Victoria laughed. "That worked better when I didn't have a healing spell."

"Yeah, but can you use your healing spell in front of people?" Amy asked smugly. “At least not without having to go through a week's worth of testing by the PRT to prove it's safe.”

"Fine, no pictures," Victoria lied, planning on taking at least one, because her sister looked adorably crouchy.

Myst glanced at his mana pool then focused on his life tap ability and used it, promptly screaming in pain as it felt like he got stabbed multiple times. "Fuck!"

Amy quickly grabbed Myst to make sure he was okay. "What the hell was that?!"

"Fuck that hurt," Myst complained as he looked at his sheet. "I wasn't expecting it to hurt that much."

"What did you do?" Victoria demanded, concerned.

"I converted life to mana… and it sucked," Myst complained as he cast the spell again, wincing. "Fuck, it hurts just as much the second time." He cast his soul recovery spell to heal the damage.

"If you're going to keep hurting yourself, you might want a magical masochism collar or something to make it feel better," Amy snarked.

Victoria shook her head. "I'm fairly sure they don't make those."

"Check the auction house, considering the things I've seen at the hospital, I'm fairly sure someone has come up with something," Amy suggested, knowing that people were weird.

"Nope, I like my sanity," Myst replied as he headed for the balcony.

"What sanity?" Amy asked with amusement.

"The remains of my sanity?" Myst asked as he floated into the air.

"That's more believable," Amy said as she followed him out to the balcony.

Victoria swapped her robe for one of her leather outfits then followed them out. "You need to find a cleaning spell."

"On the list," Myst replied as he floated up into the air and headed toward the mall.

Victoria grabbed Amy and Myst's hands and flew towards the mall, not content to wait for their less than stellar flight speed.

0o0o0

Myst wasn't sure how to feel as he walked up to Tomas Calvert's house, his car was in the driveway, he could hear the sound of the morning news on the television as he walked up the concrete path to the door. He'd finished the zombie dungeon with the girls and they'd headed back home to grab showers and breakfast, leaving him bored and on his own. Thus why he'd picked up the phonebook in the coffee shop when he'd stopped for a donut and looked up Calvert's address on the off chance that he was actually in the phonebook. 

'It's nice when wannabe Bond villains are in the phonebook,' he mused as he walked up to the door and peeked in the window, slightly surprised to see a middle aged man sitting on his couch drinking coffee, like he was a regular person instead of a badly written villain. He grinned slightly as he noticed today’s newspaper on the coffee table which meant the front door was probably unlocked since he’d gone out at least once today.

He slipped into an empty ID barrier then opened the door and walked inside, slightly surprised that there wasn't an alarm or a chime on the door or anything to make it harder to sneak inside, though it was possible his ID barrier simply didn’t copy it. He glanced around the man's living room then slipped out of the barrier, walked over and punched him in the temple, dropping him unconscious. He pulled a roll of duct tape out of his inventory and secured the villain then stuck him in his inventory. 

'Worst villain, ever,' he mused as he picked up Calvert's phone and looked through the contact list, mildly surprised to see that he had Lisa listed as a TT-smug, sure, it could have been someone else but the likelihood of that was close to nil. He pushed the talk button and adjusted his Stranger rating so that the phone would pick up his voice but not record it.

"Boss?" Lisa asked, sounding half asleep.

"No, I have your boss, if you want his money accept the party invitation," Myst said, trying not to laugh.

"What?" Lisa asked, not sure what was going on, but wishing they'd waited until she'd had her morning coffee.

"I'm sure that TT-smug could be anyone, but this is Tattletale, right?"

"Yes?" Lisa asked, not sure how someone had gotten Coil's phone.

"You haven't had your coffee, have you?" Myst asked.

"No, it's barely six," Lisa complained. "How did you get Coil's phone?"

"I punched him in the head, he's currently tied up and drooling. Do you want like twenty minutes to play 'guess the account number' with him?"

"What are you planning on doing to him afterwards?" Lisa asked.

Myst sent Lisa a party invite.

Lisa blinked as a blue translucent window appeared asking her if she wanted to join the ‘Loot Coil Party’? "How the hell?!" she asked as she looked around her room.

"Magic, otherwise known as I'm a trump," Myst replied smugly.

"How do I join?" Lisa asked.

"Just say yes or hit the yes button," Myst replied.

Lisa pushed yes. "Now what?"

"Now I hang up," Myst replied and ended the call then put the phone in his inventory. 'And we use the much more secure party chat that came with my powers,' he continued, having a bit more fun messing with the teenage villain than he probably should.

'Telepathy shouldn't work,' Lisa complained.

'It's not mind reading, it's just communications,' he assured her. 'So, like I was saying, I have your asshole of a boss, do you want to play guess his accounts?'

'What's in it for you?' Lisa asked, trying to get more information.

'You mean beyond the satisfaction of watching his face when he realizes you've stolen everything from him?'

'Yeah, beyond that?' Lisa asked.

'Let's just go with precogs are bullshit. I don't need him outing the entirety of the Empire 88. I have no love for nazis, but Purity left and she's a Blaster 8 with family and I don't trust the PRT to pour piss out of a boot, much less do the right thing, which is leave the lady's family alone.'

'That sounds unfortunate at best,' Lisa agreed, mind spinning worst case possibilities of Purity leveling the city because they’d kidnapped one of her family members and backed her into a corner. 'Where do you want to meet up?'

'Wherever you want, I'm not picky,' Myst replied.

'Twenty minutes at the Blue Moon cafe on 6th,' Lisa suggested.

'Works for me,' Myst agreed as he walked over to the door and locked it, wanting to make sure no one walked off with evidence before the PRT got there.