Bracelet Hero Part 6 (Patreon)

Myst wasn't sure if he was supposed to be annoyed or relieved that only a third of the priests in the area were corrupt as hell or at least guilty of providing support to the corrupt governor, mostly because it would have given him a solid reason to deal with the local branch without worrying about witnesses. He wasn't particularly surprised that the rest of the guards at the checkpoint had been guilty of a combination of crimes, either murdering people when they couldn't or wouldn't pay the toll, raiding the next town's crops or abusing their authority in ways that made Myst write them off as people.

Thankfully, he had a convenient way to dispose of bodies and the checkpoint's barrier, namely by feeding them to his bracelet. Unfortunately for the remaining bandits, one of the bandits had been willing to draw a rough map of the town in exchange for his life. Of course, he'd blasted the rapist in the back as soon as he'd started running.

The next two hours involved sneaking around the town while invisible, walking up to shutters and using his alcoholic breath weapon to make sure they were unconscious before slipping inside and tying them all up for eventual questioning. From there, it was just a simple matter of slipping into the governor's mansion and poisoning his wine while he laughed with his remaining guards.

Myst sighed as he looked at the unconscious guards. 'I really need to find a way to see invisible people and monsters before they start using my own tactics.' He glanced over at Anna, glad that the invisibility spell let you see the rest of the group you'd turned invisible when you'd cast it, otherwise it would have been a lot less useful. "Go and make sure Rishia is safe, I'll see if I can figure out what else the governor knows and where he keeps his loot."

"Shouldn't we turn some of the valuables back over to the people?" Lyno asked as Anna left the room to find a girl.

"I doubt he knows where most of his loot came from, I certainly don't want people knowing that I have it and if we just leave it here, someone is just going to take it. I'd rather sell it discreetly and use the money to improve our ability to save the world," Myst explained as he started looting the guards.

"Is that going to be your excuse every time we rob a noble?" Lyno asked.

Myst shook his head. "If we can find paperwork letting us know who they robbed it from, then yeah I'll consider returning it or at least dropping it off somewhere. We're a bit short on trustworthy people in the area and a bit long on acceptable targets. I'm not turning it over to the church to deal with because they're part of the problem and the neighboring noble has lost any real ability to deal with it because of the crown or members of the church."

Lyno sighed. "How long do you think it's going to take to deal with the church?"

Myst shrugged. "The local branch, assuming they don't have wards or protections that keep me from grabbing them in their sleep, probably an hour which means I should be able to haul everyone back here by dawn so we can start questioning them without the church connecting things to us."

"Yeah, I'd rather not have to deal with assassins for the rest of our short lives," Lyno admitted.

"Basically," Myst agreed as he got back to cursing the guards and the governor so he could add to his list of people to question.

0o0o0

"We'll hunt you to the ends of the world," the priest snarled at the stranger that had captured him and forced him to reveal secrets that would damage the church if they saw the light of day.

"Really? What's my name?" Myst asked as he studied the priest that was probably in his fifties though he looked far older. 'Even tied up in the governor's cells, you're acting like you're too important to kill.'

"It doesn't matter, the church will learn your name, then we'll destroy you," the priest replied, sounding more than a little unhinged.

"How? I slipped in under cover of night, walked through your halls like a ghost and captured half the priests in your church without anyone seeing me. I'm wearing a mask, my voice is disguised and I stole these clothes from a noble. You have nothing, no gods to whisper in your ears or save you, no magic to divine the secrets of the past or future, no innocent lives to hide behind so yeah, what makes you think that someone in your backwater country is going to find me?"

"If you let me live the church-" the priest stopped talking as he couldn't force the words out.

Myst laughed as the priest tried to choke the words out he couldn't say because of the curse against lying. "Yeah, you can claim the church will come after me, you can claim they'll find me because you're stupid enough to believe it but you can't lie, which means you can't tell me that they'll forgive me or make a deal you know they won't."

"What do you want?" the priest demanded.

"I want to have the power to dance between raindrops," Myst lied, rather amused by the look of confusion on the man's face.

"What?" the priest sputtered, not sure what he meant.

Myst reached out and punched the priest in the temple, knocking him unconscious. "I want the world to keep spinning and people to prove they can be heroes or at least heroic when it counts." He sighed then stuffed the unconscious priest into his inventory with the rest of the priests he'd captured and headed for the stairs so he could collect his party.

0o0o0

"Are you sure this is a good idea?" Rishia asked warily as she watched the forest, more than a little unnerved by the screams and calls of various monsters getting closer. Despite the fact that the area shouldn't have any particularly powerful monsters, the number of cries was unnerving.

"Not even remotely," Myst replied as he concentrated on holding the magic he'd managed to draw from the surrounding area, still not sure where his understanding of ley lines came from or how well his cobbled together ritual would work.

Anna stared as a vast horde of random low level monsters poured out of the forest like a tidal wave of death. "Shit!"

Myst waited for the monsters to get a bit closer then chanted, "Darkness beyond twilight, rip the life from my enemies!" as he pushed the magic he'd gathered with his ritual into his life drain spell and gestured at the horde of monsters.

Lyno shivered as a swirling twisted cloud of darkness erupted from Myst's hands, sweeping over the ground and leaving the grass yellowed and dead as it rushed towards the army of monsters. She shivered as the darkness spread and turned into a wave of rolling black fog that swept over everything in its path. "How the fuck!"

Myst shivered as he absorbed the life energy as the army of low level monsters died and he received a tenth of their life force as healing. While the life energy didn't help his health as he was currently at full health, it washed away the fatigue from pulling an all nighter, restored his stamina completely and left him feeling like he'd just had several cups of hot chocolate on a cold winter day. He focused on the cloud of darkness and forced it to stay in place rather than ravage the forest as the rage filled monsters charged into it, creating a pile of flesh and bones where they died as the life was ripped from their bodies.

Rishia stared at her experience bar as it quickly filled, reset and filled several times. "What are we supposed to do?"

"Feel free to shoot them, just don't go into the cloud of death," Myst ordered, not wanting to risk his companions as his spell did an alarming amount of damage thanks to his magic stat and his level of healing affinity.

"Thunder and lightning hear my call," Anna chanted as she gestured at the monsters.

Rishia twitched as bolts of lightning started striking the monsters. "What did I sign up for?"

"Being a hero," Lyno replied as she started shooting some of the flying monsters that were flying over the cloud of death. "Shoot the flying things!"

"On it!" Rishia replied as she forced herself back into the moment and started shooting the flying monsters, still not sure why her father had allowed her to leave with the masked adventurer that had rescued her though it probably had something to do with avoiding revenge or repaying the debt for his help, though he hadn't asked for anything from her father when he'd escorted her home.

Myst did his best to focus on the cloud wall rather than the occasional flying monster that made it past their first line of defense, thankfully, the girls were exceptionally good at knocking the birds and giant bugs out of the sky and into the wall of death. He frowned when he noticed that he was barely getting any experience now that he'd hit level twenty.

He pulled up his menu for strengthening methods and looked at his Growth Revision ability. 'Sacrificing twenty levels should improve a stat's growth by two tenths, so every five levels I'd get another point of something. That's not particularly useful until it starts stacking up or until I boost something that shouldn't scale with level.'

He quickly pulled up his Magic Rank ability and dropped enough points to boost his life drain spell to the maximum, boosting the efficiency and giving it a marginal increase in power while lowering the overall mana cost. He opened his Skill Rank strengthening method and dropped the rest of his points into his enchanting skill, bringing it up to rank X and cutting his mana cost for enchanting in half as well as increasing the quality of the enchants by half.

"If my spell fails, run," Myst told the girls as he pushed mana into his life drain spell, trying to increase the spell's duration so he could pull his next trick without getting everyone killed. 'Screw it, it's like a sponge in a desert and I've got an eyedropper.'

He quickly pulled out a mana potion and downed it as he opened his enchanting menu. He brought up the enchant that he'd reverse engineered from his Stealth Bracelet that should let him keep access to his spells despite his plans to reset his levels which would screw with his mage profession.

"Shit! Thunder and lightning hear my call," Anna chanted as she continued gesturing at the flying monsters, fairly sure they were screwed if Myst's spell failed as the monsters were getting larger and more dangerous.

Lyno continued shooting the monsters, more than a little worried as some of the larger monsters were managing to make it a couple of yards through the cloud of death before dropping. 'Are all of the heroes insane?'

"Yes!" Myst selected his modified life drain spell then pulled a silver ring out of his inventory and tossed it into his enchanting box. 'Teaches Life Drain X, ten mana, forty five yards, restores 15% of the damage it deals to the caster. That's the maxed out version,' he mused then quickly tapped the icon in the corner for using his Microtransaction Enhancement strengthening cheat.

He tapped the slider on his menu and slid it up until the spell changed. 'Teaches Life Drain (Area), fifteen mana per second, forty five yards range and up to a ten foot radius or a wall. Caster gets healed for 15% of the damage it causes, which is fantastic and probably based on the base spell considering it shouldn't be that cheap,' he mused as he pushed his enchanting button.

[Ring of Spell Knowledge created]

Myst focused on the life drain spell for a couple of seconds, trying to get an idea how much longer it would last then slipped his new ring on as he was fairly sure controlling his pieced together spell would count towards learning the new spell or at least it wouldn't hurt. He grabbed another ring from his inventory and tossed his fireball spell on it then hit the button, not bothering to waste the gold to upgrade it when he hadn't invested any skill points in it.

Anna winced when Myst's life drain spell flickered and died, letting a horde of large boars, twisted bears and egg-like creatures charge across the field at their group. "Fuck!"

"Darkness beyond twilight," Myst chanted as he gestured at the horde of monsters, creating a much smaller field of death in the way of the monsters. He scowled as the larger and more impressive creatures merely circled around the wall rather than running through it, not completely blinded by their rage.

Myst dropped the wall and gestured at the group of monsters. "Darkness beyond twilight!" he chanted, creating a globe of darkness on the largest and closest group of monsters.

"This sucks!" Anna complained in between blasts of lightning.

Myst pulled a potion out of his inventory and drank it then tossed up two more walls to block the monsters before they could cross the field and reach him and his companions. He quickly turned two more rings into Rings of Spell Knowledge for his healing spell and his new Mana Shield that he'd picked up for hitting fifteen and twenty then brought up his strengthening menu and reset his level, boosting his magic growth rate.

"Shit!" Anna cursed when the walls of darkness failed and Myst dropped to a knee. "Lyno, switch to melee!"

Myst pulled another potion out and drank it then shouted, "Darkness beyond twilight!" creating a cloud of darkness on the group of monsters charging them.

Lyno pulled her sword out and got ready to defend Anna and Rishia.

Rishia gulped as several of the monsters made it through the cloud of darkness looking only half dead then quickly started shooting the monsters. "Take off the damned amulet!"

Myst yanked his monster attraction necklace off then gestured at the group of monstrous boars charging out of the forest and shouted, "Darkness beyond twilight!"

Anna gestured and brought down another flying bird. "I'm running out of mana!"

"This should be the last group," Myst replied as he held his spell on the boars until they died.

Lyno took a deep breath then let it out slowly as she stared at the piles of monster corpses, some of which were taller than she was. "Any idea what we're going to do with a few dozen tons of monster parts?"

"Yeah, I'm going to stick everything in my inventory then we're going to search the woods for useful plants and to teleport back to the capital to check on the other heroes, pick up a monster egg and do some alchemy. Rishia's father was nice enough to send the wagon and dragon mounts back to Reichnott's which means we're free to head to Lute village and start fortifying things," Myst explained as he watched the edge of the forest to make sure nothing else was coming out to attack them.

"Why Lute village?" Rishia asked.

Myst turned to look at Rishia. "Because if I'm not mistaken, it's going to be the location of the second wave. We've got about a week to mine a bunch of light ore and get everyone to a level where we can defend the village. We also need to make sure the other heroes can't screw things up."

Anna frowned as she looked at her stats, not all that impressed by her stat growth. "I thought we were supposed to get better stats by leveling with a hero?"

"You should, let me check something," Myst replied as he opened his companion menu and looked over the various modifiers. "Fuck!"

"Something wrong?" Anna asked warily.

"I'm not the Shield Hero, you actually get a negative for being a slave in my party," Myst admitted. "Which means there's no reason to actually keep the slave seal."

"How come you didn't notice that before?" Lyno asked.

"Because I wasn't paying attention and I just assumed it worked the same as the shield hero," Myst admitted, wishing he'd double checked. "Thankfully, it just messed with your growth potential, not your base stats which means we should be able to reset your level then break the seal and everything should improve."

"What happens if we break the seal and then reset things?" Anna asked.

Myst shook his head. "Let's check when you're resetting a level, not twenty. I'd rather not screw up your base stats. I mean sure, we probably can't but I'd rather test things and risk a couple of stats at level two than risk a bunch at level twenty."

Anna shook her head. "Yeah, let's avoid screwing my stats up. Do you think we can trick the system into permanently increasing my base stats by leveling then using a slave seal and resetting my level?"

Myst smiled at Anna. "Let's save the testing for after the next wave. I have a couple of ideas that should improve our ability to quickly grind through the first twenty levels without too much trouble."

"What's that?" Rishia asked, rather impressed with her growth and levels.

"One of the heroes is grabbing a seed from a monstrous plant, if everything works out like I'm expecting, we should be able to grind the monstrous plant and get a crazy amount of experience while staying out of range," Myst replied as he headed for the nearest corpse to stick it in his inventory.

Lyno glanced at the piles of monster corpses.  "Sounds safer than trying to empty entire forests."

"It should be," Myst assured them, rather happy with the fact that he'd managed to make it back up to level twelve off the last group of monsters. He opened his spell page as he absently started tossing the monsters from the closest pile into his inventory. "Huh, ice bolt and shock."

"What about them?" Anna asked.

"When I reset my levels, I lost the spells my mage profession gave me and got two new spells when I leveled up," Myst replied with a grin as he fed a broken boar tusk to his bracelet, acquiring an Ivory Bracelet.

"Shit…" she trailed off when she realized he was grinning. "Why are you grinning?"

Myst smirked as he read over his new bracelet's charge ability. "Because I got three points of vitality and a charge ability but also because I made some magic rings that should teach us the spells that I lost."

"Does that mean we're going to be farming for spells?" Anna asked, not sure how to feel about her friend's insanity.

"Assuming everything works? Probably, it's a good chance to boost our stats and overall ability to survive," Myst replied, fairly sure they were going to need all the help they could get. "If what I remember is correct, the waves are going to hit multiple places at once starting with the next wave and it's just going to get worse from there."

Lyno winced. "How are we supposed to get anywhere in less than a week?"

"Thankfully, The Carriage hero should have the other half of the next wave covered but we're going to run into trouble as every wave opens more portals than the last. We're going to have to spread out and link up with as many hourglasses as possible if we want to be able to get where we need to go," Myst warned them.

"When are you going to tell the other heroes?" Lyno asked.

"When we get back to town," Myst replied as he continued shoving corpses into his inventory so he could butcher them later.

"Did you remember to grab a teleport point?" Anna asked.

Myst shook his head. "I set one at Rishia's house, it's reasonably close and I figured Rishia would want the chance to visit and officially sort things out with her folks once we get things set up."

"Thanks," Rishia admitted. "What story are we going with?"

Myst shrugged. "Let's just go with you managed to escape and I found you on the road."

"Being attacked by bandits, that gives you the credit and has nothing to do with the dead governor," Rishia suggested.

"How many bandits?" Msyt asked as he moved to the next pile, wanting to make sure they kept their story straight.