Replacement Boy That Lived Part 11 (Patreon)

"Mystic Boots of Asskicking," Myst mused as he looked at the leather boots they'd picked up from the dark elf.

"What are they really called?" Hermione asked as they walked out of a hole in the hedge and into the courtyard with a two story stone tower in the middle of it surrounded by various torn up flower beds filled with half eaten flowers and a curious lack of gnomes.

"Boots of Asskicking," Myst replied with a grin as he glanced around the clearing, rather amused that he wasn't actually lying and that they didn't have to fight an insane army of gnomes.

Hermione gave Myst a suspicious look, not sure she believed him. "What do they do?"

"They boost your kicking damage, increase your defense against ranged attacks if they hit you in the feet and let you walk and run 30% faster while draining your stamina 10% less."

"How much armor do they give you?" Scarlet asked as she looked around, wanting to make sure nothing was lurking out of sight, ready to jump them.

"Twenty five to your feet or seventy five against arrows," Myst replied as he glanced at the open door on the side of the tower, not sure if it was a trap or if defeating the boss had unlocked it.

"They charmed the boots against arrows?" Neville asked, not sure why someone would bother.

"Apparently," Myst replied as he looked at the cloak. "Cloak of the Flickering Flame, it gives 10 points of armor to everything it covers, another fifty points against ranged attacks, boosts your walking and running speed by 10% and increases your fire damage by 3 to 6 points."

Neville glanced at the damage box for his firebolt on his character sheet. "I'm not sure the extra fire damage would matter considering how much we're already doing but I guess it adds up."

"It would help my damage," Scarlet pointed out, looking forward to increasing her magic so she wouldn't run out of mana as much.

"Don't worry, we're going to farm enough for everyone," Myst assured them as he checked the elf's dagger, disappointed that it only had a basic enchant to keep it rust free and sharp. 'It's more like something you'd want for the kitchen.'

"That would make running around easier," Hermione agreed as she headed towards the heavy wooden door bound with brass.

Myst checked the silver ring. "The ring reduces magic damage taken by 2."

"By half or two points?" Neville asked, not sure you'd even notice a difference of two points considering the damage his firebolt did.

"By two points. I'm assuming it would stack with other rings or armor that did the same," Myst replied as he headed for the tower. 'The hat of disguise and the dagger could have been from D&D but the rest of the stuff seems like it came from a video game.'

"That doesn't seem like a lot," Hermione pointed out as she stopped five feet from the entrance to the tower, wanting some space in case something was hiding.

Myst shrugged. "Considering the general difficulty of the dungeon, we got lucky with the loot. Besides, the ring would probably stack with other items that reduce the amount of damage you take, even if it doesn't help with a direct hit, it might help with glancing blows."

"I hadn't considered that," Hermione admitted.

"How do you want to handle the tower?" Scarlet asked as she stopped eight feet away from the tower so she could take a peek inside from behind Hermione.

Myst reached out with telekinesis and pulled on the door, causing it to swing open the rest of the way and reveal a couch that took up a decent percentage of the room they could see. "Carefully?"

"Sounds good," Hermione agreed then sighed when Scarlet walked over to take a closer look. "Be careful."

"I'm being careful," Scarlet replied as she glanced around the elf's living room that seemed to be illuminated by glowing marble sized spheres scattered around the room in various containers. "It looks like a combination of a living room, a bedroom and a kitchen. There are also some metal stairs going up."

"Anything weird?" Myst asked as he walked over with Neville.

"No…" Scarlet trailed off when she saw a gold garden gnome standing on the bookshelf, looking like he was frozen in terror. She glanced at the drawers next to the bed where another gold gnome figurine was sitting, its face twisted up in agony. She glanced around, trying to spot more gnomes. "Someone likes gnomes a bit too much or hates them."

"Probably," Myst replied as he looked at the hinges of the bronze bound door. "Okay, that should be easy enough," he mused as he pulled out one of the screwdrivers the gnomes had dropped and went to work removing the hinge pins.

"What are you doing?" Neville asked Myst.

"One of the other dungeons has treasure chests that are indestructible or nearly indestructible, I'm curious if the same holds true for the door," Myst explained as he popped the pin loose.

"That makes sense," Hermione admitted, thinking of some of her father's video games.

Neville glanced between Hermione and Myst. "How does that make sense?"

"In certain games, the doors bosses are guarding have been charmed to be indestructible to prevent people from skipping the bosses by just destroying the door," Hermione explained.

"It's worth checking," Myst said as he pulled the middle pin out. He slipped the pins in his inventory then reached out with telekinesis for the third pin, not sure if he should be surprised or not that his telekinesis slid off the pin and hinge without really touching them. 'Points for it being a boss door,' he mused as he used telekinesis on his boots to boost him up high enough that he could pop the pin.

"Where are you going to put it?" Neville asked.

Myst popped the third pin then stuck the door in his inventory before it could fall to the ground. "My family has a cabin."

"You mean the memorial?" Neville asked, thinking about the ruined cabin that he'd seen a couple of years ago when his uncle had taken him to see the place where Voldemort died.

"Just because the Ministry decided to put up an illegal monument without my permission, doesn't mean I don't own the cabin," Myst replied as he dropped back to the ground and checked the door. 'Indestructible, nice,' he mused as he stepped into the tower and looked around, fairly sure the black leather couches were worth taking as were the books in the bookshelves and everything in the kitchen, if only so he could study it.

"I asked Algie why they hadn't fixed the roof when he showed me the memorial a couple of years ago, he said something about them leaving it in its ruined state as a memorial, you might run into trouble rebuilding it," Neville warned him.

"Considering my family has owned that property for a thousand years and I have the deed, that seems like a remarkably stupid hill for them to die on," Myst replied as he walked over and shoved the leather couch into his inventory, revealing a bare spot on the stone floor and an ornately carved wooden jewelry box that had been hidden by the couch.

"You could get fined," Neville pointed out.

"Not enough to matter," Myst replied as he picked up the box and stuck it in his inventory so he could examine it. "I'd run a story in the paper about the ministry trying to steal it and how it could happen to anyone. If they survived a month, I'd be surprised."

"That's one way to deal with corrupt idiots, you could probably take the case to the queen," Scarlet suggested.

"Why would the ministry care about the queen?" Neville asked.

"Because queens are supposed to protect the country," Scarlet replied, thinking about her parents.

Neville frowned as Myst walked over and shoved the wooden bed into his inventory or possibly made it vanish. "I don't think the Ministry cares about the queen."

Scarlet frowned as she tried to wrap her head around the idea of someone not loving her mother. "They sound corrupt."

"Something to look into," Myst replied, fairly sure the wizarding government technically owed some type of allegiance to the queen, if only because Fudge had been required to notify the Prime Minister about the breakout in the books and the fact that her family had still been in power when the wizarding world went into hiding.

"Why would you make life like gold statues of gnomes?" Hermione asked as she headed over to the bookshelf to see what she could find.

"I'm guessing he turned the gnomes into gold or used a spell," Myst replied as he shoved the well built wooden dresser into his inventory so he could examine it for traps without setting anything off.

"Are you going to loot everything down to the stone?" Neville asked as he watched Myst and the girls systematically strip everything in the tower.

"That's the plan," Myst replied as he grabbed a wooden chest filled with lady's underwear and possible sex toys or torture devices he didn't want to know the use of and shoved it into his inventory. "I'd steal the tower but I don't have a mining pick and I'm fairly sure it's marked as indestructible."

Neville shook his head, fairly sure his new friend was having too much fun. He glanced at the shiny silver stairs. "Are we going to check the second floor?"

"I don't hear screaming, whimpering or insane laughter coming from up there which means we should have time to loot everything. I want the room cleared out and the dirt in the flowerbeds outside shoveled into bags and stuck in our inventories before we walk up the stairs on the off chance that we find something that closes the dungeon or sets off a self destruct," Myst replied as he worked on looting the enchanted kitchen appliances.

"Why do you want to dig up the flowerbeds?" Hermione asked, wondering if he was going overboard with looting or if he had an actual reason.

Myst shoved the magical stove into his inventory with a grin. "I don't recognize the flowers and the dirt might increase their growth or be useful for topsoil."

Scarlet gave Myst a look. "You want us to dig up the entire flowerbed on the off chance that we find something useful?"

"Technically, we can probably just grab a handful of dirt and use the inventory's identification system to check to see if it has any special properties," Myst replied as he shoved the enchanted ice box into his inventory.

"That sounds more reasonable," Scarlet admitted then turned to look at Hermione. "Did you find anything useful?"

"No, just a bunch of weird smut," Hermione complained as she tried to figure out why you'd need a bunch of artificial tentacles, gnome puppets in tiny wetsuits and the top half of a bowling pin strapped to your codpiece.

"Weird?" Scarlet asked with a grin.

Hermione flipped through the rest of the magazine, going a bit green when she realized what some of the pictures entailed. "Yeah, he was obviously insane," she complained and put the magazine back on the shelf, making a mental note to disinfect everything they looted from the tower.

"No reason to not be a little adventurous," Scarlet said cheerfully as she walked over to the bookshelf and picked up a book, curious about his porn collection. "Hmm, never mind, Cooking With Gnomes seems a bit twisted."

Neville shook his head. "No thanks, just because I don't like them doesn't mean I'm going to eat them."

Hermione took the book and opened it, wondering if it would improve her cooking skill or get her any recipes that were actually useful and frowned when nothing happened. "It's just a book," she complained, forgetting for a second that she probably didn't want knowledge of cooking gnomes stuffed in her head. She flipped to the first page of actual text and skimmed over the words. "It's not a cookbook, it's a book for getting gnomes to cook for you."

"Mind control?" Neville asked as Myst continued looting the room, turning it from a moderately cluttered home to an empty tower.

"No, just techniques to train them," Hermione replied as she flipped through the book, not sure why someone had gone to the trouble of writing it considering gnomes weren't particularly intelligent and they didn't make great assistants from what she could tell.

Myst grinned as he walked over and pushed the bookcase into his inventory, removing the last of the glowing marbles and dropping the light level down to what was coming in through the door and the hole to the second floor. "Let's check the lab then we can see if we can talk the mad scientist into giving us something for her underwear."

Hermione stuck the book in her inventory then looked at Myst. "You found her underwear?"

"I found a box of underwear, it might not be hers but she was complaining about losing it so it's probably hers," Myst replied as he walked over to the stairs and started climbing after testing to make sure the first step didn't try to kill him. He paused when he climbed high enough to notice the alchemy lab, complete with vents in the wall and a couple of windows that were obviously magical or glamoured because you couldn't see them from outside. "We're going to have to run the dungeon a couple of times to get some decent alchemy equipment."

"And ingredients," Neville agreed as he followed Myst up the stairs, hoping his new alchemy skill would keep him from causing a disaster. He stared at the rows of strange ingredients in glass vials and jars on a wooden shelf, fairly sure the tower had enough supplies to get everyone a couple of levels of alchemy.

"Yep," Myst agreed as he walked over to the desk and picked up the leather bound journal and opened it.

"Alchemy recipe acquired: Smurf Creation unlocked," a female voice announced.

"Huh," Myst muttered as he opened his alchemy interface and looked at his new recipe. "Sugar and spice, clay, crocodile tears and a stone for her heart."

"Recipe?" Scarlet asked as she followed Hermione up the stairs.

"If I understand things correctly, the recipe creates small intelligent magical helpers," Myst explained as he flipped through the journal, trying to figure out why the crazy elf had resorted to training gnomes when he had a recipe for making smurfs.

"And he was using gnomes?" Hermione asked in disbelief, not sure why you'd go with something you had to train like a cat for an assistant versus something that was actually intelligent. She stared when he flipped a page in the journal and she saw a rather detailed drawing of a female smurf, complete with a pink dress and a familiar white hat. "Wait a minute, does this mean the Smurfs were based on something real?"

"It depends on how old the dungeon is," Myst mused. "Either the creator of the show based it on something real or magic stole the idea and created something tangible when it created the dungeon."

"Or your power screwed things up," Scarlet suggested as she started looking through the alchemy journals, opening and closing everything so she'd pick up any recipes.

"Or my power is screwing things up," Myst agreed, not sure how to test that because the only dungeon he knew of that someone else knew about was Wonderland and he wasn't going near that particular dungeon without a damned good reason.

Neville glanced between Hermione and Myst. "What's a smurf?"

"They're basically friendly blue humanoids that are about three apples tall," Hermione explained, thinking about the show.

Myst glanced over the ingredients then grabbed one of the alchemy tools that looked like two vaguely teardrop shaped potion bottles connected by glass tubes and sitting on iron stands and stuck it in his inventory so he could examine it. "Apprentice alembic? Decreases the negative properties in most potions by breaking the ingredients down and distilling them."

"That sounds useful, potions can have a lot of negative effects," Neville warned them, thinking of some of the horror stories his great uncle had told him and thinking about the warnings the mediwizards occasionally gave him when they were trying something new with his parents, of course that had decreased a lot in recent years since everyone had basically lost hope of curing them.

"I have a feeling we're going to have to run this place a couple of times," Myst used as he checked out the rest of the familiar looking equipment, fairly sure it matched the alchemy equipment from some of the elder scrolls games.

Hermione smiled as she thought about picking up her own collection of alchemy tools. "At least we know what to expect."

"There's that," Myst agreed as he started moving the rest of the equipment to his inventory to check it, wanting to squeeze at least one more run into things before they had to quit for the day.

0o0o0

"Kill them!" the crazy reject from a steampunk convention that looked like a victorian age borg shouted then slammed the door of her tower.

"So much for the dungeon staying consistent," Myst replied then gestured towards the army of mechanical garden gnomes charging at them and combined his lightning rune with the spray rune, sending out a fan of lightning. "Join the darkside, we have cookies!"

Neville stared at the destruction. "Has he lost his marbles?"

"Probably," Hermione replied as she copied Myst, her lips unconsciously twisting into a smile as she blasted the battlefield with lightning.

"Sanity is overrated," Scarlet said cheerfully as she raised her hands and tossed a lightning bolt into another group, enjoying being able to play with magic.

Myst laughed as he sprinted towards the army of gnomes with lightning pouring out of his hands. "There can be only one!"

"Until you don't have it," Hermione said as she combined the wall rune with lightning and dropped a wall of lightning between the group and another army of garden gnomes that were charging them from the side.

"At which point you probably don't care," Myst replied as he pushed mana into his spell, trying to extend the range of his crackling spray of death.

"How did you do that!" Neville sputtered, staring at Hermione's wall of lightning.

"Myst mentioned it when he turned the hedge into chocolate, the dungeon spells are combinations of runes, you just mix the runes together and add mana. Think about the shape runes then combine them in your mind with an element, some of the runes work together, some of them don't," Hermione explained, surprised that Neville hadn't picked up on that detail since he'd grown up with magic.

"You say that like it's easy," Neville grumbled as he considered the spells he'd picked up, realizing that the spells had runes if he broke things down. 'Okay, maybe she has a point.'

"It just takes practice," Myst assured him. "Just think about the runes then push mana into it, you should get something."

Neville mentally combined the bubble rune with lightning then pushed a decent chunk of mana into the runes, creating a bus sized bubble of lightning that floated across the battlefield.

"Like that-" Hermione cut off when the bubble dipped and hit the ground, promptly exploding and ripping through the army of gnomes in a storm of lightning and thunder.

"All hail Neville, Dark Lord of Lightning," Myst offered as he stared at the destruction and blackened earth.

Neville rubbed his ears, trying to get them to stop ringing. "What did you say?" he asked loudly.

Myst gestured and healed Neville then himself. "I said, nice job!"

"Thanks," Neville replied, shocked at the destruction his spell had caused.

Hermione healed her ears and smiled at Neville. "Now you just need to figure out how to do it on purpose."

Scarlet looked at Myst. "We're fixing my magic tonight."

"As you wish," Myst replied with a grin.