Replacement Boy That Lived Part 13 (Patreon)

Myst walked around the corner and blinked a couple of times when he noticed the aisle seemed to slowly warp and twist when he wasn't looking directly at it, causing sections to bend and stretch in ways that were disturbing as he couldn't quite remember what they'd looked like a second ago but knew they'd changed or at least was reasonably sure they'd changed. "Is anyone else getting a bad feeling about this?"

"Nope!" Scarlet cheerfully lied as she tried to keep her eye on everything, despite the urge to break into a song about madness and its costs.

"It's not just you," Hermione admitted, feeling more than a little disconcerted as the shadows seemed to move and dance in ways they shouldn't while everything else rearranged itself when she wasn't paying attention. "It feels like someone is watching us."

"Probably," Myst agreed as he tried to figure out how they were supposed to deal with the creepy aisle they'd saved for last.

"When you’re rife with devastation," Scarlet blurted out, unable to stop the song bubbling up from inside.

Myst shivered as the shadows twisted and seemed to grow as the lights above seemed to dim, at least until he looked directly at them. "Are you feeling, pink?" he asked, not sure where the last part came from as he'd intended to ask if she was feeling okay.

"You’re a toymaker’s creation," Scarlet sang as she danced towards the aisle.

"Trapped inside a crystal ball," Hermione sang as she walked into the twisted aisle.

"So I dug a thousand holes-" Myst sang as he stepped forward, cutting off when he grabbed the girls and yanked them back out of the aisle. "Nope!"

Scarlet blinked a couple of times. "I hate when that happens."

"Does that happen often?" Hermione asked warily, not sure where the weird phrase had come from.

"Now and then, it's usually my sisters or mom breaking into song, but occasionally my aunt will launch into a song about ice and feelings, it can get pretty weird around the castle," Scarlet replied as she turned and checked behind them to make sure something wasn't creeping up on them.

Myst glared at the shadowy aisle and tossed a bubble of poison down the aisle, his scowl fading when the bubble popped and he heard a voice scream in agony before a thick leather bound tome and two scrolls appeared out of thin air. "That was easier than I was expecting."

"What gave it away?" Hermione asked, feeling rather unnerved that she hadn't noticed anything wrong with singing or walking into the obviously magical aisle, like her common sense had decided to take a vacation without telling her.

"Something or someone managed to get me to burst into song," Myst replied as he used telekinesis to levitate the book and scrolls over so he could grab them. "I figured it was worth checking for cultists with mind influencing spells."

"Just don't curse my sisters when they burst into song," Scarlet warned him then paused as she remembered how annoying they could be at points, "nothing lethal anyway."

"Of course not, they're your family," Myst assured her as he used a cleaning spell to remove any trace of the poison on the books and scrolls. He opened the book, annoyed and relieved to find out that it wasn't a skill book, mostly because that meant they'd finished collecting the twenty five books they needed. He opened the first scroll.

"New recipe acquired: Elixir of the Mad Genius!" the voice announced.

Myst handed the scroll to Scarlet then checked the recipe. "Permanently grants the drinker near genius level intelligence and eidetic memory."

"What?" Hermione sputtered.

"Side effects?" Scarlet asked thoughtfully, not trusting the cultists to have something without drawbacks or side effects besides the large collection of attribute stealing daggers that had the drawback built in, namely that you had to kill something with a higher attribute than you possessed if you wanted to get anything.

Myst glanced over the list of warnings. "That depends on how badly you screw up the potion, anything from the urge to break into song or maniacal laughter at random points to manic tendencies have been noticed. It's touchy enough that I don't think I'd use it without having the inventory's interface to check it for side effects."

Scarlet glanced at Hermione then looked at Myst. "What if you're already a genius?"

"Then you get a boost to memory," Myst replied, relieved that you couldn't accidentally make someone less intelligent with the elixir, mostly because the wizarding world had enough idiots. "It won't actually decrease your intelligence."

"We're going to have to make some," Hermione said, thinking about the stupid people at school the potion would have helped.

"I wouldn't mind having a better memory," Myst mused as he stuck the tome in his inventory then opened the second scroll, figuring he'd save the discussion about the potion not fixing laziness until they weren't in a dungeon and they'd run some tests.

"New recipe acquired: Elixir of Invictus!" the voice announced.

Myst checked the recipe then started cackling madly when he realized the elixir would solve one of his major concerns about being stuck in Harry's world.

"Do you think it was cursed?" Hermione asked warily as she watched Myst, wondering if he'd lost it.

Scarlet shook her head then used the recipe and handed it to Hermione. "No, he’s just insane."

Myst stuck his tongue out at Scarlet, causing her to snicker and return the favor. "I'm just happy, it's an elixir to fight mind control. It basically makes you immune to mind control or mind reading unless you allow it. It also increases your pain tolerance."

"That sounds useful. Side effects and how long does it last?" Hermione asked, fairly sure it was too good to be true since it had dropped off a cultist.

"It's permanent and the usual, paranoia, delusions, memory loss, making everyone in the area want to burst into song or an inability to see pink," Myst replied, reading the list of known side effects and resisting the urge to make a bad joke about anal seepage, mostly because he didn't want to have to explain the joke to Scarlet.

"What's the point of protecting your mind if the potion makes you lose it?" Hermione asked, fairly sure you'd have to be insane to use the potion.

"What did you expect?" Scarlet asked with a shrug. "We got the recipe from a cultist."

"Technically, most of the side effects are probably a result of mistakes in the process or substandard potion ingredients," Myst pointed out. "We can probably get the side effects down to something reasonable with some research and using the alchemy tools we found in the other dungeon."

"What do you consider reasonable?" Hermione asked as they headed back towards the front of the library so they could turn in the books.

"Best case? We get rid of the side effects completely or figure out something we can cure with another potion, like a status effect. I'm willing to live with a touch of paranoia or a slightly increased tendency to have people break out in song if it means I don't have to worry about being controlled by some dipshit with a wand or having some teacher take a stroll through my memories." Myst was willing to live with a lot more than that but he didn't see the point in borrowing trouble when he had a game system that would let him check the results of the potions in advance.

"Do you really think the professors would look at our memories?" Hermione asked, unhappy with the idea of someone looking through her memories, especially the ones involving the annoying brats at school and her subtle use of telekinesis to redress their karmic imbalance.

Myst sighed as he thought about the number of threats Harry had to deal with in the books. "Unless I'm very much mistaken, we have a teacher that has a parasitic fragment of a dark wizard's soul for a Defense teacher and we have a potion master that hated my father that also happens to be a master at mind reading. I'm unwilling to take chances with my mind, especially since there are spells to erase people's memories so they don’t even remember the violation."

"What are you going to tell people if they figure out that you have mental defenses?" Hermione asked.

"If they figure it out they've already attacked me, I'm a fan of reducto and poison clouds and such. If it comes up in a way I have to explain, I'm going to tell them that Nicolas Flamel sent me a couple of elixirs to protect my mind. Sure, Dumbledore might ask Nicolas to confirm the story, but there's always a chance that the alchemist just shrugs and doesn't confirm or deny anything," Myst replied with a grin, fairly sure the alchemist wouldn't mind him using his name for a cover, especially since he was either faking his death or taking his secrets to the grave in a year or two.

"Wouldn't it be easier to just blame it on unnamed strangers?" Hermione asked as they walked through a section of shelves where they'd already killed three invisible cultists, worried about someone catching them in a lie.

"Or both," Scarlet suggested. "What if we just tell them that we got the potions from his apprentice? It's not like a couple of children have a way to check with an ancient alchemist to make sure some random stranger is actually their apprentice. It would also go a long way towards explaining why we put a lot of effort into learning alchemy and potions."

"Not a bad idea," Myst mused as he realized that staging the scene so he could pull the memory out later and show it to people would help sell the deception. 'If I make them look like a random face in the crowd or a famous actress, they'd probably just assume polyjuice and leave well enough alone. We don't need it perfect, we just need it good enough.'

Hermione tossed a bolt of lightning down the aisle when she thought she heard something.

Myst stopped and blinked the spots out of his vision. "Did you get him?"

"I thought I heard something," Hermione whispered as she scanned the area, looking for some sign of invisible cultists and listening for any sounds that weren't coming from her friends.

"I don't hear anything," Scarlet said after a minute of listening to herself breathe.

"I'm probably just jumpy," Hermione admitted, fairly sure she'd heard something but willing to admit that her mind had been playing tricks on her, if only so they could leave.

"Nothing wrong with being careful," Myst pointed out as they continued walking, everyone feeling a bit like a long tailed cat in a room filled with rocking chairs and half expecting a last second attempt to recapture the books on the part of the cultists. Thankfully, it only took three minutes to make it back to the front with the books.

Scarlet was a touch surprised and relieved when an army of cultists didn't jump out of the shadows and attack as they walked over to the librarian and handed him the books. 'Maybe they're just waiting until we leave.'

"Thank you," the librarian replied as he handed Myst three scrolls. "Please take these scrolls, they might come in useful."

Myst accepted the scrolls then blinked when the librarian faded away like a ghost, vanishing completely after a few seconds.

"Huh," Scarlet muttered as she glanced around, still half expecting to get attacked. "Isn't this when the cultists are supposed to jump out of the shadows and attack?"

"No idea," Myst replied as he opened the first scroll, surprised they hadn't run into a boss.

"New recipe acquired: Potion of Invisibility!" the voice announced.

Myst handed the scroll to Scarlet then opened the next two scrolls.

"New recipe acquired: Elixir of Clouds!" the voice announced.

"New recipe acquired: Elixir of the Essence of Speed!" the voice announced.

Myst checked the recipes. "Looks like potions or at least potions from this dungeon are temporary while elixirs are permanent. We have a potion of invisibility that turns the person drinking it invisible for six hours or less, depending on how much to the potion you drink."

"Sounds like that would be good for sneaking into the library after curfew," Scarlet mused, fairly sure they could use it for decent pranks.

"We should probably use it before we teleport to random dungeons in case the rest of them don't have some type of notice-me-not field," Hermione said thoughtfully.

"Good point," Myst agreed, knowing he'd feel better about using the entrance in Knockturn Alley if they were invisible. "We also have an elixir that can make people or things lighter or softer for various durations, including permanently."

Scarlet considered the idea of making herself lighter then shook her head. "You'd be able to jump further, but you'd probably get tossed around by the wind."

"You'd have trouble if someone measured your weight," Hermione added, figuring it would be better as a temporary potion.

"I'd rather use it on armor, you could make it lighter and probably softer without screwing up the durability. The last elixir is an elixir of speed that you can use on objects or living things to increase their speed." Myst pulled up his dungeon menu. "Do we still want to hit the other dungeon?"

"It's early," Hermione said hopefully, unwilling to call it quits until she was too tired to stay awake or the sun came up. "Like arrows or bicycles?" she asked, wondering what else you could use the potion on.

"Or computers, it seems a bit conceptual," Myst replied as he selected the Fantasy Witches of Rainbow Island dungeon, not wanting to face another round of cultists at the moment.

"Computers? How much are the ingredients?" Hermione asked, knowing her father would appreciate having a faster computer.

Myst pulled up the recipe and checked the ingredients again. "I don't see anything completely insane, but we'll have to check the apothecary to be sure."

"Do you think we can put it on a sled?" Scarlet asked with a grin.

"No idea," Myst admitted. "Ready to swap dungeons?"

"Yes," Hermione replied, fairly sure they'd grabbed everything they could that didn't involve exploring the cursed aisle.

"I'm just glad we," Scarlet blinked a couple of times when Myst teleported them and they went from being in a dimly lit library to standing in a shallow pool in the middle of a brightly lit plaza filled with asians, "have extra daggers."

Myst glanced around at the crowd of people that were thankfully ignoring their sudden appearance and the buildings with writing could have been any of the asain languages but was probably Japanese kanji considering where the dungeon was supposed to be. He turned his attention back to the bronze arch at the base of the fountain that had a sheet of water flowing over it. He reached out and tapped the edge of the arch, causing it to fill with a shimmering curtain of light. "At least it's summer," he muttered quietly and stepped through the portal onto a sandy tropical beach, the scent of the ocean and the warm wind washing over him. He glanced at the monsters he could see on the beach, not sure how to feel about the weird collection of what appeared to be a mix of actual monsters and guys in large rubber suits.

He squinted as he glanced around, trying to figure out what they were supposed to fight or at least get some idea of the theme of the dungeon while he waited for the girls to step through. "No giant rainbows or pots of gold," he mused as he scanned his surroundings.

"Were you expecting them?" Hermione asked as she glanced around the beach, looking at the various mutated monsters that were walking around the beach or crawling out of the sea. "Giant crabs, guys in rubber costumes, tentacle monsters and a purple haired teenager wearing a witch's hat and a bikini that is using a giant sword to fight an enormous octopus that was still half in the water.

"The girl might be friendly," Myst replied as he raised his hand and tossed a firebolt at the nearest monster, figuring they might as well get the party started. He frowned as his firebolt splashed over the bear sized crab without doing an appreciable amount of damage, causing the giant crab to turn and charge them. "So much for elemental weaknesses."

"Please tell me that we have a plan," Scarlet said as she turned to make sure she could see the exit portal and the giant crab in case they had to bail.

Myst scowled when he tried to levitate the crab and his magic slid off the creature like water off a duck's back. "Run?"

"Give me a second!" the purple haired teenager shouted as she slashed one of the octopus' tentacles off then tossed her oversized sword to the beach and jumped on it, riding it like a surfboard, one foot on the blade and her back foot on the crossguard as she flew towards the group and away from the large angry octopus.

Myst combined the runes for wall and chocolate then pushed mana into his spell, conjuring a six foot wall of dark chocolate in front of the crab, causing the crab to daze itself when it smashed into it and giving the purple haired teenager time to get there. "Thanks!"

The purple girl laughed as she rammed the crab with her sword then jumped off and rolled over the wall like an action hero, sticking the landing with an impressive amount of agility. "Let me guess, you're new around here?"

"Yeah, I wasn't expecting the crab to survive a couple of hits," Myst admitted, not sure why the difficulty hadn't been rated higher considering he'd barely hurt the crab.

"The monsters are almost impossible to kill if you're not a witch or a magic girl," the girl replied as she conjured three plain looking black hats and passed them out. "These should last until you can collect enough bits and pieces to build a transformation item or get a witch's hat."

Myst stuck the hat in his inventory and looked at the description. 'Conjured item: Fades away outside of the dungeon. Temporarily transforms the wearer into a magic girl complete with a random swimsuit, boosting physical stats by fifty and removing the damage limit while worn.'

"How do we make transformation items?" Hermione asked.

"Normally you bribe an experienced magic girl or tech monkey to toss everything together from the bits that drop off the monsters, but tell you what, I could use a break to grab some ice cream, if you kill twenty of the creatures while I'm gone, I'll give you a copy of the instruction manual and a scroll for making flying swords."

"Deal," Myst replied as he dropped the hat on his head, changing into a tall busty teenage girl with shoulder length green hair and a dark blue one piece bathing suit. "Could be worse," he muttered as he examined 'his' character portrait, fairly sure the girl on the page could win some amateur beauty contests.

Scarlet grinned as she walked around Myst, checking out 'his' new appearance. "Nice."

"Why do I feel like a rabbit in a room filled with foxes?" Myst asked with amusement.

"No reason," Scarlet teased as she reached out and played with a lock of Myst's hair.

Hermione glanced at Myst's breasts, fairly sure they were a C or a D cup then dropped the hat on her head, causing her wild hair to turn indigo and gaining several inches in height, a generous bust to match Myst's and a dark purple one piece swimming suit. "This is going to take some getting used to."

"Yep, we're keeping her," Scarlet mused as she appreciated Hermione's long legs.

Hermione shook her head, not noticing her lips twisting into a slight grin. "Just put the hat on so we can get started."

"Sure," Scarlet replied as she put her hat on, causing her clothes to vanish, leaving her in a sheer yellow bathing suit that was only slightly less transparent around her crotch. "Hey, why did your breasts grow and mine stayed the same."

Hermione glanced at Scarlet who hadn't physically changed at all and found her gaze drawn towards her breasts, mostly because the suit made them stand out more than her being naked did somehow. "Are the hats defective?"

"They're working as intended, she was already a teen," the girl replied with a grin then pulled her attention off Scarlet's breasts when her sword flew over. "I'll be back in a bit."

"Have fun," Myst said as the witch flew off, leaving them alone with the beach filled with monsters. "At least we don't have to deal with cultists."

"Yet!" Scarlet replied with a grin as she gestured towards a monster that looked like a man in a rubber monster costume and tossed a firebolt at it. She grinned as the flames crashed into the monster, knocking it to the ground and taking a chunk out of its side. "Looks like we're back in business."

"Good," Myst replied as he tossed a firebolt into the recovering monster as it charged the group, staggering it and nearly killing it. He used his telekinesis to yank the monster that looked like a reject from a Power Rangers show off its feet so he could walk over and stab it with the strength stealing dagger.