Demons and Botched Rituals Part 25 (Patreon)

Harry pulled his attention away from the mostly finished demon steel blade that he was working on when Hermione started playing her flute. 'Huh, she must have taken lessons, that's actually good.'

Hermione continued playing for another ten seconds, each note summoning another hand sized rat. She stuck the flute in her inventory and gestured towards the closest rat that was glaring at her, turning it into an ornate bronze snuff box and causing the rest of the rats to scatter.

"Nice to know we actually found a use for the spell," Harry said as he tagged a rat with a silent snuff box spell, creating a box with bronze whiskers as he didn't have quite enough focus to overcome the lack of incantation. "I might need more practice."

Hermione smiled as she continued turning the rats into snuff boxes as they ran around the smithy trying to find a way out. "I wasn't going to say anything, it just takes a bit more focus."

Harry missed with his next two spells as the rats ran around the room, trying to hide behind anything that might keep them from being hit, including each other. He managed to tag one with his third spell, creating a box without whiskers. "Not to mention practice."

Hermione quickly tossed up a shield when a rat jumped at her. "I should have stopped at three."

Harry was just about to tag the concussed rat when Hermione's kitten appeared out of thin air next to Hermione and pounced on the rat.

"Tangles!" Hermione blurted, worried about her kitten's low vitality.

Harry smiled as the rat bolted rather than deal with the large kitten. "She's fine."

Tangles looked around, making sure none of the rats could get close to Hermione.

Hermione scooped her kitten up in her arms, wanting to keep her safe. "Can you tag the rest of them?"

"Sure," Harry replied with a smile as he went back to tagging the rats with the snuff box spell. "Do you think she felt the rat attacking you or did she wake up from her nap and decide to find you?"

"Not sure," Hermione admitted as she scratched Tangles between her ears, causing the large kitten to start purring.

Harry stopped and stared when he changed one of the rats into a snuff box and a book appeared out of thin air next to the snuff box. "I'm surprised they have any skills to drop a skill book."

"Stealth or night vision?" Hermione asked thoughtfully as she walked over to check the book. "Metal claws?"

Selena opened the door to the smithy and walked in, doing her best to ignore the fact that the room felt like a sauna.

Harry tagged the last rat as it darted out from behind the workbench and made a run for the door. "Thanks."

Selena glanced at the brass box that slid into her boot then looked at the book on the ground. "What are you working on?"

"We figured out a nice way to get a lot of easy experience," Hermione replied as Harry walked over and picked up the book. "If you duplicate things before you finish, you can get a decent amount of experience putting everything together, especially if you use a mix of material for the hilts."

"I wonder if that's why some smiths have their apprentices make the parts and put everything together themselves," Selena mused as she walked over. "Anything interesting?"

Harry opened the book and sighed when it turned into sparkles and vanished. "So much for selling the books after we grab the skills." He opened his Wayfinder skill and looked through his available skills until he found the new skill. "That's nearly useless, or it would be without Hermione. It lets you temporarily change your claws or nails into pot metal."

"Does it say anything about getting lead poisoning or negative effects?" Hermione asked, curious what she could get by combining the skill with one of her arrow spells.

"Nothing specific," Harry replied as he spent the mana to teach Hermione the skill.

Selena glanced at the workbench that was covered with a bunch of half completed projects, including a pile of crowns. "Did you manage to make a mithril crown?"

Harry gestured at the pile of crowns. "Two silvery blue crowns and a creepy looking black crown, no idea why the third one turned black."

"The design called it the Dark Crown," Hermione replied as she walked over and looked at the pile of silver crowns she'd created to increase her skill before she'd switched to using mithril.

"How many crowns do you think you'll need to enchant?" Selena asked with amusement as she walked over to get a closer look at the pile of silver crowns.

"I might have gotten a bit carried away but they're worth a decent amount of experience and they're quick," Hermione explained. "Besides, it gives me the ability to repeatedly burn the skill and get it back without bothering Harry every time."

"How many crown patterns do you have?" Selena asked as she sorted through the pile of random looking crowns, none of which were the same.

"Just one, it makes random crowns unless you set the appearance to one of the designs you've unlocked," Hermione explained.

Selena picked up one of the silver crowns, dropped it in her enchanting box and selected the temporary skill enchant and her Mentor skill. "That gives me a ten point reduction in cost."

Harry pulled the staff out of his inventory and handed it to Selena. "Good luck."

"Thanks," Selena replied as she hit the button, emptying her mana pool and turning the crown into a permanent magical item. "If I wasn't worried about the guild, we could make a ruinous amount of gold off that enchantment."

"We'll get there," Hermione assured her, knowing they were going to have to put in a lot of work before they didn't have to worry about the Enchanting guild.

Selena handed Harry the crown. "You might as well unlock the skill."

Harry tossed the crown in his enchanting box and identified it, wanting to make sure it hadn't gotten cursed or anything as Selena's enchanting skill probably wasn't particularly impressive yet. 'Looks fine.' He stuck the crown on his head, unlocking the Mentor skill so he could teach people the skill if he needed to.

He handed Hermione the crown then pulled up his Wayfinder skill and glanced over the description for the new skill. "This would be better without the restriction to master the class but at least we can share it."

"It's a start," Hermione agreed as she opened her Synthesis skill and selected the Mentor skill, curious if there was anything she could combine the skill with. "So much for making a better teaching skill, can you give me the skill?" she asked as Jessica walked into the room.

"Sure," Harry replied as he spent the mana to teach everyone in the room other than Selena the Mentor skill. "That should make it easier to trade classes."

"Nice," Jessica said excitedly as she pulled her skill page up and tapped the icon for her new skill, bringing the teaching page up. "How many points of Enchanting do you have, Selena?"

"Two, why?" Selena asked.

"Are you willing to burn your enchanting so you can make a Leatherworking item so that Hermione has a chance to modify Leatherworking before she picks up the class?" Jessica asked hopefully. "There's a chance we could get the class up to a cap of thirty if we can give her the skill before she gets the class."

Selena glanced at Hermione then shrugged. "It's worth a try."

Jessica burned the mana to teach Selena the Skinwork class. "How long is it going to take to regenerate your mana?"

Selena glanced over the class then hit accept, knowing Hermione could give her another copy of her Runic Enchanting skill when she dropped the class. She focused on the mana tap skill Harry had been nice enough to share and started absorbing mana from the pocket dimension. "Give me a couple of minutes to absorb enough mana to refill my pool and I'll give it a try."

"Have fun, I'm going to grab River and do some shopping," Harry said as he headed for the door.

"Sounds good," Hermione agreed, looking forward to having more skills to experiment with.

0o0o0

Harry opened the door to the Mystic Orb shop and walked inside, doing his best to ignore the way the shopkeeper rolled his eyes in disdain when he pulled his attention away from the crystal ball he was looking at and saw him. 'No wonder you have to jack the prices,' he mused as he glanced around.

"Welcome to the Mystic Orb," the shopkeeper repeated tiredly, wishing the demon would leave so he could get back to watching the play on his crystal ball or would at least buy something real quick.

Harry pulled a coin purse out of his pocket, trying to look bored and not laugh when the man's expression shifted to an obviously fake smile when he realized he had gold to burn. "My master gave me a bag of gold, where are the crystal balls?"

"Aisle three," the shopkeeper replied and gestured towards the right side of the shop before he turned his attention back to the play he was watching, relieved that the demon wasn't going to waste his time asking a bunch of questions.

'So much for service with a smile,' Harry thought as he headed towards the third aisle, looking at the expensive collection of odds and ends. 'Most of these look like flawed creations people found a use for.''

Harry smiled when he walked around the corner and saw an entire shelf filled with crystal balls of various types and styles. 'Trelawney would love this, or hate it,' he mused, not sure how she'd feel about having a crystal ball that actually worked considering her talent was more than a little suspect.

'Orb of danger sense, scrying device, ten miles? Only scrys on places you've been?' he mused as he read through the tags on the various crystal balls on display. 'One mile range, creates an image of the user in a high quality, low cut, dress to the people you're scrying on and you can look around like you're actually there?'

'That could be useful in dungeons,' Harry mused as he continued looking for useful enchantments, not particularly impressed with most of the descriptions as the claims were either vague as shit or the price was extremely steep or both. 'Communication device? Low quality visual connection for communicating with people while they're indisposed, decent sound quality? That sounds like they're making the best out of a design flaw.'

He spent another twenty to thirty seconds looking through descriptions before coming back to the fuzzy communication device as it seemed to have the best sound quality. He glanced at the price tag. 'Yeah, sorry, I'm not spending fifty gold on a failed project,' he complained as he dropped the crystal ball mounted on a twisted tower into his enchanting box and quickly hit the button to reverse engineer the enchantment, half expecting alarms to start ringing or the shopkeeper to start screaming about people stealing his shit.

Harry was almost disappointed when nothing of the sort happened. He set the crystal ball back on the shelf then looked at his new enchantments. 'I'm not sure changing the image into a fuzzy mess is helpful but the communication enchantment links with the scrying enchantment. Volume control on your voice and on the sound you're picking up, nice.'

He smiled as he grabbed the crystal ball that was supposed to work like a danger sense, dropped it into the enchanting box and hit the button. 'Scrys on dangerous creatures within thirty three yards per point of magic of the enchanter.'

He put the crystal ball back then picked up the crystal ball that let you project an image of yourself to the location you're scrying on and reverse engineered it, picking up the enchantments for looking around and the projected image and the dress quirk.

Harry put the crystal ball back on the shelf then continued down the aisle, looking for anything that might give him useful enchantments. He grinned when he found a decently cheap crystal ball that would let him scry on a particular theater. He dropped it in his enchanting box and hit the button, picking up an enchantment for scrying on a place that you named while enchanting it.

'Makes me wonder if he hates the theater or at least that particular theater,' he mused as he pulled the crystal ball out of his enchanting menu and continued walking down the aisle. He shivered slightly as he got the feeling that he was being watched. 'What the hell?'

"Do you need help?" the shopkeeper called out, sounding like he was supposed to hurry and that answer had better be no.

"No, I found it," Harry replied as he continued walking down the aisle, trying not to act suspicious. 'He's not screaming, just walk up and pay then you can leave and he'll never know that you're copying enchantments.'

He took a breath then let it out slowly as he reached the end of the aisle. He plastered a smile on his face as he walked over and set the crystal ball on the counter. "Five gold right?"

"Pretty sure that was supposed to be six but if the tag says, five, that's fine," the shopkeeper replied.

"No worries, it's not my gold," Harry replied as he pulled six gold coins out of the coin purse and set them on the table.

"Best of luck," the shopkeeper replied with a pleased smile.

Harry turned and left, wondering if the guy was running a front for the thieves’ guild or if people were just used to him trying to scam a little extra.

Harry spent the next block and a half watching the crowd and enjoying the day as he made his way towards the cafe where he was supposed to meet River and her contact with the glassblowers’ guild. He wasn't even paying attention or thinking about his problems when an average looking girl that was walking passed him from the other direction suddenly pivoted and shoved him into the alley.

Harry had just enough time to see a large man step out of the shadows before he tripped over a box that someone kicked at his feet, causing him to hit the ground hard a second before he felt something stab into his side. He scrambled away from the large man that had stabbed him with a nasty looking black spear that was dripping a greenish ichor.

Harry screamed in pain and shock as someone hit him with a wooden bat over the head from behind, driving him into the ground and making him see stars. He twisted and rolled away, catching one of the most horrifying sights of his life, a five or six hundred pound naked guy with rolls of fat that was probably a foot shorter than he was and nearly as wide as he was tall.

"Kill it!" the fat man shouted in a high pitched voice that sounded like it should be coming from a school girl, not a freak of nature.

Harry pulled a mithril sword out of his inventory and staggered to his feet, not sure who to stab first or why the fucking fucky bastard was naked. "What the fuck?"

"You can't win demon," the man with the spear taunted. "You're already dead, you just don't know it yet."

"No blade can cut my holy flesh, no demonic spell can touch me," the man bragged as he lifted his holy cudgel to hit the demon a second time.

Harry activated his cold aura and his cloak of stars spell then unleashed a swarm of firebolts at the fat bastard as the man with the spear died trying to scream as all of the water in his blood froze. He scowled at the stench of burned flesh as the fat man tumbled to the ground, burned beyond all hope of saving. He scanned the alley, making sure to look up, then looked back at the entrance to the alley and turned his aura of cold off as he didn't want to hit some innocent person walking past.

He gestured at the area where the fucker had stabbed him and used a scouring spell then pulled a healing potion out of his inventory and drank it, instantly feeling better as his headache and the pain in his side vanished. He checked his character sheet to make sure he wasn't poisoned or anything, then walked over to the corpse of the fat man and took his bracers and the flaming cudgel and stuffed them in his inventory.

He kicked the other man's frozen skull, shattering it to pieces. 'What the fuck was that about?' he asked himself as he picked up the spear and took the man's coin purse and daggers. 'On second thought, fuck it, I don't care.'

Harry took a last look around the alley then apparated to the balcony he remembered that was above the cafe where he was supposed to meet River. 'What the hell was that about? I was shoved and they tried to kill me without saying shit. So much for having a nice quiet vacation.' He frowned as he realized he couldn't remember anything about the person that had shoved him, mostly because the details were already blurring together with everyone else in the crowd that he'd been looking at. 'Brown hair, tall? Short? Breasts? Average, or I would have noticed, maybe.'

'Screw it,' he decided that it didn't matter for the moment. He opened his enchanting menu and dropped the spear into the window and hit the button. 'Demonbane spear, doubles the damage against demons at the cost of lower base damage against everything else? That should have done a hell of a lot more damage.' He swapped the spear for the bracers and hit the button to reverse engineer them.

'Holy Bracers of Nudity, the less you're wearing, the more armor you have, doubles armor rating against demons and increases magic defense. The field that covers you would probably be better if they weren't made out of the pot metal,' he mused as he pulled up the enchantment he unlocked. 'Excellent enchanter, horrible blacksmith or maybe he got it from a dungeon.'

He stuck the bracers in his inventory then dropped the flaming cudgel into the box and hit the button. 'Casey's Holy Cudgel of Slaughter, doubles damage against demons and burns them with holy fire. Also enchanted to improve your ability to sing?'

Harry stuck the cudgel back in his inventory then closed the menu and jumped down to the back of a convenient wagon then down to the street and walked over to where River was waiting with a tall man with a goatee and brown work clothes. "Hi."

"Any trouble?" River asked.

"Nothing to write home about," Harry replied, planning on filling her in later.

River's contact looked at Harry. "So, this never happened, I was never here."

"Exactly," Harry agreed, not seeing a point in disagreeing with him.

The trainer spent the mana to teach Harry the apprentice glass blowing class. "Are we good?"

Harry glanced over the details of the class then hit accept, picking up Glass Blowing, Fire Resistance, Basic Chemistry, Basic Pyromancy, Artistic and Sculpture skills. "We're good."

"Enjoy," the man told them then left, wanting to get back to the guild before anyone noticed he was gone or that he'd ever met with a demon.

Harry watched the trainer leave then turned to look at River. "He's a bit jumpy."

"You get used to it," River replied as they started walking the other direction. "Did you find what you were looking for?"

"Hopefully, if everything works I'll be able to let my friends know that I'm safe and that they can stop looking for me," Harry replied, hoping the combination of the scrying enchantments would let him send a message. "Where are we going first?"

"There's a tavern near the Carpenter's Guild, we should be able to find someone that will teach us if we pay off their tab," River replied with a grin. "After that, we can talk with some of the painters that hang out in the market and see if we can bribe one of them to teach us a couple of patterns, they're always looking for gold."

"Works for me," Harry agreed, his eyes scanning the crowd, trying to find the girl that had shoved him into an alley on the off chance that she wasn't fleeing the city or hiding under a rock.