Dungeon Myst Part 3 (Patreon)

Previously:

"Door!" Myst shouted as he jumped off the desk and ran towards the door, glad that Harry was already opening it.

Harry dashed through the door to the hallway and found himself floating in a black void. "What's going on?"

"Reinitializing tutorial," the ethereal voice announced. "Analyzing skill collection, would you like a tutorial for your new skills?"

"Yes," Harry replied without hesitation, thinking about his cousin's tendency to skip the tutorial then get furious when things didn't work how he thought they should.

"Domain abilities generally only work in certain locations or on certain types of location or effect. Your Heart's Domain ability gives you invulnerability while you are in your domain."

"Invulnerability?" Harry asked, thinking of some of Dudley's computer games.

"You can't be hurt, moved or cursed while within your domain," the ethereal voice explained.

"What does that have to do with a Mother's Love?" Harry asked, fairly sure that was the name of his old ability.

"Your previous ability only included wards against harm from certain types of dark wizard," the ethereal voice explained.

"Where did I get my previous ability?" Harry asked.

"Unknown," the voice admitted. "Your domain currently extends to the property line of your aunt's house. Your domain requires a member of your mother's bloodline to be in residence in your domain, losing said family member will result in a loss of your domain until such time as you have a member of your mother's bloodline living with you."

"So it's just my aunt's house?" Harry asked.

"For now," the voice said. "You can extend your domain by convincing the owners of the properties touching your domain to follow you or by buying more land that borders your domain or claiming areas by right of conquest," the ethereal voice explained.

"Right of conquest? As in fighting people?" Harry asked warily.

"Yes, would you like to run a simulation of the process?" the voice asked.

"Yes," Harry replied, curious how everything worked.

"Generating scenario," the ethereal voice said as a three dimensional model of his aunt's house and yard appeared in front of Harry. "Please wait while the neighborhood loads," the voice said as a model of the neighbor's house appeared along with several small figurines.

Harry smiled when elevator music started playing softly as models of the rest of the neighborhood filled in. "Does following me give people any actual benefits?"

"Everyone and everything in your domain has protection from Voldemort's forces and your Magic Minion skill allows you to infuse people with magic and turn them into minions if they live in your domain. Using the granted magic will increase their loyalty towards you, resulting in extremely loyal minions within a couple of weeks of even moderate magic use," the voice explained.

"Magic Minions?" Harry asked.

"The skill allows you to turn normal people into minor magic users with a bit of magic. This essentially makes them stronger and healthier while giving them the ability to make various potions and use most magical items and bypass wards that require the people to have magic. Feel free to test the skill while you're trying to expand your domain," the voice explained.

"I'll try…" Harry trailed off as he appeared on the sidewalk of the model. He glanced up at the black void then looked around, not quite sure how he could still see as he didn't see a source of illumination. He glanced around then focused on the wooden rack filled with various melee weapons that was placed next to the faintly shimmering blue field surrounding the property.

"When you're finished with testing, just say you're finished and we'll move onto the next section of the tutorial," the ethereal voice said.

"Thanks," Harry replied as he walked over to look at the collection of weapons. 'Hockey stick, baseball bat, knife, sword there's no way I can lift, and a rag?' he mused as he picked up the rag so he could read the text on it. 'Do I smell like chloroform? No clue, I'm not that stupid, I'm not even sure Dudley's actually that stupid.'

"I should probably test my magical minion skill before I get carried away trying to take over the neighborhood," he said thoughtfully as he headed towards the house. He smiled when Dudley walked outside, picturing his cousin finally leaving him alone.

Dudley froze when he noticed the strange smile Harry was giving him. "What do you want freak?"

Harry focused on the strange Magic Minion skill he'd picked up and pushed his magic into his cousin, causing him to stand up a bit straighter and to lose like twenty pounds around the middle. "I want you to leave me alone."

"Fine," Dudley replied as he continued walking towards the weapon rack.

"Close enough," Harry muttered as he headed into the house to test his skill on his aunt and uncle in case they could help him challenge one of the neighbors.

0o0o0

Myst turned his attention towards the ornate vine-covered stone wall that was maybe ten feet high by eight feet wide that was on the other side of the small platform. "Great, I've got less than a ten foot square to work with and the wall is probably a waygate."

Myst opened his inventory and sighed when he realized that it only had two gold tokens in it. "So much for collecting a bunch of cursed items from the trial." He focused on the first token and read the description that appeared. 'Token: Mithril node: Resource nodes can be used to mine resources, they also attract adventurers and certain monsters. Yeah, I'm probably dead if I use it before I have some decent defenses.'

He looked at the description for the brothel token. 'In addition to generating income, brothels decrease the amount of unrest in your population and lower your reputation with the Holy Empire. If they're going to freak out over a brothel, they're probably going to freak out over the magic academy so they can go to hell.'

Myst pulled up his ability list. 'Lesser Undead Summoning and Possession?' He double checked his possession ability to make sure it hadn't changed then looked at the new ability. "I can summon five lesser undead five times a day, control lasts for twenty four hours and the quality of undead increases with practice. Control? Nothing about duration, that sounds like a trap," he muttered as he swapped to look at his spells.

"Conjure Food, ten units of food for five mana… Conjure Rabbits? Huh, it summons a combat rabbit under my control for one mana and it doesn't mention a duration. I wonder if you can eat them or skin them?" he mused as he looked at the next spell. "Conjure Resource Node? One thousand mana for a card that creates a limited resource node. That's either broken as hell or worthless," he mused as he looked at the bar for his mana pool. "One hundred mana? Yeah, I'm going to have to find a way to boost that."

Myst stared at the spell that let him transform a skull into crystal which functioned as a grenade. "Might be worth using," he said thoughtfully, knowing it would depend on how easy it was to get mana. He sighed in relief when he saw the spell that would let him convert dirt and rock into float stone. "That should let me expand the island, now I just need to figure out how to get a massive amount of mana."

Myst glanced at his next spell then stared when he read the description. "Extract Magic? Yeah, I'm perfectly happy killing monsters or evil wizards to create magic users," he mused, wondering how long it would take to train some hunters or rangers so he could start creating the magic crystals that would let him turn people into magic users. "One step at a time, you're going to need to figure out how to get minions before you get swarmed by the portal."

Myst pulled up his minion menu and looked at the three undead the card had given him, slightly annoyed that he didn't have his cursed and almost dead imp but relieved since that meant he hadn't maimed an actual creature. "One undead rabbit, one undead black mage and an undead knight, better than nothing."

He focused on the resource icon and brought up a list of his resources. "One hundred stone, lumber and food and it looks like I can hold five hundred before I need to figure out how to build a warehouse. Could be worse…" he trailed off as he pulled up the menu and realized that both of his minion patterns were grayed out. "Huh, peasants require access to neighboring villages and slimes require a sewer or an alchemy lab to create."

"What the fuck?" Myst complained as he looked at his collection of buildings that he could build, trying to find something he could build that would give him the ability to create a minion that he could use to acquire more resources. "One hundred stone and lumber for a smelter which lets me teach people how to mine. Yeah, I'm going to fucking kill someone when I get back."

Myst took a breath then slowly let it out as he tried to get his frustration under control. "How the fuck are you supposed to start a city on a floating platform when you can't even recruit people?"

He focused on his mana bar and brought up the details. "Capped at one hundred and I regenerate one an hour, so roughly four days to recharge completely. Could be worse,' he mused as he looked at the upgrade options. "One thousand points of mana and a thousand units of gemstones to upgrade my mana pool and it doesn't even tell me how much it upgrades everything, is it dependent on the type of gems or does the interface just suck?"

"I'm going to need miners and resource nodes and a way to store mana or some other way to increase my mana," he said thoughtfully as he opened the structures menu and looked at the basic magic school that he could build. "Let's see, building a magic school lets you teach people magic assuming they have the potential and having friendly magic users in the city gives a temporary boost to your mana pool as long as they're in the city. That still requires actually having a population which requires some method of getting people here. Not to mention, I don't have five hundred units of lumber or stone or the gemstones I need."

Myst grabbed the undead rabbit card out of his inventory and examined it. 'Using the card creates an undead rabbit under your control. Undead minions require no food but they don't heal on their own.' He focused on using the card and shivered when a large rabbit appeared in front of him with rotting flesh and burning green points of light where its eyes should have been.

He opened the rabbit's stat page and stared at the creature's abysmal stats. "One strength, one agility and no vitality or magic, yeah, that's practically useless." He checked his mana pool to make sure it wasn't eating his mana or anything by existing then checked his options for controlling the rabbit. 'Attack, defend, follow and stay.'

He pulled the black mage card out of his inventory and used it, causing a humanoid skeleton in a tattered black robe to appear in front of him.

"I am at your service," the skeleton mage announced in a gravelly voice.

"Good." Myst smiled when he checked the mage's controls and realized it had a nice collection of options that the rabbit didn't have. 'Cast spell, mission, patrol, research and restore mana,' he mused as he focused on the grayed out options, slightly annoyed that nothing popped up. "Is there a reason you can't restore your mana right now?"

"I need a dark location that has ambient mana and I need a place to research if you want me to conduct research," the mage explained as he glanced around, curious about where he'd been summoned.

"I'll keep that in mind." Myst glanced at the stone wall that he was fairly sure was a waygate given the card's description about a fallen empire and the life like plants carved out of stone. "Can you tell the difference between people and monsters?"

"Just because I don't have a brain doesn't mean I'm an idiot," the skeleton mage replied dryly.

"Just making sure. Defend the dungeon heart and make sure you kill any monster that comes out of the wall, it's actually a portal," Myst ordered as he took a quick look at the mage's stats, curious if he had any useful skills or spells. 'Eight strength, twelve agility, no vitality and twenty points of magic. Animate Skeletons, Fireball and Gather Mana.'

He checked the Animate Skeleton spell. 'Creates a permanent undead of the appropriate type from a mostly intact corpse. No upkeep cost, just bones? Yeah, that explains why undead hordes are cheap, you just have to hit a graveyard at night or slaughter a town and you have an army.'

Myst checked the Gather Mana spell. 'Requires the caster to remain in a dark place while gathering mana and the return depends on the ambient mana. Hopefully that doesn't end up eating my regeneration.'

Myst pulled the undead knight card out of his inventory then used it, creating an undead knight with a blackened breastplate and a sword that looked like it was dipped in ink. "Guard my heart."

"I live to serve," the knight announced as he walked over and stood in front of the dungeon heart.

"Can you teach your spells?" Myst asked the mage.

"You'd need a magic school or an exceptional student and a place to practice," the mage replied.

"Note to self, build a school," Myst muttered as he pulled up his spell page. 'Should I save the stone for a smelter?' He considered the question for a minute before deciding that he might as well see if he could enlarge the platform because he didn't have enough space to build much of anything. He cast his Convert Stone to Float Stone spell, spending the required fifty mana and getting five units of float stone for his mana.

He pulled up the floor plan for the dungeon and looked at his options. 'One unit of float stone makes a five foot section of ground or I can use it to make floating platforms or stone structures that float. Worry about the fun stuff when you have more defenses and mana.' He used four of the squares to expand the platform, doubling his available floor space and draining forty mana in the process.

"That's a decent start," Myst mused as he pulled up his Lesser Undead Summoning ability. "I'm going to summon some lesser undead, if they attack, destroy them."

"Understood," the mage replied as he shifted so he could watch the wall and the area in front of Myst.

"You have my sword," the knight offered.

'Is that a canned response or was that just the way he was trained?' Myst used the ability and summoned a skeleton that was holding a rusty ladle in one hand and a rusty cast iron pan in the other. He looked at the skeleton's sheet. 'Basic Cooking 1 and Farming 1? Yeah, it's probably just as well I don't need to eat anymore,' he mused, not trusting a skeleton to make food that was actually safe to eat. He glanced at the skeleton's action bar and noticed that it had attack, cook, farm, follow and stay commands. He glanced at the skeleton's stats. 'No vitality, magic or any combat skills, yeah, that's nearly useless right now.'

He checked the skeleton's cooking skill to see if it had any useful recipes. 'Charred meat and beans? Yeah, that's basically useless.' He used his summoning ability again, hoping for something more useful. He felt a rush of excitement when the next skeleton had a rusty metal pickaxe, hoping it came with a mining skill. He checked the skeleton's stats and sighed in relief when he saw the mining skill. "We have a miner, now we just have to figure out how to get him somewhere we can actually use the skill."

"Best of luck," the mage offered as the stone vines came alive on the stone wall, split in the middle and started swinging open. "The portal is opening."

"I see it." Myst quickly used his lesser summoning ability three more times, summoning skeletons with a sword, a hatchet and a blacksmith hammer. He quickly checked the new skeletons' sheets as they waited for the portal to open all of the way. "Basic combat skills, basic woodcutting and advanced blacksmithing skills."

"Don't risk the crafters or the gatherers," the mage suggested, knowing they'd need the resources.

Myst mentally selected the skeletons with crafting and gathering skills and ordered them to drag his core out of the blast radius. He mentally sent the skeleton with combat skills to stand between the crafters and the portal, figuring he might be able to delay the monsters from killing the crafters if something slipped past the knight. He took a step back despite his best intentions when half a dozen eight to nine feet tall beastmen charged out of the inky black portal holding nasty looking weapons, practically confirming his opinion of the portal leading to the ways as they looked warped and twisted.

"Burn!" the mage screamed as he gestured and tossed a ball of fire at the beastmen, catching most of them and a strange eyeless humanoid wearing black armor as he suddenly jumped out of the portal behind the beastmen. The mage dodged backwards when the strange creature lunged out of the fire and stabbed him in the chest with his sword almost quicker than he could see.

The knight lunged forward and brought his sword down on the man's wrist, severing it and cutting through his armor.

The skeleton mage grabbed the hilt of the twisted sword impaling him to make sure the eyeless man couldn't take it back as he used his other hand to toss a fireball at the beastmen that were screaming in pain from his first spell. "Burn More!"

Myst smirked as the knight got stabbed by the eyeless man's backup dagger, if only because the knight took the chance to cut the fade's head most of the way off, causing it to fall to the ground flailing its limbs. "Might as well step back, I'm pretty sure that's a fade, they don't die until the sun sets."

"It's mostly dead," the mage pointed out as he took a couple of steps away from the creature that was thrashing on the ground and pulled the blade out of his chest. "Maces work a lot better on undead."

Myst glanced at his mana pool, happy to see that it was completely full from killing the monsters and that the undead mage was boosting his mana capacity by a point or at least that's where he was assuming the extra point was coming from as he only had one magic using minion and the sheet listed the extra point as a bonus. "Let me try something," he ordered as he opened his spell page and selected the Extract Magic spell, curious what the spell would give him since the eyeless creature was from another world. He smiled as his magic ripped the life and magic out of the creature that looked like a fade from the Wheel of Time, creating a shimmering blue crystal and killing the fade in the process.

The mage glanced between the body that had just collapsed and stopped moving and the two inch crystal in Myst's hand. "Did you get anything useful?"

Myst examined the crystal and read the description when it appeared, "Magic Crystal, this particular crystal bestows the ability to channel magic to the person or creature it's used on."

"Channeling magic sounds like something a shaman can do, you'll probably need to create a mana battery since they don't usually have enough mana on their own for the really impressive fire spells, but having more magic users around would be useful," the skeleton mage mused, looking forward to doing some research once they got things set up. "Do you want me to animate the beastmen as skeletons?"

Myst glanced at the gate that was still open. "Yeah, it would give us a chance to run some tests and The Ways should count as a magic rich environment so you can get your mana back."

"The Ways?" the mage asked.

"They're basically a network of portals on another world that open at various locations on another world. They were designed so people could get from one location to another when a group of insane mages was ripping the land apart and rearranging it," Myst explained as he pointed at the lesser skeleton without craft skills. "Walk through the portal then look around and walk back."

"You realize he can't actually tell us anything, right?" the mage asked as the other skeleton walked into the portal and vanished.

"I'm just making sure the portal is safe to use," Myst explained as the mage started reanimating the trollocs, causing their flesh to wither away before his eyes. 'Better than zombies,' he mused as the skeleton walked back out of the portal. "Looks like we're in business. Once you're done animating the corpses, I'll explain how you're supposed to open the waygates and you can take the harvesters and see if you can see what you can harvest."

"Sounds good," the mage replied, looking forward to exploring a new world.