Dungeon Myst Part 9 (Patreon)

Harry glared at the goblin banker. "Let me get this straight, you're using my family's money to make a profit but you're unwilling to share the profit or let me change the way the money is set up because I'm underage?"

"That is correct," the goblin replied smugly. "We've made quite a lot of money off of your family in recent years as you can see from the reports that we're legally required to give you."

"The ones that you wrote in weird scratches and runes?" Harry asked with annoyance as he looked at the stacks of paperwork that covered most of the large wooden desk.

The goblin snorted. "Gobbledygook is a recognized language, it's not my fault that you can't read it."

"Can you provide the information in English?" Harry asked, trying to keep a handle on his temper, something that was made more difficult by the goblin's smirk.

"Of course, for a ten galleon fee we'll provide translations," the goblin offered with a smirk that implied butter wouldn't melt in his mouth.

"That's per document, isn't it?" Harry asked, feeling the urge to kill the bastards rising.

"Per page," the goblin replied proudly.

Several of the pages caught fire as Harry lost his temper.

"Destruction of Gringotts' records, one galleon per page," the goblin said excitedly.

Harry quickly put the fire out with his sleeve. "It's not my fault if your papers spontaneously combust."

The goblin laughed. "You're the one that used magic, as our sensors will clearly show, you're lucky I'm not having you thrown out of the bank."

"You realize that I'll be taking my gold out of your bank in seven years, right?" Harry asked, trying to sound calm and collected and not like he wanted to strangle the goblin.

"That's your right but we've invested most of your family's fortune in long term investments, the penalties for withdrawing the gold are excessive," the goblin warned him, not even bothering to hide the malicious glint in his eyes.

"Why?" Harry asked.

The goblin laughed. "Because we can. As long as we have enough gold to top off the trust fund every year, we're allowed to invest the rest. Of course, if those investments lose money, that's hardly our fault."

"It's entirely your fault!" Harry snapped.

"Take it up with the ministry, oh wait, they sealed the records," the goblin replied with an evil grin.

"How much is the balance on my trust vault?" Harry asked.

The goblin pushed one of the sheets of parchment over to Harry. "It clearly states the balance in the records."

Harry glared at the goblin. "Why the hell would anyone willingly trust you with their gold?"

"Stupidity and magical contracts that prevent us from giving our client's gold to the ministry without permission," the goblin explained. "Will there be anything else or would you like to continue wasting my valuable time?"

"I'm being charged for this, aren't I?" Harry asked.

"Yes, the cost is clearly spelled out in the reports," the goblin replied, his grin wide enough to show all his teeth.

"Reports I can't read," Harry complained.

"Again, I don't see how that is my fault," the goblin argued.

"We're done…" Harry trailed off as he found himself back in the void.

"Skills Acquired! Acquired basic Legal skills. Basic Mental Defense has evolved to Advanced Mental Defense. Advanced Mental Defense has evolved to Iron Will. Fire Creation has been added to your collection of spells," the ethereal voice stated.

"I hate goblins," Harry complained, wishing he could set the goblins on fire.

"That is a common reaction. Would you like to practice your combat abilities against goblins?" the ethereal voice asked.

"Yes," Harry agreed without hesitation.

"Please kill one hundred goblins before dying," the ethereal voice announced.

Harry blinked a couple of times when he found himself in a damp cave with faintly glowing mushrooms growing on the walls. He listened for any sign of monsters for a couple of seconds then whispered, "Status? Character sheet? Skills?" he asked hopefully.

"Inventory?" Harry asked hopefully, not really expecting anything and thus surprised when a translucent inventory window appeared in front of him with twenty nine empty boxes and a box filled with a picture of a knife. He touched the knife and read the description that appeared. 'Carving knife, not much good in combat but it's excellent for carving wood.'

"Skills?" Harry asked hopefully and got a list of his skills. 'One point of Destruction Magic? At least I have plenty of targets.' He smiled when he thought about the page vanishing and it vanished. 'Spells?'

'Fire Creation, you have touched upon the primordial secrets of creating fire with mana. Would it kill the system to give me an actual description? Probably,' Harry admitted, figuring he'd get more of a description after he used it a couple of times. He glanced down at the worn t-shirt he was wearing that was a couple of sizes too large. 'Great, I'm back to wearing Dudley's castoffs.'

He pulled the permanently stained t-shirt off and dropped it on the ground, focused on what he wanted the shirt to say and used his spell to create custom T-shirts. He stared at the black t-shirt with red text. "Goblin Slayer: 000 goblins killed? Not exactly what I wanted but I'll take it."

He pulled the t-shirt on then focused on the tunnel and used his new fire spell, creating a flickering flame over his hand. "Cool…" he trailed off as he tried to toss the flame and it died without moving an inch. He glanced down at Dudley's shirt and used his Fire Creation skill, thinking about all of the times that he'd wanted to set Dudley on fire. He jumped back as the shirt ignited and caught fire like he'd dumped petrol on it.

Thankfully there wasn't anyone around to notice Harry's too wide smile as he headed down the tunnel, looking forward to venting his frustrations on the most disgusting creatures in all of creation that he’d had the misfortune to run into… Bankers!

0o0o0

Myst pulled up the combat log when his newly created rabbit charged down a side passageway with orders to kill the annoying rooster that wouldn't stop crowing and vanished from his HUD without taking any damage. 'Petrified? Does that mean it was frozen or turned to stone?' he mused as he cautiously moved towards the side tunnel. He peeked around the corner and stared at the impossibly realistic stone statue of a large rabbit frozen mid jump. 'Yeah, that's probably a basilisk considering the crowing.'

He glanced at the flickering purple torches lining the far wall in the chamber that connected to the passage then focused on the statue of a woman in robes that was facing the same general direction as the rabbit. 'If they made it an extra ten feet, it's probably not a trap on the entrance to the chamber.'

'Let's see if I can kill it with numbers.' He started chain casting his spell to create multiple battle rabbits, dropping them into the chambers and creating a small army of slime beasts as he worked on burning through his mana. He watched the rabbits turn to stone one after another with the only exception the rabbit that was looking the opposite direction. 'Okay, that means it's probably sight based.'

He swapped spells and cast a spell to conjure food in the chamber, causing the slimes to surge into the chamber. "Huh," he muttered when one of the slime beasts turned into an agate statue that vaguely resembled a giant slug. 'Wasn't expecting that to work. Why agate, is it because they're clear or is it because they're more dangerous?' he mused as he watched several more slimes get turned into agate statues.

'I wonder if undead are immune?' he mused as he focused on the ground and moved towards the closest statue, doing his best to ignore the angry crowing coming from somewhere on his right. He reached out and shoved the stone rabbit statue into his storage. He pulled up the description of the statue as he made his way over to the next statue, doing his best not to look in the direction the crowing was coming from. 'Rabbit decoration: This stone rabbit was once a living rabbit, with the proper spells or oils it can be transformed back into a living rabbit. This particular decoration has a small chance to increase a citizen's happiness if they interact with it.'

He touched the multicolored agate statue with a tentacle and shoved it into his storage then read the description. 'Previously living slime beast, agate and they generate curiosity? I guess that's better than causing everyone that sees them to panic or lose sanity.'

Myst snuck a quick glance at the half of the chamber that didn't have anything crowing or moving around in it. 'Solid wooden tables, burners and beakers with brightly colored liquids straight out of a mad science movie. Worry about the junk later, you've got a monster that can turn things to stone behind you. It's quick but it's turning them into stone one at a time, I just need a decent amount of cover and I can probably sneak a quick look.'

He spent the next minute chain casting his combat rabbit spell to flood the room with targets then took a quick look in the direction of the crowing, hoping the creature wasn't intelligent and watching him. He yanked his attention away from the chained up abomination that looked like a featherless chicken with patches of scales covering its body. 'Yeah, someone broke the ugly stick when they made that.'

'Considering the glowing runes on the chain, I doubt the beast is going anywhere,' he mused as he 'walked' around the room collecting the statues, doing his best not to look in the creature's general direction. He ignored the last couple of creatures being turned to stone as he read the description on the humanoid statue, 'Annoying Mage: Decoration: This magical statue increases your mana regeneration by one point when placed in an appropriate location and has a decent chance to increase the happiness of anyone that interacts with it. Warning, curing the petrification will result in an annoying minion that will decrease the happiness of everyone that has to interact with her.'

"Probably just as well that I can't cure people," he said thoughtfully as he reached a tentacle up and pulled one of the slime statues out of his storage at the end of his tentacle, letting it hit the ground and break into several pieces. He moved the largest chunk of the broken statue into his inventory and checked the description. 'Broken statue, possibly created by an ancient society? Seriously? Okay, at least it's not mentioning anything about reversing the spell.'

He dropped the broken statue back on the ground then dropped another slime statue on the broken remains from six feet up. He glanced at his mana pool to make sure he had enough to cast his spell then cast his float stone spell, creating five units of Float Stone (Agate) in his storage and leaving part of the statue's head behind. "Wasn't expecting that to actually work," he admitted as he checked the description of the new type of float stone, skimming over the part that was the same as the rest of the float stone. 'You can change the colors and transparency of this stone when it's placed, ranging from transparent to merely translucent.'

'That's going to make farming easier, assuming I don't run out of patience.' Myst glanced at his mana bar then his HUD's clock. 'Five seconds.' He opened his enchanting menu and dropped the mage's statue into the box for reverse engineering enchantments. "Three, two, one." He hit the button when his mana jumped to fifty seven, causing a progress bar to appear. 'If this works, I'm going to have to make a lot of statues.'

He watched the progress bar fill, doing his best to ignore the crowing of the abomination and the sound of metal sliding over stone as he waited for the progress bar to finish. He relaxed a touch when the progress bar filled up and he saw the description of the new enchantment. 'Mana Generating Statue: One thousand mana and a statue created from a magical material provides one point of regeneration per minute. Not bad if you ignore the fact that it's almost as expensive as upgrading my mana directly, which means there's probably a point where upgrading my mana regenerating isn't going to be nearly as cheap or maybe finding gems is supposed to be a pain in the ass?'

He opened the menu for his mana pool and dropped one of the agate slugs into the box, causing the gem counter to jump to full. 'Okay, that makes things easy or at least easier than I was expecting. Now I just need to figure out a decent way to pay for the upgrades that isn't tainted as hell.'

He glanced at the mana scales icon on his HUD. 'Fifty eight.' He cast his rabbit creation spell then used his possession ability on the slime that appeared when he noticed that it was facing the wall. He watched as the slime he'd just jumped out of pounced on the combat rabbit that he'd just summoned.

'Sorry, not sorry,' he thought when the crystal covered slime turned to look for more sources of food and was turned into agate, leaving the mana scales embedded in the statue. He reached out with a tentacle and shoved the statue into his storage then looked at the statue's description. 'Magical Slug Decoration: The statue allows a magic user or a group of magic users to attune themselves to the statue and use it as a battery as long as they're within a mile of the statue, this particular statue can store fifty nine mana. That matches the number of stacks from the mana scales.'

He dropped the magic statue in the box in his mana menu and smiled when the mana counter jumped fifty nine points. 'Okay, even if I can't chain them together, I should be able to use them as fuel.'

Myst spent the next couple of minutes carefully 'walking' around and collecting all of the statues, wanting to make sure he didn't accidently glance at the cockatrice. Carefully set the magic slug statue on the ground and focused on it. "Activate? Work?" He concentrated and pushed a little mana into the statue, causing a pop up to appear. 'You can only be attuned to one statue at a time without the proper training, do you want to attune to this statue?'

"Figures." He tapped the accept button, causing his available mana to jump by fifty nine points. 'That should give me enough magic for the extraction spell.' He carefully set the statue of the annoying woman on the ground in front of him. 'Sorry, but I can't change you back right now and the description implies that you'll cause a lot of trouble if I restore you, so you'll just have to wait until I have enough magic users to deal with you.'

He cast the magic extraction spell on the petrified mage, creating a glowing blue gem and causing the statue to crumble and turn into sand. "Shit!" he cursed as he touched the pile of sand and shoved it into his inventory. 'Sand with trace amounts of magic, useful for building sandcastles or for meditation gardens. Yeah, so much for fixing everything when I get enough magic.'

'At least the description implied that she was a bitch,' he told himself as he started chain casting his rabbit creation spell, wondering if he should feel bad about it before putting it out of his mind.

0o0o0

Harry sighed as he found himself back in the void for the seventh time. "I don't suppose you can tell me what killed me this time?"

"You stepped on an explosive trap," the voice said.

"I don't suppose there's a skill for dealing with traps?" Harry asked hopefully, tired of dealing with the absurdly lethal traps in the goblin filled cave.

"St Trinians has a class for dealing with traps. Would you like to take the class and help Professor Vanessa with her demonstration?" the ethereal voice asked.

"Can I come back to slaughter more goblins later?" Harry asked.

"Of course," the voice assured him.

"I'll take the class," Harry told her. He glanced around when he found himself in the entryway of an old fashioned school that had seen better days. He stared when he saw part of a chalk outline of a body on the ground that someone had partially covered with a rug.

"Can I help you dearie?" the woman standing by the desk asked Harry.

Harry pulled his attention off the dark stain on the floor that was partially covered by another rug and looked at the woman that appeared to be in her sixties who was wearing a cheap business suit. "Ms. Vanessa needed my help with a demonstration."

"Ah yes, Mr. Potter," the woman replied with a smirk as she gestured towards the stairs. "Up the stairs and the second door on the right."

"Sure…" Harry trailed off as a fat teenage girl 'fell' over the balcony. He stared in shock when the girl hit the ground, smacking her head on the ground in the process and knocking herself out.

"Pork is back on the menu!" a dark haired girl called out from the second story.

"Ms. Crenshaw!" the woman near the desk snapped when she looked up and noticed the broken railing on the second floor. "Take Ms. White to the k-" she glanced at Harry, "infirmary then report to shop class and tell him that someone needs to repair the balcony."

"Of course," the girl replied and casually flipped off the balcony, landing next to the unconscious and possibly dead girl like she hadn't just jumped down from the second story.

Harry stared as the dark haired girl wearing black grabbed the fat girl by her legs and started hauling her down the hallway, leaving a trail of blood on the floor. "That hardly seems safe."

"Don't worry, Ms. White has a thick skull," the woman replied with a smile.

"Where is Professor Vanessa's class again?" Harry asked, trying to pretend that everything was fine so that she didn't send him to the kitch- infirmary.

The woman gestured towards the stairs. "Second door on the right, please ignore the screams coming from the first door, the girls are practicing their interrogation skills."

"No problem," Harry replied as he headed for the stairs, wondering if this was what the boarding school that his uncle wanted to send him to was like. He did his best to ignore the first door when he heard a guy screaming for help. 'He's probably just an actor, no point in ruining the lesson,' he lied to himself as he walked over to the second door. 'Do I knock or just open the door? Considering the lesson, barging in is probably a bad idea.'

He reached out to push the doorbell and froze when he realized that the casing was metal and that there was a loose wire soldered to the metal. 'Yeah, you don't normally have doorbells on the inside of buildings or make them out of metal, you'd have to be as stupid as Dudley to touch that,' he thought as he reached out and knocked on the wooden door.

"What do you need?" Vanessa called out from inside.

"You mentioned needing me for a demonstration," Harry replied.

"Ah, Harry, let me disable the explosives on the door," Vanessa replied as she hurried over to disable the trap that she'd left on the door to keep the other teachers from bothering her.

"Explosives?" Harry asked warily.

"Don't worry, they're more like firecrackers," Vanessa replied as she finished disabling the trap and opened the door. "You're a bit early but you're welcome to take a seat and listen to my lecture about criminal behavior and the law before we get to the demonstration."

"Otherwise known as how to get away with all sorts of shit on account of technicalities," one of the girls offered as Harry walked into the room, her eyes roaming up and down his body.

"Swear jar," Vanessa ordered as she closed the door and rearmed her trap.

"Thanks." Harry glanced over the class filled with attractive teenage girls that were wearing matching skirts and blouses decorated with a St Trinian's patch that seemed to range from twelve or thirteen to seventeen or eighteen all of which they’d altered in unique ways either to add color or remove portions to display a bit more skin.

"Come on, that's hardly swearing," the girl complained.

"I'm aware but you're supposed to be practicing for court, which means you need to keep a civil tongue," Vanessa pointed out as Harry walked over and took the only empty seat. "Can someone explain to our guest why good behavior is important?"

A busty red haired girl raised her hand in the back row then explained when Vanessa gestured in her direction, "How you conduct yourself in court reflects on how the judge and the witnesses view you, if you're a foul mouthed little harlot, they're going to toss the book at you even if you don’t happen to be guilty of that particular crime."

"Correct," Vanessa offered with a smile. "Now, I believe we were just getting into a discussion about the legalities of possessing explosives and the acceptable responses when the police catch you with said explosives. Any suggestions?"

"Bribery!" one of the girls called out while one of the younger ones called out, "Blame being framed!" while one of the more busty girls called out, "Seduction!"

'Dudley is a rank amateur,' Harry thought as he listened to the creative and in some cases horrifying suggestions from the ‘innocent’ looking girls.

Vanessa spent a minute writing the suggestions on the board then turned and looked at the class. "Any other suggestions?"

"Merc the cop and hide the evidence," one of the girls suggested.

Vanessa shook her head, not even bothering to hide her smile. "I can't legally advise that course of action and that ties into tomorrow's lesson on witness tampering and how to make sure it doesn't happen to you. Before we go through the list of suggestions and figure out a legal way to accomplish them or at least a way to accomplish them that won't result in more charges, does anyone have a legal suggestion on how to deal with the matter?"

"Get a permit," the busty redhead suggested. "If you flirt with someone in the records department, you can usually get a permit for just about anything. That's assuming you can't pass the required tests or lack the dosh for the fees."

Vanessa laughed. "We'll file that under quasi legal solutions."

Harry relaxed a touch as the lecture got underway and the girls stopped looking at him like he was a delicious slab of meat.

0o0o0