Dungeon Myst Part 18 (Patreon)

Myst selected the option to sacrifice people again to summon another teacher then watched the video. He frowned when he noticed the person they summoned looked like a typical drill sergeant wearing shorts and a t-shirt.

"Mr. West, this sadistic gym teacher from L.A. makes the students play dodgeball, run suicide runs and play various team sports until they're ready to fall over so they'll pay more attention in the rest of their classes. He also has the basic teaching talent which means he can handle ten students."

"Any negatives?" Vivian asked.

"He has a tendency to toss wrenches at troublemakers to work on their reflexes so I'll probably have to keep an eye on him," Myst replied as he assigned the man to a teaching slot and hit the button to summon another teacher. "Worst case, we'll pull him if he starts flattening too many gremlins."

"That's not a bug, it's a feature," Vivian replied cheerfully, not seeing a problem with running the gremlins ragged.

Myst blinked when a green haired man in a straight jacket appeared in the summoning circle. "Nurse Inks, sadistic bastard… kills unhealthy students. Teaches anatomy by using students as test subjects, lovely."

Vivian stared at Myst. "Why the hell would you want him around?"

"Because assigning him to a teaching slot decreases the absence rate for students in the school playing sick by forty percent," Myst explained as he assigned the nurse to one of the teacher's rooms and assigned him to teach the cooking class. "He's also extremely effective and boosts all of the student's anatomy experience by fifty percent. I stuck him in the cooking class, he should be super effective."

Vivian shook her head, reminded of some of the demons she knew. "Assuming he doesn't kill everyone. We're going to need a safer school."

"I'm aware. I want to wait until I can unlock an academy," Myst explained as he selected the option to summon another teacher, killing nineteen gremlins and destroying a bunch of undead.

"Speaking of cursed structures, is there anything else you can make?" Vivian asked.

Myst pulled up his construction menu while he waited for the video clip of the summoning to finish and looked for new options. "Oh, I can build a jail to make money off of captured adventurers."

"Are you going to build it?" Vivian asked.

"Yep," Myst replied as he placed a jail on his main platform then assigned the construction team to build it. He looked at the options for additional structures he could add to the school and bought the nurse's office.

"Cursed Infirmary of the Mad Unlocked, Infirmary unlocked."

Myst looked at the new infirmary and stared when he noticed the option to generate insane nurses with razor blades for five mana each. "Huh, the infirmary gave me the ability to generate insane nurses that will drag anyone walking past the door into the infirmary at night so they can kill them."

"I wonder if that counts as a negative trait or if they have magic," Vivian mused. "Does it have an option to train nurses?"

"I doubt they're magic users, that would be useful," Myst replied as he started heading for the nearest well. "The option to train nurses is grayed out, probably because I haven't assigned a nurse."

"Can you replace or upgrade the infirmary?" Vivian asked as she followed him.

Myst scowled when he noticed that the option to remove the infirmary was grayed out. "I can't remove it, probably because it's cursed. I'll probably have to fill the five slots with nurses before I can upgrade it and I'm not sure I want to," Myst admitted, figuring the school was safer without the nurses.

He pulled up the new teacher's sheet and looked at it. "Takeda Yodo? This unlucky bastard is a harem anime protagonist that has a history of getting pulled into alternate worlds. While he's a horrible teacher and has a tendency to attract homicidal relationships, he's an amazing administrator. Negative trait: Bad teacher, reduces the students he can teach by three. Trouble Magnet: Insane girls."

"Might be nice to have someone that can run the school," Vivian suggested.

"Probably," Myst agreed as he assigned the teacher to one of the basic teacher rooms, dropping the gremlin into a student slot. He looked at his upgrade options for the school. "Student shop, headmaster's office, gym, locker rooms and a cafeteria."

Vivian laughed. "Your school is a cobbled together mess."

"I'm aware," Myst complained as he tossed agate, mist crystals and frost iron wood into the box for the headmaster's office and hit the button. He stared at the rounded frost covered tower that appeared near the top of the leaning tower, serving as a counterweight for the tower.

"Headmaster's Tower of Voyeurism unlocked."

"Could be worse," Vivian replied, rather amused by the suggestive shape of the tower.

"Sure," Myst replied half heartedly as he opened the menu for the headmaster's office. "Not sure how to feel about the headmaster spying on everyone but it should be fine for gremlins."

"Spying on everyone?" Vivian asked.

"The enchanted ceiling allows the headmaster or the deputy headmaster to spy on every part of the school, reducing troublemaking by five percent."

"That would be useful for a security center if we could duplicate the enchantment," Vivian mused.

"I'll put it on the list," Myst replied, figuring having the ability to spy on the city would make things a lot harder for adventurers to sneak around his city. "Filling the slot for the headmaster lets me set general rules for the school and basically gives me an advisor for school policies. It also lets me assign a deputy headmaster to help reduce troublemaking by one percent."

"Sounds useful," Vivian admitted as they reached the well. "What are you thinking?"

Myst assigned Takeda Yodo to the headmaster slot then assigned Jessica as the assistant headmaster and looked at the options. "Huh, I can have the headmaster train the assistant and the assistant has a chance to pick up a random administration talent."

"Do they still count as teachers?" Vivian asked.

"The deputy can, the headmaster can't, which is just as well considering Takeda's lack of teaching ability." Myst assigned Jessica to work on picking up the basic administration package then looked at the requirements to build a student shop. He tossed the required wood into the box and hit the button.

"Moo Girl Ice Cream shop unlocked. Student Store unlocked. Demonic Dairy unlocked."

Myst opened the menu for the student store. "Interesting, I just built a student store that increases the happiness of the students that buy ice cream from them."

"Does that mean we get free ice cream?" Vivian asked hopefully.

"Sure," Myst replied as he floated over the well and cast his create food spell, creating an ice cream cone in her hand and nine plates of food that dropped into the well along with the slime beast the curse created.

Vivian laughed. "That's not what I meant but I'll take it."

Myst fiddled with the options for the student store, trying to figure out how everything worked. "It looks like I have to have the inventory which means I'm going to have to build a dairy or plant a bunch of ice cream squashes. On the upside, I can assign students to the store and they'll get experience in math and basic customer service skills. I can also pay ten mana to teach the clerks a spell to summon a cowboy hat and a choker with a bell on it which seems to be the shop's uniform which explains why working there degrades modesty."

Vivian stopped licking her ice cream cone. "Probably for the best considering the boost your naked classrooms give the students. Can you even get cows?"

"Let's find out," Myst replied as he pulled up the Demonic Dairy pattern. "Demon infested farm that produces cursed dairy products and allows the workers to summon demonic cows that drop loot when killed and will try to eat everyone other than the farm employees."

Vivian shook her head. "At least the gremlins are on their own platform."

"Yeah," Myst replied as he paid the mana to move his core to the cave under the workshop on the off chance that the demon infested farm spawned monsters that ran wild, creating a slime beast that dropped into the well.

Vivian scowled as she thought about dealing with a dungeon filled with slime beasts. "The mist stones are going to make clearing the dungeon a nightmare."

"The skeleton knight already moved the cave under the workshop, the mist should cause the monsters in the dungeon to mutate and rip each other apart or melt. Once everything is done, I can use a slime beast to pick up the stones and rabbits to clear the mist which should purify everything."

"That's probably easier than trying to send a bunch of half trained gremlins to kill everything," Vivian admitted.

"Hopefully." Myst tossed the stone and a couple of mist crystals into the box for the dairy then added ten units of divine tainted wood. 'That should be suitably chaotic and twisted.' He filled the rest of the required wood with frost iron wood and hit the button. He placed the farm on the platform with the school and paid the mana to instantly create it, using a bunch of mist stones to afford it.

"Eldritch Dairy of Frozen Hell unlocked. Eldritch Dairy unlocked. Frozen Dairy unlocked. Dairy unlocked."

Myst ignored the slime that fell into the well as he pulled up the menu for his new dairy. He stared at the picture of the innocent looking snow covered barn with a vertical crack in space near the back side of the barn that was glowing with a pulsing blue light. He pulled his attention away from the peaceful looking scene and looked at the available options. "The dairy has some interesting options if you're insane."

Vivian stopped licking her ice cream cone long enough to ask, "That bad?"

"It lets me convert minions into insane cultists by tossing them into a strange rift. I also have grayed out options to sacrifice minions to boost the quantity or quality of the milk one of the cows produces and summon demonic cows that can be used for milk and farmed for loot by adventurers. It has five slots for ritualists and ten for cows. It has a grayed out option to upgrade the barn."

"What type of dairy products can you make?" Vivian asked, curious what the dairy could make.

Myst pulled up the list of products. "Butter, cheese, cream, ice cream, milk and yogurt. It looks like I can turn the cream pumpkins into cream, cheese and butter without any side effects which is useful."

Vivian nodded. "Are you going to make some cultists?"

"Yeah, I just need to pick the right minion," Myst replied as he tapped the option to create a cultist and looked through his list of available minions, looking for someone that he wouldn't mind sacrificing in case something went wrong. 'If I use an idiot, that might cause trouble but I don't want to waste someone important or useful.'

He selected the blind ritualist and hit the button to turn him into a cultist, figuring the ritual skill would help him summon the cows. He felt slightly guilty as he watched a short clip of a blind gremlin stumbling around near the barn only to get shoved into the rift by another gremlin. "Yeah, I'm starting to hate gremlins."

"They're annoying," Vivian agreed.

Myst frowned when the video showed the ritualist getting tossed back out of the rift with his right arm transformed into a glowing purple tentacle filled with dozens of eyes that seemed to move around when they closed. 'That's fucking horrifying. Is that because he was blind or was it just random chance?' he thought as he pulled up the information on the cultist and looked at his new traits. "Not sure he's playing with a full deck anymore but we can probably remove his Flayer and Glory of the Noodle God traits with the right teachers."

"Glory of the Noodle God?" Vivian asked warily.

"He likes to cut people's big toes off and sacrifice them to his dark god as tribute."

Vivian stared at Myst. "The people or their toes?"

"Their toes," Myst replied as he spent the one hundred mana to summon a demonic cow, causing a short clip to appear showing a cow with glowing red eyes coming out of a pentagram on the stone floor of the barn. He pulled the cow's sheet up and checked her stats. "Huh, the cow has a hostile trait, she'll try to kill anyone that isn't one of the farm hands."

"Does she have magic?" Vivian asked, wondering if it was worth turning them into minotaurs.

"Twenty points and a cold affinity," Myst replied as he looked at the amount of milk he'd get from the cow each day. "Five galleons of corrupted magic infused milk per day, I'm not sure what that does exactly but we'll have to experiment."

"That sounds like a good way to drive people insane or turn them into demons," Vivian mused.

"We can probably figure out a way to purify the milk, if not we'll stick with using the cream pumpkins," Myst replied as he spent the mana to create another demonic cow. He ignored the slime beast that dropped into the well as he looked at the new cow's sheet. He sighed when he noticed that the cow didn't have any magic and just gave five gallons of corrupted milk a day. "So much for farming the cows for affinities and magic."

"No magic?" Vivian asked.

"Nope," Myst complained as he spent the mana to summon another cow, creating another slime that dropped into the well and a third cow. "Considering the cows don't require mana or food, the dairy should make a decent amount of gold, especially if we can upgrade the quality a couple of times."

"Nothing like a bit of blood magic to improve your fortunes," Vivian agreed. "Are you going to create more cultists or are you going to upgrade the school?"

"Both, just give me a minute to check my list," Myst replied as he pulled up his list of gremlins with the ritual skill. He added one of the ritualist's twins to the second slot and frowned slightly when it gave him a notice that she didn't know the proper rituals. "At least the system didn't complain that they weren't cultists."

"Does that mean you can get rid of their negative traits or teach the rituals?" Vivian asked, figuring that would be easier than dealing with cultists.

Myst double checked the cultist's sheet. "The cultist trait won't let them talk about the rituals with outsiders but it's a mental trait so we might be able to scrap the trait and keep the ability to summon cows. It's worth checking."

He selected the best gremlin ritualists he had other than the twins that Vivian had created and queued them up for getting turned into cultists then hit the button. He watched the clips of the various cultists getting random limbs replaced by tentacles then glanced over the collection of negative traits. 'Kidnapper? Pyromaniac? Tentacle rapist? Yeah, you need to fucking die.'

Myst assigned the entire ritual team to a class with Ms. Raspberry then gave them caffeine laced apples to make sure they'd misbehave and get replaced with saner copies. "At least the job doesn't seem to conflict with being a student."

"Cool," Vivian replied with a grin.

"I think I'll just leave the cows for the moment," Myst said as he moved the dairy menu off to the side and pulled up the list of additions he could add to the school. He tossed the required wood to create a gym into the box then hit the button.

"Iced Gym unlocked. Gym unlocked. Arena unlocked."

Myst pulled up the new gym's menu. "I unlocked an ice gym. The frost covered floors increase the chances of someone slipping and falling but constant training in the gym will occasionally increase the students' agility, chance decreases the higher their agility."

"That would be fantastic if we actually had a medical team," Vivian said thoughtfully.

"Yeah," Myst selected the locker room pattern and tossed in the wood, stone, agate and metal that he needed into the box and hit the button.

"Cursed Locker Room unlocked. Unisex Locker Room unlocked. Locker Room unlocked."

Myst looked at the description for the Cursed Unisex Locker Room. "These cursed lockers have showers that occasionally go ice cold while people are using them and the benches are cold enough to be uncomfortable."

"That's evil," Vivian complained with a shiver.

"Yeah, I should have expected that considering the wood is always cool," Myst admitted as he selected the cafeteria and tossed in the required material, figuring he'd need it for the other school.

"Student Run Cafeteria of Delight unlocked. Student Run Cafeteria unlocked."

Myst pulled up the cafeteria menu. "One slot for a head cook, five for student cooks and two slots for lunch monitors. It looks like the cooks get a decent amount of cooking experience and the lunch monitors get experience in Diplomacy and Intimidation."

"Huh, that's actually useful. What do you need to upgrade it to an academy?" Vivian asked, curious how close they were.

Myst looked at the requirements to upgrade the school. "I need at least two hundred students which means I'm going to need more teachers and forty seven students." He swapped back to the main page of his school menu and selected the option to sacrifice a bunch of townsfolk to create a teacher.

"That's easy enough, just send the best gremlins to the square in front of the school and I'll start making twins," Vivian said, looking forward to seeing what they could do with the academy.

"No problem," Myst replied as he got to work.

0o0o0

"Your aunt took that surprisingly well," Richard said as he glanced around the basement apartment, trying to get a feel for the boy that had woken his sister up and that his granddaughter was obviously attracted to.

"He wasn't the nicest person to live with," Harry replied, implying that he'd been an abusive bastard all around and hoping that they'd drop it.

"Enough snooping, let's go," Sarah said as she headed for the door that led to the tunnels they'd be using to get to the manor.

"I wasn't snooping, I was just thinking that I might need to look into hiring a couple of wizards to build a bunker under the house," Richard replied as he followed Sarah into the tunnels.

"I know you mentioned the rules against telling people about magic but I'm surprised that you never said anything about magic to your family," Hermione complained.

"Your father stopped believing in Santa when he was four and he never showed any signs of having magic so I figured there wasn't a point in telling him that magic exists if he didn't get a letter," Richard explained.

"Sorry," Hermione said, wishing she could fix it considering how much her grandfather loved fantasy.

"It's not your fault and I made my peace with it a long time ago," Richard replied. "I have enough magic to see ghosts and various other creatures and ignore muggle repelling charms but not enough to use a wand."

"What did you end up doing for a living?" Sarah asked as she led them through the surprisingly clean tunnels.

Richard glanced at the magical torches that were lighting up as they walked. "I own a decent number of rental units and I manage the family's investments in the magical world."

"Nice…" Sarah trailed off as one of the house elves appeared with a crack.

"Mistress Sarah has returned!" Tipsy squealed as she jumped up and hugged Sarah.

"Nice to see you," Sarah replied as she hugged her favorite house elf.

Hermione stared at the house elf as it rubbed its face against Sarah's chest.

"This is Tipsy, Tipsy, this is my grand niece Hermione and Harry is the person that woke me up," Sarah told her elf.

Tipsy glanced between Harry and Hermione. "Thank you for waking Missus Sarah up, she is special and not mean."

"Sorry, I shouldn't have told you to stay here, I wasn't thinking," Richard offered.

"You were forgiven a lot time ago Mr. Richard," Tipsy assured him. "Can I have a hug?"

"Of course," Richard replied, relieved that she didn't hate him despite his stupidity after the war.

Tipsy teleported into Richard's arms and hugged him. "Does this mean we can keep fixing your property?"

Richard laughed. "That explains so much and yes, you can keep fixing things. Does Marley know?"

Tipsy nodded. "Missus Marley has been great, she fixes the noticeable things and we fix and clean the rest."

"Missus Marley?" Sarah asked.

"I hired a muggle-born witch about ten years ago for a summer job. She decided to stay on after she graduated Hogwarts because I pay well and it leaves her a lot of free time," Richard explained.

"Do you like cleaning?" Hermione asked the odd little humanoid with large eyes that was wearing a pillow case that had been tailored.

"Of course, I hates dust!" Tipsy complained.

"How come her room was dusty?" Harry asked, having wondered about that considering the hallways were dust free.

"Previous Missus Granger forbade us from going into her room because we were crying and sad, she died before she could change the order," Tipsy admitted.

"I rescind any previous orders that I've given," Richard stated, wanting to be clear.

"Good, some of the property needs painting, I have ideas!" Tipsy teased.

"I probably deserve that," Richard admitted as they continued walking.

"Why would forty five year old orders matter?" Hermione asked.

"House elves are bound to magical families or places, in exchange for absorbing excess magic we have to follow orders," Tipsy explained.

"Excess magic?" Hermione asked.

Richard explained, "Witches and wizards often push more magic into their spells than they actually need, resulting in a build up of magic which is what lets some of the more annoying magical pests form. House elves are basically magic sponges, they soak up the excess magic in an area so that we don't have nasty magical fungus or dark creatures spawning."

"So it's a trade?" Hermione asked, trying to wrap her head around the concept.

Sarah nodded. "They're also part of the family."

"We like work," Tipsy assured them.

"Have you had enough work?" Sarah asked as they passed a branching tunnel.

"We could use more but keeping the farm running and the manor clean, updating the library and making sure Master Richard's properties are clean and in good repair keeps us satisfied," Tipsy assured her.

"How much have you been spending on the library?" Richard asked, surprised since he hadn't noticed an appreciable drop in the fund for maintaining the manor.

"Tipsy would have to check the account balance as Tipsy isn't responsible for updating the library. Tipsy should let the rest of the elves know that Missus Sarah is back," Tipsy said, then teleported back to the manor to let the rest of the elves know that Sarah was heading to the manor so they could assemble and welcome her back with style.

"Did she just dodge a question?" Hermione asked.

Richard laughed. "Yes, which probably means they're stealing books or doing something creative to make money and didn't want to explain."

"I'm sure it's fine," Sarah replied as she walked over and opened a vault door, revealing the family manor and the farm that surrounded it. "What do you think?"

Hermione stared at the stone large manor that was on a small hill that was surrounded by farmland then up at the top of the cavern that was illuminated by thousands of glowing lights. "How?"

"Magic," Sarah replied smugly then started explaining when Hermione gave her an annoyed look, "It's a combination of expansion charms and the fact that there's a slight incline to the tunnel which means we're actually about eighty feet below ground right now."

"The manor is under the park, the family wanted to make sure nothing was built over it," Ricard explained as he walked into the cavern. "I don't remember the farm being quite this extensive but it's been fifty years since I've seen it."

"She should have left a letter or something," Sarah complained, wishing her mother hadn't been quite as security obsessed.

"Don't worry about it," Richard told her, having long since come to terms with his parents' deaths.

Harry stared in shock when two dozen house elves wearing a random collection of pillowcases and hardhats appeared on the path in front of them.

"Granger house elves reporting for duty!" one of the house elves wearing a bright yellow hardhat called out cheerfully.

Sarah smiled at the familiar house elf, sort of curious where the rest of them came from. "Nice to see you Bob."

Bob smiled at Sarah. "We are happy that yous are awake!"

"We have prepared the master bedroom for you," one of the female house elves told her.

"Thank you Muffin. Did you expand the farm?" Sarah asked as she looked at the other familiar house elf.

"The previous Missus Granger told us to keep the library up to date. Unfortunately, the amount of gold she left for that purpose was going to run out so we had to take drastic measures," Muffin explained sheepishly.

"Drastic measures?" Richard asked, wondering what they'd done.

"We had to deal with wizards," Muffin complained. "We sells most of the produce to Hogwarts and Diagon Alley. We also make wine which we sell in the alley. Snickers can show you the account after you're settled in."

"Sounds good," Sarah agreed, glad that the elves seemed happy. "I only remember having five house elves."

"Family," Tispy said cheerfully.

"Let's head to the library. You can introduce everyone over tea. Do you still make those lovely shortcakes with strawberries?" Sarah asked hopefully.

"There are some in the oven," Tipsy assured her.

"Excellent," Sarah replied, looking forward to catching up and getting to know everyone and showing off the family library.

"Tea sounds nice," Richard agreed as they started walking down the path towards the three story mansion, curious if the elves were making a decent profit or if he'd have to make some suggestions.