Dungeon Myst Part 21 (Patreon)

Myst pulled his attention off the small group of gremlins that were milling around and picking fights with each other while they waited for him to extract their magic and focused on the unstable mana crystals piling up in his inventory that his minions had been collecting from the floating platform and around the structures that he'd made while the mana scale curse was active. 'Each crystal of unstable mana is worth between five and twenty mana and introduces a chaotic elemental in anything they're used for. They'll also occasionally explode if they're bumped too hard or someone whispers around them or looks at them funny, making collecting them a dangerous process.'

'Just as well I didn't rush to finish the other platform,' Myst thought as he dropped one of the rabbit statues into his Enchanting box and selected the enchantment that increased his mana regeneration. He added two hundred unstable mana crystals to the box and looked at the results. 'One mana, two mana, one, three? Two, one… still one, two, one. That explains why they're unstable.'

Myst added another eight hundred crystals and watched the numbers for the finished enchantment fluctuate. 'Six regen, eight regen… eleven, ten, seven, fourteen, six, yeah, doesn't seem to have a pattern.' He put his fingers over the Enchant button and waited until he saw a large number then hit it and started the process.

Myst stared at the enchanted statue's description. 'Placing the statue in your city will increase your mana regeneration by sixteen points and allows five people to attune themselves to the statue at a time and boost their mana regeneration by sixteen per minute as long as they're within the city.'

Myst glanced at his remaining collection of unstable mana crystals. 'Twenty seven, yeah, I'll have to wait a couple of hours.' He placed the statue next to the tree by the inn and grinned when his mana regeneration jumped by sixteen points. He turned his attention to the next gremlin on his list and cast his extraction spell, killing the gremlin as it attempted to toss a rock at one of the other gremlins and creating a magic granting gem. He tossed the blue gem into his storage with the rest of them.

'This is boring as shit,' Myst grumbled as he selected another group of gremlins and skeletons to create a magic user and pushed the button, trying to keep the number of magic users over two hundred. He opened his workshop menu and used twenty of the unstable crystals to pay to create more gremlins, curious how the crystals would change the gremlins. He glanced at the thirty two gremlins with progress bars that he'd just queued up then settled in to wait for his mana to regenerate so he could make the next magic granting crystal.

Myst frowned slightly when the video finished, giving him a magic using undead gremlin. He pulled up the abomination's character sheet. 'Five points of magic and a death affinity, just as well considering I don't have all that many gremlins with death affinity.' He ordered the new skeleton to the courtyard then queued up the next group of gremlins and undead gremlins to turn into magic users.

He spent a minute making sure all of his gremlins were assigned to various classes that matched their skills and specialties while he waited for the new gremlins. He pulled up the summary for the new gremlins and stared when he noticed that one of the twenty one gremlins with magic had an insane amount of magic. He pulled up the gremlin's sheet and looked at the green haired gremlin wearing a pair of flight goggles and a neon green bra that was stuffed with tissues and carrying a rune covered skateboard. "Morgana, sixty five magic? Wind, Water, Metal and Earth affinities? Fucking hell? Thirty agility and twenty vitality, five strength. Brilliant, antisocial and prankster traits. Mechanic and Pilot: skateboarding skills?"

He glanced at the description for the unfamiliar traits. 'Being around more than three people at a time results in loss of happiness and pranking people increases her happiness.' He glanced at her collection of spells. 'Conjure Vehicle(skateboard), Water Blast, Boost(Wind), Refine Ore, Conjure Ramp(Earth)? Sixty five magic, a name out of legends and she's a skateboard punk, figures,' he complained as he ordered her to report to the square so he could boost her magic before sending her to spend some time with Vivian.

Myst spent a couple of minutes assigning the new gremlins to classes and setting up another group of normal gremlins to get sacrificed to make a magic user. He twitched when he turned to look at the school to figure out what the strange sound was and saw an insane gremlin skating down the side of the leaning tower on a skateboard, flying like a bat out of hell.

"Fuck yeah!" Morgana squealed as she flew down the tower, picking up speed as she used her Boost spell to push herself even faster and stay on the tower. "Leaf on the wind!"

"Fuck," Myst muttered, fairly sure his new minion was going to kill herself but not able to look away.

Morgana cackled as she conjured a stone ramp at the bottom of the tower a second before she would have crashed, letting her zoom down the ramp and sending her flying through the air. She conjured another stone ramp as she dropped back towards the platform, letting her spin around and zoom back towards Myst. She jumped off her conjured skateboard in front of Myst letting it vanish. "Was that fucking awesome or what?!" she demanded.

"You're fucking insane," Myst replied, not sure what else to say.

"That's a yes!" Morgana squealed as she raised her hands above her head and danced around for a couple of seconds. "Oh, right, you called. What do you need, boss?"

"How would you like to be a cat girl and get some twins after I boost your magic?" Myst asked.

"Fuck yeah!" Morgana replied without hesitation and a smirk.

"I'll take that for a yes," Myst replied as he started using magic granting crystals on her, giving her Fire, Arcane, Lightning, Shadow, Cold, Death and Life affinities and another thirty five points of magic, bringing her up to an even one hundred magic. "That should cover the basics for affinities, at least until we figure out a way to improve everything."

"Awesome!" Morgana squealed as she looked at her character sheet and noticed the improvements.

"Can I have magic?" one of the gremlins on Myst's list asked.

Myst glanced at the gremlin with the stupid trait and used his magic extraction on him since he didn't have any useful skills or new spells. "No." He hit the next four gremlins on his list with the extraction spell, tossing the crystals in his inventory. "That should give us enough crystals to cover Egwene's affinities, I'll drop everything off then I'll come back and get the rest of you."

"Asshole," one of the gremlins complained.

Myst focused on two of his mist stones and cast the magic extraction spell on the gremlin that had insulted him, creating a blue crystal. "I'm aware," he replied as he looked at his new magic granting stone. 'Eight points of magic and grants fire or lightning affinity? Screw it, I might as well just grab everything, I can use the normal crystals to fill in the gaps.'

Myst smiled as he used the mist stones to cast his magic extraction spell, quickly going through the rest of the gremlins on his list. 'I'm going to need to figure out a better way to get the crystals if I want to boost everyone from Emond's Field but this works well enough for Rand and Egwene, especially if we can borrow a decent magic girl item.' He pulled a cream pumpkin out of his storage and set it down next to Morgana. "Eating this should turn you into a kitten so Vivian can turn you into a catgirl with better physical ability scores, then we can make twins."

"Catgirls rocks!" Morgana replied cheerfully then started eating the pumpkin, her overly large and sharp teeth making quick work of the top.

'Yeah, we might need an etiquette teacher,' Myst mused as he watched the gremlin of doom gnaw on the pumpkin. He smiled when the gremlin drank enough cream to transform into an orange kitten. "Are you ready?"

"Meow?" Morgana complained then looked down at her paws. She turned and looked at her tail then went back to drinking the cream.

Myst picked the kitten and the pumpkin up and started walking towards the inn. "Let's go…" he trailed off as his mana pool jumped by ten points then twenty points a second later, letting him know that something weird was going on. He started running when he heard the scream of a beast coming from the other platform.

0o0o0

"Are you trying to break the portal?" Sunny asked as her twin poked the strange stone frame carved with plants with her finger.

"No, the skeleton mage wanted to see if I could move the destination," Dawn replied as she twisted the mental dial she could feel, causing the portal to flicker and jump to a waygate on a different world if what she was feeling was correct.

"Pretty sure he wanted you to wait for him to get back from the school," Sunny pointed out.

"Details-" she jumped back from the portal when a beastman jumped out of the portal and tried to stab her with a crude sword.

"Shit!" Sunny cursed as trollocs started pouring out of the portal like a tide of giant rats.

"Die!" Dawn shouted as she pulled her lightsaber off her belt, turned it on and started hacking the beastmen apart. 'This would be so much easier if I had a couple of combat spells.'

"Hey!" Buffy shouted as she turned her lightsaber on and ran over to help Dawn kill the creatures. "Leave my sister alone!"

"Thanks," Dawn replied as she continued retreating as she cut the monsters apart, trying to keep the assholes from hitting her or from tripping on the corpses.

"What happened?" Buffy asked as she started cutting the monsters apart, not bothering with her usual banter.

"I was testing something for the skeleton mage, the portal jumped worlds and they started pouring out of the portal," Dawn complained as she continued killing the monsters.

Willow tossed a fireball from the second story window of the inn at the portal, doing her best to ignore the fact that she was naked and leaning out the window. "Fire in the hole!"

Dawn jumped back a second before the ball of fire slammed into one of the trollocs and exploded, consuming twenty of the creatures. "I'm going to need to close that."

"Just keep killing them!" Myst called out as he quickly spent the mana that had flooded his mana pool along with a couple mana scale covered agate statues and a magic granting crystal to boost his mana capacity, pushing it up by another hundred points. "They can't be endless and the more we kill the less the dark god has to toss at people," he pointed out.

"You just want the mana," Dawn replied with amusement as she continued slaughtering the trollocs that were pouring out of the portal, rather happy that her armor was good enough to deflect the occasional hit because she wasn't a jedi.

"Nothing wrong with getting paid twice!" Myst replied as Rand stepped out on the balcony, summoned her bow and started shooting the trollocs as they stepped out of the portal, each arrow putting a fist sized hole in a trolloc.

'What the hell?' Egwene complained as she followed Rand outside and saw the beastmen rushing out of the portal. She glanced between Dawn and Buffy then quickly tossed up curved walls of air on each side of the portal to let the trollocs spread out a touch while keeping them from fleeing and making them bunch up to fight Buffy and Dawn.

Morgana started tossing water blasts at the trollocs once Myst floated up so that she could hit them without hitting the girls fighting them, causing the monsters to lose their footing and making it a lot easier for Buffy and Dawn to pick them off. "Meow!"

"You tell them," Myst said, making a note to pick up some more combat spells and a decent host so that he didn't feel useless the next time they were attacked. 'At least I'm getting mana and they're getting experience.'

Buffy took another step back and hacked two of the demons apart as the creatures continued charging at her, trying to crush her with the press of bodies. "More fireballs!"

Willow tossed another fireball into the horde, trying to break them or at least give Buffy and Dawn a break. "I'm working on it!"

"I need a weapon," Sunny complained as she dashed over to where Myst was hovering in the air holding up a spell casting cat.

Myst pulled the fighter's axe out of his storage and tossed it to Sunny with his left hand. "Make sure none of them get to the inn."

"I can do that," Sunny replied, relieved that she wouldn't have to jump into the meat grinder as she didn't have any defensive gear.

Danelle and Maple rushed out onto the other balcony of the inn and started raining down fireballs on the horde of trollocs that were threatening to overwhelm Dawn and Buffy, reducing most of the trollocs to burned corpses.

Rand shot the eyeless humanoid that jumped out of the portal in the head, causing him to collapse and start twitching as the trollocs fell over and died.

Myst ignored the mana pouring into his mana pool as he focused on the twitching fade and cast his magic extraction spell before Buffy could walk up and cut its head off, creating a blue gem and giving him two hundred mana back as the fade died. "What happened?"

"Your skeleton mage wanted to know if I could shift the portal's destination, I twisted the destination and monsters started pouring out of it," Dawn explained as glanced over the dead monsters, looking for signs of life.

"Makes sense," Myst agreed as he tossed a couple of statues with mana scales into the box with a magic granting crystal that gave fire affinity and pushed the button, pushing his mana capacity up to seven hundred before the extra mana from minions and picking up the fire affinity.

"That's it? It makes sense?" Buffy demanded. "You should tell people before you play with something that can unleash a horde of demons!"

"That's fair," Dawn admitted.

"You could…" Buffy trailed off when she realized that Dawn had agreed with her. "That's it?"

"I wasn't expecting them to charge me, I figured I'd have enough time to shut the portal down but I jumped backwards to avoid a sword and just kept moving backwards because there were too many of them," Dawn explained as Vivian rushed out of the inn now that the monsters were dead.

"Next time, ask for some backup," Myst suggested as she floated back to the ground and set the kitten on the ground. "Vivian, can you turn the kitten into a catgirl, she's on the list for getting twins."

"No problem," Vivian replied as she walked over.

Buffy took a breath then let it out when she realized that Dawn had handled the combat side of things better than she'd been expecting. "Backup is always good."

Egwene let the shields drop then jumped down and walked over. "I need better combat spells."

Rand jumped down and walked over. "You kept them from running."

"I'll put them on the list," Myst assured her, surprised that she hadn't used fire.

Vivian focused on the kitten and used her ability to change animals into beastkin, changing the kitten into a busty red haired teenage catgirl with cat ears and a fluffy tail that matched her hair.

Morgana looked down at her hands and breasts and started giggling, ecstatic that she wouldn't have to stuff a bra anymore. "Thank you!" she squealed as she pulled Vivian into a hug.

"You're welcome," Vivian assured her as she returned the hug.

"Can you turn the portal off?" Myst asked Dawn. "I don't want to get ambushed in the middle of cleaning things up."

"Sure." Dawn walked around the corpses in case they were playing possum, touched the plant carved stone frame and flipped the mental off switch she could feel, causing the portal to close. "That should do it."

"Thanks." Myst walked over to the fade's corpse and grabbed his sword. He tossed the sword into his enchanting box and deconstructed it, getting two ingots of magical steel. He tossed the ingots into his storage then unhooked the fade's cloak and did the same, getting a bolt of phase silk.

"Speaking of portals that need testing, the other portal can take us to an infinite shop, a desert world and a magical base, does anyone want to test it while we're here?" Dawn asked hopefully, figuring some shopping would take Buffy's mind off the attack.

"I could do some shopping," Buffy admitted, wanting a couple of extra pairs of shoes.

Egwene glanced at the portal that connected to the village green. "That's the portal we need to get home, right?"

"The portal is stable, I should be able to close it and open it to the same place," Dawn assured them.

Myst turned to look at Vivian. "Have you had enough cuddle time with Egwene and Rand to make the twins?"

"And Mat and Perrin," Vivian replied with a grin as the skeleton mage ran over.

"What happened?" the skeleton mage asked as he stopped near the piles of partially burnt corpses, a bit upset that someone had set them on fire and it hadn’t been him.

"Dawn changed the portal and we got attacked, animate everything you can and toss the rest of the bodies in the cursed well on the gremlin platform, the mist should eat it," Myst ordered.

"I'll get started," the skeleton mage replied as he started animating the dead trollocs.

Myst gestured toward the inn. "Let's go inside, I've got a bunch of magic granting crystals, we can sort out everyone's affinities then you can get twins and I'll see if I can make some magic transformation devices that are worth a damn."

"Sounds good," Rand agreed, looking forward to increasing his mana pool and having a way to stay male while enjoying the extra magic.

Myst headed for the door to the inn, wanting to get things sorted with the people from The Two Rivers so he could head to Star Wars and pick up a turret and a gunner so that he could make sure he wouldn't get attacked by any more ships.

0o0o0

Hermione studied the silver ring with a curled up cat and a sapphire for an eye that Harry had handed her then looked at Harry. "Are you sure this is going to work?"

Harry pulled his attention away from the target dummy that Sarah was tossing curses at and looked at Hermione. "Eighty percent."

Hermione raised her eyebrows. "Eighty?"

"I have a good feeling about the ring but it's not an exact science," Harry admitted, wishing he still had access to the system as it made getting exact numbers easy.

"That's often the case," Richard offered, doing his best not to laugh at the frustrated expression on his granddaughter's face.

"Is there a reason you didn't test it?" Hermione asked Harry.

"I can't, I used a trick to tie the ring to the first person that uses it. I don't want people stealing or summoning your ring and it gives the ring a bit more oomph at the 'cost' of making it less useful," Harry explained.

"Oomph?" Sarah asked with amusement.

Harry shrugged. "I tried for a boost in Power but it might boost her control or her ability to learn, I was trying for power but the training boost wouldn't be a bad thing."

"Not control?" Hermione asked, surprised that he was treating extra control like a bad thing.

Harry shook his head, thinking about what his magical foci skill had dumped into his head when he'd finished the tutorial. "Control enchantments are good on speciality tools that you need for precision but they're basically a crutch on your main focus which means you're better off with something that helps you learn and boosts your power. Control should come with practice."

"Isn't the power boost a crutch as well?" Hermione asked.

"Not really, you'll get there eventually and you can always overcharge your spells to give your magic a workout," Harry explained. "Just test it, worst case, you can always use it as a backup focus and get a wand from the alley."

"How do I use it?" Hermione asked, wishing it came with an instruction manual.

"Put it on your finger and push magic into it," Harry suggested.

Hermione slipped the ring on her finger and wiggled it around, surprised that it fit perfectly since it had looked a bit too large when she was holding it. "How do I push magic into it?"

"Point it at the target and just think about pushing energy into it," Harry suggested.

Hermione pointed her fist at the target and tried to think about the ring doing something. "It's not working," she complained after about twenty seconds of nothing happening.

"You're over thinking things, just think about the target grabbing a bunch of books and burning them…" Sarah trailed off as the supposedly flame resistant target dummy caught fire and started to burn.

"Success!" Harry said, glad that her focus had worked as well as he'd been hoping.

Hermione stared at the burning target dummy then looked down at her ring. "Was that me?"

Richard laughed. "It wasn't me."

Hermione glanced at her grandfather then focused on the target dummy. "Is there a spell for putting fires out?"

"Several," Sarah replied as she waved her wand at the target dummy and shot a stream of water at it, putting the fire out with a bit of effort. "We should probably check the library and look up some spells, no testing them in the library though."

"Of course not," Hermione agreed quickly. "Why didn't we stop there first?"

"Because then we wouldn't have finished the tour," Sarah teased. "Besides, the practice range is a good place to test new wands or magic rings and seeing is believing when it comes to magic."

"Where is the library?" Hermione asked, excited about seeing an actual magical library.

"Through the door in the den, you pull the candlestick holder and the wall vanishes," Sarah replied as she left the room.

"Seriously?" Hermione asked her grandfather.

"My mother liked secret passages, it reminded her of school," Richard said as they followed Sarah down the hallway.

"They're sort of neat," Hermione said, thinking about some of her favorite books that had secret passages in them.

"Something to research," Harry mused as he followed them down the stone hallway. "Can I ask what the magical world is like?"

"I'm not sure I'm the best person to ask but I'm not the worst," Richard admitted after a couple of seconds of thought. "If I had to pick one word to sum up the wizarding world it would be lazy, why learn to properly make a house when you can just glue it together with spells that you have to refresh every couple of years? Why change a tradition when it's worked for a couple of hundred years? Never mind that no one actually remembers why it started or learned its history."

"To be fair, the history teacher is horrible," Sarah complained as she walked into the den.

"Why don't they replace them?" Hermione asked as they walked into the den as Sarah walked over and pulled a candle stick, causing the wall to vanish, revealing a doorway to a rather large library.

"He's a ghost, which means he's cheap," Richard explained, having heard his assistant complain about the 'man' on more than one occasion over the years.

"That's horrible," Hermione complained.

Richard smiled as he followed the group into the library he hadn't seen for fifty years. "I think the elves have been busy, this looks a lot larger than I remember."

"At least double!" Sarah squealed as she hurried over to the new section and started looking at the spines of the books.

"Ooh…" Hermione said as she looked around the large room that was lined with bookshelves filled with old fashioned leather books.

"And we've lost them," Richard teased, only half joking.

Harry glanced at the table in the middle of the room then at the comfortable looking chairs then stared at the room that probably had more books than the local library.

A house elf with a floppy hat and a pair of glasses stood up so he could look over the back of the chair at the group and asked, "Can Index help Missus Sarah?"

Sarah turned to look at the familiar house elf. "Did you move the first year books?"

"Please forgive Index but there was an accident with a sorting charm and things had to be re-sorted twenty years ago," the house elf explained, trying not to remember the day one of the children had tried sorting the entire library with magic. "They should be with the rest of the Hogwarts books on the green shelves."

"Thank you," Sarah replied as she headed over to the green bookcase that was bolted to the stone wall and started looking through her old books for something that would help Harry and Hermione get some practice. "What happened?"

"One of the house elves was trying to sort everything using magic," Index admitted.

"Did it work?" Sarah asked.

Index shrugged. "Everything landed on the table in order of publication, which isn't as useful as by subject."

"Makes sense," Sarah replied as she removed her first year charms book and walked over to the table. "We can look up a couple of spells then we can head back to the range to practice."

"We've got time though I'll have to find a phone eventually," Richard said, wanting to call his wife before it got too late. 'At least Hermione was staying for the week anyway, stupid dentist conventions.'

"Master Richard can use phone in the den," Index suggested.

"You have a phone?" Richard asked in disbelief.

"Several," Index replied with a grin, thinking of Bob's collection of old phones. "Most of them even work. Just press nine if you want to dial out."

"Do you have a number?" Richard asked, curious how they'd set the service up.

Index shrugged. "Bob never mentioned a number, just that we can make calls."

"Ah," Richard mused, figuring the elf had spliced into the phone line. "I'll be right back, don't let any of the books eat the children."

"What?!" Hermione blurted out.

"Don't worry, that hasn't happened in years," Index assured them.

Sarah turned to look at Index. "When was the last time the books ate someone?"

"Fifty five years, you'd gone off to Hogwarts and your father had a business associate over, he dogeared a page."

"Makes sense," Sarah replied as if the books eating people was perfectly normal.

"Hmm," Hermione mused, not sure folding the corner of a page deserved getting eaten but decided that he was probably a repeat offender so it might have been justified.

Harry glanced between Hermione and Sarah and made a mental note to be really careful of the books while he was here.