Dungeon Myst Part 30 (Patreon)

"How long until it explodes?" Myst asked the gremlin tinker as he studied the brass scope that looked like it would be right at home in a steampunk movie.

"It's not going to explode," the gremlin engineer complained.

"Are you grumpy because I'm questioning your abilities or because it's not going to explode?" Myst asked as he picked the brass scope up and tried to judge the weight.

"Yes," the gremlin replied without hesitation.

"That's fair," Myst admitted as he brought the 'X-ray' scope up to his eye and looked at the wall, finding it a bit weird to see the solid wall with one eye and a translucent wall with the scope. He moved the scope around a bit, trying to see if motion made the experience worse. 'Yeah, that's annoying.' He closed his left eye and continued looking around for a minute, making a mental note to track Moody down and get a scan of his eye so he could make a pair of X-ray glasses.

"Sorry to interrupt but are you the person I talk to about getting magic?" Jason asked as he stepped into the workshop and looked around.

Myst turned to look at the dark haired man in mid twenties who was wearing a black t-shirt, a pair of black boots and cut off shorts that were probably made from the Ikea employee uniforms given their bright blue color. "Generally. What's your name?"

"Jason Smith," Jason replied as he showed him his dog tags, trying to avoid the usual song and dance about people thinking he was lying since his last name was dirt common. "Buffy rescued us from Ikea. She mentioned that you might have a couple of jobs that would let us pick up magic and stick around."

"That depends, are you a religious nutcase?" Myst asked, thinking about the nuns that Thea had already tossed through a portal to Harry's world because they'd started complaining about sin and hell when they'd noticed how many girls were walking around without clothes.

Jason shook his head. "Nah, I was raised Catholic but it never stuck. I'm a soldier or I was before Casey and I went shopping for a new gaming desk after an unfortunate incident with a drunk idiot and we got stuck in Ikea hell."

"Cool. Between the nuns and the cultists, I figured I'd check," Myst replied, glad that he wasn't crazy.

"To be fair, the pasta guys just liked fucking with the nuns, they were a bit annoying," Jason offered.

"That's fair," Myst agreed. "Speaking of morals and ethics, do you have any moral objections to shooting a bunch of slavers?" he asked, thinking about the Seanchan.

"Not particularly," Jason admitted. "Provided they actually deserve it and it's not because the slaves are criminals or have gambling debts they're paying off."

"Have you ever heard of the Seanchan?" Myst asked.

"Wheel of Time?" Jason asked thoughtfully.

"Yes," Myst agreed, glad that he wouldn't have to explain everything.

Jason smiled as he thought about meeting some of his favorite characters. "I've read the books, most of them at least three times. The show was awesome!"

"Seriously?" Myst blurted out.

"Not a fan?" Jason asked, wondering what was wrong with the guy.

"The casting director should have been shot," Myst complained.

"What's wrong with Emma Watson for Moraine? I mean, I know she's a couple of inches too tall but it's Watson and Viggo Mortensen nailed it for Lan! I mean, I know he's getting a bit old but damn, it was awesome," Jason argued.

"Huh, okay, I need to figure out how to get to your version of Earth because the version we got sucked. Watching the first season was like pulling teeth and I only watched it so that I'd have a 'right' to complain, way too much woke bullshit."

"Woke bullshit?" Jason asked warily.

"They made the Two Rivers multicultural, rather than an isolated farming town like it was supposed to be and turned Mat's mother into a drunk."

Jason winced. "That doesn't inspire a lot of confidence about the show considering the isolation was actually important and his parents were decent people, he just liked pranks."

"The bits and pieces I caught of the second season were better but yeah, not exactly epic storytelling," Myst grumbled.

"That sucks," Jason complained. "Just to make sure things actually match up with the books, the Seanchan are ruled by an Empress and they're going to return to the mainland to conquer everything and enslave channelers, right?"

"Yeah, from what I can tell the version of the Wheel of Time that one of my portals connects to is about a year before the main part of the story starts. Of course, things went a bit weird for the Two Rivers because someone introduced a magic girl curse to the town seven years ago that seriously skewed things."

Jason raised his eyebrows. "Magic girl curse?"

"It basically gives someone with magic or a supernatural power the ability to transform into a magical girl with boosted physical stats, twenty extra points of magic and the ability to see a symbol that gives a clue towards which magical abilities people have for the small cost of some of your modesty while transformed."

"Not much of a downside. Did Mat end up changing?" Jason asked, figuring he was the token normal member of the group, at least to start with.

"Yeah, I'm not sure if his luck or his old blood counts as a magical ability but one of them gave him enough magic to pick up the ability to transform. His special ability involves making portals."

"That's interesting," Jason mused, already thinking about ways to use a portal on a battlefield. "What's with the scope?"

"It's magitech," Myst replied as he handed the scope to Jason. "Take a look."

Jason looked through the scope and blinked when he realized that he could see through the wall. "I don't suppose you can make ammo that phases through walls?"

"That would be nice…" Myst trailed off as he realized that phasing ammo was entirely possible if he was shooting magic users. "Huh, that makes my crazy idea a lot less crazy."

"What was your crazy idea?" Jason asked as he played with looking through different walls and objects, wondering if he could talk Myst into letting him keep the scope after the job as part of his payment.

"I was planning on using armor piercing bullets to shoot through wooden walls or windows but your question reminded me that I have a way to enchant things so they'll phase through anything that doesn't have magic, which means you could be sitting half a mile away and snipe the sul'dam and the damane with paintballs that we've turned into portkeys."

"I doubt you'll get a paintball gun that can shoot that far or that you'd want to shoot at someone if you overclocked the gun and froze the paintballs so they didn't splatter. Are you using portkeys as a descriptive thing or is Harry Potter real?" he asked.

"The multiverse is a weird place," Myst replied with a grin. "Joking about distances aside, what sort of gear and support would you need to deal with the sul'dam?"

"Bare minimum?" Jason mused as he handed the scope back to Myst. "I'd need people in the stedding to deal with the people I tag and I'd need a way to identify my targets when they're not walking around with leashes. Ideally, I'd want a way to move around quickly and the defensive gear from the Ebou Dar storeroom or a copy and an entire suit made out of fancloth, unless you have a ring of invisibility or something that will do the job better than a warder's cloak. I wouldn't object to boots of spider climbing or something that lets me fly if you have it and it feels really weird to be talking about magical items like they're real."

"I'm aware," Myst agreed with amusement.

"I can rig up some goggles that should let you see magic users," the gremlin offered.

"That would be great," Myst told the gremlin then focused on Jason. "I should be able to round up some people to work on containing the prisoners, Harry has the ability to make knockoff seven league boots and I know a couple of witches that can teleport which means they should be able to teleport into the storeroom in the tower and steal some cloaks and possibly copy some of the ter'angreal the Tower has stashed away if we let them borrow the scope."

"Let's swing by the inn and grab Casey, he's pretty good at turning vague ideas into actual plans," Jason said as he turned around and left the workshop, looking forward to playing with a bunch of magitech toys.

"Works for me," Myst agreed as he followed Jason.

The gremlin cackled as he got to work making a pair of goggles.

0o0o0

Dawn finished chewing the Swedish meatball that she'd snagged from the tray. "How many extra parts do you need?"

"You can never have too many," Al replied as he worked on pulling the last of the tubing out of the diet fountain drink he'd cracked open, figuring no one would miss it, especially since it would regenerate over the next couple of days.

"Makes sense," Dawn replied, fairly sure he didn't know what he was doing and was going to poison anyone that drank the 'alcohol' that he brewed.

"Are you going to stand there or are you going to help?" Buffy asked Dawn as she set the coffee machine that she'd liberated on the cart so that she could start grabbing some of the hotplates and heat lamps or at least disconnecting them so they'd cool down.

"You wanted a lookout, I'm providing a valuable service," Dawn replied as she headed over to the soft serve ice cream machine.

"Valuable service?" Buffy asked skeptically.

"I'm scouting for valuable machines to steal," Dawn replied cheerfully. "Myst has a dairy, we might as well grab the ice cream machine."

"You realize the shit will turn people into demons, right?" Buffy asked.

"Not if we have the girls purify it and the girls are working on a permanent fix to that problem anyway," Dawn replied, knowing Tara and Firma were trying to fix that particular problem.

"Fine, whatever, I'll grab the ice cream machine if you take some of the heat pads and heat lamps apart, Michelle wanted some heat lamps for a project," Buffy said as she walked over, handed Dawn the screwdriver and picked the ice cream machine up.

"Sure," Dawn replied as she snagged a pair of oven mitts by the oven then headed back over to the hotplates to grab a couple more meatballs and to get started taking things apart.

“You’ve been remarkably mellow lately,” Buffy said suspiciously.

“I’ve finally been getting rid of some pent up stress with someone who won’t lose their soul or forget to call in the morning,” Dawn said, “which is something you’ve been getting recently as well, so I’d say we both have reasons to be mellow.”

“That is a good point,” Buffy admitted to herself as she walked the ice cream machine over to one of the carts and set it down then looked over the rest of the machines. "I grabbed the coffee beans and the coffee machine, that should keep us in coffee for at least a couple of weeks, any other ideas?"

"Soda, light shades, jars of jam," Dawn mused.

"You should probably grab most of the food, I doubt anyone is going to complain as long as we add some things to it, like pasta or beans for tacos," Al suggested as he walked over and dropped the tubing in his box of supplies.

"Might as well," Buffy agreed as she walked over and grabbed a pastry that they used to promote their jam. "The pastries smell pretty good."

"They're good," Al agreed, still not sure why most of the people had complained about the lack of variety, it was loads better than the charred shit that passed for Peg's cooking or would have if that woman had ever actually cooked anything.

0o0o0

Myst pulled his attention away from his mana pool menu and focused on the skinny red faced young man that had just stalked over to where he was sitting, fairly sure he was one of the 'pasta cultists' that Buffy had recruited. "Yes?"

"This is fucking bullshit!" Eric complained as he shook his essay at him, less than happy that the asshole wasn't going to give him magic and that he'd marked the shit out of it with red. "Beth doesn't even have an associates degree and you're giving her magic, what the fuck, man?"

Myst glanced over at where Beth was talking to Raven and Rain near the door to the kitchen then focused on the red faced asshole that had written a crappy essay that most of his English teachers would have tossed in the trash or the fireplace. "Honestly? I liked her essay and she agreed to help with the school calendar and work in the student store when she wasn't going to classes. In other words, she was willing to put actual effort into her pitch. You didn't."

"So, she gets a pass because she's willing to fuck a girl on camera? I'll totally fuck a girl for magic, I need a volunteer!" Eric shouted.

"Go fuck yourself with a tire iron!" Beth told him, tired of his passive aggressive shit from the last two months, especially since he couldn't sing for shit or keep a rhythm and claimed to be a music major.

Eric gestured violently at one of the other guys that had come with them. "Adam wrote three fucking words on his easy! Why the fuck are you giving him magic?!" he demanded.

"I actually wrote four," Adam replied, not taking his eyes off the girl he was flirting with.

"Because I liked his essay," Myst replied with amusement, not seeing any problem with someone writing 'Because magic is awesome!' as an answer for why they wanted magic, compared to Eric's badly written essay filled with dubious statements about making the world a better place that didn't match his personality from the couple of minutes that he'd talked to him before he'd given him the essay, especially since he hadn't bothered to use capitals or punctuation.

"It was four fucking words!" Eric ranted, losing the last of his cool.

"It was honest," Myst replied as he dropped a thousand units of gems into the box along with a magic granting crystal from a gremlin and hit the button, boosting his mana regeneration. "To be clear, I'm giving Beth magic because she had some interesting ideas and because she's a pleasant person, the fact that she's willing to help with the paper and did a project on her local newspaper so she has a better idea how they're supposed to work is just a bonus."

"Whatever!" Eric snapped. "I'm not one of the popular students so I'm fucked! Where the fuck can you drop me because you're a fucking cunt and this shit is rigged!"

Myst stared at the asshole for a couple of seconds then shook his head, wondering if the young man had been dropped on his head as a child. "You need to make a choice because you've worn out your welcome, you can either head back to the infinite Ikea or I can open a portal but you can't stay here. Your choice of portals includes Star Wars and a town filled with demons."

Eric briefly considered the two options. "I'll take the demon town, if you're not giving me magic, I'll find someone that will."

"Works for me, let's go," Myst replied as he left the inn. 'Fucking idiot.'

Eric glanced at the group that he'd been hanging out with for the last two months then followed the man out of the inn. 'I'll make a deal and sacrifice some idiot's soul for power then I'll come back and kill them all.'

Myst waited for the young man with a poorly concealed death glare to walk out of the inn then walked over to the portal to Ikea, touched the frame with his hand and swapped the portal to Star Wars. 'No point in giving him access to demons on the off chance that he can buy magic or make a trade.'

Eric jumped through the portal and immediately and blinked when he realized that he was in the middle of a desert. "What the fuck?!"

Myst closed the portal, fairly sure the asshole couldn't cause all that much trouble on Tatooine since Anakin's mother had left with Padme from what Dawn said. "Maybe a couple of weeks on an alien world where you have to work for water will give him some perspective."

"Or he'll just end up dead," Xander said as he walked over.

Myst glanced at the surprisingly quiet Scooby. "Issues?"

"No, I would have left him somewhere worse," Xander admitted, not particularly impressed by the things he'd said to some of the girls. "How many people do you think will end up staying?"

Myst swapped the portal back to the infinite Ikea, wanting to make sure the chain of skeletons could continue looting. "The strippers that were hanging out with Al were working themselves through art school so they'll probably end up staying since we have some really cool art teachers, one of the other girls was a chef and one of them was a librarian which should make the school's library a lot more useful. Most of the pasta religion group will probably end up staying for a couple of weeks while they work on skills. I've already explained that I'm going to stab them if they do something that summons an eldritch horror, pasta based or not."

"Seems reasonable," Xander agreed.

"The accountant just wants to get back to a normal life so we'll probably give him a stack of gold coins and drop him in Harry's world."

"Probably for the best, he seemed a bit twitchy." Xander took a couple of steps away from the portal when a group of six skeletons dragged one of the employees through the portal and stabbed it to death with their rusty knives. "Have you figured out what you're going to do with the monster corpses?"

"Leah wanted to grind her skinning so I'll probably just let her skin them and toss the remains back through the portal to encourage them to swarm the portal for the mana or I'll toss them in the ocean for the fish."

Xander glanced towards the school. "How long do you think it will take to finish the dorm?"

"At least a couple of hours, I need to finish enchanting the rest of the rooms, then I need to toss up some dividers and furnish everything. With any luck, I'll unlock a template that I can use for the dorm to speed things up in the future."

"Do you want some help?" Xander asked.

"Sure," Myst replied, wanting to have a chance to calm down before he dealt with the rest of the idiots that Buffy had recruited.