Mist of Shadows
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Dungeon Myst Part 26
🕑 Added 2023-11-14 06:20:36 +0000 UTC"Hey!" a gremlin complained as he dodged out of the way of Myst stepping on him. "Watch where you're going!"
"Sorry," Myst offered as he pulled his attention off Lara's naked behind and concentrated on walking down the hallway and not stepping on gremlins. He frowned when he noticed that he had several warnings informing him that half of his miners were exhausted. "Weird," he muttered as he looked at the mining logs. 'Huh, eldritch stone, mithril ore, mithril ore, eldritch stone…' He looked at the description of the eldritch stone. 'Over the last several thousand years this pale blue stone has absorbed some of the magic inherent in the mithril it was mixed with, granting it exceptional strength and durability and making mining it a challenge.'
'I'm going to have to train a couple of undead to do the actual mining or use a magic girl,' Myst mused as he tossed two hundred units of Eldritch Stone into his Enchanting box and selected the Flamemarble enchantment. He waited until they reached the infirmary then pushed the button and started to go through the process of enchanting it. "Go ahead and break the curse, I need to enchant some stone blocks for the new classroom."
"No worries," Lara replied as she reached out with her senses, trying to figure out the source of the curse.
Egwene took her time looking around at the strange tools, wondering what they were used for since she didn't recognize half of them and the half that she recognized seemed strange.
Myst was barely halfway through turning all of the stone into Eldritch Flamemarble when Lara blasted an obviously fake medical degree from Arkham Asylum that someone had hung on the wall, causing it to fall to the ground and disintegrate.
"Curse Broken, Eldritch Infirmary unlocked."
Lara stared at the remains of the framed piece of paper. "Sorry, I wasn't expecting it to fall apart."
"Don't worry about it, you broke the curse," Myst assured her.
"Fantastic, does that mean we can take classes?" Lara asked hopefully.
"I should have a couple of classrooms completed by the time you get to the other school," Myst assured the girls as he continued working on enchanting the stone. "I'll send the invites once I have a better idea which classrooms I've created."
"Thank you," Lara replied cheerfully as she slipped past Myst and headed for the exit.
"I'll swing by the inn and tell everyone." Egwene slipped past Myst and rushed to catch up with her twin, looking forward to learning more magic.
'There's something wrong with being that enthusiastic about school,' Myst thought as he finished enchanting the stone. He dropped the enchanted stone into the box for the classroom then tossed in two hundred units of mithril, pushed the button and paid the thousand mana to complete the room.
"Expanded Nudist Classroom of Sex Education and Magitech Tinkering Classroom acquired and unlocked. Upgraded Rooms unlocked."
Myst looked at the upgrade option. "Okay, I can pay two hundred stone and a thousand mana and I double the classroom's capacity from five to ten, that should help," he mused as he pulled up the description for his new classroom.
'Standard thirty percent for being nude and it doubles crafting experience for a week, nice. It gives a ten percent chance to unlock a talent based around toy creation and a two percent chance per class to unlock additional talents. Experience for Enchanting and Magitech Crafting as if you'd finished ten modest projects, in addition to whatever you get out of the lesson? That could fill in some gaps until we get more schematics. Every lesson will be adjusted to include Magitech and Anatomy, giving experience for each depending on the lesson and how well it fits. If the lesson includes Sex Education, the students have a five percent chance to lose a derangement or negative mental trait per lesson.'
'Even if they just take the class once a week, that's a hell of a crafting bonus,' Myst thought as he left the infirmary and headed towards the magical forge, glad that he had a map of the school because it was a bit of a mess in terms of layout. He pulled up the skill lists for his teachers and compared the numbers, trying to figure out which teacher to stick in charge of the class.
He was a touch annoyed that the only 'teacher' with a magitech skill was Takeda Yodo and his skill was only a three. 'Okay, I just need someone that's a better teacher to pick up the skill and then we can go from there.'
He checked Jessica's sheet and smiled when he saw her administration trait. 'Administrator, this allows the headmaster to avoid various problems by being proactive and friendly. Reduces the chance of students acting out by five percent.'
Myst assigned Jessica to the position as Headmaster then dropped her twin into her old assistant slot. 'Best of luck Amanda.' He assigned Mr. Yodo to teach the new magitech class then tossed Ms. Winterbottom, Ms. Faust, Ms. Simpson, Ms. Frankenstein, Ms. Slickspeak and both of Nurse Inks' twins to the class, figuring they'd unlock the skill. 'Once they get the skill, I can have them grind it until they can teach the basics and Yodo can go back to being the headmaster.'
Myst pulled up the option to create a new teacher room and selected the Goth option as it seemed more amusing than the plain teacher's bedroom and he didn't want to make another Bedroom of Sin at the moment since he wanted a place for annoying teachers. He tossed two hundred units of the Eldritch Stone and fifty units of Blood Silk and faerie wood into the material box and hit the button, curious if the exceptional material would result in something interesting.
"Gothic Bedroom of Blood acquired and unlocked."
'Huh, this causes the teacher to grow pale and learn a spell to conjure a black and red cloak that drips illusionary blood. Staying in the room gives the teacher a five percent chance per night of gaining the ability to turn into a swarm of bats. Two percent chance per night of gaining the ability to turn into a wolf and a one percent chance to gain the ability to temporarily turn into a living cloud of mist. Huh, I'm sort of surprised that it doesn't come with a requirement to drink blood or at least a derangement to that effect.'
Myst assigned Yodo to the bedroom then closed all of his menus and stepped into the magical smithy. He glanced at the various crafting gremlins that were working on projects at various workbenches. He opened his Enchanting menu and focused on the magical forge until a little model of the forge appeared in the target box. He paid the required fifty mana to safely learn the enchantment.
"Hey, boss, did you need something?" a gremlin wearing a gremlin sized welding helmet asked.
Myst smiled when he picked up a pattern for a device that created fire that he could use to upgrade a forge or a smelter to run on magic rather than wood. "I need an anvil made out of Eldritch Adamant."
The gremlin considered the request for a couple of seconds then shook his head. "Do you have a team of ancient dwarven master smiths or a group of archmages?"
"Not currently," Myst admitted.
The gremlin shrugged. "Then I can't make your anvil of doom."
"I'll try something else," Myst replied as he opened the menu for the school's Magical Smithy and looked at his options. 'I should have looked at this before. One slot for the head smith, three slots for assistants, five slots for students, five slots for anvils and five for hammers.' He glanced at the gremlin's sheet that had managed to assign himself to the head smith slot. 'Hmm, three points of Advanced Blacksmithing and a genius trait, could be worse.'
He pulled up his minion list and sorted it by blacksmithing skill then assigned the best of the gremlins as assistants and students, making a mental note to check everything in a couple of hours. 'At least I have a decent amount of iron because of the dungeon nodes.' He glanced at the steel tools the group of gremlins were using. "Would Phoenix Steel hammers help?"
The gremlin shook his head. "I'd have to run some tests but I doubt it, the heat would be uneven."
"And mithril is too light, right?" Myst asked, wanting to make sure since magic might screw his expectations up.
"For hammers? Yes!" the gremlin snapped. "You want something with more weight but not as much as the impossible shit you want to make the anvil out of."
"Are you saying the Adamant would make a bad anvil?" Myst asked.
The gremlin snorted. "It would be a great anvil, we just can't work it. How much iron can we use to make projects?"
Myst glanced at his supply of iron, noticing that he had over a thousand units. "Five hundred units."
"I'll get the boys working," the gremlin promised with a wide grin. "We have jobs!"
"If I give you a couple of students, can you teach them everything you know about metals and smithing, they're already trained, they just might have gaps because they're from another world," Myst explained.
The gremlin nodded. "I'll take care of it."
"Thanks," Myst replied as he sent an invite to Perrin and Egwene as well as their twins to become students in the smithy or assistants since there were six of them and only five student slots. "Perrin has the smithing skill and Egwene has the channeling talents to manipulate metal and strengthen it which should make things interesting, especially if Perrin can fill in some gaps in your understanding."
Myst set the permissions so that Perrin's twins could access a hundred units of the Eldritch Adamant in case they wanted to try building an anvil with their metal manipulation ability. "If they need any exotic material, send a material request."
"No problem boss," the gremlin replied cheerfully as he got to work, happy that the boss was paying attention to the smithy.
'I should probably look into upgrading the head smith,' Myst mused as he left the smithy. He swapped over to the building option for the gremlin school and selected the Magical Solarium pattern. 'Dirt, seeds, glass, stones and wood. Do I want to head to the sand hills and toss a couple of lightning spells at the sand or should I just use the Abyssglass?'
'Might as well try the Abyssglass,' he mused as he dropped a hundred units of the magical glass into the box along with two hundred units of Eldritch Stone. 'I should probably see if the girls can remove the curse on the ice cream squash seeds so they don't cause lactation, at least on the ones I'm going to use. Wait, if I'm going to use it in the solarium, I should probably spend the mana to make a brain boosting squash.'
Myst shook his head as he pulled up his map and checked on Lara's location. "Okay, looks like she's on her way back from the inn. I should have them use the ritual on the inn so I can make sure it says clean…" he trailed off when several notices popped up informing him that a number of his non magic gremlins had just died. "What the hell?" he complained as he flew down the hallway, heading for the exit.
0o0o0
Buffy slipped out of her chair and jumped back when the image of Wilkins that she'd been trying to enchant pulled itself off the paper rather than animate like it was supposed to. "Shit!"
"Enchanting unlocked!" the voice told Buffy, sounding almost amused.
"Language," Wilkins said absently as he turned his head to get a better look at the small graphite figurine that was dancing on Buffy's paper. "Interesting."
"This is why I don't make with the magic," Buffy complained as she grabbed her lightsaber and turned it on, ready to kill it if it jumped at her.
"Don't kill it!" Sabrina snapped at Buffy as she took a couple of steps closer to Buffy's desk so she could study the enchantment. "You might break the enchantment."
"Isn't that a good thing?" Buffy asked, not taking her eyes off the figurine that was slowly waltzing across the paper towards her, not trusting the figure in the slightest because of what the teacher had said before and because it looked like Wilkins.
"Not when we're trying to learn new enchantments," Sabrina argued as she focused on reverse engineering the magic on the paper, wanting to figure out how to duplicate the enchantment before it failed because Buffy hadn't properly finished it.
"Is that a result of poor visualization or too much mana?" Hermione asked thoughtfully.
Xander glanced at Richard Wilkins then focused on Hermione. "I'm guessing both."
"Probably," Buffy agreed as the figure turned and started dancing back across the paper.
Sabrina snickered when she finished reverse engineering the enchantment on the paper and realized that the figurine was mostly harmless, if only because it couldn't actually leave the paper and didn't have a high enough strength score to pull anyone into the paper. "Relax, it couldn't hurt you even if it wanted to unless you were stupid enough to let it climb up your clothes and stab you in the eyes."
"Don't give it ideas," Buffy complained, ready to cut the figure in half if it tried.
Dawn snickered when she noticed that the teacher was trying not to smile and failing. "You're messing with her, aren't you?"
"Just a bit," Sabrina admitted. "Relax, it can't leave the paper."
Thea pulled her attention off Harry's image of Sarah and Hermione dancing on the paper in front of Harry and looked at the teacher. "Has anyone ever said you have a warped sense of humor?"
"Now and again," Sabrina replied with a grin that said she was well aware that her sense of humor was a bit off. "Did you manage to unlock a version of the Enchanting skill?" she asked Buffy, fairly sure the answer was yes.
"Yeah," Buffy replied as she focused on her new skill and opened her Enchanting menu. She frowned when she noticed that she only had one enchantment in her list. "How do we get more enchantments?"
Sabrina glanced around the room at the various students. "You should have a reverse engineering option or a button for learning from a schematic. The exact nature of the skills that you can unlock via training and experimentation varies."
"Does that mean we're screwed if our skill sucks?" Buffy asked, not seeing an option to reverse engineer designs.
"No, it just means that you're going to have to put some time into learning how Enchanting actually works so that you can expand your skill." Sabrina glanced around the room at her students. "Raise your hand if you have an option that lets you get patterns from studying enchanted items."
"Seriously?" Buffy sputtered when everyone's hand went up other than her brother's and her own.
"Sorry?" Xander offered, not sure what else to say.
"You can't win every time," Dawn offered, glad that she'd found something that she could beat her older sister at.
'At least I have both methods,' Harry mused as he glanced around the room, feeling slightly better about being the youngest person in the class.
"Keep your hands up or put them up if you have an option to learn enchantments from schematics," Sabrina ordered the class.
"Great," Buffy muttered in frustration when no one dropped their hands and Nathan raised his hand. "So much for learning enough magic to keep up."
"Don't worry about it, you'll be fine," Sabrina assured Buffy as she made a downward gesture for the students to put their hands down. "I was planning on spending the next couple of classes covering the basics, this just makes it easier. Since this is your first class, I should probably explain some of the quirks of the school."
"Quirks?" Hermione asked.
"Most of the classrooms and rooms provide special features or bonuses, the same is true of the various staff bedrooms, at least so far. Several of the bedrooms provide substantial bonuses if the teacher invites students back to their bedrooms for a bit of one-on-one instruction and fun."
"A bit of fun?" Buffy asked suspiciously.
"Anything from board games to massage and sex but it generally depends on the teacher and the student," Sabrina explained.
"Can we beat the shit out of the teachers if they try shit?" Buffy asked sarcastically.
"Absolutely," Sabrina assured her. "This is strictly voluntary on both sides, you're free to refuse and you're absolutely encouraged to report any problems to a teacher you trust or Myst. This isn't something we'd normally encourage but several of the bedrooms offer substantial magical benefits and we have ways to detect if someone is lying which should cut down on the bullshit."
"Like creepy professors?" Sarah asked, thinking about some of her old professors from Hogwarts that she wouldn't want to touch with a ten foot staff.
"Basically," Sabrina admitted.
"What type of benefits?" Hermione asked.
"Knowledge in a random magical skill that the teacher possesses along with a chance to permanently increase your cold resistance or your cold affinity for the frost themed rooms. The angelic themed rooms have a small chance to give you the ability to manifest angelic wings which let you fly."
"How much frost resistance?" the darker haired ex-minotaur asked thoughtfully, not seeing a problem with having sex with a teacher for the chance to increase her abilities.
Sabrina turned to look at the attractive and naked teenager with generous breasts and curves. "Five percent, it's not much but it stacks which means that you could eventually become immune to cold damage."
The girl smiled as she pictured tossing the teacher on a bed and having her wicked way with her. "Any time you want, I'm there."
"I'll keep that in mind," Sabrina replied with a smile, looking forward to taking the girl up on her offer.
"This is where you try to talk Nathan and I into visiting your room, isn't it?" Buffy asked, not quite sure how to feel about having sex with a teacher, even if she was smoking hot.
"Hopefully," Nathan said without any hesitation.
Sabrina smiled at Nathan then focused on Buffy. "It would certainly make it easier but I have office hours that don't require visiting my bedroom."
"I'm not going to turn down a chance to get extra help and magic abilities," Buffy replied with a smile, not seeing a problem with having sex with the teacher since she wasn't all that much older than she was and she had a quirky sense of humor.
"Let me hand out some schematics then I'll let you go," Sabrina said as she walked over to the desk and grabbed the stack of basic enchanting schematics that she'd written down. "You'll have to share but that shouldn't be a problem." She handed half of the stack of papers to Tara and the other half to Hermione. "Look through the schematics and practice what you can, see if you can get to the second or third level of Enchanting then take a break and get something to eat and chill for a bit, the next class should be in three hours."
"Is there an actual schedule?" Willow asked.
"Not currently, we'll figure out a schedule once we have a couple more classes," Sabrina assured them, not particularly worried about sticking to a schedule until they had a better idea what classes they needed to teach. "Now if you'll excuse me, I have a couple of students to have sex with."
Nathan smiled as he left with the teacher, reasonably sure it wasn't another Ms. French situation.
"I wonder if she offers extra credit," Hermione mused as Sabrina left with Buffy and Nathan following her.
"It's worth asking," Danielle said thoughtfully.
Wilkins shook his head. "We're avoiding extra credit that isn't offered to the entire class, mostly because Myst is trying to avoid any chance of abuse, some of the teachers at the other school should be set on fire."
"That bad?" Xander asked, wondering how bad they had to be for the Mayor's alternate to have concerns about them.
"The nurse over there is a sadist, Faust likes to trap people with magical contracts and Ms. Winterbottom has a nasty tendency to turn annoying students into plant monsters that she can cut up for her alchemy lessons."
"Cut up?!" Sunny blurted out.
"As in dead and gone," Wilkin replied bluntly. "Most of the staff should be in therapy, Myst has been working on it but all of the teachers have some screws loose."
"Including yourself?" Alexis asked.
"I've spent most of the last hundred and fifty years without my soul, even with the bindings making sure I didn't go completely off the rails, that sort of thing leaves a mark," Wilkins admitted.
"How did you get your soul back?" Alex asked Wilkins.
"The original demon that I sold my soul to didn't read the fine print and a demon hunter managed to kill the demon that possessed my soul a couple of years ago," Wilkins explained.
"How did you manage that?" Sarah asked.
"I paid an associate of mine to trick a mind-reading demon with gambling debts into loaning out his ability to read any language for a month while glamoured to look like a rival. I made a deal with a different warlock for a couple of hours of his ability to understand any language and used it to write a contract that included decorative runes around the edges spelling out the fine print. I was betting on the fact that he'd use this telepathy to make sure the contract was safe."
"At which point you erased your memory of the plan?" Willow asked.
Wilkins glanced at Willow, giving her a disappointed look. "I'm not in the habit of erasing my own memories, I merely removed them once I'd finished writing the contract and setting up some magical bindings on my behavior and personality. Before I removed my memories I gave one of my loyal associates a letter with instructions to burn the candle on my desk in an hour which gave me plenty of time to make a deal with the overworked demon that I'd set up a couple of weeks before. Since he didn't want to admit that he couldn't read the contract and he needed a quality soul to pay off some gambling debts, he merely scanned my mind to check the contract."
"How bad was the fine print?" Xander asked.
"I included a number of safety provisions and a caveat that my soul would be restored free and clear in the event of his death or the death of the person, creature or container that held my soul and that I'd get to keep my immortality free and clear. He immediately sold my soul to a group of demons that were interested in having a demon friendly city on a hellmouth and vanished."
"Are you planning on taking over the world?" Alex asked, wondering how much trouble he'd cause.
Wilkins shivered as he thought about the sheer amount of paperwork you'd have to deal with as the ruler of a planet. "Too much paperwork. Just keeping Sunnydale running was a full time job, I'm not going to ruin my retirement by trying to take over the world."
"So, you just get to win and walk off into the sunset?" Alexis asked.
"I'm not a Disney villain," Wilkins replied as he turned and left the classroom with a spring to his steps.
Thea watched Wilkins leave the classroom then turned to look at Xander. "Can I use that line?"
Xander shook his head. "Only if you find a world that needs a villain because the heroes are completely screwed up."
"Deal," Thea replied cheerfully as she headed for the door. "Let's grab some lunch."
"I could eat," Xander agreed.
