Mist of Shadows
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Population Boom, Azeroth
🕑 Added 2025-02-18 10:58:45 +0000 UTC"It's going to be strange without having to deal with the Dursleys," Harry admitted as he followed Mist and Hermione down the aisle, doing their best to avoid getting trampled by some of the upperclassmen that were in a hurry to get off the train so they could start their summer.
"Strange and relaxing," Mist offered, rather happy that the Dursleys had gotten stuck in a portrait since that meant he wouldn't have to come up with ways to dispose of Vernon's body when his 'uncle' inevitably said something terminally stupid. "Almost as weird as living with three sisters."
"You're always welcome to visit, I only have one," Ron told them as they reached the exit door.
"Thanks…" Mist trailed off as he stepped off the Hogwarts Express and found himself in an unfamiliar stone building rather than the train station like he'd been expecting. "What the fuck?!"
"How did you get here?" a woman demanded, wondering if the teenager wearing strange clothes and holding one side of a trunk was a new recruit or if he was an intruder that needed to die.
Mist turned around and froze when he noticed the severe looking woman wearing dark robes and a witch's hat that was surrounded by a black fog, letting him know that she was probably a seriously devout cultist or someone that abused the hell out of dark magic. 'So much for ending up in a nice location,' he mused as he glanced at the glowing green sludge that 'flowed' under the shoddy metal bridge she was standing on. "I stepped through a door and found myself here, where are we?"
"Deatholme," the necromancer replied, not seeing a point in lying.
"Ghostlands?" Mist asked, taking a wild guess because of the name and because of the glowing green sludge. 'That explains the black fog, she's probably a member of the cult of the Damned.'
"Yes," the necromancer replied as she studied the young man with piercing blue eyes.
"Huh, I guess the gnome, look out!" Mist called out and pointed behind the necromancer, as if he'd seen something horrible in the hallway behind the woman. He tossed an overcharged wandless stunner at the woman's back once she turned to look at what he'd seen. He wasn't sure if he should be surprised or not when his spell struck her in the back and she dropped like a puppet with cut strings.
'So much for having a nice relaxing vacation,' Mist thought as he walked over and poked the woman's hand, picking up the ability to make a clone. He opened his inventory, pulled out his Company cell phone and pushed the button to call the agent that he'd talked to in the diner.
"Sorry, I've got to take this," the agent told Ralph from accounting when her phone rang, happy for the distraction, since he didn't seem to get the fact that she wasn't into tentacle monsters.
"Right, work," Ralph replied as he left her office area, figuring he'd bother Bart, since the guy was always getting up to some trouble despite his caseload.
The agent frowned when she used her technopathy to check the caller ID and realized that Mist was calling from Azeroth. "Hey Mist, is there a reason you're in Azeroth?"
"I was hoping you could tell me," Mist admitted. "I was on the Hogwarts Express and when I stepped off the train, I found myself in a necromancer's tower."
"Let me check," the agent replied as she used her Technopathy to check Mist's file. "Shit!" she cursed when she read the note about one of the new techs activating an old summoning device without properly calibrating it.
"Shit?" Mist asked warily, knowing that hearing your case worker curse was never a good sign.
"I figured out why you're in Azeroth," she said as the elevator doors opened, revealing a curvy blonde teenager dressed in overalls with a tool belt around her waist. "One of the techs activated an old Isekai machine without calibrating it and teleported a bunch of freelance agents to Azeroth since their contracts have open contract information."
"Great," Mist muttered. "Do you have any good news?"
"I can save you fifteen percent on car insurance?" the agent offered dryly as the tech hurried over to her cubicle.
"I don't have a car," Mist replied as he rifled through the cultist's bags, fairly sure she was joking about the car insurance.
"Sorry," the agent offered as the tech hustled over. "Give me a second. What happened?" she asked the flustered tech.
"The notes said the Isekai device was schizo tech, they didn't say anything about the device having a secondary power supply or wireless capabilities. Nothing came up on the scans and the network techs claim that hacking the system should be impossible."
"That's because Rick went on a bender last month and upgraded the device because the network techs pissed him off and he took it as a challenge," Lisa called out from the next cubicle, having just put the pieces together thanks to the email she'd received.
The agent turned and looked at the girl with spiky blonde hair. "Is there a reason Maggie didn't file the paperwork? She's his handler."
Lisa sighed. "She was on vacation and the temporary replacement was stoned out of his mind because he was stupid enough to eat one of Shagwell's brownies. I would have checked to make sure all of the paperwork was filed, but I've been busy dealing with the paperwork for Taylor's vacation and Bart's excursion to get the office enough booze for the upcoming Christmas party."
"Please tell me the idiot is already gone?" the agent asked, feeling that anyone that ignored the various warnings about the man's super awesome trippy brownies wasn't someone she wanted working in the same building.
"Yeah," Lisa replied with a smile. "Maggie booted the intern into the skyblocks when she got back because she's going to be stuck in the office for a week fixing his mistakes."
Kara winced, knowing she should probably feel bad about someone getting booted through a portal but finding it hard since he'd caused a lot of trouble because he didn't pay attention to the warnings about not eating anything Shagwell baked without clocking out and possibly filing for vacation time.
"So, how long until we can retrieve the agents?" the agent asked, not sure what she was supposed to tell Mist.
"I don't know, the basic device should have bound the agents to their destination dimension for a year and a day but Rick's modifications might have changed that," Kara offered.
"I'll call Maggie, she should know where to find Rick," Lisa offered as she called her sister.
"Thanks," the agent replied. "We're working on finding a solution, can you hang tight for a couple of days?" she asked Mist.
"I'll make it work," Mist replied, hoping they could solve the problem so he wasn't stuck in Azeroth.
"Thanks, I'll let you know and don't try to teleport home, it might kill you," the agent replied then ended the call, hoping Maggie could track Rick down so they could get him to fix the device.
0o0o0
'Probably just as well that they aren't home,' Mist thought as he waited for the machine to answer the call.
"You've reached the Potter Residence, leave a message," Lily's voice came out of Mist's company cell phone.
"I'm alive and safe," Mist assured everyone, wanting to make sure they didn't tear the wizarding world apart looking for him. "I just got displaced to another world and no Sirius didn't put me up to this and I'm not joking. I'll explain a bit more once I get somewhere less crowded."
He ended the call and swapped the ringer to vibrate and stuck it in his pocket, wanting to make sure he didn't alert everyone in the area that there was a problem. He used his cloning ability and cloned the cultist, causing a naked woman to appear.
"Huh," the clone muttered when she realized that she was a clone and that she didn't actually care about the Scourge.
"Do you work for the Scourge?" Mist asked the clone, trying to figure out how far he could 'trust' the woman.
"Of course not, you're the boss," the woman replied with a smile that seemed a bit unhinged.
"Let me rephrase that, is she a cultist?" Mist asked as he pointed at the original that was sprawled on the stone floor.
"Without a doubt, she wants to become a lich so that she can unleash death and destruction on everything," the woman replied, sounding almost cheerful about the whole thing.
"Lovely," Mist muttered as he used a cleaning spell to clean the stone the clone was standing on and her feet. "Any particular reason?"
"Not really, I think she's just fucked in the head," the clone replied with a shrug. “Daddy issues, you know how it is.”
"Good to know," Mist replied as he conjured a pair of goat hide boots for the woman. 'At least Bellatrix had a reason for hating everyone.' He tossed the boots to the woman. "You should probably put these on unless you want to deal with infections."
"Not particularly," the clone admitted as she worked on putting the boots on, knowing it would be a while before she had enough power to turn herself into a lich and be immune to such mundane concerns as infection and cold feet.
"How many living necromancers are in the base?" Mist asked, trying to get an idea of what he had to work with.
"Twenty two, twenty three if Raten actually returns from his scouting mission, why?" the clone asked.
"Because I can't get patterns from corpses and we're going to need some help if we want to deal with the undead and the trolls," Mist told her. "What can you tell me about the local trolls?"
"The Amani? They're extremely hostile and bitter because the elves stopped them from taking over the world and stole the land from them a couple of thousand years ago. They also scream when you melt their arms off with death magic," she offered, sounding proud of herself.
"Is Arthas in Northrend?" Mist asked.
"Last we heard," the clone replied with a shrug. "We're just here to reanimate the dead elves so we can fuck everything up."
"Who's in charge locally?" Mist asked, trying to get an idea of when in the timeline he'd gotten dropped into things.
"Dar'Khan Drathir, he's a darkfallen and former Magister," she offered.
"How many of your fellow necromancers do you think you can lure back here without alerting the entire base?" Mist asked, hoping they could take out at least half of the cultists before they realized there was a problem.
"At least fifteen, they're not all that bright," the clone replied with a grin.
"Okay, strip the cultist and put her clothes on then see how many necromancers you can lure back here, once we have enough cultists, we'll start clearing out the undead."
"Do you want me to kill the cultist?" she asked.
"No, I'll deal with it once you've stolen her clothes, no point in setting her clothes on fire when you need them for your disguise," Mist told the clone.
"Have fun," the clone replied then cheerfully started stripping the original.
Mist waited until the clone finished getting dressed and left, then tossed the cultist sludge which quickly melted her, causing him to make a note to avoid falling into it. He conjured a corruption eating lab coat and put it on, causing books to start appearing out of thin air as the coat absorbed the tainted mana in the area.
'This is worse than Azkaban,' he mused as he turned invisible and started tossing the questionable spell books into the expanded chest in his inventory after checking them with his Observe skill. He wasn't particularly surprised when most of the spells seemed to be dangerous copies of spells that he was familiar with because of the Warcraft games. 'No point in conjuring a demon when it automatically attacks you, especially if it ignores everything else. Shadow Bolt Volley? That would be great if it didn't hit everything.'
'Shadow bolts? I'd probably need to check the runes, it seems suspiciously useful,' Mist mused, fairly sure he'd missed something. He froze when he realized that one of the books taught a spell to create large floating corrupted mana crystals that caused paranoia. 'This spell converts pure mana into a corrupt form, giving the crystal the ability to slowly corrupt anyone that uses it.'
"Screw it, it might work as a framework," Mist muttered and opened the cover of the book, burning the spell into his mind. He cast his Spell Creation spell and quickly pulled up his new spell, curious if he could fix it. He stared at the complicated collection of runes that controlled the corruption process for a couple of minutes then simply removed the collection of messy runes that also seemed to generate the paranoia effect, leaving him with a cheaper and far more useful spell that conjured a large floating crystal filled with pure mana that blood elves could probably drain to sate their lust for mana.
He took a couple of minutes to make sure the spell would work then created the spell crystal that would let him cast it. He put the crystal in his pocket and went back to collecting books while he waited for the next cultist.
Thankfully, it didn't take all that long for his clone to come back with two cultists.
"What the hell?" one of the cultists asked when a book appeared out of thin air and fell to the ground.
"See, that's what I was talking about," the clone lied.
"You said the tower was doing something weird, you didn't say anything about books appearing out of thin air," the other cultist said eagerly.
Mist hit the cultist on the left with a stunner then did the same with the other cultist when he turned to look to see why his 'friend' had dropped.
"Fantastic, why didn't you mention you could turn invisible?" the clone asked as she started stripping the cultists.
"You didn't ask," Mist replied as he walked over and touched the two cultists on their necks, picking up their patterns. He used his cloning ability and copied the cultists. "Strip the cultists. How much can you tell me about Drathir?"
"What do you want to know?" the male clone asked as he worked on stripping his duplicate.
"How many people would it take to knock him unconscious?" Mist asked, figuring it would be easier to just knock him unconscious and toss him in his inventory since he always seemed to come back in the game when someone killed him. "What are the wards like on his tower and does he have any magical defenses or guardians that would make it hard to sneak in there while invisible?"
The clone pulled his counterpart's robe on. "The wards shouldn't be all that hard to avoid, you'd just have to come through the top of the tower and he has a couple of abominations or gargoyles guarding his room, it depends on the day, he likes to change things up."
"Does he have the ability and power to create portals or teleport?" Mist asked, wanting to make sure he couldn't escape.
"He was a magister so yes, he can teleport," the clone warned him.
"Okay, that just means we'll have to take him by surprise," Mist replied as he went back to picking up the books that were still dropping.
"That's going to be messy," the first clone argued.
"That just means you're going to need more people," Mist pointed out.
"I'll be right back with Jace," the first clone said as she left, looking forward to getting access to Drathir's library.
"I have a better idea," the other female cultist said, speaking up after pulling her robes on.
"What's that?" Mist asked.
"If we take control of some of the undead and attack the undead guarding the tower, he'll probably come out of his tower to scream at us about wasting resources," she suggested.
"It wouldn't be the first time we've gotten a bit carried away fighting," the male clone admitted.
"It's worth a try once we have a couple more clones," Mist agreed, figuring the chances of Drathir running from his seat of power wasn't all that great. 'I'll give the first clone a couple of minutes to grab more people then I'll stash the lab coat and see if we can kill the boss.'
0o0o0
'Stupid son of a bitch,' Mist complained in his head as the pale ex-blood elf walked out of his heavily warded tower like an idiot to check on the undead brawl that was happening in front of his tower.
"Don't break the minions!" Drathir ordered, rightfully pissed that the idiots couldn't follow simple orders.
Mist snuck around the couple of cultists that were watching the fight and hit Drathir with an overpowered stunner from behind, taking advantage of the ex-magister's distracted state. He lunged forward, grabbed the man's body and tossed it into his inventory on the off chance that he had some contingency spell that would save him. "Kill them!" he shouted as he started conjuring eternal fire on all of the undead he could see that wasn't being controlled by his minions.
Mist dashed away from the tower as one of the cultists tossed a wall of green flames in his general direction, glad that the cultists couldn't actually see him because he didn't want to get burned by cursed fire. He gave his clones a chance to start fighting the other cultists then started creating more clones as the fight turned into something of a free for all as most of the necromancers lost control of their undead and the cultists died screaming.
'This would be a lot easier, if I had better magic resistance,' Mist mused as he conjured a wave of black fire to take out the horde of ghouls charging toward the melee, making sure to make the wave come from the doorway of one of the empty towers so the undead wouldn't charge him or start tossing spells in his general direction. 'You're not nearly as impressive without Arthas or the lich leading the charge.'
'At least I can tell the cultists apart,' Mist mused as he snuck up on one of the cultists that was trying to escape the melee and dropped him with a stunner. He touched the cultist's hand then shoved him into his inventory and sprinted away from the spot in case someone saw him or realized that they were supposed to be tossing spells in his general direction. He created a couple more clones then flew up into the air so that he could get a better look at the battle and so that he'd be out of the way.
'Huh, prisoners,' he mused when he spotted a set of cages with a pair of blood elves inside that looked like they'd been worked over by a professional boxer as they were both sporting bruises and the male elf was holding his arm like it was broken. 'At least they're not tainted,' he thought as he flew over the cage.
"Can you get us out of here?" one of the elves asked in a whisper, looking right at Mist, unaffected by his invisibility.
"So much for stealth," Mist muttered as he dropped down next to the lock on the door of the metal cage. "Give me a second," he replied as he reached out, grabbed the padlock and put it into his inventory.
"Nice trick," one of the blood elves said as Mist pulled the lock back out of his inventory. "Do you have any healing potions?"
"No but I have a healing spell, do you want me to cast it on you?" Mist asked, figuring he might as well ask permission.
"Yes," the female elf replied without hesitation.
"Normally I'd say no but I have a couple of broken ribs and my arm is fractured in several places," the male elf admitted.
"Makes sense, I'm just a random adventurer," Mist replied and cast his regeneration spell on the male elf, causing his wounds and bruises to quickly heal, then did the same on the female elf, causing her bruises to quickly vanish.
"By the light!" the man swore as all of his pain and injuries vanished, leaving him feeling better than he'd felt since before the Sunwell had been destroyed.
"Do you have any mana potions?" the female elf asked hopefully, knowing she'd need the mana if she wanted to fight her way through the undead.
"Sorry, I generally don't need them," Mist replied as he pulled the spell crystal that he'd created earlier out of his pocket. "Let me make a mana crystal." He used the spell crystal to cast his cobbled together spell, burning a staggering amount of mana and creating a torso sized floating purple crystal filled with pure mana that would probably keep a couple of hundred starving blood elves happy for a week. "That should be enough to get you back in the fight."
"Are you an archmage?" the female elf asked, surprised by the amount of magic the human had used to create the floating crystal.
"I wish, I just have a lot of mana," Mist replied as he pocketed the gem. "I'd love to trade stories but you should probably refill your mana pools before the undead or the remaining cultists realize you're free."
"Thank you!" the female elf told him as she started draining mana from the crystal, causing a purple cord of light and mana to flow out of the crystal and touch her hand.
"You're welcome," Mist assured them. "I'm just trying to deal with the Scourge and avoiding getting attacked by the elves in the area."
"We're not that far gone," the female assured him.
"How often can you make the crystals?" the male elf asked, knowing the crystals would help keep his people from withering away while they looked for a replacement for the Sunwell.
"I can probably make a couple of dozen a day," Mist offered, knowing the number would go up the more undead he killed while wearing his enchanted underwear. 'I bet I can double or even triple my mana if I can clear the Dead Scar.'
"That would help," the elf admitted, relieved that they'd found someone that could help save his people.
0o0o0
Comments
Mist of Shadows
It's a side story, maybe the third... it's not chapter 20. Chapter twenty should continue his Hogwarts stuff.
OdinMage
Is this a third story in the series? Or still part of the main 'Population Boom' story (chapter 20)?
Mist of Shadows
Yep, it was certainly my favorite.
Mist of Shadows
They're certainly easy on the eyes from what I recall in the game. :)
Mist of Shadows
His mana, pulling in the environmental mana would be rather useful in a lot of ways, especially if he could purify it. However he's going to need something else for that.
Mist of Shadows
Some of the spells would be useful for handing out yes.
MND
Right, he needs to fix the kind of spells that the coat makes and then start handing them out.
ZeroLink21
So does the mana crystal form from Mist's mana or from environmental mana and purifiers it?
Alex Wierzbicki
Mmm elves for lewding.
Bable Zmith
Blood Elf Booty is still my favorite to watch as I'm leveling. Girly Blood Elf Booty, thank you. :P
