Mist of Shadows
patreon
Dungeon Myst Part 11
🕑 Added 2023-09-23 05:55:24 +0000 UTCMyst glared at the gremlin that he'd trapped in the rusty old fashioned metal milk crate that one of his minions had pulled out of the junk pile. "You were trying to set people on fire, justify your existence."
"Is gremlin!" the idiot replied as he flipped Myst off with both hands, not seeing a point in listening to anyone in authority.
"Never mind," Myst muttered and used his magic extraction spell on the idiot with the Stupid and Anti-authority traits that also happened to have five points of magic, instantly killing him and creating a shimmering blue gem and a green slime. He quickly devoured the slime before it could start attacking the gremlins.
He glared at the group of gremlins that he'd assembled in front of the school for his test. "Does anyone else want to be an asshole?"
"Union!" one the gremlin's with the political trait shouted as he waved his arms and jumped up and down.
Myst glared at the corrupt gremlin as he cast his magic extraction spell, instantly killing the gremlin and creating another shimmering blue gem as his body fell to the ground. He quickly devoured the slime that his magic created then glared at the rest of the gremlins. "Does anyone else want to start a union?"
"No sir!" one of the gremlins with a Bright trait called out.
"Excellent," Myst replied as he used the magic granting gem on the gremlin with Clockworking as he was the only gremlin he'd found with the skill out of the five hundred gremlins he'd created. He used the other magic gem on the gremlin with Advanced Gem Cutting, wanting to make sure he didn't lose the crafter because he also had the Bright trait and a decent personality that was more interested in crafting than playing harmful pranks.
"Now for the fun part," Myst muttered as he tapped the option on the school's menu to recruit a magic user by using drastic measures. He sighed in relief and relaxed when a box with ten slots appeared. 'Please select the ten people that you'd like to destructively test for magic? At least I can pick which ten people they test.' He looked at the crowd of gremlins. "Please step forward if you want a chance to get magic…" he trailed off as the crowd of gremlins stepped forward without hesitation. "Okay, that works."
He glanced at his mana pool to make sure he had enough time to sort through some of the minions before he had to spend it. 'Just as well I don't have the buff anymore but the regeneration was great.' He opened his minion menu and changed the display so the list was sorted by traits. He selected the Bright and Genius traits and swapped the display so they'd be at the bottom of the list. 'No point in risking the people with decent traits when I can just hand them magic.'
He selected ten of the more annoying gremlins and hit the button, causing them to walk into the school. 'At least I can make sure I don't toss the decent gremlins into the meat grinder.' He watched a short clip of the students doing a ritual in one of the classrooms that basically involved pushing mana into the gremlins until they died screaming, at least until the last gremlin started glowing instead of screaming. He checked the gremlin's stats when the clip stopped. 'Ice affinity, five points of magic and two new traits? Dangerously insane? This particular gremlin is willing to risk death for magical knowledge and power. Sadistic: The gremlin loves causing misery rather than harmless pranks, spending time near the gremlin will rapidly decrease people's happiness levels and risk their health.'
'It's not like he was particularly stable to start with,' he mused as he glanced at the options for what to do with the bodies. 'I can animate them, burn them to ash or bury them in a cemetery I don't have.'
He selected the third option on the off chance that it unlocked something and sighed when nothing happened. 'It was worth a try.' He selected the animate option, not seeing a reason to pass up the chance to get gremlin skeletons, mostly because he was curious if they'd keep any of the crafting skills or be useful in a fight considering their size.
Myst selected the next ten gremlins with horrible personalities and hit the button. He watched a video of the new ritual, noticing that the students looked a bit more practiced than they had in the previous video. He looked at the newly enhanced minion. 'Dangerously Unstable, the ritual has unhinged the gremlin, he's liable to attack anyone that insults him. This would be less useful if I couldn't extract their magic to give to someone else.'
Myst glanced at his resource display to make sure he had enough wood, then selected the option to increase the slots for teachers. He tossed the required wood and stone into the box and hit the button. He sighed when he got a weird quality on the teacher's room. 'Violently Pink, this nightmarishly pink room infects everyone that stays there for longer than twenty four hours, changing the color of their clothes and making pink their favorite color, insulting the color in their presence might cause the teacher to fall into a homicidal rage? At least it comes with a picture of the room so I won't accidently drop someone there.'
'That's worse than the goth room, at least that one only makes them wear black,' he mused as he added another classroom, pushing the maximum students up to fifty. He laughed when three pop ups appeared, informing him that he'd unlocked new options.
'Naked Classroom unlocked, any students taking a class in the room will get a twenty percent bonus to learning speed if they're not wearing clothes, safety gear excluded provided it's necessary for the subject being taught.'
'Alchemist classroom, this particular classroom is specialized for alchemy. Learning alchemy in the classroom will increase the student's learning speed by fifty percent.'
'Dual Specialization unlocked: You've unlocked the ability to specialize classrooms for multiple specialties. Warning, specialties might conflict, decreasing the rewards.'
'Naked Alchemy? Yeah, that sounds like a remarkably bad match,' Myst mused as he checked the description on the room. 'Sixty if they're naked and fifty if they're not, not sure that's worth it in an alchemy class but protective gear doesn't count so it's probably fine for now.'
'Worst case, I'll see about protective magic items or spells.' He assigned one of the Bright gremlins with alchemy to be the new teacher then filled the class with his collection of alchemists, using his collection of unnamed gremlins to fill in the gaps. He turned his attention back to the collection of gremlins without magic and started selecting the gremlins for turning one of them into a magic user. 'I've got about forty gremlins with decent personalities, traits and skills which means I can probably hit one hundred students if I extract the magic from the assholes.'
He ignored the video of the new ritual as he planned things out. 'I'm going to need at least a hundred slots for students if I want to avoid having any of them killed by the option to sacrifice fifty people. Yeah, there's no way I'm getting enough wood before the curse breaks and there are probably better things to use it on, like finishing the solarium and some of the structures to see if the curse twists them.'
Myst pulled up his build menu then placed a 'rooftop' farm near one of the wells. He dropped some dirt that he'd had one of his minions pick up from the goblin dungeon and spent fifty mana to create the farm, a touch surprised that it was finished instantly. He devoured the green slime that was created then pulled up the details for his farm. 'Blood Soaked Eldritch Farm: By spending ten mana you can sacrifice a living creature on the farm to create a harvest filled with tainted plants, the more powerful the creature, the more impressive the harvest. Warning: You must control the creature in order to sacrifice it. So much for using it as a trap.'
He directed Giggle to walk over to the farm, wanting to make sure the monster died before he started killing his minions as it didn't say anything about him needing the combat ability to pull things off, just that a random citizen died. He waited until Giggle walked onto the farm then paid the mana and sacrificed him, causing him to scream as he sank into the ground like unnaturally fast quicksand. 'That's one way to get rid of problematic minions.'
Myst devoured the slime then selected the farm and checked the details on the tainted harvest as he walked over to get a closer look. 'Ice Cream Squash, like actual ice cream? That would explain why the squash has frost on it. Cream Fruit, dairy replacement? Vegetarians would be happy, assuming it's not cursed or poisonous. That's probably the plant that looks like a white pumpkin.'
He glanced at the eggplant then did a double take when he read the name. "Leather Eggplant, why would they…" he trailed off as he took a second look at the plant and realized that the Eggplant was covered in purple flesh. 'I'm not sure if that counts as a goldmine for the leather or as something to be torched. Probably depends on the insides.'
Myst glanced at the bush with five blue tomatoes. 'Blood Tomato? That might help for medical research or vampires.' He glanced at the next plant on the list. "Magic Beets? I might need to find an actual alchemist at some point." He looked at the apple tree with blood red apples. 'Yeah, pretty sure nothing good would come of eating those.'
He assigned his skeleton with cooking and farming to harvest the farm, slightly annoyed that it wasn't as easy as everything just dropping into his storage. He pulled up his options for farms and looked at his new option while he waited for the farmer to harvest everything. 'I can duplicate the cursed farm for two hundred mana and dirt, could be worse.'
He dropped a handful of dirt, a sample of the pink sludge that he'd stuffed in a vial and enough cursed mana stones into the box to pay the mana cost then placed the farm near one of the other wells and hit the button, creating a green slime and an Eldritch Brain Fruit Farm. 'Spending one thousand mana will cause a seed to quickly grow a plant that produces fruit or that can be eaten to temporarily boost a creature's intelligence, there's a small chance of producing fruit that will result in a permanent boost. Where's the downside?'
'Other than the mana. Something to work on I guess,' he complained as he opened his storage menu and examined the new fruits. 'Five Ice Cream Squashes off one bush, that's not too bad. It's a magically frozen squash that has chocolate ice cream inside, this version is cursed to make girls lactate for a day if they eat it. That's not nearly as bad as I was expecting.'
'Five Cream fruits, pumpkins containing one gallon of cream. The cream has a small chance to turn the person that drinks it into a kitten if it hasn't been processed. Yeah, we're going to have to plant the seeds and figure out how to process it.'
He looked at the eggplant shaped plant. 'Vegetarian safe meat replacement? They can also be skinned for leather? Yeah, that's twisted.' He looked at the tainted tomatoes. 'These blood filled tomatoes have a small chance of attracting vampires. I should probably keep some of the seeds.' He looked at the collection of apples. 'Twenty five caffeine laced apples that will absolutely keep you awake for forty eight hours if they don't cause your heart to explode?'
'I need to give the apples to an alchemist, maybe they can figure out a safe use,' he mused as he looked at the magic beets. 'Eating these magical beets summons a pair of bandits to beat the shit out of the person eating the beats, thankfully they generally have change in their pockets. What the fuck? Did I get dropped into Xanth?'
He glanced at the apple tree that was still in his Eldritch Farm. 'I'm going to have to move the tree somewhere else, at least it's useful.' He checked his farmer's farming skill and used the option to extract seeds from one of the apples, getting a package of seeds. 'No clue where the paper or ink came from but I'll take it,' he thought, glad that he didn't have to label everything himself.
He opened the menu for the farms that he could create and selected the farm that grew brain fruits. He tossed in the apple seeds then enough tainted mana stones and magical scales to make up the required thousand mana. 'One tainted tree that influences intelligence coming up,' he mused as he placed the farm near the school and hit the button. He watched as a surprisingly mundane appearing apple tree grew out of the ground and sprouted apples.
He pulled up the description of the tree. 'Mutated Eldritch Brain Farm, spending one hundred mana creates fifty apples that temporarily increases the intelligence of anyone that eats them while driving them into a caffeine high for forty eight hours until they crash for a day. The buff also causes their brain and skull to double in size, leaving them looking like a mutated freak while the buff is active. Five percent chance to produce an apple that permanently increases the consumer's intelligence? Yeah, that sounds like a trap.'
He assigned the farmer to harvest the apples from the new tree then went back to getting rid of the annoying gremlins by turning some of them into magic users while he waited for the farmer to harvest everything. He glanced away from the video of the students when an apple appeared in another stack in his storage. He sighed when he checked the apple and realized it wasn't quite as good as he would like. 'Caffeine Laced Apple of Modest Intelligence, this apple will permanently increase the consumer's intelligence as long as they're below average intelligence. Unfortunately it will also double their skull and brain size.'
He had the farmer extract the seeds from the apple, leaving a sliced apple in his storage that could boost someone's intelligence. He selected the rabbit magic user and fed the apple slices to it, curious if it would end up as intelligent as a human if he kept feeding it apples.'
He watched as the rabbit's head doubled in size making it look like a mutated science experiment then checked its sheet. 'Low human intelligence? That's better than being a normal rabbit.'
Myst selected the magical beets and fed one to Jack, curious what would happen with the little thief. He watched as two masked humans appeared out of thin air one either side of the gremlin holding wooden cudgels. "Look out…" he trailed off as Jack sprinted at the closest bandit, easily dodging the bandit's cudgel when the 'giant' tried to splatter him.
"Mine!" Jack shouted as he grabbed the bandit's pants leg and used his Thievery skill, causing the pants to vanish into his inventory. He laughed as he pounced on the bandit's right foot and stole his shoe before he was sent flying by the bandit's flailing.
"Attack!" one of the gremlin students shouted as he conjured a banana peel under the bandit's foot as he took a step, causing the bandit to slip and fall as the rest of the magic users started tossing spells at the bandits.
'Quantity has a quality all its own,' Myst mused as he watched the bandits get swarmed and overwhelmed by magic they should have been able to shrug off or ignore long enough to kill a small pack of gremlins. He quickly used his magic extraction spell on one of the twisted gremlins with magic when his mana jumped from the bandits' deaths. 'Yeah, probably shouldn't do that again while I'm dealing with the curse.'
Myst pulled up Jack's sheet while the gremlins swarmed the dead bandits, looking for loot. 'Getting kicked or hitting the ground cost a third of your health, I'm going to need to work on that.'
He glanced at his material list. 'This would be easier if I had chainsaws and actual competent minions,' he mused as he assigned five trolloc skeletons and five skeletal gremlins to run the 'test' to discover magic, curious if it would work on undead or the gremlins that shouldn't have magic. He flew over to the portal while he waited for the trolloc skeletons to make their way to the school. He spent the fifty mana required to examine the portal without damaging it and devoured the slime that appeared.
He checked the resulting Enchanting pattern. 'Random Portal: This enchantment turns a doorway or frame into a portal that connects to a random world where a civilization fell. This portal is set once enchanted. Two thousand mana? Yeah, I'm going to have to farm a bunch of mana crystals from the slimes.'
Myst's attention was pulled away from the portal when the video clip of the ritual started playing, mostly because watching the skeletons develop glowing cracks before they exploded was interesting. He smiled as the students reached the last skeleton for testing, wondering if the little gremlin that the mage animated would get glowing eyes from the ritual. He sighed when the last skeleton exploded just like the rest. "Huh, so much for getting anything out of the ritual…" he trailed off when a large portal opened in the video and a naked girl with blue hair tumbled out that towered over the gremlins.
Myst glanced at the notice that his option to recruit more magic users via rituals was locked for an hour then glanced at the other notice. 'Inadequate safety procedures have resulted in a magical backlash that summoned a great and terrible demon.' He relaxed when he realized that she was on his minion list and wasn't uncontrolled in the middle of his school. He quickly checked his new minion's sheet. 'Vivian? Species: Imp of the Perverse, Age: Thirteen, Height: 5'7", Cup size: B? That's a ridiculously tall imp.'
He glanced at her stats. 'Twenty one points of strength, thirty two agility, forty three vitality and twenty magic?' He glanced at her traits. 'Genius, Emotional Hunger and Perverse Empowerment?' He tapped the icon to pull up a description for the hunger trait. 'While Vivian doesn't need actual food, if she doesn't get enough sex or cuddle time her mood rapidly spirals and the chances of her acting out increases dramatically.'
He checked the description for the Perverse Empowerment trait. 'Vivian has the ability to conjure a female twin of anyone she has sex or enough cuddle time with. If her target has sex with their twin within twenty four hours their mana pools permanently increase by one hundred points and their twin becomes permanent and pregnant, giving birth to a perfectly healthy set of twins nine days later. The resulting children are genetically half Vivian's and half the target/clone. Any creature can only have two siblings from this spell active at a time and can never get more than two hundred mana from it.'
'That's one way to increase the population of magic users running around,' Myst mused as he glanced over her spells. 'Conjure Brush: Conjures a brush that allows the person brushing a creature's hair to change their hair color. Five mana or fifty mana if I want it permanent. That sounds like a good way to make my minions stand out or to make interesting pets.'
He flew back over to the school as he looked at her next spell. 'Magic Leash? Casting this spell summons a collar and a leash around the target's neck that forces the victim to follow your commands, success depends on your magic stat and the target's willpower. Liberal use of the spell will decrease the time it takes a pet to learn tricks by half. Any damage to the victim breaks the spell and causes the collar to vanish. This spell only lasts a number of minutes equal to the caster's magic stat and costs twenty mana, could be worse.'
He looked at the last spell on her list. 'Transmute: Pet. This spell changes a pet into a beastkin based on the animal type. Unfortunately, this spell only moderately increases their intelligence, usually resulting in dimwitted if loyal minions. Fifty mana? That's half of her mana, which means we're going to need to increase her magic and or mana if we want to mass produce bunny girls.'
'Not sure she counts as a great and terrible demon,' Myst mused as the girl walked out of the school with a smile on her face and a spring in her steps. 'Probably because of the curse that twists everything,' he mused as he checked her skills, 'Dancing and Pet Training? Makes a certain amount of sense considering her abilities.'
Vivian glanced between the various gremlins. "Boss, am I allowed to beat the gremlins half to death if they prank me?"
"I'll consider it," Myst replied, knowing that saying no would just encourage the gremlins to prank her.
"Excellent," Vivian replied as she gave the gremlins a stern look, knowing you couldn't let lesser demons walk over you if you wanted any peace and quiet.
"How quickly can you cast your Magic Leash spell?" Myst asked as he closed her sheet.
"Two seconds," Vivian replied as she glanced around, curious about where she'd ended up. "What do you want me to cast it on?"
"A slime beast, I'm currently under a curse that creates them every time I use mana. I also have a cursed garden that lets me sacrifice creatures under my control in exchange for magical plants. I was curious if mind control counted," Myst admitted.
"We should run some tests!" Vivian squealed enthusiastically as she bounced up and down, causing her breasts to bounce.
"Head over to the farm while I drop my current slime off somewhere safe." Myst flew up to the walled enclosure and dropped his possession once he was over the enclosure, causing the blue slime to drop to the ground. He cast the food spell twenty times, creating twenty slimes and a bunch of food for the slime to snack on.
'That should give me enough mist stones once it finishes eating the slimes and the food,' he thought as he flew over to the cursed farm. He landed in front of his new minion and smiled at the demon girl.
"You look like a mad scientist when your hair sticks up like that," Vivian teased.
"You're not the first person to say that," Myst admitted as he used his fingers to try to comb his ghostly hair into some semblance of order. "Speaking of looks, is there a reason you look human?"
"My mother is human. Imps of the Perverse are supposed to corrupt humanoids, we wouldn't be very good at it if we weren't attractive," Vivian explained.
"How does your hunger work? How often are you going to have to worry about it?" Myst asked, hoping it was something they could manage.
"It depends on the imp, every Imp of the Perverse has a specialty, something that they can feed off of. Mine is basically happy incest or at least that is what Mom's divination said and it fits with my personality and the description of my trait," Vivian explained with a shrug. "I haven't actually had a chance to really test things, mostly because I've only had my Perversion ability for a week and Imps can't feed off each other."
"That makes a certain amount of sense if they're supposed to be corrupting humans," Myst agreed as he turned to look at the farm. "Ready?"
"Ready!" Vivian assured him.
"Incoming." Myst spent the mana required to move the caffeine laced apple tree to his storage, causing a slime to appear.
"Magic Leash!" Vivian chanted as she cast her spell, creating a collar around the slime's 'neck' and a magical leash in her hand. She pouted when she noticed that the slime's acid was eating through the collar. "It's eating through the collar, you might want to hurry."
Myst paid the mana to sacrifice the slime to the farm, creating another slime and getting what looked like a lemon tree filled with pink lemons, a patch of carrots, a pear tree and what looked like a banana tree in the five foot square of dirt, making everything a bit crowded. He quickly used his possession ability on the new slime. "That makes things easier."
"What did we get?" Vivian asked enthusiastically as she glanced between the trees.
"No clue, I need to have a farmer pick everything," Myst replied as he directed the undead farmer to harvest the plants. "Do you have any goals?" he asked, trying to learn more about his minion since she seemed intelligent.
"Learn magic, set up a sex club and have fun?" Vivian asked with a shrug.
"That's it?" Myst asked, not sure if he believed her.
Vivian laughed. "I'm a teenager, what were you expecting, world domination?"
"Considering you're a demon, yeah," Myst teased, only half joking.
Vivian rolled her eyes. "That sounds like a lot of work, not to mention you'd have to work with some really slimy people. I might be an Imp of Perversion but I have standards."
"That's fair," Myst assured her, rather amused by his new demon.
"What about you, any goals?" Vivian asked, wondering about the type of person she was working for.
"I don't know, I'm still trying to wrap my head around being in charge of a dungeon city," Myst admitted. "I want to build an amazing magical school but I'm not actually sure where to go after that or how many defenses I'm going to need."
Vivian glanced at the undead that was walking towards them. "Couldn't tell you but more is generally better when it comes to defenses."
0o0o0
