Mist of Shadows
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Dungeon Myst Part 19
🕑 Added 2023-10-21 05:40:21 +0000 UTCMyst pulled up the sheet for the new teacher and looked at the picture of the stunning redhead that was wearing an unbuttoned lab coat, a hair tie to tie her long hair back with and nothing else. 'She could be on the cover of a magazine. Julia Frankenstein?' He glanced at her Gifted Teacher talent that let her teach four times the students then looked at her negative trait. 'Obsession with hiding lawn gnomes in the homes of unsuspecting people in her neighborhood? Yeah, that's a bit crazy but not as bad as I was expecting from someone named Frankenstein.'
Myst looked at her skills and noticed she had nine points of Alchemy, Woodcarving, and Enchanting which meant she could certainly teach the basics. 'Probably from making garden gnomes,' he mused as he assigned her to one of the open rooms for teachers and filled her class up with the gremlin twins that Vivian was creating.
'I'm getting close,' Myst mused as he opened the menu for the school's infirmary and looked at his options. 'If I hit this, they're going to kill people or at least my minions. If I don't, I won't be able to figure out if I can upgrade the infirmary.'
He pulled up the map of the school and made the sections around the infirmary door a zone that his minions were supposed to avoid. 'That should deal with the worst of it.' He tapped the button to create an insane nurse and spent the mana, creating a green haired nurse in an untied straight jacket that was foaming at the mouth and a slime beast that dropped into the well he was floating over. 'Twenty points of strength and fifteen agility, they'd certainly be able to pull most people into the nurse's office but I doubt any of the magic girls have anything to worry about.'
'No magic points which is slightly annoying but understandable considering the cost,' Myst mused as he looked at their skills and traits. 'Okay, they have a nurse trait but they also have the hostile trait which means they'll attack everyone. Five points of Anatomy and three points of blade skills which is probably for their metal nails. I guess I shouldn't expect anything particularly impressive for five mana.'
Myst tapped the button to train a nurse and looked at the warning. "Due to the cursed nature of the infirmary, any minion training here will acquire the Night Stalker mental trait in addition to the basic Nurse quality. This would be a lot easier if I had a way to break curses. Screw it, let's see if we can drive them around the bend until they're sane or comatose."
Myst hit the button and paid the mana to create four more insane nurses. He glanced over their stats then looked at the infirmary's upgrade options. 'Advanced Blades? Get every nurse's blade skill up to nine. Upgrade the metal in their claws, sacrifice one hundred units of metal. Upgrade to insane Doctors? I'd need their Anatomy skills at nine, which probably requires them to fight things…' he trailed off as he realized he might have a solution to some of his problems.
Myst assigned the five nurses to Mr. West's gym class then pulled up the menu for the detention center and sorted it by negative traits. He selected the five nurses and selected the option for Testing them to Destruction. He watched the rather short and thankfully animated video of the nurses getting killed in various ways. 'It's like watching the Joker get tortured to death.'
Myst glanced at the message that appeared on his menu. "Due to understanding your students better, you've decreased the tendency for students causing trouble by one percent. Due to a breakthrough, you've managed to figure out an alchemy compound that you can use to increase a human's strength without massive side effects."
"Works for me," Myst admitted as he spent the mana and created five more nurses, creating five slime beasts in the process. He swapped to the main page for the school and added the nurses and five gremlins to the ritual to create a magic user and pushed the button. He watched the video of the students destroying the gremlins and the nurses while trying to create a magic user. He pulled up the resulting magic nurse. 'Five points and you have a metal affinity, is that because of the claws or random chance?'
'I'll figure it out eventually,' he mused as he created another four nurses then assigned them to Mr. West's class. He sent selected the nurses that didn't have magic and selected the option to torture the four nurses with fire, curious if he could remove the Night Stalker trait.
He ignored the video of the silently screaming nurses being tortured with fire as best he could and queued up another twenty gremlins, figuring he'd need them. He focused on the mist stones in his storage and cast his spell to create a resource card, creating a slime and a foil card. He looked at the image on the foil card of a massive bronze talon. 'Tainted celestial bronze from Hera's personal Harpy. Yeah, I can't see that going well.'
Myst used the card, creating a giant 'bronze' bird foot on the ground in front of the smelter. He directed his miners to mine it then looked at the nurses, surprised that two of the four nurses that survived the 'treatment' and lost the Night Stalker trait. 'I can deal with the pyrophobia trait and the horrible scars.'
He spent the mana to create two nurses, not noticing the red slime beast that dropped into the well. He set the two nurses with the Night Stalker trait up to be tortured by fire then jumped out of the slime beast, letting it fall into the well. He flew towards the school, wanting to extract the magic out of the nurse so that he could give it to a sane nurse.
Ten minutes and a couple of dozen nurses later Myst had five mostly sane magic using nurses filling all of the infirmary slots. He selected the upgrade option and smiled when he saw the option to upgrade the infirmary to a Cursed Eldritch Infirmary. "Two thousand mana? Yeah, I'm going to need to farm more mist stones and agate."
He spent the stones to upgrade the infirmary and looked at the result. "Cursed Eldritch Infirmary, spending five mana creates a nurse that will drag sick students into the infirmary for treatment and one hundred mana will summon a demonic nurse. I can live with that,' he mused as he headed towards the exit so he could pick up the mist stones that should be building up in the tunnels because he needed the mana to create the academy.
Myst was halfway back to the well when he spotted Xander, Dawn and Thea crossing the bridge with four girls that he didn't recognize and that weren't minions. "New friends?"
"Yes," Dawn replied cheerfully.
"Is that a ghost?" Egwene asked warily.
"Spirit of the city," Myst replied as he flew over to the edge of the gremlin platform.
Xander gestured towards Dawn. "Dawn poked the portal and we found a village filled with magic girls. They were hoping to trade their form of magic girl transformation for a couple of magic boy trinkets or some enchanted gear or time at the school."
Myst glanced at the icon for his curse. "Give me twenty minutes to create a bunch of agate and collect more magic stones and I'll upgrade the school to an academy then the curse will break and I'll be able to make a school that isn't a death trap."
"Sounds good," Xander agreed. "Is there anything we can help with?"
"How do you feel about killing monstrous cows?" Myst asked thoughtfully.
"Shouldn't be a problem, we have lightsabers," Dawn replied cheerfully.
"How many do you want taken out?" Xander asked.
"At least two." Myst quickly opened the Dairy menu and spent a hundred mana to summon a cow. He possessed the resulting slime then looked at the new cow. "Two out of four, let's try for one more." He spent another hundred mana to summon a fifth cow, resulting in a cow with glowing horns and a cowboy hat bursting out of the summoning circle on the video and promptly turning into a busty teenage girl with a cowboy hat on her head. "Huh, that's weird."
"Good weird or bad weird?" Xander asked as he grabbed his lightsaber, ignited it and cut the extra slime apart.
"I summoned a cow and she had a cowboy hat and she changed into a girl…" Myts trailed off as he saw the icon of the fifth cow leaving the stall, "which has hands and can leave her stall. This is going to be a problem."
"Let's take care of her," Xander said as he headed towards the barn.
Myst pulled up the cow's stats and winced when he saw her magical affinities and stats. "She has thirty points of magic and three affinities, let me try possessing her first. I'd hate to lose a useful animal."
"Let me get this straight, you have a spell that lets you summon cows and one of them has magic?" Egwene asked as they headed towards the barn.
"Three of the five cows have magic, the last one just came with a magical transformation item that let her escape her stall," Myst explained, wondering if he'd accidentally summoned a boss or something. He was relieved when he managed to possess the demonic cowgirl without any trouble as she charged the group. "I've got her."
Xander killed the slime that jumped at him. "Good, can you get the hat off?"
"Incoming slime." Myst opened his Enchanting Menu, tossed the hat into the box and paid the mana cost to examine the hat without destroying it, picking up a pattern for a Sticky Hat of Change and caused his host to change back into a cow.
Xander cut the slime in half.
"What happened to the hat?" Berowyn asked.
"I tossed it in my enchanting box," Myst replied as he put the hat back on and changed back into a magic girl.
"Am I the only person that finds a talking cow strange?" Mat asked.
Rand shook his head. "It's a bit weird."
"You get used to it," Thea replied with amusement.
"Eventually," Dawn added.
"What did you get?" Xander asked, hoping it was another transformation item.
Myst shrugged, causing his host's breasts to bounce. "It's a transformation item that is enchanted to stay on your head unless it's destroyed or you willingly take it off. It gives you a humanoid form and boosts your strength, agility and vitality by twenty points while you're wearing it."
Dawn pulled her attention off the girl's rather large breasts. "Magic girl?"
"It doesn't change your gender, the cows are female," Myst said cheerfully as he used a magic fire crystal on his host, giving her the fire affinity and another five points of magic. "Tell you what, if you give me a chance to finish a couple of projects I'll make a copy if you're willing to kill the cows that don't have magic."
"Sure," Xander agreed. "It gives us something to work on and gives Egwene a chance to work on her combat magic."
"Cool…" Myst trailed off when his brain processed the name. "Last name?"
"al'Vere," Egwene offered. "Why?"
Myst glanced down at his cursed icon and realized he was running out of time. "Just curious, I'll be back in a few minutes. Don't be alarmed if I summon more cows while I'm finishing projects."
"Have fun and no worries, we need the experience," Xander replied as he headed towards the barn, glad that he could sense magic so he wouldn't kill the wrong cows.
Myst flew into the barn, parked the cow in her stall, closed the door then dropped the hat into his enchanting box, changing back into a cow. He jumped out of the cow and left the barn when the cow didn't immediately start freaking out or attacking things and headed back for the well to grab the mist stones, looking forward to hearing Egwene's story and figure out what was going on after he dealt with the school.
"How do you want to do this?" Rand asked as he looked at the barn filled with dangerous animals.
"Can you sense which cows have magic?" Xander asked.
Egwene nodded. "They don't have symbols floating over their heads."
Xander glanced at the cows that looked normal enough if you ignored their red eyes then glanced at Egwene. "Can you open the stalls with magic?"
"Easily," Egwene agreed.
"Open one of the stalls that we need to kill and then do your best to kill it before it gets out here, if you can't I'll kill it with my lightsaber," Xander assured her.
Egwene used a touch of magic to lift the latch and open the stall door then lashed out with a razor sharp blade of hardened air and cut the cow's neck open. She jumped back when the cow continued charging at her despite the gash on her neck.
Xander stepped forward and to the side as he brought his lightsaber down on the cow's neck, cutting off her head and killing her instantly. He blinked as a pink bandana appeared on top of the cow along with a small stack of gold coins. "Huh, they drop loot, this might be more fun than I thought."
"I think I'm going to like it here," Mat said cheerfully.
0o0o0
Myst tossed the last of the agate statues into his storage when he noticed that he finally had enough minions, doing his best to ignore the basilisk that was chained up behind him. He assigned the last of the students he needed to Ms. Frankenstein's class, figuring he'd deal with sorting through everything once he had time. He tapped the icon that lit up and looked at the cost for the academy. 'Five thousand mana, five hundred units of gems, three hundred units of stone, five hundred wood and two hundred units of metal, I'd have a hell of a time paying the mana if I wasn't cheating.'
He tossed a bunch of mist stones into the box to pay the mana cost then tossed in all of his shadow crystals to cover the gems along with three hundred units of agate and five hundred units of frost iron wood and two hundred units of the Tainted Celestial Bronze then hit the button after double checking everything.
He smiled when a window appeared with several options. 'Please choose which academy you'd like to turn your school into, Princess Academy of Candy Magic, Moon Princess Magic Girl Academy, Dark Crystal Academy of Sinful Delight, Dark Academy of Necromancy, Island Academy of Blood Magic, Academy of Magic, Academy of Clownmancy, Vulgar Academy of Witchcraft or Frosthaven, Academy of the Lands of Ice and Snow.'
'Clownmancy? Positives, creepy magic clowns, negatives, really creepy magic clowns, yeah, hard pass,' Myst decided. 'Frosthaven is a named school but it probably leans heavily towards ice and this is supposed to be a basic school that grinds the rough edges off the gremlins before I drop them somewhere else. The Princess Academy of Candy Magic looks amusing but I'm not sure it would fit gremlins or be all that effective against adventurers. This would be a lot easier with descriptions or a cheat sheet. Screw it, I don't need to encourage bad behavior so the vulgar school is out and blood magic is generally limited.'
Myst selected the Dark Crystal Academy of Sinful Delight and watched the window change. 'Please select two specialties, Battlemagic, Enchanting, Magitech, Necromancy or Transmutation. Is that even a choice?' he mused as he selected Enchanting and Magitech, causing the window to change. 'Please select two rooms to unlock, Celestial Library of Sin, Forbidden Labs of Darkest Alchemy, Graveyard of Eternal Unrest or Forgotten Torture Chamber?'
He picked the library and the labs, mostly because wanted a library and an alchemy lab and didn't want a torture chamber or something that sounded like it would make wandering undead. "Upgrade two structures in the school," he mused as he looked over the collection of structures that he could upgrade. 'Doesn't look like I can upgrade the infirmary, probably because it's cursed.'
He glanced over the options, half tempted to pick the cooking classroom before seeing the Personal Massager Creation classroom on the list as it was also listed as a Naked classroom and a classroom with a project which should upgrade all three for one choice. 'Yeah, that's too good to pass up.'
He glanced between the Winter Bedroom of Sin and the Frost Touched Bedroom of Sin. 'The frost touched has a better chance to upgrade your frost affinity and resistance but it has a chance to give you frostbite, which shouldn't be a problem once we get some healing spells, probably.'
He picked the three in one classroom and the Frost Touched Bedroom then hit the button, causing the window to change and give him more options. 'Please pick one classroom option to unlock, Chemistry, Law, Math, Mad Science or Sex Magic?' He selected the Mad Science and hit the button, expecting yet another window.
"Dark Crystal Academy of Sinful Delight and Magitech unlocked. Celestial Library of Sin acquired and unlocked. Magitech Library Wing acquired and unlocked. Enchanting Library Wing acquired and unlocked. Forbidden Labs of Darkest Alchemy acquired and unlocked. Enchanting Classroom unlocked. Magitech Classroom unlocked. Nudist classroom acquired and unlocked. Magitech Personal Massager Creation Classroom acquired and unlocked. Nude Wizarding Calendar project acquired and unlocked. Wizarding Photos unlocked. Frozen Soul Bedroom of Sin acquired and unlocked. Spell Crystal Creation classroom unlocked."
Myst blinked when he found himself in the courtyard watching the stone of the leaning tower change into a seamless dark crystal. He sighed in relief as one of the curses he was under faded away, leaving him with just the second curse that created unstable mana crystals and mana scales when he cast spells.
"Did you get anything interesting?" Vivian asked when she noticed Myst.
"A library and an alchemy lab and it unlocked a couple of things." Myst opened the school page and looked at the school's title. "It also changed the school's title to the Dark Crystal Academy of Sinful Delight and Magitech."
"What did it unlock?" Vivian asked, wondering if it was worth using.
"Copies of the library and alchemy lab, Enchanting and Magitech classrooms and a better teacher's bedroom," Myst replied as he pulled up the information on the bedroom that had been upgraded from the Frost Touch Bedroom. "The Frozen Soul Bedroom of Sin, the teacher of this frozen bedroom regularly lures students to their bedroom for private instruction, resulting in the students gaining experience in a random magical skill the teacher possesses and decreasing their stress level. The number of students depends on the appearance and personality of the teacher. There's a twenty percent chance for the student to permanently increase their frost resistance by five percent and a ten percent chance to acquire the cold affinity each visit with a small chance of improving it if they already have it. There's also a ten percent chance of the student picking up a cold related derangement and suffering from severe frostbite which results in lost appendages, modified by their frost resistance."
"Nice! Cutting the chances of something negative happening by half is pretty cool, did it upgrade anything else?" Jessica asked as she walked over.
Myst pulled up the page for the Nudist classroom. "The general training booster from the naked classroom jumped from twenty to thirty percent for the Nudist Classroom and the Personal Massager Creation class added a magitech tag which should unlock some interesting inventions."
"What does the library give us?" Vivian asked.
"Good question," Myst replied as he pulled up the menu for the new library. "Ooh, there's a slot for a head librarian, two assistants, five student assistants and ten students doing research." He tapped the head librarian slot and looked at the requirements. "This might be slightly annoying, the head librarian slot needs the librarian trait and I don't see a way to get it."
"Check the assistant slots," Vivian suggested.
Myst checked the assistant slots. "Assistants that can help the students research and keep the library clean and prevent vandals and troublemakers from stealing books or causing problems, research boost depends on intelligence and skills related to the subject the students are researching. There's also an option for a sex research party that has a twenty percent chance to produce a random blueprint, breakthrough or a packet of research notes on a random subject and a small chance for one of the students to unlock a lesser succubus magic trait, each party takes an hour."
"Library of Sin?" Vivian asked thoughtfully.
"Celestial Library of Sin, I'm not sure where the celestial part comes into things yet…" he trailed off when he looked at the options for students. "Never mind, the students can apparently earn various celestial themed prizes by completing various research quests that the head librarian assigns."
Jessica smiled as she pictured a bunch of students doing research so they could win prizes. "Weird and possibly useful if we can find a librarian, we might have to go recruiting."
"I'll put it on the list," Myst replied as he looked at the upgrade options. "I need twenty packets of research notes of the right type to upgrade one of the wings of the library so that's going to be a long term project and I need a thousand mana to get another assistant slot."
"Probably worth it," Jessica argued.
"Should be," Myst replied as he looked at his mana pool. "I'm back down to regenerating a hundred mana a minute and I'm up to just over five hundred mana for capacity, I'm going to have to work on that."
"I need better mana regeneration," Vivian complained.
"It's on the list," Myst assured her as he opened his build menu and worked on expanding the gremlin platform, relieved that he didn't have to worry about creating slimes every time he used mana.
"You mean the list that just keeps getting longer?" Vivian teased.
"Yeah, that one," Myst replied as he opened his dairy menu. "If you make a twin, would they still have the hostile trait?"
"I don't know," Vivian admitted. "The twins generally have the same abilities and issues, just not injuries so I'm leaning towards yes but it's probably worth checking, what are you thinking?"
"One of the cows came with a lot of magic and a magic transformation hat earlier. I was thinking about sacrificing some of the random gremlins that don't have magic or useful traits and seeing how much I could boost the cow before tossing the hat on it and having you copy her."
"I have a better idea, torture all of them until you get one of them that doesn't have the hostile trait, then you can just give it magic and we'll go from there. I'd rather not make a twin of a hostile magic girl that's going to kill everything in the area and I doubt we can make the cows sit still in a sex education class long enough to get rid of their hostile trait."
"You probably could if you used your leash spell," Myst pointed out.
"Or you could just torture all of them and hope that one of them survives, it's only a hundred mana a shot which is like one minute per attempt compared to an hour each class for a five percent chance," Vivian argued.
"Fine," Myst replied as he assigned the cows to Mr. West's class then assigned them to be tortured with fire, hoping that one of the magic cows survived. He ignored the videos playing of his skeleton mage trying to cook the cows with fire as he pulled up the information for the Spell Crystal Creation classroom. 'Teaches students how to create spell crystals, crystals that teach magic spells by serving as a template. Did I just figure out how to make materia? That's slightly less impressive when I can use the school to teach people but that should make learning everything easier. Sadly, I don't have the thousand mana or the gems to sink into it right now.'
Myst stared at the remaining three cows, surprised that three of the magic cows actually managed to survive while the rest didn't. He glanced over their traits, trying not to look at the collection of burns that covered the cows on their portraits. "That worked out better than I was expecting, three of the magic cows survived and lost their hostile trait though one picked up a phobia of fire and the most powerful one picked up a trait that causes her to go into a berserk rage if someone uses fire magic around her."
Vivian sighed. "That sounds like a bad day waiting to happen."
"Especially since it boosts her damage against them by fifty percent," Myst added, wondering if there was a way to keep the damage boost when they got rid of the hatred part of it.
"Speaking of bad days, I should get back to work," Jessica admitted. "I'm trying to figure out if there's a better way to organize the classes and the best way to deal with some of the teachers' mental issues."
"Best of luck," Myst offered as he used his minion menu to feed the survivors enough intelligence boosting apples to boost their intelligence to match the 'average' human and causing their heads to quadruple in size, making them look sort of comical. He sorted through his collection of gremlins that didn't have magic for the worst of the bunch then started sacrificing them to boost the cows' milk and quantity. "Ten gremlins per cow and we're at the cap for quality and amount, ten gallons of delicious corrupted magic infused milk per day."
"Have you figured out a way to purify it yet?" Vivian asked.
"Nope," Myst admitted as he started walking towards the farm. "I'm hoping we can research it in the library if I assign some of the farm hands as researchers."
"Makes sense," Vivian said as they headed over to the farm. "Do you have a plan?"
"With the cows or with the school or the visitors?" Myst asked as he spent the mana to summon another cow.
"Yes," Vivian teased.
He smiled when he noticed the bell hanging from the cow's neck as it came out of the summoning circle. "I figured we'd make some copies then torture the last one until we fix the hostile trait…" he trailed off as the cow turned into a tentacle abomination. "Incoming!" he blurted out, expecting the beast to burst out of the barn and try to kill them.
Vivian jumped back and glared at the barn, expecting trouble.
"Or not," Myst muttered after a couple of seconds when nothing happened. He pulled up the tentacle monster's sheet and looked at her traits. "Pacifist, removes any trait that causes aggression and locks most combat options other than cowering. Fast Reader, increases reading speed and comprehension by fifty percent? Near-sighted, needs glasses to correct."
Vivian shivered when she noticed several blue tentacles with eyes peeking over the stall door. "Does that mean she's safe?"
"Apparently," Myst replied as he checked the collar. "Faded Magical Item? Something has damaged the magic on the item or it was designed as a one use item but there are traces which might influence the next enchantment placed on the item."
Vivian shook her head. "Not my monkey, not my problem."
Myst laughed. "Sounds about right. At least she has magic and she can still produce milk."
"I'd ask but I really don't want to know," Vivian admitted.
"Pretty much," Myst agreed. "Ignore the tentacle demon for a minute and get started turning the cows into minotaurs so they get the intelligence boost. He pulled the transformation hat out of his enchanting box and tossed it to Vivian. "I'm going to talk to the visitors and figure out what we can trade for some of the townsfolk getting twins, we're missing a decent number of professions."
