Mist of Shadows
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Endbringers Hate Paperwork Part 9
🕑 Added 2023-02-28 06:19:07 +0000 UTCAmy glanced away from where her sister and Taylor were using cantrips to try to kill a floating zombie in an attempt to get their cantrips ability to change into something more useful and focused on Myst. "Do you have an actual plan for dealing with the rest of the gangs?"
"That depends," Myst replied as he focused on the new ability he'd picked up from his warlock pact, fading out of view. "Can you see me?"
Amy stared at the area where the fifteen foot tall giant should be. "How did you manage that?"
"Warlock," Myst replied smugly as he reached out with telekinesis and tweaked the zombie's nose, causing him to fade back into view. "Unfortunately Walk Unseen only gives me basic invisibility which means it breaks when I attack someone."
"Better than nothing, you're sort of noticeable," Amy teased as she turned her attention back to watching her sister toss globes of acid at the zombie that barely seemed to hurt it, not sure the cantrips were worth grinding up to a reasonable level.
"I noticed," Myst replied dryly.
"How long do you think it will take to max out our warlock magic?" Amy asked.
"No clue," Myst admitted as he conjured a ball of magic and tossed it at the warrior that was standing on another platform because it couldn't reach them. "We're not exactly running on game rules which means if we put the time in we can probably learn a number of tricks because we're not limited by feats. Unfortunately, I'm not sure where to start."
"Do you know of any spells that give people the ability to view a creature's health?" Vicky asked, frustrated with the lack of progress with her spells or at least the lack of visible progress.
"A couple, I'm just not sure how to acquire any of them because most of them are from a setting where you learn spells by buying them from a shop and I don't recall the names of the shopkeepers. Let me try something." Myst focused on his summoning ability and summoned Adria from Tristram.
Adria blinked as she found herself on a floating rocky floating platform in a star filled abyss staring up at a strangely dressed giant. "What is going on?" she asked as she looked between the giant and the strangely dressed females wearing helmets that completely hid their faces.
"I was hoping you had a couple of spell books for sale," Myst told her, doing his best to keep his expression pleasant and not think about the shit she'd pulled in the third game.
"I don't…" Adria trailed off as she turned and noticed the piles of coins and treasure on the flying carpet that was hovering over the ground next to the giant. "I'm sure we can come to some sort of arrangement. What else do you want?"
"Excellent," Myst replied more cheerfully than he felt. "We need magic elixirs and spell books."
"I happen to have a decent collection of spell tomes," Adria replied, thinking about the box of weather worn spellbooks the hero had sold her for a steal. "I'll even toss in my stock of magic elixirs for one hundred thousand gold."
"A hundred thousand?!" Amy blurted, staring at the robed figure in shock.
"They're quite valuable and you have plenty of treasure," Adria replied with a smile.
"Take a look at the loot, I'm willing to make some trades," Myst offered, knowing he'd never be able to come up with that sort of gold and not particularly worried about selling the junk he'd stolen from the constructs, if only because none of it had looked particularly impressive to his new magic detection ability, at least compared to the rest of the stuff they'd already stolen from the other elixirs.
"Pleasure doing business with you," Adria replied as she walked over to examine the loot.
'He has the strangest power,' Taylor mused as she went back to blasting the zombie with her fire dart spell, not particularly impressed by the spell but willing to put in the work to see if she could turn it into something more than a trick to start fires. She barely noticed when her mind wandered and she cast the spell 'wrong', doubling the number of fire darts and causing the zombie to flinch.
"Sweet!" Vicky blurted excitedly. "How did you do it?"
Taylor thought about her fire dart cantrip and realized that she had a decent idea how to duplicate it. She slightly twisted the spell in her mind and cast it, creating two fire darts that jumped from her fingertips and slammed into the zombie, producing an obviously larger if still pathetic looking black mark on the zombie's flesh. "You just sort of mentally twist it, doubling the effects."
“Mentally twist?” Vicky asked with a frown.
Taylor nodded. “Yeah, when you are pushing out the mana you simply will it to… twist, on the way out.”
Vicky focused and conjured a yellow globe of acid that turned a sickly green as she focused on it. She tossed the ball at the zombie, causing a bit more damage than her previous spell or maybe she was just being hopeful as it was hard to tell considering it barely seemed to do anything. "Acid orb!" she shouted as she conjured another orb and tossed it, hoping it would help.
"Bad Vicky!" Amy snapped. "Don't call out your attacks."
"Why not?" Vicky asked as she tossed another acid orb at the floating zombie.
"It makes you look like an idiot," Amy complained.
"Relax, no one has a camera," Vicky replied, enjoying being silly and not worrying about the team's reputation.
"It's a bad habit," Amy argued, not seeing a point in mentioning that she'd taken a couple of pictures with her phone when her sister wasn't paying attention.
"Fine," Vicky replied with a pout that would have worked better if she'd been facing Amy and not wearing a helmet that covered her face.
Adria smiled as she found an extremely powerful staff that boosted magic in the pile of loot on the floating carpet. She added the staff to the collection of strange potions that she wanted to reverse engineer. "This should cover the books and the elixirs. Do you want any vitality, dexterity or strength elixirs?" she asked, wanting a reason to pick a couple more items without the giant deciding she was trying to cheat him.
"Might as well," Myst replied, curious if Amy could duplicate the effects or what her power would make of the improvements. 'We're going to need some type of inventory or a bunch of bags of holding, or storage rings,' he mused, wondering if he could talk Taylor into making minions they could use to farm the Item World when they got bored.'
Amy watched as the cloaked woman collected a couple more times. "Done?"
"Yes," Adria replied, not wanting to push her luck despite the collection of treasures that she'd like to acquire.
"I'll summon you back in ten to fifteen minutes, you'll want to be holding the books," Myst told Adria, hoping he wasn't making a mistake and dooming a world.
Amy frowned when the woman vanished. "Elixirs?"
"They permanently increase your basic stats," Myst explained. "The books mystically imprint the spells in the user's mind, which should give us more options."
"Do you know of any spells or items that would let us keep track of how injured the zombies are?" Taylor asked hopefully.
"Technically," Myst replied as he tried to remember if there were any items or materia that gave people Libra. "I might have an idea." He focused on his summoning ability, sifting through the collection of worlds he could reach. 'This is a fucking broken ability,' he thought as he found one of the people he wanted to summon. He focused on the person he wanted to summon and used his power, summoning a blonde haired man in his twenties holding a massive sword.
Cloud Strife glanced around and focused on the giant. "Where am I?"
"You're in a pocket dimension. I'm willing to pay you for your time, do you have any extra mug materia or items with materia slots that you're willing to part with?" Myst asked hopefully.
Cloud glanced at Amy with her brightly glowing rear, then pulled his eyes back to the giant, doing his best not to blush when he realized that her outfit was practically see through. "Why do you want a Steal materia?"
"A friend of mine has a ritual that creates pocket dimensions filled with monsters you can use to improve an item. The monsters have loot if you can steal it before you kill them, otherwise they fade away like dust in the wind and you get nothing," Myst explained.
"Annoying," Cloud replied as he glanced at the loot on the flying carpet. "How much is it worth to you?"
"Take your pick," Myst replied, gesturing towards the loot.
Cloud walked over to check the loot, curious what he'd find as he had a box full of the things because of Yuffie's tendency to steal things from people that annoyed her or had something shiny… or happened to be within arm’s reach. "You'll have to send me back, I don't have them with me."
"Not a problem, grab your items first," Myst replied, not worried about Cloud cheating him.
"Can I talk you out of the ritual?" Cloud asked, knowing the ability to upgrade their gear and stay in shape would come in useful.
"You'd have to talk to the girl that has the ritual, but I doubt she'd have a problem sharing it. If nothing else, you're welcome to run through the dungeon a couple of times in addition to taking your choice of the loot," Myst replied, hoping he could snag something from Cloud's world so he had a chance to get more materia.
"Sure," Cloud replied as he looked over gear.
"How strong are you?" Taylor asked as she walked over, looking at the heavy looking blade he was holding without any apparent trouble.
"I'm a Soldier," Cloud replied as if that explained everything.
"Soldiers have enhanced physical strength, he's basically a Brute," Myst explained.
"Nice to meet you," Taylor offered as she held her hand out, hoping she could unlock something interesting.
"Nice to meet you," Cloud agreed, doing his best and failing to not look at the girl's body as he shook her hand. "Are you part of a team?" he asked as he forced himself to go back to sorting through the loot rather than staring at the girl.
"Yep," Taylor agreed as she looked over the Magic Infused Biology unlock she'd just picked up. 'Superhuman strength, speed and agility, nice.'
"We're working on it," Vicky said cheerfully as she walked over. "Our city has a bit of a gang problem, we're trying to get rid of them."
"Do you need help?" Cloud asked as he picked up a nice looking staff that boosted magic that Aerith would probably like despite the fact that he'd have to have it modified to hold materia.
"We should be able to take care of it," Myst assured him, trying to avoid giving Pigot a legitimate reason to scream at him or make him fill out paperwork. "On the other hand, are you any good at destroying giant monsters?" he asked, not sure which version of Cloud he'd summoned.
"I've fought a couple," Cloud replied, thinking of the various summons they'd defeated on their adventures.
"I'll keep that in mind the next time we have to deal with a giant monster," Myst replied as he focused on his summoning ability and started looking for his next target.
Cloud found a pair of boots that would look good on Tifa and a cloak that Yuffie would like and grabbed them. "If you toss in six bags of Fairy Dust, I'll give you the Steal material, a bracelet with sockets and the materia to link the Steal materia to magic, which would let you steal things by blasting your enemies with spells." He hadn’t seen Fairy Dust before, but for some reason he could tell what it did just by looking at it.
"Done," Myst replied without any hesitation, knowing he'd put the Fairy Dust to good use.
"What do you need Fairy Dust for?" Amy asked.
"The scientist responsible for my abilities was insane," Cloud admitted. "I know people that have issues because of the process and I'd rather not drop dead in a couple of years if I can help it."
"I'm a healer, do you want me to check?" Amy asked as she held her hand out.
"That would be appreciated," Cloud admitted, not sure she'd be any more help than Aerith at fending off the disease but willing to take the chance since she was offering.
Amy reached out and touched his arm. "Your body is fighting some foreign cells that seem to be dying."
"They're dying?" Cloud asked in surprise.
"Probably because you're in a different dimension," Myst replied as he picked up a bag of Fairy Dust and hit Cloud with it, causing him to look like he'd been hit by a glitter bomb. "Sorry, not sorry. Any change?"
Amy stared as the foreign cells completely vanished along with all of the micro damage that he'd suffered from whatever had enhanced him and from his time as a hero. "You're in perfect health."
Cloud blinked a couple of times, glad that none of the dust had gotten in his eyes. "Are my eyes still glowing?" he asked as he raised and lowered his buster sword, noting that it felt lighter than it had in weeks.
Myst checked Cloud's eyes, noticing that they still had a greenish glow. "I'm pretty sure glowing eyes count as a feature rather than a bug."
"Thanks," Cloud replied as he checked his sleeve, relieved to find perfectly healthy skin rather than the discolored splotches he’d noticed developing.
"How long will it take to grab the materia?" Myst asked.
"Give me an hour," Cloud replied with a smile. "I need to discuss things with the girls, I might be able to toss in a couple of extra materia."
"Sure," Myst replied, letting Cloud vanish. "Let's finish killing the zombie and get out of here."
Amy conjured a ball of magic and tossed it at the zombie, killing it instantly and causing the group to reappear in the warehouse along with a pile of coins and a potion bottle. "Done."
Vicky turned to look at Taylor. "What did you get when you touched him?"
"Magic Infused Biology," Taylor replied as she pulled up the entry for the ability. "It basically gives a minion superhuman strength, speed, and agility."
"Do you think you can replicate it?" Vicky asked Amy excitedly.
"Not without a source of magic and a lot of tests," Amy admitted, not sure how you'd even start infusing a body with magic or what side effects it might have.
"Let's table that idea until we have a decent collection of mad scientists that can fix the mistakes in the original process," Myst suggested, wondering how badly things would spiral out of control if he summoned Dexter. 'Dee Dee wouldn't be around, so his stuff would probably work unless he got overly excited. Yeah… better skip that idea. Reed? Nope. Rick? Fuck that, I mean it would work but he'd probably turn someone into a pickle. He'd probably kill the endbringers in an afternoon, maybe half the planet too,' he mused, knowing the chances of summoning a helpful Rick would be remote. 'I'll put that down as a maybe.'
"Probably for the best," Amy agreed, wanting a better understanding of how magic was supposed to work before she started experimenting with turning people into magical warriors.
"Do you want help with sorting the loot?" the demon girl asked, reminding the group that she was there.
"Thanks," Myst replied, making a mental note to ask Adria if she could find an identification tome because not being able to identify things himself was a pain in the ass.
0o0o0
Adria smiled as she set her box on the table. "Eight magic elixirs, two vitality potions, three strength potions, nine dexterity potions and five rare spell books that I think you'll enjoy, identify, blood ritual, heal other, mana shield and reflect. I also tossed in a book for fireball since most sorcerers love that spell."
"Blood ritual?" Myst asked, not recognizing the name.
"You burn some of your health to generate mana," Adria explained as she took a step away from the desk in the strange storage room.
'Was that in the demo?' Myst mused, fairly sure he'd have used the spell if it was in the main game. 'At least I know the identify spell exists in the world, even if you had to use scrolls in the game.' He glanced at the demon girl that was already checking the elixirs then focused on the witch. "And reflect?"
"You basically reflect twenty to thirty percent of the incoming damage from physical attacks back to your attacker," Adria explained with an evil grin.
'So much for her being a decent person,' he mused, not particularly surprised that she was a bit sadistic considering her actions in the third game. "Feel free to grab something from the pile for the extra elixirs."
"Pleasure doing business with you," Adria said as she walked over to look through the loot.
"Always," Myst lied as he went back to trying to find his next target.
"This works," Adria announced a couple of minutes later after picking up another staff that boosted magic by an insane amount.
"Best of luck," Myst told her and let her vanish. "At least her products are good."
"I want a copy of the Reflect spell," the demon girl said.
"First copy we find," Myst assured her. "We're going to get burned out, we should probably look into recruiting people to clear the levels or make some minions to do it."
"I'm not bored yet," Vicky argued.
Amy covered her mouth with her arm as she yawned. "I'm not bored yet but we're going to need sleep eventually."
"If we grab an air mattress we should be able to get a nap in the Item World, we just need to find a platform the constructs can't reach or we need to pin one of them under a tree," Vicky explained her idea.
"Cool, that gives me enough time to deal with the Merchants," Myst mused as he summoned a traveling merchant, summoning an old man wearing brown robes and carrying a pack on his back. "Do you have any spatial rings, inventory items or books about crafting magical items?"
The merchant glanced between Myst and the girls, pausing a bit on the girls before pulling his attention back to Myst. "That depends, how much are you willing to pay for them?"
Myst gestured towards the loot on the flying carpets and piled on the floor. "I'm willing to pay in silver or interesting magical items."
"I have several spatial rings, half a dozen magical chests and an old enchanting altar I was planning on selling to a hero but he managed to get himself killed fighting a dragon," the old man admitted as he walked over to take a look at the look, fairly sure he'd find something that he wouldn't mind trading.
"Sucks about the dragon," Myst offered.
"Yeah, he was a good customer," the merchant replied as he picked up a magical sword and examined it. 'I could make a fortune off this, better not screw them over too much.'
0o0o0
