Mist of Shadows
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Replacement Boy That Lived Part 14
🕑 Added 2022-04-12 06:01:44 +0000 UTCMyst dodged under a tentacle and stabbed the fake looking tentacle monster with her dagger, moving better in her unfamiliar female body than she had any right to thanks to her magical girl transformation and the agility she'd stolen from the last twenty monsters she'd killed. She slashed at the tentacle that was heading for somewhere it had no business going then viciously drove the blade into the monster's body, causing the burned and battered creature to vanish and leave behind a high tech black visor. "Fucking perverts," she grumbled as she picked up the visor with a USB port on the top and checked the writing on the memory stick that was plugged in.
"Nice, most of them don't actually drop the systems, they just drop games or wireless gloves," the returning purple haired girl said as she walked over. "What game did you get?"
"Black Magic and the Naughty Apprentice," Myst replied as she dropped the visor in her inventory so she could look at the description. 'Magitech VR system, one mana per ten minutes, can hold up to one hundred mana.' She turned his attention to the game. 'Run through dungeons increasing your knowledge of magic, crafting and trap breaking or just have some fun blasting naked demon girls. Sounds like a good way to waste time at Hogwarts so I don't stab the idiots,' she mused, knowing she was going to have to do something to keep from getting bored and taking it out on the annoying students if they were anything like the books.
"Keep your eye out for the dark librarian expansion, she unlocks collecting books and you can occasionally find useful runes playing the game," the girl offered as Scarlet walked over.
"Useful runes?" Myst asked.
"Mostly vanity combinations but they're surprisingly useful," the girl replied as she pulled a book and a scroll out of her pocket dimension and handed them to Myst. "Thanks for taking care of the monsters while I was grabbing some ice cream."
"No worries," Myst replied as she opened the manual, absently scratching under her right breast that had developed an itch from drying sweat.
"New skill acquired: Enchanting!" a female voice announced.
"It was fun," Scarlet assured her, happy they'd gotten paid for something they were going to do anyway.
'Sweet!' she thought as he quickly opened his skills menu and pulled up her new skill. "Do I start with…" Myst trailed off when she realized that she only had one recipe and there wasn't a reverse engineering option or anything that would let her acquire more recipes, unlike her alchemy skill. "Magic Girl Transformation: add elemental or magic parts to a base object then design the costume and spend the mana. Could be worse."
"You'll probably need to find costume bits if you want your transformation to look somewhat reasonable," the girl offered. "I suggest talking to some of the costume shops or playing Naughty Nights, a Black Magic expansion that occasionally gives you schematics for various summoning spells and costumes."
Myst glanced at where Hermione was picking something up off the sand about thirty feet away that looked surprisingly like a laptop from the 2020’s. "Where do I find the costume shops?"
"In the city," the girl replied as she pointed at the forest. "You just have to go a couple of miles up the beach and you'll run into the city, you can't miss it."
"Thanks," Myst replied as she used the scroll.
"New recipe acquired: Flying Mount," a female voice announced.
Myst checked her enchanting list. 'Permanently enchants an object with flight and mental controls, five miles per hour per 100 mana. "How fast are most of the flying swords?"
The girl shrugged. "Anywhere from five miles an hour hoverboards for toddlers to fifty or sixty miles an hour depending on the crafter. People occasionally get something more impressive from the boss quality monsters that spawn, but it's rare. Normally, you just do the best you can then buy some upgrade tokens."
"Does anyone use brooms?" Hermione asked as she walked over holding the thin silvery laptop with both hands, trying not to be overly giddy about her new computer.
The girl shook her head. "Only girls and generally only around halloween, they're not particularly comfortable. I'd rather enchant a chair or something with handlebars and a foot rest or fly around on my sword."
Myst glanced at the laptop Hermione was holding. "Do the computers work?" she asked as she stuck the book and scroll in her inventory.
"Most of them," the girl replied. "You'll occasionally have to reformat the drives or fix some drivers."
"Drivers?" Scarlet asked, not sure what they were talking about.
"Computers have…" Myst nibbled the bottom of her lip as she tried to figure out how to describe computers to someone without a clue. "Think of it like a magic box with lists and directions on how to do things, we'll call the lists programs. Some of the programs are instructions for getting the box to do something related to the box, we occasionally call those programs drivers. Confused yet?"
"Yep," Scarlet replied, fairly sure she was going to need a book on the topic, one with pictures.
"Basically, some of the directions are wrong and someone needs to fix them before they can be used," the girl offered.
"Makes sense," Scarlet replied, thinking about the messes that happened when you told her aunt's ice golems you needed things done and they forgot important details.
The girl turned back to look at Myst and Hermione. "I suggest deleting the porn folder without looking through it, twenty percent of the time you get something interesting, the rest of the time, you end up with weird crap."
"Thanks for the warning," Hermione replied, making a mental note to check the various files and see if she could figure out where the obviously advanced computer came from, because something this advanced couldn’t have come from the magic world, so it had to have its origins in an alternate future… or something like that. ‘Maybe I read too much science fiction.’
"On that note, I should get back to monster hunting," the girl admitted.
"Thanks for the help," Myst said as she watched the girl fly off down the beach, tossing lightning at the larger monsters on her way. "Other than the computer, did you find anything interesting?"
"Sundancer Sunscreen, SPF 50," Hermione replied as she stuck the laptop in her inventory and pulled the plastic bottle of sunscreen out of her inventory.
"I found a beach towel and a large ball made out of a strange material," Scarlet offered.
Myst glanced between the two very pale girls. "We should probably take a couple of minutes and put on sunscreen before we burn."
"Sunburns suck," Scarlet grumbled as she pulled the beach towel out of her inventory and spread it on the sand. "Who wants to get my back?" she teased as she pulled the top of her suit down, revealing creamy pale skin.
"What about the monsters?" Hermione asked as she glanced around at the various monsters that were wandering around the beach despite their best efforts at pest control.
"I'll take care of the monsters if you want to get her back," Myst offered, doing her best not to stare at Scarlet's breasts, as even as a female he was still finding her attractive.
Hermione glanced between Myst and Scarlet then tossed the bottle of sunscreen to Myst with a mischievous grin and headed towards the closest monster, a touch surprised he'd been paying enough attention to catch the sunscreen. "You can do it, after all it’s just us girls here and I need to work on my strength."
"Don't worry, you can do me next time," Scarlet offered as she sprawled out on the beach towel.
'Was that intentional? Probably,' Hermione thought as she tossed a firebolt at the nearest monster, trying to soften the giant lobster up before it got into melee range.
Myst knelt down next to Scarlet and squeezed a generous amount of clear gel onto her hands then got to work, starting with her neck and moving down her back, figuring she could get her arms herself.
Hermione tossed another firebolt then dodged a huge pincer and slashed at the creature's antenna, trying to keep it from hitting her. 'I need to look up a decent shield spell,' she thought as she used telekinesis to flip the monster over on its back, using the fact that she wasn't actually lifting the creature to get past the fact that it weighed more than she could lift. She pounced on the lobster and started stabbing as fast as she could, trying to kill it before it managed to knock her off or hit her with its pincers.
She grinned when the creature vanished, leaving behind a large wicker basket of steaming hot lobster with a wax paper container of melted garlic butter. 'I could get used to this,' she mused as she stuck the basket in her inventory to keep it hot and fresh. She glanced around then tossed a firebolt at the tentacle monster that looked like a fat man in a costume that was shuffling closer to Myst and Scarlet with what looked like a video camera. 'No free shows,' she thought as she charged the creature.
Myst finished getting Scarlet's back. "Do you want me to get your legs or do you want to deal with it?"
Scarlet blinked as Hermione tumbled into view, stabbing a tentacle monster. "Normally, I'd say go for it but we should probably hurry up and help Hermione deal with the various monsters."
Hermione stabbed the monster until it faded, leaving behind two memory sticks, a wallet filled with cash and a high tech video camera or at least she was assuming it was some type of video recorder because of the lense, carrying strap and general shape. "I'm good," she replied as she stuck the camera in her inventory and looked at it.
"What did you get?" Myst asked as she put more gel on her hands and started covering her arms, glancing down at her breasts and wondering if she needed to do her cleavage as well or if there wouldn’t be enough exposure to really affect it.
Hermione picked up the memory sticks and wallet and put them in her inventory then walked back over to the group since none of the remaining monsters were that close. "It's a magitech digital video camera, no need for electricity, just mana. We'll probably have to buy the cords or get lucky with a drop if we want to connect it to the laptop, assuming it's compatible."
"Video recorder?" Scarlet asked as she 'stole' the bottle of sunscreen from the distracted Myst (who was gingerly rubbing sunscreen into her cleavage as if she was disarming a bomb) and squirted a generous glob on her hand before tossing the bottle to Hermione. 'This is better than using goose lard from the general store,' she mused as she got to work covering her breasts.
"It basically takes moving pictures…" Myst explained, trailing off when she turned back to look at Scarlet and noticed her enthusiastically slathering her breasts with sunscreen.
"That's useful," Scarlet replied with a smirk that caused Hermione to shake her head.
"You enjoy teasing people, don't you?" Hermione asked rhetorically, as she put some sunscreen on her hands so she could make sure she didn't end up looking like a cooked lobster herself, and if she happened to jiggle her own temporary curves, drawing the pair’s attention then it was completely accidental.
"And showing off," Scarlet replied with a smirk.
"How are you doing for strength and agility?" Myst asked as she worked on covering her ears and the back of her neck with sunscreen, facing away so she could check for monsters and not because she was finding the hormonal surge of being a teenager again distracting.
Hermione opened her character sheet to double check her stats. "I didn't get anything for the lobster, which probably means it has less than seventy five strength unless the dagger only lets you steal a certain amount a day. I'm up to twenty five strength and sixteen agility without the boost from my magic transformation which drives them up to seventy five and sixty six respectively."
"Considering the description doesn't mention a limit, it's probably a strength thing," Myst mused as she held out her hand for more sunscreen, while scanning the area around them for monsters for their safety and no other reason.
Hermione squeezed a generous glob of gel into Myst's hand then went back to working on covering the exposed skin on her chest so she wouldn't get sunburned, as she really wasn’t sure what it would come out looking like when her breasts shrank back down to normal or how she would explain it to her parents. "I guess that means we should work on endurance as we head towards the city."
"Works for me," Myst agreed, pausing to undo a wedgie as her swimsuit went somewhere it shouldn’t. "I want to see if I can find some decent bracelets to enchant for transformation items."
"Shopping!" Scarlet said cheerfully.
"Assuming we can get some local currency," Myst warned her, wanting to make sure she didn't get her hopes up.
Scarlet snickered as she pulled her suit back on after finishing her stomach. "Give me a minute to finish my legs and behind, then we can start cutting a swath of destruction through the monsters."
"I found a couple of wallets and we have gold coins," Hermione pointed out, reasonably sure they could figure something out. "We should probably check to see if they have an alchemy shop, we need some ingredients for the intelligence boosting elixirs."
"It would certainly attract less attention than buying a ton of 'random' ingredients in Diagon Alley," Myst said as she worked on finishing up applying her sunscreen.
0o0o0
Hermione stared as they walked far enough down the beach that the trees weren't blocking their view of the large stone wall built into a massive rock outcropping. "How tall do you think the wall is?"
Myst glanced between the wall and the outcropping as they continued up the beach, not sure how to measure the wall because despite the top being reasonably even, they'd extended the wall in a couple of places where the rock it was built on was lower. "At least sixty feet from the rock to the top, ignoring the sections where they extended the wall."
"I'm surprised they don't have a gate," Scarlet said as she followed the sandy trail that ran from the beach up to the landing where the wall started with her gaze.
"There's probably a gate on the other side," Myst replied as she glanced at the various towers built into the wall every thirty feet that would be perfect for archers or spell casters. "No point in having a gate right next to the beach where all the monsters are."
"You've obviously not met enough nobles," Scarlet replied as she tossed a firebolt at a tentacle monster, thinking about some of the idiots she'd run into at diplomatic dinners. "More than a few of them are stupid enough to insist on building a gate so they wouldn't have to walk as far."
Myst tossed a firebolt at the creature that looked like a fat woman in a tentacle suit as it rolled towards the group with two dozen tentacles sprouting bone like scythes. She swapped to lightning when her firebolt didn't seem to do enough damage. She stopped when the monster had a sliver of health left. "They probably have flying carpets, they'd just fly over the," she glanced at the city when she heard a loud church style bell, "wall."
Scarlet dashed forward and stabbed the creature, taking a hit by one of the slimy tentacles on her leg in order to avoid a scythe cutting her arm. "Die!"
"Do you think you could enchant spears with the dagger's stat draining ability?" Hermione asked thoughtfully.
"Not without figuring out how to," Myst paused as the bell rang again, "reverse engineer things," she admitted, not sure where she'd even start. "It's something to keep in mind."
Hermione relaxed when Scarlet managed to hit something vital or just did enough damage and the creature faded out before it could hit her with a bone scythe, leaving behind a huge flat screen television, a wallet and a DVD case. "Can I give one of the smaller flat screen televisions to my parents?"
"Sure," Myst replied as she walked over and stuck the eighty or ninety inch television in her inventory before it could fall over or get hit by a monster attack. "You should probably remind your parents that they shouldn't show them off for a couple of years."
"Good point," Hermione admitted, fairly sure she could just tell them that the screen was magic without causing too much trouble.
"Fat People Gone Wild?" Scarlet asked as she picked up the wallet and the movie case, wondering how many peasants starved so this rich cow could get that fat.
"No idea," Hermione admitted as the bell rang a third time.
Myst glanced at the DVD cover, cursing her curiosity and suddenly wishing she had brain bleach because human shaped whales shouldn't wear bikinis sized for teenage girls or at least that was the vague impression she'd gotten from her thankfully quick glance. "We might be able to sell it or use it to torture cultists."
"I'd rather just set them on fire," Scarlet replied as she tossed the wallet to Myst and put the DVD in her inventory, fairly sure Myst was joking about torturing cultists with images of barely dressed fat people.
"We're not…" Hermione trailed off as a wave of magic girls flew over the city's wall, riding a strange mix of hoverboards, bikes, swords, wooden horses, barrels and sleds and dressed in a weird collection of costumes that made them look like knock off superheroes or villains. "So much for hunting the rest of the monsters."
Myst stared in disbelief as one of the girls pulled something that looked like a Ghostbusters style proton pack off her shoulder and blasted one of the monsters with a blue and green beam that did a passable impression of a proton beam. "Yeah."
"Three bells, three o'clock?" Hermione mused when it didn't didn't seem like the bell was going to ring again.
"It would make sense," Myst replied as she watched one of the few guys in the army of magic girls blast one of the giant crabs with a scepter that shot lightning. 'At least he's not tossing roses at people.'
Hermione shivered as organ music started to play in the background, sounding rather ominous and making all of the magic girls tense up and look around. "That doesn't sound good."
"Not really…" Myst trailed off as she saw a large humanoid shark with a crown surfing towards shore holding a massive axe.
"Raid boss!" one of the girls shouted as she pointed her staff at the boss and started tossing fireballs at him.
"How dangerous-" Hermione stoppen and frowned when the army started unleashing hell on the shark and his health barely started moving. "Should we run?"
"Never!" Scarlet shouted as she started tossing firebolts at the boss, trying to help.
Myst couldn't help the sinking feeling that she'd just stepped into a Fantasy Fantasy game where you were supposed to get your ass handed to you and run away because the girls were tossing a barrage of spells at the boss and its health bar was barely moving. She raised her hands and tossed a stream of lightning at the creature, not particularly surprised when the boss's health barely twitched. 'So much for the girls being background and us being heroes.'
Hermione copied Myst, sending a stream of lightning at the shark as it jumped off its board and charged them.
Myst gestured and conjured a wall of tapioca pudding between them and the boss then teleported out of the way when he charged through the wall, mostly because he looked extremely angry and the axe and his mouth, filled with razor sharp teeth, looked extremely dangerous.
Myst turned to blast the boss and stopped when music changed and someone started singing, "I need a hero!", the words echoing over the battlefield as a girl with rainbow colored hair in a sheer rainbow colored skirt flew over the wall carrying a staff that was crackingling with lightning. She stared at the girl's massive rainbow butterfly wings attached to her back. 'Yep, scripted events are a go.'
"Dragon slave!" the girl shouted as she started gathering streams of multicolored magic from the air.
"Fuck!" the humanoid shark cursed as he turned his attention towards the girl with rainbow wings.
Myst blinked as an athletic looking teenage male with short blue hair appeared out of thin air behind the shark and ran him through with a long sword, causing the boss's health to drop from almost full to empty as the sword ripped through his heart. "Damn…" she trailed off as Hermione's lightning bolt struck the boss and killed him. "Sorry!"
The teen grinned as he turned around and saw Myst and the girls. "Don't worry about it, everybody gets credit."
'At least I know I still think guys are attractive,' Hermione mused as she looked at the well-built teen with a movie star face and an easy face that was wearing a pair of blue swimming trunks.
"Does that happen often?" Myst asked as the teen reached down and touched the box that dropped where the boss had died.
"Raid boss participation loot awarded! Sparkling Summer Princess Rose, awarded Crown of Celestial Rage! Void Stalker awarded Axe of Rage, Hermione awarded Sparkly G-String!" the voice announced.
Myst glanced at her inventory and smiled when she saw a token for upgrading a flying mount to fly 10 mph faster. "Does the underwear do anything useful enough to wear?"
"No…" Hermione trailed off as she finished opening her inventory and looked at the g-string.
"Let me guess, you found a reason to wear it?" Scarlet asked curiously.
"It has fifty points of armor, automatically resizes, perfectly repairs and cares for teeth, and lets me style my hair with a thought," Hermione admitted, wishing they could put the enchantment on something more reasonable.
"That sounds useful," Scarlet said cheerfully, thinking about the armor value and the time it would save her in the bathroom combing her hair in the morning. ‘Maybe I could get Myst to do it?’ she thought to herself, recalling that her mom got her da to do it for her rather than let her cut her hair.
"Ready to head to the city and get some shopping done?" Hermione asked, trying to change the subject.
"Sure," Myst replied. “I’m really in the mood for some pants right about now.”
Comments
Mist of Shadows
Sand is evil...
Bable Zmith
and maybe a bra that isn't lined with sand... ;P
