Mist of Shadows
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Reluctant Villainy Part 22
🕑 Added 2021-08-17 08:47:33 +0000 UTCMist blinked as he went from doing a hundred things with his duplicates to floating in the void with a dark haired stranger and the girl with the umbrella. "Something the matter?" he asked, wondering why he'd gotten yanked out of the world early.
"Other than the fact that you're a horrible villain and Jump Chan is cheating?" the ROB asked sarcastically.
Jump stuck her tongue out at the ROB. "I'm not cheating, he was in a hundred places at once, the hours add up and he was being a villain so I'm not sure what you're complaining about."
"He barely killed a handful of people and his crime spree was pathetic," the ROB complained, glaring at Myst.
Myst glanced at the girl with the umbrella. "No one said I had to be a super villain or a lunatic, just a villain. Besides, I think I made a decent villain, I stole a couple of famous paintings, killed a bunch of dark witches for power, paid at least a hundred college girls to fly around National City naked to embarrass Kara, recorded thousands of hours worth of video of naked novices and accepted killing goblins and built a flying death machine. That's gotta be worth something."
The ROB snorted. "You gave the paintings to a museum after stealing them from the personal vaults of a couple of corrupt businessmen and the witches were evil, they don't count. Your 'death machine' was a blimp filled with hydrogen with some magitek weapons that could barely level half a town."
"Technically paying people to run around naked or recording people with permission isn't evil, it's just entertainment," the girl with the umbrella offered with a grin.
"What about the valuable medical research I stole or the destroyed logging camp or the fact that I ripped off the Hatter's mind control tech and shot a hero with an invisibility ray, turning her clothes invisible?" Myst asked, hoping he could get her vote as the ROB was obviously intending to screw him over.
The girl with the umbrella shook her head. "You turned the stolen medical data over to a non profit to make a bunch of cures for various horrible diseases, you hit the hero in front of her date so it doesn't really count and the logging camp was illegal and messy, so those don't really count either."
"What about giving a bunch of homeless kids professional level hacking skills and unleashing them to cause havoc or stealing a bunch of cloning tech from Cadmus without calling the heroes or killing the mad scientists?" Myst asked.
The ROB snorted. "Creating hackers to take down an evil government agency doesn't make you a villain, same with destroying Apocalypse."
"I'm fairly sure heroes aren't supposed to blow up entire worlds," Myst argued.
"A villain wouldn't have saved the innocent prisoners," the ROB argued, getting annoyed that he wasn't getting his cup of blood.
Myst shook his head. "Just because I have to be a villain, doesn't mean I have to be a monster. I'm starting to wonder if you actually understand what it means to be a villain."
"Blood, death and pain," the ROB replied as he tossed Myst into the next world. "Let's see him dance his way out of this mess without a river of blood."
Jump resisted the urge to shake her head and conjured a box of popcorn, fairly sure the demon was missing the point. 'You're not going to corrupt him by tossing him at a bunch of assholes and even if you could, he's vindictive enough to kill you when everything is said and done.'
0o0o0
Myst scowled as he went from floating in the void to standing in a summoning circle carved into the stone floor in what looked like a temple. He glanced at the dozen old people wearing hooded white robes that were looking at him disdainfully. "What's going on?"
"We have summoned you to deal with the demon lord that is threatening our world," one of the old men explained.
"Congratulations, you get to be the hero of legend," one of the other men said, his tone of voice indicating that he thought they were doing Myst a favor.
Myst turned to look at the man that was trying to get him to kill a demon lord. "Why do you need the demon lord slain?"
The man trembled in anger as he thought about the arrogant devil cultivator that thought he could get away with besmirching their good name. "He has corrupted a hundred young ladies by turning them into his demonic wives."
"He has to die for this insult!" one of the other old men ordered. "You will go forth and kill him for the honor of the Gods of Light!"
Myst stared at the old man that wanted the demon lord dead. "How much are you going to pay me?"
"What!" another one of the old men blurted.
"You're the hero, it's a matter of honor," the first old man to talk argued.
Myst glanced down at the ornate silver summoning circle and smiled when he noticed the jewelry box next to his feet. "Is this my payment?"
"Of course, the Gods of Light reward their heroes," one of the other men lied, not sure where the box had come from as none of the rest of the heroes they'd summoned over the years had shown up with jewelry boxes or extra gear.
"You should have been given a 'Cheat' skill as payment that you can share to help the temple," one of the other men said excitedly.
"You want me to share my payment?" Myst asked as he used his Telepathy to read the man's mind. 'Seriously? You want the demon lord dead because he rescued some girls from being sacrificed and has been rescuing slaves and undermining your authority? You're not even priests, just cultivators that figured out how to summon people from other worlds.'
"Of course, the more power the Heaven's Sect has, the more we can help everyone see the glory of the light," the man explained with a smile that didn't reach his eyes.
'Even if I wasn't a telepath I wouldn't fall for that shit,' he mused as he scanned the wooden jewelry box to make sure it wasn't cursed or trapped. 'Looks safe enough.' He opened the box and scanned the coin purse filled with coins. 'Huh, it refills every year, should be enough for a couple of months on the road. Why the hell would I choose the money option? Maybe it was a free bonus?' he mused as he pulled the coin purse out and stuffed it in his inventory.
One of the men nodded. "Which means the world is safer."
He stuck the box in his inventory then smiled at the group of cultivators that had summoned him. "I don't suppose you'd be willing to share the method you used to summon me?"
"You expect us to share our sacred summoning method?" one of the men asked in disbelief.
One of the other men sneered before managing to turn his expression into a simple frown. "You're not worthy!"
One of the other old men quickly cut in, "Once you've proven yourself by killing the demon lord we'll revisit the issue."
"Did you learn any secret techniques?" one of the other men asked eagerly.
Myst grinned when he mentally reviewed his various skills and powers for anything out of place and realized he knew a Cosmic Refining Method that could improve things given enough time and magic. "Sorry, I'm guessing the gods decided paying me a handful of gold coins was enough."
"He's lying, he should have the sacred light!" one of the men shouted then tossed a bolt of light at Myst to see how he'd react.
Myst raised his hands and conjured a shield formed out of solid darkness before he realized what he was doing. "What the hell is your problem?"
"Demonspawn!" one of the old men shouted then rushed forward to punch Myst.
Myst took a step back when the man hit him in the face, mostly in surprise as the man would have shattered a concrete bunker with his punch. "What the hell?"
"How dare you not lay down and die! Kill him!" one of the other men shouted as he lunged forward to strike Myst.
Myst took another hit to the face as he tried and failed to process the stupidity and arrogance of the man's statement. He absently blocked the next couple of strikes as he used his Telepathy to rip the details of the summoning ritual out of their minds. 'Yeah, I'm going to end up with a river of blood if everyone is this stupid.'
One of the old men turned and sprinted towards the exit, moving at nearly a hundred miles an hour thanks to the sheer amount of spiritual energy running through his body.
"Screw it," Myst muttered as he opened a small horizontal portal in front of the fleeing idiot's throat then turned his attention towards the rest of the idiots trying to kill him because he wasn't willing to play assassin and had the ability to conjure darkness.
0o0o0
"Shit!" Sarah Granger cursed when the last boss managed to clip her character with lightning and dropped her hit points from nearly full health to a bare sliver. She quickly hit the hotkey to use an elixir then dashed in and stabbed the demon lord in the crotch, getting a critical hit and stunning him long enough to slip between his legs, spin around and stab him in the back with a kidney shot.
"Language!" Mione called out from the kitchen.
"Sorry!" Sarah lied as she tapped the macro button she'd talked her 'uncle' Leet into programming and smirked when her character danced around the demon lord like greased lightning, stabbing his various weak points and keeping him stun locked. 'Almost there.' She hit her next macro button and watched as her character tossed her ultimate spell at the demon lord half a second before she jumped backwards, causing her to ride the wave rather than take the full force of her attack.
"Die," Sarah whispered as she tapped the hotkey for her next macro which automatically targeted the demon lord and started shooting him with light arrows as she flew backwards, slightly annoyed that she couldn't just automate the whole thing but taking damage tended to break macros.
"3, 2, 1…" She hit the hotkey she'd set up for a toy that caused a character to levitate for a second which killed her character's momentum and dropped her on a floating platform so she didn't fall in the lava.
She hit her next hotkey, tossing a 'combat' pet at the demon lord then worked on shooting the demon lord while he tried to hit her puppy. "Just a little bit more, shit!" she cursed as the demon lord managed to connect after missing three times, sending her puppy into the lava.
"I'm getting the soap!" Mione lied as she continued stirring the pasta sauce, rather amused at her daughter's enthusiasm.
"Crap," Sarah muttered as she tossed one of her other combat toys at the demon to distract it then hit a button to swap her arrows. "No more healing," she whispered as she put a cursed arrow in the demon lord's eye that should keep it from healing for fifteen seconds. She hit her spell blitz macro and watched as her character started stringing together spells with inhuman accuracy, each overcharged spell burning through her mana pool and the last of the boss's health.
She stared in disbelief when the supposedly unbeatable last boss fell over and crashed to the ground. "I won…" she trailed off as she found herself standing in a summoning circle surrounded by thirteen people in white robes. "If my character ends up dying, I'm going to get annoyed."
The leader of the summoning circle glared at the half dressed teenage girl standing in the summoning circle. "Stop your whining child."
"I'm not a child, I'm thirteen," Sarah argued.
"I'm over eight hundred, you're a child," one of the men snapped.
"More like a harlet," one of the men muttered under his breath, staring at the girl's bare chest.
'You're so lucky that none of my family heard that, especially Dad,' Sarah thought as she studied the cave they were in. "Fine, why did you summon me?" she asked, wondering if they actually had a legitimate reason for summoning her.
"A great and terrible monster was summoned by mistake and we need a hero to hunt them down and destroy them," the man explained.
Sarah sighed. "Right, who do you want me to destroy and what did they do?"
"A demonspawn, he perverted our sacred summoning ritual and wields the power of Darkness…" the man trailed off when Sarah shook her head.
"No thanks," Sarah replied, not particularly interested in going on an adventure for a bunch of assholes, especially not without asking permission first. "You should probably send me back before my family notices I'm gone."
"He insulted our sect and perverted the sacred summoning ritual, he has to die!" one of the other men argued.
One of the men smirked. "Which means you're going to help us destroy him."
Sarah shook her head. "You have enough magic to summon people, why can't you deal with him yourselves?"
"Because we have more important things to do and it's part of your contract, you can't refuse," one of the men said smugly.
"Mom!" Sarah shouted.
One of the men laughed. "Calling for your mother isn't going to help…" he trailed off as a young woman that looked a lot like the girl they summoned appeared outside of the summoning circle, holding a kitchen knife. "Don't do anything stupid or we'll kill the girl-" whatever else he was going to say was lost as Mione buried the kitchen knife in his chest.
Sarah summoned her copy of her father's crossbow and shot one of the men in the shoulder, less than impressed by the group of idiots. "Suck a goat!" she shouted as she conjured a blade of light and stabbed one of the other men before he blurred forward and hit her in the face, sending her tumbling.
Mione gestured and unleashed lightning on the group, less than amused at getting summoned to an abandoned ruin a couple of seconds before hearing her daughter's call for help.
"Kill her!" one of the men ordered, rather amused at the idea of having the girl's daughter kill her.
Sarah twisted around and shot the idiot in the chest with her crossbow, not feeling the slightest urge to attack her mother let alone kill her. "No-" her sarcastic comment was cut off when one of the old men blurred forward and sent her across the room into a wall with a kick to her solar plexus, knocking the wind out of her.
"Enough!" the man that had kicked Sarah snapped as he turned and glared at Mione. "You're nothing but a hedge witch, you're not awakened and you certainly aren't on my level. If you insist on fighting I'll kill you."
"Lovely," Mione muttered as she killed two more of the old men with her lightning as their barriers failed. "You're the one that threatened my daughter."
"She's nothing but a pawn and I'm going to enjoy torturing you until she does her duty!" one of old men finished his rant a second before his head slipped off his neck and fell to the ground, causing the rest of the group of old men to stare at the body as it collapsed to the ground.
Sarah glared at the asshole that hit her as she bounced to her feet, wishing her parents had let her pick up more offensive abilities as she doubted her crossbow would cut it.
The last of the old men stared in shocked disbelief when the rest of his fellow elders fell apart between one second and the next. "What the hell!"
"You shouldn't have threatened my family," Myst replied as he stepped out of the shadows holding a dagger that was covered in blood.
"Who are you?" the old man demanded, trying not to let his unease show at the fact that he couldn't sense the stranger that had just killed half a dozen elders without apparent effort. "Just because you can deal with the elders doesn't mean you can deal with a grand elder on the path to ascension!"
Myst ripped the location of the man's sect from his mind with Telepathy then blurred forward and stabbed the man in the heart with his athame, instantly killing him and absorbing his magical talents and a fraction of his spiritual power thanks to his Heartless ability. "Is everyone okay?" he asked as he turned to look at Hermione and Sarah, focusing on the teenager that should still be munchkin sized. "When did you get so tall?"
"When you weren't paying attention," Sarah replied with amusement as she walked over and started looting the two idiots she'd shot with her crossbow. "Any idea where we are?"
"In a cave in the middle of nowhere." Myst jumped when the phone in his pocket started ringing.
Sarah snickered. "Do you think he'll ever get used to carrying a cell?"
"Probably not," Mione replied as she studied the summoning circle carved into the stone.
"I'm not that bad," Myst muttered as he pulled his phone out of his pocket and answered the call, "Hello?"
John Constantine pulled his attention off the half naked students walking through the halls when he heard Myst's voice. "Any idea why the school jumped to a floating island or why half the students aren't wearing shirts?"
"Beyond jumping worlds and a weird dress code? Not really, I don't recognize the world," Myst admitted as he started looting the dead cultivators. "Do you have class or can you slip away?"
"It's lunch," John replied as he continued walking towards the staff room. "Any idea what to expect with the new students?"
"Judging by the idiots that summoned Sarah, I'm guessing spiritual energy or some type of hedge magic," Myst replied as he continued stuffing the loot in his inventory. "Either way, I'll be there in five once I get done looting the idiots."
"Sounds good," John replied, ending the call as he walked into the staff lounge where most of the teachers ate lunch when they didn't want to eat in the great hall. He glanced between Selena and the two unfamiliar yet similar looking ladies sitting across from her at the staff table. 'Green eyes, vaguely Asian features, a bit on the tall side and enough cleavage to make the silk robes look good.' He walked over and sat down next to Selena. "Any trouble with the new location?"
Selena gave John a smile. "Not yet, Kara volunteered to do some scouting, I was getting to know Xu Mei and Xu Xinya, they're our new cultivation teachers."
"Welcome to Hogwarts," John said as he grabbed a plate and started dishing up some of the roasted bird on the platter. "How long does it take to train a student?"
"It shouldn't take more than a couple of months before they can start to move their Qi. After that, it's just a matter of learning to manipulate their elements, unlocking their meridians and building up their Qi pools until they're ready to learn alchemy and refining," Xinya explained.
"Refining?" John asked as he moved his plate back in front of him.
"It basically lets you use Qi to turn magical ingredients into talismans or weapons," Mei explained.
"How much Qi does alchemy require?" John asked as he poured himself a glass of wine.
Xinya shrugged. "It depends on what you're making and the ingredients, you mostly use it to make up for poor ingredients and to remove impurities."
"We'll have to run some tests." John took a bite of the roasted bird and smiled when he tasted the magic saturating the creature's flesh. "That's delicious."
Mei nodded as she finished another bite of the roasted bird. "It almost makes up for working with the dregs that the large sects didn't want."
"Stupid?" John asked warily as Myst dark orbed into the room.
"No, just untalented," Xinya complained. "Headmaster."
"Trouble?" Myst asked, focusing on the new teachers.
Xinya shook her head. "No, I was just explaining that the great septs tend to monopolize the truly talented. We followed the directions in your letter and managed to recruit a decent number of intelligent students but most of them don't have particularly impressive talents for the spiritual arts or lack the ability to read."
Myst held out his hand and turned his newly acquired talent with spiritual fire into a power sphere. "Don't worry about natural talent, just worry about teaching the students the basics. I have a way to give people magical talents," he explained as he scanned the power sphere so he could copy it.
"You can give people magical talents?" Mei asked in disbelief.
"It's a talent or rather a collection of talents," Myst replied with a grin. "As long as the students are willing to work hard, I can make sure they have the talents to reach the heavens."
"You should avoid letting anyone know you can improve talents, the greater sects would go to war for that ability and kill everyone here a thousand times over if they could claim it," Xinya warned him.
"I have a couple of ideas to make that harder." Myst turned to look at John. "We should probably work on improving the wards on the castle and see if we can extend them to the entire island."
"I'll look into it." John smirked. "I know a couple of tricks that should help."
"Thanks, I'd rather not have to deal with a bunch of lunatics trying to blow the island up," Myst admitted.
Selena glanced between Mei and Xanya. "Is that a possibility?"
Mei glanced at her cousin then shrugged. "It depends on the formations protecting the island and the number of elders the sects send."
"Something to look into," Myst mused, planning on warding the island until a god would have trouble destroying it.
