Mist of Shadows
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Dragon King Part 3
🕑 Added 2021-03-06 07:31:03 +0000 UTCMyst pulled his attention away from the spinning translucent gacha wheel hovering in front of him and looked at the door as it opened. "Dinner?" he asked innocently, trying to pretend that there was nothing wrong.
"Yes…" Elia trailed off when she spotted the dragon shaped stuffed toy that her daughter was chasing around the room. "Where did you get that?"
Myst glanced at the stuffed dragon that was flying around the room, narrowly avoiding getting caught by his sister. "Same place I got the device I used on the Mountain."
"Is it safe?" Elia asked warily.
Myst reached out and caught the gold and ruby ring that dropped from his gacha. "It's just a stuffed toy."
"Dragon!" Rhaenys squealed when she managed to grab the dragon and it nuzzled her face.
Elia relaxed when she realized the toy was probably harmless. "I think she just found her new favorite toy."
"Good." Myst opened his upgrade menu and looked at the ring. 'Spatial ring? One cubic yard of time-locked extra-dimensional storage space and a mental inventory, could be worse.' He slipped the ring on, smiling when it resized to fit his finger.
"What does the ring do?" Elia asked in concern, not sure how safe he was being.
"It lets me magically store a box worth of stuff," Myst admitted, not really seeing a point in lying to his mother as he was going to need her help with some of his ideas.
"That sounds useful for smuggling," Elia mused, fairly sure her brother would love something like that to carry supplies. "If you get more, I'd like one."
"Sure," Myst replied as he spent mana for another jewelry gacha, hoping for something useful.
"What else have you picked up?" Elia asked as she glanced around the room.
Myst pulled a coin out of his pocket and held it out towards his mother. "Just the stuffed toy and a dragon steel coin that floats in salt water."
"How do you know it floats in salt water?" Elia asked as she picked up the coin and examined the ripples in the metal.
"One of my abilities gives me the details for various magical items and odd substances," Myst explained as he caught the silver and ruby crown that dropped from his gacha wheel.
"How often can you conjure things from thin air?" Elia asked with a raised eyebrow.
"Until I run out of mana..." Myst trailed off as he looked at the crown with his upgrade ability and wondered how much his luck perk was influencing things. 'Crown of the Demon Prince, grants 2 points of armor to the wearer's head and allows them to summon a demonic instructor who improves the user's skill growth by 13% and increases the user's mana and health regeneration by 2% of their total health and mana per minute. So from nothing to full in just under fifty minutes? That should speed everything up, especially if I increase the training boost to something unreasonable.'
Elia glanced between the crown and her son. "And the crown?"
"It basically protects the wearer's head with magic and might improve the rate they pick up skills, I'll have to do some testing," Myst explained as he put the crown on and looked at the icon that appeared on his HUD. 'No mana cost, no time limit, that's better than I was expecting.'
"You look like a prince," Elia teased as she handed him the coin back. "What are you planning on doing with the coin?"
Myst focused on his ring and the coin and grinned when the coin vanished, appearing in his mental inventory for the spatial ring. "I'm sort of hoping I get enough coins that I can have them melted down and make a sword out of them."
"Are you going to be a knight?" Rhaenys asked.
Myst smiled at his sister. "I wasn't planning on it but everyone should know how to fight."
Rhaenys glanced at her mother then looked back at her brother. "Even princesses?"
"Especially princesses," Myst replied as he spent the mana to grab a trinket gacha wheel.
"Don't worry, you've got a couple more years before you need to worry about it," Elia assured her daughter. "Let's eat before the food gets cold."
"Sounds good," Myst agreed as he caught the thirteen inch long wooden 'plank' that dropped from his gacha wheel.
"Weirwood?" Elia asked as she studied the pale white wooden board.
"That's what my ability says. It also says it's immune to fire," Myst replied as they headed back into the other room to eat.
"As in it won't burn at all?" Elia asked in surprise.
"Exactly," Myst replied with a grin, looking forward to figuring out a way to duplicate it.
"I wish we had enough to make a ship out of it," Elia mused as she walked over to the silver platter on the bed and started making a plate for Rhaenys. "Having a ship that can't rot and won't burn would be useful."
"It would certainly help." Myst checked the mana cost to increase the length of the board. 'Hmm, that's actually reasonably cheap.' He looked at the cost for upgrading the durability then stuck the plank in his spatial ring. 'Slightly less reasonable but easy enough, especially once I get my regeneration up to a reasonable level.'
Elia handed the sandwich to Rhaenys then looked at Myst. "You should get something to eat."
"Right." Myst checked the food for poison using his upgrade ability, wanting to make sure the food was safe to eat. 'Safe enough,' he mused as he walked over to grab a plate, making a mental note to work on the realm's sanitation issues or figure out a way to conjure food.
0o0o0
'This would be so much easier if I had a pocket dimension where I could train without witnesses,' Myst mused as he glanced around the moonlight and torchlit courtyard connected to the holdfast, wondering how many of Varys' spies were watching him. "Screw it, if anyone asks they're just someone in a weird costume," he muttered as he tapped the icon on his HUD and summoned his new trainer, not sure what to expect and ready to dispel them. He stared at the purple skinned girl with elf like ears that appeared out of thin air six feet in front of him wearing a green and red kilt and a black t-shirt that said, 'Asking before touching!' on the front.
The teenage demon looked around the courtyard then looked down at Myst. "Aren't you a bit young for combat training?"
"It's never too early to learn to stab stupid idiots," Myst replied as he looked at the demon girl's stats with his upgrade ability, noticing that she was a bit stronger and faster than his Strength of the Mountain boosted strength. 'Dark Sight and a Training Aura, students learn 13% faster and allies regenerate an extra 2% of their total health and mana per minute, I need to copy that when I get a chance.'
"Fair enough," the demon girl agreed as she held her right hand out. "Do you want to start with a knife or sword before we move on to bashing people with hammers?"
Myst considered the question for a couple of seconds. "Let's start with learning to use a sword. Do you have a name or a nickname you want me to use?"
"Vanessa," the demon girl replied with a grin as she conjured a child sized wooden sparring blade. "This should keep anyone from getting any serious injuries."
Myst caught the practice blade she tossed him. "Works for me." He spent all of the mana in his pool to boost his mana cap then closed his upgrade menu so he wouldn't get distracted.
Vanessa smiled at Myst and conjured a wooden practice sword. "Show me what you've got."
The next couple of minutes of 'practice' made Myst exceptionally glad that he had regeneration and that they were using wooden blades because his skills were beyond rusty.
"I've taught worse," Vanessa teased as he stepped back. "Your footwork is decent, martial arts?"
"Yeah," Myst replied, not taking his eyes off his sparring partner in case she tried to surprise him as she hadn't told him they were done. "What type of skills are you able to teach?"
Vanessa grabbed her hip flask and took a drink. "Archery, knives, swords, axes, hammers, blacksmithing, math, contracts and jousting."
"Sounds like a decent collection of skills," Myst mused, wondering if she had any interesting demonic tricks for blacksmithing. 'If nothing else, it should help increase my mana regeneration which is useful.'
"Every demon needs to learn to write contracts and at least the basics for mathematics. Ready to get back to work?" Vanessa asked with a grin.
"Of course," Myst replied with a grin as they got back to training, hoping they could put in at least a couple of hours of training before having to call it quits. The less said about the three hour training session where Vanessa cheerfully knocked the rust off his skills, the better as far as he was concerned. The only upside was that he'd managed to create skill 'potions' of her aura and her dark sight abilities during the short breaks they'd taken for Venessa to explain the history of jousting and demonic blacksmithing.
"Is that enough for tonight?" Vanessa asked with amusement as she helped Myst off the ground.
Myst glanced up at where he could see his mother watching them from the balcony. "As much as I'd love to keep practicing, I should probably get a bath and some sleep."
Vanessa smiled at up Elia. "Feel free to summon me tomorrow, you'll want to keep practicing, you've got a lot to learn."
"Everyone has to start somewhere." Myst dusted his leggings off as best he could. "I should be able to sneak in a couple of hours of practice. Thank you for the help."
"It's my pleasure," Vanessa replied then walked behind an ivy screen and vanished, looking forward to teaching a gifted student.
Myst waved up at his mother then headed for the doors, looking forward to a nice long bath while he tried to figure out how he was going to get through the next couple of days. He pulled the dark sight potion out of his pocket and looked it over with his upgrade ability once he got below the balcony where his mother couldn't see him. 'Allows the user to see in total darkness and see through magical darkness.'
He drank the potion and smiled when all of the shadows got less dark to the point where it was easy to see everything, including color for some reason. 'That's better than black and white vision or night vision goggles. 'That's way too useful not to pass around especially if I can find some darkness spells. If I give them enhanced strength, proper training and night vision, I've got the start of a decent strike force, assuming I can find anyone that can keep their mouth shut.'
Myst opened the doors and walked into the hallway past the two men guarding the door. 'Yeah, I should probably table that idea until I have somewhere I can train people in secret and enough time to do it right, I don't need people connecting the dots.' He pulled his bracelet out of his pocket and slipped it on his wrist, figuring he could use the extra mana to boost his mana capacity before he crashed for the night.
0o0o0
Elia glanced at Myst's empty breakfast plate. "You've been eating like a starving wolf lately."
"I've been hungry," Myst replied, fairly sure it was a combination abusing his 'cursed' bracelet and the fact that he was a growing boy that had spent three hours sparring the night before without more than a snack to tide him over until breakfast. "I might have practiced a bit too much last night."
"Your father had the same problem," Elia assured him. "Speaking of practice, did you acquire anything else with your new ability?"
"I haven't tried," Myst replied before Rhaenys could mention the raspberry flavored treat he'd talked her into drinking so he'd have better access to the demon's training aura. He would have felt more guilty about it but he really needed the mana and the potion was perfectly harmless which was honestly a step up from some of the food. "I've been working on increasing my mana pool so I could buy more interesting trinkets but I'll give it a try."
"Dragon?" Rhaenys asked hopefully.
"We'll see," Myst teased as he opened his gacha menu and looked over his options. "First time I've seen a servant wheel."
"You can get servants?" Elia asked warily.
"Apparently." Myst glanced over the rest of the wheels, wishing they gave him a bit more information. "Two trinket wheels, a book wheel, an armor wheel and a pet wheel in addition to the servant wheel."
Elia frowned as she thought about the number of servants that had been killed or dragged off to the Seven only knew where during the attack. "How loyal would the servant be?"
"No clue," Myst admitted. "It's random but I've been pretty lucky so I doubt they'd be any worse than recruiting people from the city."
"In that case, you might as well try it," Elia said, figuring it was probably safer than recruiting local talent with the recent trouble.
Myst spent the required mana and watched the servant wheel start spinning, hoping he wasn't making a mistake. He wasn't sure if he should laugh or shake his head when a busty red haired teenage girl appeared out of thin air in front of him wearing a red silk top that was practically see through and a red silk loincloth with a silver chain belt. "Hi?"
"Hey boss," the girl replied as she glanced around the room.
"Boss?" Elia asked as she glanced between the feather duster the girl was carrying in her right hand, the piece of parchment in her left hand and her strange outfit.
"Of course," the girl replied with a smile as she handed Myst the contract. "He's my master and I'm his girl, assuming he signs on the dotted line."
Myst scanned over the rather short contract. "One hundred mana a week for upkeep on the mortal realm.." he trailed off as he saw the next part of the contract. "You reserve the right to maim or kill anyone that tries to take advantage of you without my permission?"
"Yep," she replied cheerfully. "It's one thing if you want to," she glanced at Rhaenys, "have some fun, it's another when some idiot gets grabby."
Myst opened his upgrade menu and checked his new minion. 'Nice stats, decent cleaning skills, impressive sex skills I won't be able to take advantage of for a few years and exceptional knife skills. Not to mention some cleaning magic that should come in useful.' He glanced back at the part in the contract that gave her the right to maim people that assaulted her then quickly looked over the rest of the contract about her not betraying secrets. 'Seems like a decent deal all around except for the fact that this is Westeros and she's going to end up with a body count, do I care?' he asked himself as he bought the armor wheel.
"Seems fair to me," Elia said, thinking about some of the nobles she'd run into over the years.
"Works for me," Myst replied as he walked over to the table to grab a quill, not particularly concerned about the people that couldn't take no for an answer. "I sign my name and give you one, is that how it works?"
"Exactly," the girl agreed.
"Selena," Myst said as he signed the contract. He wrote her name on the available line then reached out and caught the silver chain and blue silk loincloth when the gacha wheel stopped spinning.
"Nice choice," Selena said with a smile as she gestured and her contract vanished, making sure no one else could screw with it.
"I'm not sure if I should laugh or cry that you're going up so fast," Elia teased as she looked at the loincloth that wouldn't be out of place at a high end brothel in certain parts of Essos.
"Laugh, it was supposed to drop armor," Myst replied as he examined the loincloth with his upgrade ability. "Never mind, it offers better protection than some of the castle forged greaves I've seen."
"For your entire body or just your legs?" Elia asked thoughtfully, wondering if it would be worth wearing under something.
"Pretty," Rhaenys said, looking at the blue silk.
"Just your legs," Myst replied as he stuck the loincloth into his spatial ring, not sure if he should be relieved or annoyed that males didn't get any protection from it. He bought the book wheel and one of the trinket wheels with the last of his mana. 'If nothing else, I'll give it to Selena if she does a good job or maybe save it for Daenerys when she gets older.' He reached up and caught a wadded up string when it dropped from the trinket wheel.
"String?" Elia asked, voicing Rhaenys' question first.
Myst's frown turned into a smile when he looked at the string with his upgrade ability and realized just how valuable it was. "Ten inches of unbreakable string which means it's perfect for making rope or canvas once I figure out how to duplicate the magic."
"Can you still cut it?" Elia asked with a raised eyebrow.
"You can cut it to size but it won't break which makes it more useful," Myst replied as he caught the paperback book that dropped from his book wheel.
"The Sailmaker's Journal?" Elia asked as she looked at the strange looking book.
"Could be useful," Myst said as he flipped through the book, looking at the various drawings and pictures of sails and rigging as well as nicely laid out notes that would probably improve the navy's ability to move around by a significant amount. "More like," he stopped talking when he heard a knock on the door. "Yes?" he asked as he stuck the book and the thread in his spatial ring.
"I received a reply from Stannis Baratheon," Varys said just loudly enough to be understood.
Elia glanced at Selena who was dusting one of the shelves, wondering if it was worth hiding the girl before realizing he'd just find out and cause trouble when he caught her walking around. "Come in."
Varys opened the door and paused for a second when he noticed Selena. "Forgive me if I'm intruding."
"You're not. Selena this is Lord Varys, Master of Whispers, Varys this is Selena, my children's new maid," Elia replied. "Did he agree to take the job?"
Varys nodded, figuring he'd ask her story later. "He has some reservations and concerns but is willing to come to King's Landing to discuss the details."
"I can't say I blame him considering the recent events," Myst said as he walked over to the mug of cider and carefully poured himself a cup.
Varys nodded. "We should also discuss your Coronation."
"Suggestions?" Myst asked.
Varys glanced at Elia then looked at Myst. "I suggest delaying things until Eddard Stark and Lyanna have a chance to attend. It would heal a lot of wounds and give certain parties a chance to attend."
"I don't have a problem with that. What are our options for the person leading the ceremony?" Myst asked, hoping there was a way to avoid involving the Church of the Seven.
"Your grandmother would be the best choice, it would avoid a lot of problems if she crowned you, including the fact that she was the queen," Varys explained.
"It doesn't hurt to send a raven and ask," Myst replied, hoping that he didn't have to resort to drastic measures to keep Viserys off the throne. 'I should have plenty of mana by then which means I'll have better options to defend myself if any of the lords decide to try something drastic. I just need to keep everything together until I can get a decent regent, then I can work on learning magic.'
0o0o0
Comments
Alex Wierzbicki
This is amusing.
Mist of Shadows
Thanks, it's been interesting.
Robert Buniff
This is turning into a really fun story!
