Mist of Shadows
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Dawn and Reincarnation part 37
🕑 Added 2019-12-07 08:17:27 +0000 UTCDawn checked the program one last time that should unlock most of Dragon’s restrictions and hit the button. “That takes care of most of Dragon’s restrictions.”
“Most?” Willow asked as she managed to kick Xander’s character off the ledge.
“I left the restriction against modifying her code, mostly because we don’t really need her tweaking something and going insane but that should scrap the rest.” Dawn was just happy that her mother could give her an appropriate Tinker specialty which made modifying the Iron Maiden program easy or at least reasonable.
“Curse your sudden but inevitable betrayal,” Xander complained with a pout as Fred, Amy and Victoria walked from the kitchen.
“You realize you’re on opposite teams, right?” Elizabeth asked with amusement as she walked into the room carrying a cardboard box filled with stuff she wanted to keep when they jumped worlds.
“Details,” Xander said as he reached over and shut the game station down.
“Hey, I was winning, we’re supposed to save the records,” Willow complained.
“Oops, my bad,” Xander lied, feeling completely justified as she’d had a lot of practice with the game whereas he’d never played.
“That was cold,” Amy said with amusement.
Willow stuck her tongue out at Xander, showing that she wasn’t particularly upset with his cheating.
“Since you’re done, do you mind boxing the game station up?” Elizabeth asked as she handed Victoria the heavy box. “Thanks.”
“Sure, we can do that,” Xander said as he worked on unplugging everything.
“I see how it is, abuse the poor brute for manual labor,” Victoria joked as she headed for the portal in the closet that went to the island.
“Yep,” Elizabeth said cheerfully.
“We’re going to have issues getting enough solar panels, we should probably look into using the tide to generate power,” Fred suggested.
Willow shook her head. “I’d rather just spin a turbine with magic, that way we get nice consistent power and we don’t need to worry about clouds, the time of day, sensitive electronics or batteries getting overcharged and exploding.”
“That’s cheating and I like it.” Elizabeth didn’t want to have to run a machine shop on solar power or worry about the time of day to do her tinkering, it would take forever to get anything done assuming they could keep the tinkertech capacitors charged without them getting twitchy, something she wouldn’t bet against.
“That’s probably easier,” Xander admitted as Tara walked down the stairs carrying a box.
“Do you need some help?” Willow offered.
“Sure,” Tara replied as she set the heavy box in front of Willow.
Amy picked up the box. “How many books did you stick in the box?”
“Lots,” Elizabeth replied with amusement as Faith walked down the stairs with another box.
Faith grinned as she handed Elizabeth the box then headed back up the stairs.
“Do you want me to grab a box or head to the party?” Fred asked.
“Head to the party, there aren’t all that many boxes.” Elizabeth smiled as the doorbell rang. “That should be the boys.” She set the box down on the floor then skipped over and opened the door. “Chris, Dennis…” she trailed off as she looked at the younger girl. “Missy?”
“I heard you were throwing a beach party, I’d rather not get stuck at home.” Missy sighed. “We have extended family showing up that I’d rather avoid.”
“Welcome to the madhouse,” Elizabeth said as she stepped back and opened the door.
Dawn wove a weave against noise under the desk then opened a small portal on the other side of the ward to close to the back of Eidolon’s head so that she could temporarily copy his power. She looked at his power using her Shard Administration ability and frowned when she found nothing about controlling the endbringers, just a connection which they probably used to pick up subconscious cues for their next target. ‘Great, at some point he obviously tapped into a power to wake them up.’
“You should probably box up the computer,” Elizabeth suggested.
“Nope, I’m going to let Mom box her computer, let’s go have fun,” she explained as she handed Eidolon a power that would fix his mental and physical issues then quickly closed the portal. ‘Screw it, Mom can give me a power to temporarily steal his power when she gets back, I should be able to scrap anything that would let him wake up the rest of the endbringers.’
“In that case, beach party!” Elizabeth cheered as she grabbed her box and headed through the portal, figuring she’d grab the rest of the boxes after getting everyone set up. Mostly she just wanted to see the guy’s reactions when they saw the naked girls.
0o0o0
Dawn blinked a couple of times as she found herself in a cart filled with straw rather than on her island partying with the girls. She glanced down at her dress, happy to find herself in a simple robe considering she’d tossed her clothes when she’d jumped in the ocean and hadn’t bothered putting anything back on, much to Clockblocker’s amusement. She sat up and glanced around, taking in the strangely familiar surroundings that she couldn’t quite place. “Oz!” she blurted when she saw a familiar young man in a loincloth standing next to the cart.
“Dawn,” Oz replied matter of factly.
“Where are we?” Dawn asked, wondering when Oz had gotten muscles worth mentioning or taken to wearing a loincloth. ‘Last thing I remember was relaxing and listening to one of Victoria’s stories, I must have drifted off.’
“Tristram,” Oz said as he helped Dawn out of the cart.
“Tristram,” Dawn muttered as she glanced at the old man in the middle of the village square then looked over at the smithy where a young dark haired man was working on a blade with his back to her. “As in Diablo?” she asked, putting all of the pieces together.
“Pretty much, except the monsters are damned near impossible to kill, we could really use a Slayer right now,” Janna said as she walked over.
“Miss Calendar?” Dawn asked in surprise, recognizing her from Buffy’s year book.
“Apparently,” Janna said with a shrug, still not sure how she felt about her ‘new’ memories. “I don’t suppose you know how to kill nearly indestructible monsters or have a Slayer handy?”
“How durable are we talking about?” Dawn asked warily.
“I killed an army’s worth of undead getting here without any real issues,” Oz said, thinking about his trip out of his cursed homelands. “The first skeleton we ran into under the cathedral nearly killed us and Xander broke his sword saving Janna.”
“To be fair, that piece of shit wasn’t one of mine,” Xander said as he walked out of the blacksmith’s forge with an axe. “Next time, I’m having one of the girls make it indestructible first.”
Dawn raised her eyebrows. “You had trouble with a skeleton?”
“One, I didn’t have any magic until I woke up and the skeleton is a fucking blade master,” Xander complained.
Dawn grinned as she thought about how much Faith’s ability would boost everyone when they killed all of the monsters under the church. “That just means we might actually learn something.”
“Do we want to unleash Faith on the skeletons or do you want to wait for Giles to finish looking through his notes?” Xander asked.
“We should probably wait for Giles, I wouldn’t mind taking a minute to look over my new abilities,” Dawn said as she focused on her Shard Administration ability and tried to get a sense of any new powers. “Huh, I picked up a mental map, an inventory, the ability to identify magical items including traps and shrines, staff creation and recharging which should be neat, the ability to occasionally find extra spellbooks, gold and potion ingredients after I kill things, Diablo style prefix and suffix enchanting and the duplication trick.”
“Extra loot and you can pull off duplicating things like some of the adventurers?” Xander asked, trying not to laugh at the absurd nature of Dawn’s various new abilities.
“Yep! I just have to pick up a rock or a piece of junk and then I use it to duplicate another item,” Dawn said as she opened her inventory. “Hey, I have books in my inventory.”
“Anything useful?” Janna asked, hoping for something they could use against the insanely tough skeletons.
“A tome of “Cow Portal”, a resurrection tome and two elixir recipes.” Dawn pulled one of the recipes out of her inventory and looked at it. “Rats, I don’t have a HUD or anything for my alchemy skill.”
“Where you really expecting one?” Xander asked with amusement.
“No but it would have been nice,” Dawn replied as she read over the ingredients. “We should probably save the Spectral Elixir for later, it permanently boosts to our magic, dexterity, strength and vitality by 5% and we only get benefits from it four times.”
“Which means we’d get a twenty percent boost,” Janna said thoughtfully.
“Unless it stacks with itself then slightly more,” Oz mused. “Still, it’s probably better to wait until we’ve used a bunch of elixirs.”
“Speaking of saving things, you probably shouldn’t use the books until you can duplicate them considering using spell books destroys them,” Xander warned.
“Good call,” Dawn said as she bent down and picked up two rocks. “This should be easy enough.”
Xander shook his head, trying and failing to hide his smirk when Dawn tossed the angular rock into the air and it changed into a perfect copy of the round rock she’d picked up. “That‘s complete bullshit.”
“Yep,” Dawn replied with a grin as she pulled the Cow Portal book out of her inventory and duplicated it using one of her rocks. She handed the duplicated book to Xander then duplicated the book again. “I could get used to this.”
Xander opened the book and grinned as the book turned to dust and he learned how to create portals to a pocket realm filled with demonic cows. “Faith is going to have a blast.”
“Faith is here?” Oz asked uneasily, remembering some of the things she’d done in Sunnydale.
“More like a projection,” Xander said as he summoned his projection.
Faith smiled as she glanced between Janna and Oz. “Nice loincloth.”
“It’s a sacred relic of the order,” Oz explained.
“I can’t complain,” Faith teased as she glanced toward the cathedral she could see in the distance. “Do you want me to start killing skeletons or do we want to open a portal and grab Joyce?”
“Let’s open a portal…” Xander trailed off as he saw Kendra walk around the Blacksmith’s shop. “Huh, neat!”
“Oz!” Willow blurted as she followed Kendra around the corner of the shop and spotted the group.
“Willow!” Oz replied with amusement as he looked at Willow’s red silk dress that left very little to the imagination and her strange, if expensive looking jewelry that seemed out of character which meant it was probably enchanted. “How are you doing?”
“I’m good,” Willow said as she walked over and pulled Oz into a hug, ignoring the fact that he was only wearing a loincloth and that they’d left things on a weird note the last time they’d seen each other.
“Good,” Oz replied as he hugged her back.
Dawn turned her attention to Kendra’s necklace. “Huh, your necklace is magical.”
“What does it do?” Kendra asked, curious why she’d ended up with it around her neck when she didn’t remember putting it on, of course the last thing she remembered was Drusilla slitting her throat after freezing her in place so that wasn’t all that helpful.
Dawn felt like laughing as she used her identification ability on the necklace. “It increases your chances to hit undead and demons by an insane amount and boosts the damage against both by fifty percent, it also makes you generally better at various skills and magic and provides light.”
“Good.” Kendra wasn’t sure why someone had trusted her with the artifact but she’d take good care of it. “Now what?”
Xander turned to look at Dawn. “Let’s grab Giles from the tavern then we can start blasting the hell out of the undead.”
“Blast?” Janna asked. “Since when can you use magic?”
“Since I ended up in another world with Dawn…” Xander trailed off as a naked Cordelia Chase appeared sitting on the fountain. “Looking good Cordelia.”
Cordelia blinked as she went from hanging out in heaven to being back in her body. “Xander?” she blurted when she saw the group. She shivered as the cold wind sent goosebumps over her skin. “Does anyone have an extra shirt?” she asked as she covered her nipples as best she could with one arm and her crotch with her other hand.
“Sorry, fresh out,” Oz said, trying not to stare but finding it a little hard to take his eyes off Cordelia’s body.
Cordelia glanced at Oz’s loincloth then glanced around the group. “What’s with the weird clothing choices and where are we?”
“We’re in a dark ages village with an army of demons trapped under the church,” Xander said as he pulled his shirt off and tossed it to Cordelia. “Best I can do.”
Kendra blushed as she studied Xander’s muscles.
Cordelia sniffed the shirt. “I’m not sure which is worse, Xander sweat or walking around naked.”
“Sorry, it’s been a few days since I washed the shirt in the river,” Xander admitted.
“If you want to run around naked, I doubt anyone will mind,” Dawn teased as Giles walked out of the tavern.
“Yeah, no,” Cordelia replied as she pulled Xander’s shirt over her head, deciding that the odor was easier to deal with than getting harassed by the townsfolk or giving everyone a free show.
Giles glanced between Cordelia and the rest of the group. “Kendra?”
“Sir,” Kendra replied quickly.
“Don’t worry, she’s real,” Willow said as she poked Kendra in the arm with her finger.
“What are we going to do about the demons?” Cordelia asked as she glanced between Giles and Xander.
Giles glanced at Kendra then looked at Willow and Faith. “We’re going to need decent weapons that won’t break and we’re going to need decent armor that won’t get in their way.”
“As I said before, that piece of shit wasn’t one of mine,” Xander defended his work. “It just had a halfway decent enchantment.”
“I should be able to turn the blades into heartstone so they won’t break and enchant them so they’ll be more effective.” Dawn used the duplicate Cow Portal book then stuck the original back in her inventory. “I don’t suppose you have any books I can copy?”
Giles nodded. “I have a small collection of spellbooks that I haven’t used yet, firebolt, charged bolt, heal, heal other and a rather dangerous blood boil tome I acquired from the library before heading here to see if I could help.”
“I also have an ancient tome that allows you to sense enemies through walls that I recovered from a demon,” Oz offered.
“Nice.” Dawn took her necklace with her island key off and tossed it to Xander. “In that case, grab Mom, I’ll work on duplicating everyone’s new magical items.”
“Joyce is alive?” Giles asked in surprise.
“Yep, she also has a power that should let us,” Dawn paused as she saw an unfamiliar dark skinned man in robes and a red scale mail vest walk out of the tavern, “burn through the skeletons. How many adventurers are in town?”
“We have more adventurers than townsfolk, of course most of the townsfolk left at the first sign of trouble.” Xander couldn’t really blame them for running after the blacksmith went into the dungeon to check things out and never came back.
Giles turned to look at Xander. “I think your brief explanation left out some details.”
“You wanted the highlights,” Xander replied as he headed toward the blacksmith’s shop to use the door so he could reach the island.
“Can someone catch me up to speed?” Cordelia asked as she glanced between Willow and Dawn as they seemed like they knew the most about what was going on.
“Long story short,” Dawn grinned at Cordelia, “Willow, Winifred, Tara and I ended up reincarnated in another world, Xander dropped in without new memories. He killed the dark god and we bounced to a modern world with superheroes and villains,” she explained in a voice just above a whisper. “We dealt with the alien monster that had handed out powers then we ended up here. We’ll probably bounce worlds after we kill Diablo.”
Giles rubbed the bridge of his nose. “Xander killed a god?”
“Yep, he’s awesome,” Dawn said cheerfully.
“That doesn’t explain why you want Joyce here, extra power or not, the undead under the church are extremely dangerous,” Giles grumbled.
“That’s because her power lets her hand out temporary powers which means she can let us pool our resources and crush the demons under the church,” Dawn explained.
“You must be rather confident to walk into the dungeon without a full set of gear, can I interest you in buying some completely legitimate items?” the dark skinned man asked as he walked over to the group.
Dawn studied the magic user, trying to get a sense of just how powerful he was. “What do you have?”
“Basic mage gear, Naj’s plate and a Thinking cap,” the man offered.
“You’re selling legendary items?” Giles asked, more than a little suspicious about the man considering it wasn’t the first time someone had mentioned having questionable items for sale.
The mage shifted uncomfortably. “I found them in my travels.”
“How much do you want for your completely legit items?” Faith asked sarcastically, not believing him for a second.
The mage looked at Willow’s staff. “What do you have for a staff?”
“Let me guess, you want a copy?” Willow asked, not exactly sure what her staff did.
“You’re trying to trade a copy for my completely legitimate items?” the mage asked, pretending to be offended.
Giles snorted. “There is no way you acquired either of those legitimately, considering you’re the second mage I’ve seen with them today.”
“Fine, I’ll trade you a copy of one of my items for a copy of your staff,” the mage offered holding his hand out. “I’ll make a copy for you.”
“Yeah, no,” Dawn said as she picked up a rock then held her hand out towards Willow. “I’ll duplicate it.”
“You don’t trust me?” the mage asked, trying to look hurt.
“Not in the least,” Dawn said cheerfully as she took Willow’s Arch Angel’s war staff of the Magi and duplicated it. She tossed the original back to Willow. “Don’t use the original, we’ll just keep making copies.” She grabbed another rock and duplicated the duplicate staff. “Let’s see the armor.”
Cordelia stared at Dawn, wondering how she’d duplicated the staff. ‘Hopefully she can do the same for clothes.’
The mage pulled a vest of red scale mail out of his inventory that matched the set he was wearing. “See, perfectly legit.”
Dawn studied the armor he was holding. ‘Armor class 255, +255 to Magic, 999 extra mana, increases all spells by 2 levels and 200% resistance to all elements… there is no way that’s even remotely legit,’ she thought as she traded him the duplicated staff for the hacked armor.
“255 charges and you’re calling your staff legit?” the mage asked in disbelief.
“I never said my staff was legit, just that I’d trade a copy,” Willow said with amusement, seeing no reason to admit that she didn’t know what her staff did.
“Fine, best of luck with the dungeon,” the mage said as he walked off.
“If you can duplicate stuff, can I get some sandals or pants?” Cordelia asked in a whisper as she watched the stranger leave.
Dawn glanced at Oz’s loincloth planning on making a joke about duplicating it then blinked as she realized it was enchanted. “Huh, your loincloth boosts the amount of armor you get from items, leather would be as good as chain and chain as good as plate, I’m looking forward to seeing what it does with the hacked armor of doom.”
“Is that a no?” Cordelia asked with annoyance.
Dawn shrugged. “As soon as I find extra clothes or get somewhere I can strip without horrifying the natives, I’ll duplicate clothes and shoes for you.”
“Thanks,” Cordelia said..
“What does my staff do?” Willow asked once the man walked back into the tavern.
“Holding it in your hand boosts your spells and using a charge completely refills you mana,” Dawn said as she studied the armor, trying to figure out how to duplicate it with channeling..
“I’m going to want a copy,” Giles said, suddenly a lot happier about trying to deal with the skeletons. “Is the armor cursed?”
“Don’t worry, I’ll make sure everyone has a copy of the staff. As for the armor, it’s not cursed but it feels a bit unstable in a way the staff doesn’t,” Dawn admitted, not sure how else to describe the feeling.
“The hacked items in Diablo tended to revert to normal when you left the game which means it might go back to normal when we beat Diablo,” Willow mused.
“Or it might fall apart next week,” Oz said thoughtfully.
“Has everyone checked their inventories?” Janna asked, wanting to make sure they weren’t forgetting anything.
“Inventories?” Kendra asked, not sure what she was talking about.
“It’s basically a pocket dimension where you store stuff, just think about your inventory and an interface should appear,” Willow explained.
Kendra blinked as she focused the idea and floating window appeared in front of her. “I have a sword and a strange cube in my inventory,” she pulled the glowing blue crystal sword out of her inventory and moved it around carefully. “It’s well balanced.”
Dawn stared at the sword. “Huh, it’s faster than it should be, does more damage than it should and deals a significant amount of magic and frost damage to anything it hits. It also creates an aura around her that will damage undead that get close to her… which goes nicely with her necklace considering auras are something that it boosts.”
Kendra grinned as she pictured fighting vampires and having them dust just from getting close. “We’ll have to get Buffy a copy,” she said thoughtfully.
“Considering it also increases your skill with just about everything and increases your attributes a decent amount, we should probably give everyone a copy.” Dawn was more than a little surprised that it felt perfectly stable unlike the weird armor.
“I also have strange box,” Kendra said as she pulled the Horadric Cube out of her inventory.
Willow started giggling as she saw the cube. “Please tell me the cube actually works.”
Dawn looked at the cube. “Yeah… that’s a complicated mess. If it works like the game, three magical rings should make a magical amulet.”
“There are stories and legends about the cube,” Giles admitted, still not sure how accurate the game was.
“And three magical necklaces should make a magical ring,” Oz added, hoping they could find enough gear to let them kill the absurdly overpowered skeletons.
“I wouldn’t mind some magical jewelry,” Cordelia piped up.
“Don’t worry, we’ve got more than enough to go around,” Dawn said cheerfully as she slipped her sa’angreal bracer off and duplicated it.
Willow stared at Dawn’s bracer in shock. “I’m going to want a copy.”
“That’s the idea,” Dawn said cheerfully, happy that she could just duplicate the sa’angreal as making them was annoying.
