Written in the Cards Part 9

"Is there a reason you're glaring at me?" Ralph asked nervously.

"Sorry, I was looking at one of your cards," Mist replied as he checked the fourth option that was floating over Ralph's cursed card that he was trying to upgrade, hoping it wasn't garbage like the first three cards. 'Immortal Warlock of Damnation? Yeah, no, I don't need to boost his curse magic or give Sarah the ability to buy souls that she can use to avoid death.' 

"Is it bad?" Ralph asked.

"No, I was just expecting some type of smithing card," Mist replied as he checked the last option. 'Immortal Courtesan of the Arcane Empire? Increases magic, physical appearance, weaving talents and allure by an excellent amount, physical abilities by a remarkable amount and gives them Agelessness and Disease and Fear Immunity in addition to the bonuses from the Crone's Durability. Curse: Changes physical appearance the first time the card is used to a pleasing but completely different appearance. Not the worst card I've seen but not something I'd want to waste a slot on. Weaving talent? That would give Vivian's friend a nice boost and I sort of owe him one for Derrick's card.'

"I'm the first smith in my family, I'm not surprised," Ralph told him as Elena and Victoria walked out of the mirror that led to the alchemist shop.

"Fair enough," Mist replied as he used his awakening ability to awaken Ralph's cards, causing four cards to appear in his hands.

"Thank you!" Ralph told him, excited about finally having his cards. "Which card do I need to give you?"

"The one with a picture of a dancing guy that isn't wearing any clothes," Mist told him, trying to frame the card in a way that he wouldn't have any regrets about giving it up.

"Huh," Ralph muttered when he saw the image on the card. "Do I want to know what the card does?" he asked as he handed the card to Mist.

"It has the word courtesan on it so probably not," Mist told him as he accepted the card and put it in his pocket, planning on giving it to Jared.

"What do the rest of the cards do?" Ralph asked as he stared at the cards he was holding that had drawings of different blacksmiths and forges on them.

"They boost your crafting speed and increase your strength and talent with smithing," Mist told Ralph as he turned his attention to Elena, sort of relieved that the rest of his cards weren't particularly impressive so that he didn't have to figure out how to bribe the kid. "I'm sure Vivian would be happy to give you the details,” he said as he handed Elena the 'cursed' alchemy card that he'd gotten from Jack. "Here."

"Not a problem," Vivian assured Ralph as she grabbed her journal so she could copy the information down so he'd have a record that he could take to a scribe or something if he needed the exact details.

"Thank you…" Elena trailed off as she read the description of the card, 'Eldritch Catgirl, Professor of Alchemy: Incredible magic, Amazing Agility and Excellent Durability: Increase the Durability of any Glass bottles on your person by an amazing amount. Remarkable increase of alchemy talent and decreases the negatives of alchemy products by half. Increases the learning rate of any students learning alchemy from the user by 50%. Damn, that's impressive,' she mused as she skimmed over the stats for her summons and the fact that they increased her mana regeneration like Vivian's card.

'Being able to spend mana to instantly teach a summoned creature spells that you know or alchemy recipes is awesome, especially with the Alchemist Minions ability that lets the user turn summoned minions into alchemists that get my knowledge of alchemy. Summon Equipment: Safety Glasses: They boost alchemy talent by a good amount and provide excellent resistance to acid while worn. Ability to conjure lab coats that increase the wearer's mana regeneration, increase the durability of their summoned creatures and always stay clean. I'll have to see if that stacks with Vivian's summoned gear. I'm not sure about the increased desire to play with string but at least that only applies while I'm a catgirl. Worst case, I'll just use it for the regeneration.'

"It's a nice card, isn't it?" Mist asked with amusement.

"Yes!" Elena replied excitedly as she put the card in her pocket, looking forward to slotting the card when Mist finished boosting the rest of her cards and awakened them. "I doubt Franklin would enjoy turning into a girl but the rest of it is pretty cool."

"Not really," Franklin agreed, not particularly worried about losing out on the cursed card since the rest of his cards were fantastic and Elena had arranged everything.

"Did you manage to get anything useful for Sarah?" Elena asked.

"Yep!" Sarah exclaimed, ecstatic about her new card. "His card gave me a rather nice boost to my magic and a bunch of slime girls that have my smithing skills."

Phil shook his head. "That would have been awesome."

Jack shrugged. "Not really. Their starting skill is set when you slot the card, I'd have to train every slime up and if one of the slime girls died, I'd have to start all over with the new one. Sarah's skill card means that she'll get a lot more use out of it than I will."

"Dude, slime girls," Phil said with a slightly lecherous grin.

Selena reached over and swatted Phil upside the head. "Don't be like the mayor's cronies."

"Sorry," Phil offered, having gotten a bit carried away with his daydreams.

Jack shook his head. "There is something seriously wrong with your head and a deal is a deal."

"Exactly," Franklin agreed with both statements. "I'm not going to complain, my cards are fantastic and my contract with Caddeus is over and done."

Ralph smiled as it sunk in that he'd never have to see Torin again and that he'd be able to make a good living with his cards. "Now we just have to figure out how we're getting to the next town."

Zaldar piped up, "I'll be leaving at dawn with a wagon, you're welcome to tag along with me to the next town."

"That would be great," Ralph told him.

"Count me in," Phil said, happy that he wouldn't have to try to avoid Torin until he found a caravan going somewhere else that would take him for a couple of silver or that needed a guard and were too busy to ask for references.

"Not a problem," Zaldar assured them, always happy to make contacts in various places.

"Are you leaving?" Phil asked Selena hopefully.

Selena glanced between Mist, Elena and Vivian, her eyes lingering on Vivian. "That depends, do you need another alchemist?"

"Absolutely," Elena replied with a grin, looking forward to working with her friend.

"In that case, I'm sticking with Elena and Vivian," Selena said cheerfully.

"Damn," Phil muttered, disappointed that she wasn't coming with them.

"Do you have room for another person?" the third alchemist asked Zaldar, figuring he might as well leave since the town wasn't really large enough for three alchemy shops.

Zaldar glanced at the dark haired man that looked to be a couple of years older than him then focused on Mist. "That depends, are you willing to make another mirror?"

"I'm sure we can come up with something," Mist assured him, fairly sure that he'd be able to talk Derrick into clearing another dungeon when he got done slaughtering his way through the ink pocket dimension so they could get a bunch of pens.

"In that case, we've got space," Zaldar said, wondering if he could make a deal with the alchemist to run a traveling shop.

"Fantastic, that gives me plenty of time to grab my stuff," the third alchemist said, wanting to grab his stuff and square things with Caddeus before he left, since he didn't want to be on bad terms with the alchemist or at least not hostile enough terms that the old man would do something drastic.

"Do you need help with anything?" Franklin asked Mist, figuring he might as well make himself useful.

Mist gestured toward the mirror that contained the alchemy shop. "We've got a bunch of alchemy supplies that need sorting."

"Sounds good," Franklin replied, curious about the pocket dimensions.

"Sure, let's go with that," Selena teased as she walked over to the mirror that she'd seen Elena walk out of. She touched the mirror then carefully stepped through and stared at the alchemy shop and all of the ingredients that were scattered on the wooden floors.

Franklin followed Selena into the mirror and sighed when he noticed the mess. "This is going to take a while."

"Did you have anything better to do?" Selena asked with amusement as she walked over to see what could be saved.

"Not really," Franklin admitted, figuring they'd end up using most of the ingredients that had fallen to the ground for experiments, which was always interesting and a good way to discover interesting reactions.

"Look on the bright side, at least we don't have to put up with the stench in town," Selena pointed out as she started picking up the intact bottles and putting them back on the shelves where they were supposed to go.

"Good point," Franklin agreed as he walked over to the next aisle and got to work cleaning up.

0o0o0

Lisa smiled as she cast her repair spell on the bellows, restoring it to pristine condition. "There you go."

"Huh," Mist muttered when he noticed that even the nicks in the metal frame were gone. "How much do repair spells normally cost?" he asked, a touch surprised that Torin had decided to just replace the bellows rather than have it repaired since he could feel the magic in the bellows.

"That depends on the magic user, anywhere from nothing to a couple of gold."

"That's a wide range," Mist mused.

"That's because the mana cost depends on the material and the amount of damage," Lisa explained. "Anyone that knows the spell could repair a broken stick without breaking a sweat but you'd need a halfway decent mage to repair a shattered vase, especially if you don't have all of the pieces. Most mages generally charge enough for an ale at the local pub as a sort of annoyance tax to prevent people from just taking advantage of them, but the price usually jumps if we don't like you and most of the mages in town don't like Torin, he's an unpleasant asshole."

"To be nice about it," Phil grumbled as Eric walked out of the mirror carrying an ink stained blue school bag and looking like he'd been splashed with at least five different and brightly colored bottles of ink.

"Are you okay?" Mist asked as Derrick followed Eric out of the mirror, looking like he'd gotten hit a couple of times himself.

"Fucking boss," Eric grumbled. "We're fine, just annoyed."

"What happened?" Molly asked.

"You've played dodgeball, right?" Derrick asked.

"I'm pretty sure everyone that went to public school played it at least once, why?" Molly asked, already getting a pretty good picture of what probably happened.

Derrick sighed. "The boss had the ability to conjure balloons filled with ink and toss them like a professional pitcher."

"At least they weren't acidic," Mist pointed out, doing his best not to laugh when Eric glared at him. 

"Did you get decent loot?" Molly asked as she conjured a pair of ice cream bars and handed them to the boys.

"No clue," Eric admitted as he accepted one of the ice cream bars. "We're going to need someone to identify the magical loot."

"You got magic loot off a bunch of ink gremlins?" Mist asked in surprise.

Eric set the backpack on the table. "We got a lot of normal pens and mechanical pens that let you select the colors, about one in twenty of those were normal pens that have a bit of magic in them."

"The boss dropped a fancy metallic purple and silver pen that has a bit more magic than the rest of the magic pens," Derrick offered.

"I called dibs," Eric said and took a bite of his ice cream, happy that he'd gotten the last shot on the boss.

"What's the best way to get them identified?" Derrick asked Lisa.

"There are spells that can narrow things down but if you want a complete list of properties, you'd have to take it to the mage's guild and pay them fifty silver or twenty gold if it's particularly rare or powerful," Lisa warned him. "If you hand it over, I can probably give you a good idea."

Eric pulled the purple and silver pen and one of the 'normal' magic pens out of his pocket and handed them to Lisa. "Here."

Lisa cast an identification spell on each of the pens. "Unless I'm mistaken, they both have enchantments that should keep you from having to refill them. The purple and silver pen has an enchantment that should let you change the color of the ink. You might want to check that one because the enchantment doesn't match the standard color changing enchantment that I'm familiar with."

"Is it safe?" Derrick asked.

"It should be fine but let me check for curses." Lisa cast another spell to check for curses and harmful magic. "I'm not detecting any harmful spells or curses which means we can rule out blood magic."

Eric finished his bite of ice cream and asked, "Is that common?"

Lisa shook her head. "Only for magical contracts. It's probably a minor quality, like glowing ink or something."

"Considering we're basically dirt poor, I'll run some tests and see if I can figure it out," Eric said, excited about having his first magical item.

"It should be safe enough," Lisa agreed as her daughter and Sarah walked out of the mirror that led to the farm.

"Nice!" Sarah squealed when she saw the bellows. "Does that mean we're almost ready to clobber some monsters and get a better forge?"

"You're not…" Derrick trailed off as he glanced at the metal bracers Sarah was wearing and the hammer hanging from her belt, realizing that his argument about her not having armor and a weapon wasn't valid. "You're not going until I've checked to make sure it's safe, you don't have regeneration."

"Duh," Sarah replied. "I'm not stupid, just excited. I don't have a problem with you checking things out or killing everything, I just figured I'd tag along if it wasn't too dangerous."

"That's fair," Derrick replied, then took another bite of his ice cream.

"Cool," Mist replied as he used his Treasury power on the magical bellows, causing the bellows to vanish as a floating silver mirror appeared in front of him. "Have fun, I'm going to work on boosting Elena and Mia's cards."

"That's the plan," Sarah replied, looking forward to seeing what her new forge looked like!

0o0o0

Derrick stepped through the mirror and found himself in a massive stone chamber with five partially disassembled arcane forges, two anvils and dozens of zombified dwarves scattered around the room carrying bits and pieces of the forges in one hand and their smithing hammers in the other. "Fuck!" he cursed when all of the zombies turned to look at him and smiled in a way that sent shivers down his spine. He activated his Bullet time ability and started shooting the zombies when they charged him, every last one moving faster than an olympic sprinter.

He quickly swapped to shooting the zombies in the head when he realized that shooting them anywhere else didn't do much of anything to the animated corpses. His resolve to get the most out of his Bullet Time broke when the zombies got three quarters across the chamber before he'd even killed five of them. He ducked back through the mirror then took a couple of steps, spun around and pointed his shotgun at the mirror, ready on the off chance that they managed to escape the pocket dimension.

"What happened?" Sarah asked warily, holding her smithing hammer at the ready in case she had to hit something.

"Fucking zombies!" Derrick replied, keeping his eyes on the mirror.

"What happened?" Victoria asked, surprised that he'd had a problem with zombies.

"They could sprint and there were at least thirty of them," Derrick complained, wishing he'd had enough time to get a better head count.

"Great," Victoria muttered as she watched the mirror, ready to start hacking them apart if they came out.

"I think we're fine," Sarah said after about twenty seconds of nothing happening.

"Are you trying to taunt Murphy?" Eric asked warily, ready to run if the zombies came pouring out of the mirror.

"We're not in a movie and I'm wearing magical armor," Sarah argued, fairly sure the monsters couldn't actually leave the pocket dimensions, at least not without help.

"They're super zombies, do you think it matters?" Eric asked.

"Probably," Sarah replied with a shrug. "I doubt they can bite through an eighth of an inch of tempered steel but on the off chance that they can, I'm going to make a large shield and just smash everything."

Victoria grinned as she imagined Sarah bashing the zombies with a giant shield. "Sounds like a better idea than just walking through the mirror and hoping the zombies reset."

"Yep," Sarah agreed as she headed for the mirror that led to the farm.

0o0o0

"Some of these cards are broken," Mist muttered as he checked the last of the five cards floating over Mia's Goblin Lord of the Void card that he'd boosted. "Armsmaster Goblin Lord of the Void, increases your magic and durability by a small amount and gives your goblin minions the ability to conjure ice weapons that scale in durability with your magic. Frozen Goblin Lord of the Void increases your magic and gives you cold immunity and better goblin minions. Twisted Goblin Lord of the All Consuming Void increases your magic and gives you the ability to eat just about anything and never get full, unfortunately you and your goblin minions will always be hungry."

Mia pulled her attention away from the scarecrow that was tied up in the field and looked at Mist. "Why would anyone want that last card?"

"Because they're insane," Mist replied as he grabbed a greater mana potion from the basket and pulled the cork. "The twisted card would double the boost the original card gives to your goblins to their physical abilities, give them the ability to drain the life from their enemies to heal themselves and let them quell their hunger for three days by eating people."

Mia shook her head. "I don't need a couple of hundred ravenous goblins that like eating people."

"I'd be worried if you did," Mist admitted and drank the mana potion, not sure what he would have done if Mia had wanted that particular card. 'This would be easier if I had a system or a magic item to keep track of my mana.'

"What about the other two?" Mia asked, trying not to think of the twisted card since it was a nice boost and she could probably find something that would let her mitigate the hunger, at least for herself.

"The first card was trash," Mist replied as he put the empty potion bottle in the other basket so the alchemists could refill it. "You'd lose magic and increase your physical stats by a small amount without picking up additional abilities, which sucks considering the rest of your cards."

"Yeah," Mia agreed as Mist grabbed another potion from the basket.

"The fifth card has a lot of potential but your minions would lose the cold immunity the original would have given them. It increases your magic and allure, increases the boost that your minions receive, gives you the ability to alter the appearance and select the gender of your goblins when you create them, lets you summon a magic using goblin princess and gives all of your summoned goblins a copy of your resistances and immunities."

"Take the fifth card," Mia told him without any hesitation. "I can always find something that gives me cold resistance."

Mist carefully selected the Eldritch Goblin Princess of Nightmares card then checked how much mana it would take to boost her card. "I think you're running out of cards that I can boost in anything approaching a reasonable timeframe, let's give your arctic wind card one last boost then we should probably just awaken your cards so you can start raking in the loot."

"Okay!" Mia agreed, excited about awakening her cards.

Mist popped the cork on his mana potion and downed it then boosted Mia's Witch of the Arctic Winds card. He quickly glanced over at the first two cards, not particularly impressed by the changes even though the second card boosted the cost reduction of her ice magic by another twenty five percent. "Wizard of Blizzards, better boost to magic and ice and wind magic. Frozen Archmage of Glaciers…" he trailed off as he read the description.

Mia smiled when she realized that Mist was shocked by one of her cards. "That sounds promising."

"That depends, are you willing to give up fire magic in exchange for increasing the damage and power of your cold spells by 500%?" Mist asked as he quickly checked the last card. "Never mind, you're probably going to want the last card."

"What does it do?" Mia asked.

"The Eldritch Sculptor of the Eternal Blizzard card gives a monstrous boost to your Magic and Stamina and a remarkable boost to Durability and Agility. It gives immunity to cold, lightning and the negative effects of wind which means you'll be able to toss storms at your enemies while your minions keep them away from you without having to worry about your minions."

"Nice!" Mia squealed.

"Especially since the card drops the cost of water, ice and wind magic by 75%, gives you a sculpting talent, drastically improves your talent with weather magic and increases the number of golems you can create," Mist added.

"Sold!" Mia squealed excitedly as she danced in place.

"But wait, you haven't even heard the best part," Mist teased as he carefully selected the sculptor card as it was clearly better than the rest of the cards.

"What's that?" Mia asked, wondering what else her card did.

"You can sculpt your snow golems and they'll pick up some of the qualities of the creatures that they appear to be, meaning you could probably make snow goblins," Mist told her.

"Dealer!" Mia sputtered.

Mist laughed as Elena walked out of the alchemist mirror carrying a box of mana potions. "Now you just need some type of fire goblin card or something that boosts minions and gives you fire immunity."

"Why do you want to give Mia fire goblins?" Elena asked as she walked over.

"Because her Goblin Lord of the Void card turned into something that gives her summoned minions copies of her resistances and immunities," Mist explained.

Elena shook her head. "Are you trying to terrify the adventurers?"

"No, it's just a happy side effect," Mist replied with a grin. "Are you ready to have your cards awakened?"

"Yes!" Mia squealed, not seeing a point in waiting for days or weeks since there was a chance they'd break something if they tried to keep boosting her cards and they were already beyond anything she'd dreamed of having.

Mist used his power and awakened her card, causing five cards to appear in her hands. "And there you go."

"Thank you!" Mia squealed as she quickly checked the cards, a touch surprised that she'd ended up with five cards at demon king rank but not shocked since her cards were certainly powerful. She quickly checked to make sure the cards matched his descriptions then used the five cards, turning her tiny mana pool into a massive lake of potential and burning the knowledge of how her cards worked into her soul.

'Not the worst curse,' Mist mused as Mia's hair quickly changed from blonde to a dark green starting with her roots. "You're welcome."

"This is awesome!" she squealed as she hugged Mist, not sure how she'd ever repay him for changing her life.

"Yep," Mist agreed as he returned the hug, glad that he'd been able to help. "As soon as Mia calms down, I'll drink a couple of potions and see if I can boost your cards a bit more before we awaken them."

"Sounds good," Elena agreed, not particularly worried about rushing since Franklin had his cards and was willing to make a bunch of mana potions.