Dungeon Myst Part 23

Myst pulled his attention away from the stars when he felt his mana pool fill up completely. 'This would be easier if I had a decent source of gems,' he mentally grumbled as he cast his Resource Node spell, conjuring yet another foil card. 'Phasezinc? This node of magically altered zinc will drop out of phase with organic material when an electrical charge is run through it. I wonder if I can make something interesting by mixing the zinc and the shadow copper I got from the other node?'

'Worth a try,' Myst thought as he picked a spot on the floating platform with the towers that he'd expanded to hold the nodes and used the new card, creating a temporary Phasezinc node next to the temporary Abyssglass node the miners were almost done mining. He assigned a group of gremlin miners to mine the new node then queued up another fifteen gremlins on the workshop menu, dropping his mana pool down to six points. 'Rinse and repeat in five minutes.'

'At least the nodes don't leave a trace which means I can build the school when they're done mining everything,' he thought as he pulled up the information on the previous group of gremlins, looking for interesting skills, talents or stats while he waited for his mana to regenerate so he could create another resource card. 'Would it kill the system to give me a gem node?'

Half an hour and six nodes later and Myst was starting to wonder if he should give up because he hadn't managed to get any gem nodes, just a weird collection of resource nodes that he wasn't sure what he was going to use them for.

"Any luck?" Nathan asked as he walked over to where Myst was standing near the edge of the platform.

Myst turned to look at Nathan. "Depends on your point of view. I haven't managed to get a gemstone node but I picked up a nice collection of temporary resource nodes and thirty seven magic using gremlins."

"What did you get?" Nathan asked.

"Angel Weave, Veil Glass, a tree that tosses lightning at anything that comes near it, Moon Satin, Shadowcopper, Phoenix Steel, Blood Silk, Flamemarble, Phasezinc, Prismstone, Somber Wood and Mist Wood."

"What do they do?" Nathan asked.

"The Angel Weave is a white silk that holds a touch of celestial magic, the Veil Glass interferes with scrying or hides things depending on how it's used, Moon Satin is a shimmery white satin that is about as hard to cut as spider silk, Shadowcopper is basically shadow imbued copper that decreases the illumination around it and blood silk is a crimson silk that drips with illusionary blood."

"The blood silk sounds useful if you're a deranged cultist," Nathan replied with amusement.

Myst shrugged. "The description mentioned something about it making regeneration enchantments cost less."

"That's almost worth looking like a cultist," Nathan mused.

"Probably," Myst agreed. "The Phoenix Steel ignites if you run mana through it. Flamemarble is a dark stone that is always warm to the touch and generally looks like it has flames dancing in it…" he trailed off as he realized that he was being stupid. He tossed a piece of the marble into his enchanting box and paid to non-destructively reverse engineer it.

"What's up?" Nathan asked.

"I wanted to check something," Myst replied and smiled when he got the option to give a stone block the same properties as the Flamemarble. He tossed a chunk of Prismstone into his Enchanting box and sighed when the testing button didn't light up. "Neat, I can give stone blocks the same quality as the Flamemarble. Sadly, I can't do the same for Prismstone which is annoying because it randomly changes colors."

Nathan blinked a couple of times when one of the trees on the platform crackled with lightning. "What's the range on the lightning tree?"

Myst glanced at the annoying tree. "Twenty five feet, luckily I placed it toward the edge of the platform but I'm not sure how to harvest it without destroying the tree."

"Have you tried rubber boots or a lightning rod?" Nathan asked.

"I had a skeleton try a lightning rod. I don't have rubber boots and the damned thing tosses them sideways so I doubt the rubber boots would help, the lightning rod certainly didn't save the skeleton," Myst complained.

Nathan nodded. "You might need a full rubber suit and lightning resistance gear."

"If you can find some lightning resistance gear and a rubber suit I'd be happy to test it with a minion…" Myst trailed off as he realized that the catgirls might be able to shift one of their immunities to lightning if they played with a copy of the weird magic transformation ring he was using to get rid of his acid.

"What did you figure out?" Nathan asked when he noticed the look on Myst's face.

"I might have a way to avoid the lightning but I'm going to have to train the catgirls to harvest seeds and get reasonably lucky with the transformation ring."

"Cool. What did you get from the old log?" Nathan asked.

"Somber Wood, it basically mutes sounds in an area around it which means it would be fantastic for soundproofing if we could get more of it." Myst glanced at the tree that was surrounded by a thin red mist. "I'm just glad that the Faerie Tree has seeds because the wood generates a mist that gives magic users a fantastic buff that increases their resistance to poison and disease at the small cost of increasing the damage they take from iron weapons while they're in the mist."

"That sounds like something you'd want in a brothel or an inn. You should talk to Tara, she might have a spell to turn some of the Somber Wood into a sapling."

Myst glanced at the log that was partially harvested and ordered the gremlins to stop harvesting it just in case one of the girls could figure out a solution. "It's worth a try."

"Did you pick up any new teachers or classrooms?" Nathan asked.

"Just the two from before Vivian started creating twins like it was going out of style and a couple of basic classrooms. Natasha Faust is an alchemist and Anastasia Winterbottom is an herbology professor."

"Negatives?" Nathan asked, figuring there had to be something wrong with them.

"Natasha likes tricking students into signing magical contracts and Anastasia likes turning annoying students into plant monsters then cutting them up for ingredients," Myst admitted.

"That's worse than Ms. French," Nathan muttered.

"I'm working on it," Myst assured him. "I tossed most of the teachers into the sex education class as students, with any luck I'll be able to get rid of their negative mental traits before I have Vivian make twins of everyone and let them teach actual people."

"Speaking of monsters, do you have any monsters I can kill for experience and loot?" Nathan asked hopefully.

Myst pulled his dungeon menu up and looked at the pattern for the corrupted wells. "Not currently but I could build a couple of corrupted wells on the resource platform and you could explore the dungeon, if you're feeling lucky."

Nathan weighed the risk against the chance to find decent clothes and equipment for a couple of seconds then smiled. "I'll be back in a minute, I need to borrow a lightsaber."

"Sounds good," Myst agreed as he opened his Enchanting menu and tossed enough agate into the box to create the corrupted well. He selected his flamestone enchantment and converted the stone, getting a mostly clear stone with flames dancing inside of it. 'That would make a fantastic ballroom.'

He tossed the stone into the box for the corrupted well pattern then added a unit of the faerie wood, curious how it would change things. He hit the button then placed the well in the middle of the area he was planning on using for a courtyard for the new school. He smiled as he examined the mostly clear wishing well that was surrounded by a red mist that made the entire thing look a bit spooky. He flew over to the well and looked down at the water that was a sickly orange color in the places where he could see it through the red mist that covered everything.

"Yeah, I should probably check to make sure it's not a death trap," he mused as he jumped down the well, using his flight to stop before he hit the water in the cavern. He plugged his nose and did his best to ignore the stench of rotten eggs as he read the message that popped up. "Mine twenty five sulfur nodes and kill fifty imps to cleanse the well, party limit five. If you don't have the mining skill, talk to the old dwarf."

Myst glanced around at the various yellow patches of stone in the wall then focused on the pissed off dwarf that was wearing a burlap sack. "Is something the matter?"

"Ya' somethin' is the matter, dem bastards stole me clothes and me pick when I went for a dip!" the dwarf complained.

Myst glanced at the steaming pool of orange water that reeked. "Let me guess, you want me to get it back for you?" Myst asked

"It's me lucky pick, if you get it back, I'll teach you to mine," the dwarf offered.

"What stole it?" Myst asked.

"Imps! Filthy little shits!" the dwarf snapped as he gestured towards one of the tunnels.

"Sure," Myst replied as he headed down the tunnel, doing his best to stay away from the sludge that was 'flowing' down the channel. 'At least I'll get plenty of sulfur,' he mused as he flew down the tunnel. He stopped at the edge of the tunnel and glanced between the five two foot tall imps that were mining sulfur in the cavern and the crudely made wooden chest then looked at the stream of sludge that went under the wall.

"Parley?" Myst asked then promptly dodged as the imps turned and started tossing firebolts at him. 'That works,' he thought as he hit the nearest imp with his frost vision, causing it to freeze up and fall over. He dodged between two of the firebolts, grabbed the mostly frozen imp then ran for the tunnel.

"Die!" one of the imps shouted as he swapped his imp sized mining pick for a full sized mining pick and changed after Myst.

Myst ducked around the corner and cast his magic extraction spell on the mostly frozen imp, killing it instantly and giving him a magic granting crystal. He stuck the crystal in his inventory then hit the charging imp with his freeze vision when he ran around the corner, causing the imp to freeze up and drop the mining pick. He smiled as he used his magic extraction spell on the frozen imp, getting another magic crystal. 'I could get used to this, I need to kill at least fifty imps to cleanse the caves and I can probably get better loot if I link it to another well.'

Myst smiled as he picked up the pickaxe and saw the weird runes carved into the wooden handle. 'That part is easy, should I upgrade things or turn in the quest? Screw it, if I want basic mining, I can just grab it from the smelter, let's see if we can get ancient secrets of doom!'

Myst snuck back down the tunnel, figuring he'd steal the magic from the other three and check the chest before heading up and adding a duplicate well. 'Nathan has a lightsaber, we might as well make it a bit more challenging.'

0o0o0

"This isn't my lucky pick, it's me spare," the dwarf stated.

"How many spare picks do you have?" Myst asked, more than a little annoyed about the fact that none of the picks he'd turned in were the dwarf's favorite pick.

"I'm a dwarf," the dwarf replied as if that explained everything.

Myst took a couple of seconds to get his annoyance under control, reminded once again of the shit from Mario about the princess being in another castle, if only because Nathan was humming the damned theme song. "I'll see what I can do." He scowled at Nathan then headed toward the tunnel. "Don't start."

"I didn't say anything," Nathan replied as they walked into the tunnel. "Do you have a solution to dealing with the demon lord that doesn't involve getting killed?"

"That depends, how long do you think you can distract him?" Myst asked thoughtfully.

"Considering he pretty much has to be harder to kill and more dangerous than the demonic sorcerers running around and I'm down to my last two health potions because of their lightning bolts, maybe three or four seconds before he kills me," Nathan admitted, not liking their chances considering he didn't have the best gear, just what they'd managed to cobble together from the run and the bunny suit that Myst had let him borrow.

"What if you just need to get his attention for a couple of seconds before you run like the hounds of hell are after you?" Myst asked.

"What are you thinking?" Nathan asked.

"I'm thinking that if you attract his attention I can sneak up behind him with my cloak of twisted invisibility and stab him in the back or loot the chest while you lure him elsewhere," Myst suggested.

"Or and I'm just spitballing things here, we go back and you grab a couple of hundred undead and use them as a distraction," Nathan suggested.

"There's a party limit on the quest, I'd rather not screw things up considering the dwarf said that he'd teach me how to mine like a dwarven god and he just said mining before I upgraded the hell out of the dungeon."

Nathan scowled as he thought about the dwarf. "I'm guessing he's going to hand you a flask and turn it into a drinking game."

"I'd laugh," Myst lied, knowing it would make him more than a little annoyed with the dwarf.

"Then drag him outside and throw him off the platform?" Nathan asked with amusement, having already considered doing the same thing because he wouldn't accept the other picks.

"That's cold," Myst replied as they exited the tunnel, unwilling to admit that he'd been considering it. He glanced around the room to make sure none of the sorcerers had respawned or wandered into the chamber. "At least there are a lot of mineral nodes."

"Which should help," Nathan agreed then tossed himself to the ground and rolled when he saw a shimmer out of the corner of his eye. "Demon!"

Myst screamed as the sorcerer's lightning ran through his body, sending him to the floor in agony.

Nathan tossed a firebolt at the demon then lunged forward and cut his head off, his lightsaber going through the demon's shield like it wasn't even there. "Are you alive?"

"More or less," Myst admitted after a couple of seconds. "I need better resistances," he complained as he pushed himself back to his feet.

"Learn to dodge," Nathan suggested dryly as he walked over and looted the demon, taking his robe, boots and staff as well as the soulbound book that dropped. He opened the book and blinked a couple of times in discomfort when it wrote a spell in his mind. "Huh."

Myst absently flipped Nathan off as he dusted himself off. "Anything useful?"

Nathan put the book in his belt pouch of holding then pulled the new spell up on his character sheet. "It lets me conjure a cart and a mount, I can also kill demons to permanently increase the speed and strength of the mount and the quality of the cart as long as I say, 'Doom Train!' before I kill them."

Myst stared at Nathan in disbelief. "You're joking, right?"

"About the Doom Train? Yeah," Nathan admitted. "I just have to concentrate on the spell when I kill the demons and I don't get experience for my weapon skills or magic for killing them which means it's not perfect but it's probably worth upgrading, if only so that I can summon a carriage or coach."

Myst sighed. "That's not even close to fair, I got a firebolt book and you got an upgradable spell."

"Life isn't fair," Nathan replied with a smile as he continued walking toward the tunnel. "Speaking of fair, have you figured out how you're going to kill the demon lord?"

"Yeah," Myst replied as he focused on his undead summoning ability and activated it three times, summoning a skeleton knight, an archer with a crappy bow and a skeletal mage. "I'm going to summon a distraction."

"What do you want me to do?" Nathan asked.

"Stay back unless you get a decent shot, I'll send the minions in then I'll sneak in and steal the chest while the demon is dealing with the distraction," Myst suggested.

"This is a horrible plan, you know that, right?" Nathan asked.

"I'm aware," Myst replied as he pulled a cloak out of the expanded belt pouch that he'd looted from one of the demons. He tossed the cloak into his Enchanting box and enchanted it with the twisted invisibility enchant which should let him sneak past the boss since he'd be out of phase rather than just invisible. "This is going to hurt."

"At least it's not the end of the world if your host dies," Nathan argued as they headed down the tunnel.

"Fair," Myst agreed as he followed Nathan down the tunnel, hoping he didn't lose his current host because he had some nice stats and immunities. 'At least I've already muffled the stealth boots I picked up so there's a chance.'

Nathan stopped a bit back from the mouth of the tunnel, knowing that the demon lord would be sitting on his throne waiting for them, since they'd seen him when they'd lured the rest of the demons out of the cave.

Myst gestured for the undead to charge into the room then put the cloak on and winced as everything fell into shadow and it felt like someone was tearing into his flesh with a dull knife thanks to the nature of the shadow realm. 'Fuck! Think of the skills!' he thought as he ran in behind the undead distraction then promptly sprinted for the shiny gold chest as the group spread out. He stopped in front of the chest as the eight foot tall robed demon stepped down from his throne and started tossing ice blasts that froze everything they touched. 'So much for farming lightning resistance.'

The skeleton knight raised his sword and charged the demon lord, showing no fear or intelligence as the demon obliterated the knight with one frostbolt.

"Necromancer!" the demon shouted in disgust. "Come and face me coward!" he shouted, ignoring the ineffective arrows that were bouncing off his skin and the firebolts the mage was tossing at him.

"Fuck off!" Nathan shouted from the 'safety' of the tunnel. "I challenge you to a duel of honor!"

The demon lord stalked towards the entrance of the tunnel as he conjured a black blade of death. "Necromancers have no honor!"

'This is going to suck.' Myst let the demon lord get close to the pool of bubbling sulfuric acid then picked up the heavy gold chest and sprinted at the demon, trusting in his supernatural strength and durability to get the job done before the shadow realm killed his host. 'Shit!' he cursed and jumped when the demon lord started turning to look at him, hitting the demon in the chest with almost a thousand pounds of metal and causing the demon to fall backwards into the pool. He used his flight ability to keep his feet and legs from going into the boiling hot water and pressed down with everything he could on the chest, trying to keep the demon lord pinned long enough he could come up with an actual plan. "Help!"

Nathan activated Buffy's lightsaber as he charged into the cavern. He sprinted forward and slammed the blade into the sputtering demon's head. He stared at the demon lord in surprise when the blade burned right through his skull. "Huh, I was expecting that to be harder."

"Yeah," Myst agreed as he pulled the twisted invisibility cloak off then lifted the chest off the demon lord and set it on the ground. "I'm sort of surprised that my plan worked."

"Plan?" Nathan asked as he cut the demon's head completely off to make damned sure it was dead. "Just a robe? I feel sort of cheated."

Myst reached down and tossed the demon's robe into his storage, figuring that would be easier than reaching into the bubbling liquid. He opened the treasure chest and looked at the loot in the chest that was larger on the inside than the outside. "Gold, several bags of gems, a shiny mithril pickaxe and a couple of books, I think we're good."

"Can I have half the gold?" Nathan asked.

"You killed it," Myst replied as he checked the books. "Soulbound (Nathan), Conjure Blade of the Legendary Bard? Soulbound (Myst), Skill: Conjure Irish Wench?" he asked as he handed Nathan his book.

Nathan used the book, pulled up the information on his new spell and promptly started laughing when he realized what he'd have to do to increase the power of the blade.

"Something amusing?" Myst asked.

"The blade gets stronger by seducing girls and gets a significant boost if you seduce a princess or a dragon, which makes sense considering the name of the spell," Nathan explained.

"Sounds like a fantastic weapon for a bard or someone that travels a lot and is immune to disease," Myst mused then used his book. He looked at his new skill. "Huh, the skill lets me permanently conjure a red haired tavern wench for five hundred mana, increasing the skill will increase the quality and loyalty of the girl."

"That's an expensive skill but might be useful depending on which skills they start with," Nathan mused. "We should probably get out of here before something jumps us."

"Yeah," Myst agreed as he put the book and the bags of gems in his belt pouch. He picked up the pickaxe and checked the stats. "I think we have a winner, the pickaxe increases the chances of getting gems from nodes by a flat ten percent." He tossed the pickaxe in his Enchanting box and paid the mana to non-destructively learn the enchantment.

"You're learning that, right?" Nathan asked with amusement as he started collecting the gold coins.

"Already on it," Myst replied cheerfully. "Leave one gold in the chest, just in case it vanishes, I want to reverse engineer the spatial enchantment."

"Good call," Nathan admitted as he continued looting.

Myst sighed in relief when he learned the Gem Find enchantment. "This is going to make upgrading my mana pool and the school so much easier."

"Cool, the more you upgrade the school, the easier learning magic will be," Nathan said as he finished grabbing most of the gold coins.

"That's the idea." Myst swapped the chest for the pick and paid to non-destructively learn the spatial enchantment. He grinned when he learned the spatial enchantment and an enchantment that caused the chest to teleport back to a set location if it was taken out of the dungeon. "That's interesting, the chest is enchanted to teleport back to the boss room if we take it with us."

"That's a bit annoying but not exactly unexpected," Nathan admitted, thinking about all of the video games where you couldn't take the obviously expensive and magical chests with you.

"Nope," Myst agreed as he pushed the button to destructively reverse engineer it, getting eight bars of gold and several mana crystals. He smiled as he headed for the tunnel, curious what type of skill the dwarf would teach him.

"Me pick!" the dwarf screamed enthusiastically as Myst walked out of the tunnel into the first chamber holding the mithril pick.

Myst handed the pick over with a smile. "A deal is a deal."

The dwarf nodded then said something in a language Myst didn't understand.

Myst smiled as a popup appeared. "Dwarven Gemstone Mining acquired. There is a small chance of finding a gem each time you mine a node. Small increase in resistance to alcohol that scales with skill level."

"You should go mine something," the dwarf suggested as he handed Nathan and Myst two of the mining picks they'd brought back.

"Let's go, I need to mine at least twenty five nodes," Myst replied as he headed for the tunnel, wanting to be out of sight when he enchanted their picks.