Headmaster of Shadowfrost Part 10

"How long was I out?" Julia asked when she 'woke' up and realized that Mist had a book and wasn't paying attention.

Mist glanced up from the drawing of a rather perverted blonde girl having sex with a bear and looked at Julia, relieved that she'd survived apparently intact, something he'd started worrying about as the minutes crept by. "Thirty or forty minutes? Did you manage to learn the technique?"

Julia sighed in relief as she realized that she hadn't lost her understanding of the technique she'd spent the last month cramming into her mind. "Yeah. I'm going to have to practice if I want to be able to use the technique in combat but I've got the basics down."

"Which technique?" Mist asked.

"The shadow door," Julia replied as she set the tile she'd been holding back in the chest. "It's technically called the Path of Shadows but most people just call it the Shadow Door or the worst mistake of their lives."

"Worst mistake?" Mist asked as Julia got to her feet. "Most people?"

"One question at a time," Julia suggested. "The tile basically dropped me into a sort of dream world/training simulation where I spent a month trying to learn the technique. I could read books or talk to people about the technique. Some people thought it was a great technique and some people wished they'd never learned it because it crippled their spiritual roots and cost them the chance to ascend."

"Let me guess, it's a cursed technique?" Mist asked.

"Yes and no, it's technically just a technique that creates a portal to the shadow realm, there's nothing wrong with using it. The problem comes from the fact that the monsters drop scrolls or obsidian tiles with cursed shadow qi techniques and shadow stones when you kill them. You can use the stones to improve your shadow affinity and your qi reserves but it comes at the cost of damaging your spirit roots, reducing your ability to use qi."

"That sounds like a quick path to power and insanity or at least self loathing when you look back on everything you gave up for a quick boost," Mist mused.

"Yep," Julia agreed. "In theory, you could probably limit the damage from the shadow stones if you set up a proper formation and you took your time consuming them, but I doubt you could completely limit the damage, at least not without reducing the boost to the point where it would be nearly useless."

Mist sighed. "And most of the cultivators that are willing to take the risk don't have the patience or the skill."

"Ding," Julia replied as she tapped her nose with her finger. "It's probably worth using if you have a bloodline that lets you repair your spiritual roots, which means I'd be happy to use it but I'd need help killing the monsters."

"Is the shadow realm filled with corruption?" Mist asked, figuring Chan wouldn't mind venting some frustration if the area wasn't filled with corrupted qi since he hadn’t gotten to murder the rogue cultivators.

"It's a reflection of the world…" Julia trailed off as she had an idea. "We should test the technique with your Forgotten Mine technique. We might be able to kill all of the monsters in the area and then we could use it for absorbing shadow qi without having to deal with an endless horde of monsters."

"It's worth a shot," Mist replied as he cast his Portal to a Forgotten Mine spell, using half of the marbles in one of his bags to power it.

Julia stared at the four by seven foot tall silvery metal rectangle that Mist had conjured out of thin air that was floating a couple of inches off the floor in front of him. "Is that supposed to be the portal?"

Mist pulled his attention away from the swirling purple and black portal contained in the silvery frame and took a step to the side and forward so that he could look at the back of the frame. "You should see it from the other side. At least we don't have to worry about people walking through it the wrong way."

"Probably for the best," Julia replied as she closed the lid on the chest and walked over to check the other side of the portal. "How many spirit stones do you think you can get out of it?"

Mist considered the question for a couple of seconds then shrugged. "I burned half a bag of magic stones to cover the cost and you can make spirit stones with your Cheat technique. The value isn't in the stones, it's in the space and the fact that qi doesn't flow through the portal which means people shouldn't be able to sense anything we're hiding in there."

"Do you want to test it?" Julia asked, curious to see if her idea worked.

"I probably should," Mist agreed as he pulled the door to the meditation chambers shut so that the corrupted qi wouldn't just flow into the hallway once he moved. "You should probably start absorbing the corrupted qi, I'm not sure how well the door will actually contain it."

Julia glanced at the door. "It should be fine, meditation chambers are usually designed to contain qi so the concentration builds up to help with meditation and advancement."

"That's for normal qi and I might have damaged the wards when I broke the seal," Mist warned her, wanting to err on the side of caution.

"I said it should be fine, not that I have a problem collecting it," Julia replied with a smile as she used her technique to absorb corrupted qi, causing the corrupted qi in the room to swirl and start moving toward her, making it hard to see anything else now that the qi was moving and visible. "I'll work on making some spirit stones with the extra qi."

"Sounds good, it might take twenty or thirty minutes to scout everything so if I'm not back in five, don't flip out."

"No worries," Julia replied absently as she worked on trying to track the qi that her bloodline was absorbing.

'Good enough,' Mist thought as he walked through the portal. He glanced around the poorly lit chamber, the faint light from the portal doing very little to illuminate anything beyond a couple of feet. He gestured as he cast his Foxfire spell, creating a glowing sphere of blue fire five feet in front of him and three or four feet above his head, illuminating half of the cavern. He glanced at the old fashioned wooden mining cart which was only about four feet away from the portal then followed the iron rails on the ground with his eyes until they vanished into a pitch black tunnel.

"This is why necromancers have expendable minions," he muttered as he conjured another sphere of foxfire near the tunnel entrance, revealing another ten feet of the tunnel. He gestured at the other end of the chamber and conjured another ball of foxfire, illuminating the area and revealing two more tunnels as well as a couple of dozen rusty pickaxes that had been scattered around the room without any concern for safety or someone tripping on them.

'If I didn't know better, I'd swear that this was an old and abandoned mine and not something I conjured less than two minutes ago,' he mused as he headed toward the tunnel, figuring he might as well do some exploring since the mine wasn't supposed to have monsters in it. 'Worst case, I end up back in the headmaster's office tomorrow.'

Mist conjured another sphere of foxfire in the tunnel, giving him another ten feet. 'At least I don't have to worry about torches.'

0o0o0

Julia relaxed a touch when Mist stepped out of the portal. "Did you find anything interesting?"

Mist turned to look at Julia and froze when he spotted the two dozen redheads scattered around the room wearing sheer cheerleading outfits and sort of staring into space. 'It's probably just as well that I'm not a student, I'd never get anything done.' He glanced at Tara then focused on the version of Julia that had the right hair style since there were two of her. "Not really. I'm pretty sure the green stuff in one of the walls was copper and there's probably iron but I doubt it's worth mining unless we can make a cheap golem or find a necromancer because the mine barely has any qi."

"Are you surprised?" Julia asked, thinking about the description of the spell.

"No, I just wanted to check and to make sure that the mine was safe. Let me guess, Dawn got carried away?" Mist asked as he gestured at the group.

"Yes," Julia grumbled.

"Stop complaining," the other Julia told her doppelganger. "It's not that bad and it got us out of the town and away from the bandits."

"We're grateful for the chance to learn," the local Vivian offered, wanting to make sure her family didn't screw up her chance to become a cultivator.

"I'm looking forward to kicking their ass when we get back," the local Jack said, looking forward to paying some of the assholes back that had been stealing from the town for years.

"Don't worry, we'll help," Jack assured his doppelganger. "As soon as we learn how to fight."

Zoe giggled as she pictured pulling off some Jackie Chan level stuff. "This is going to be awesome!"

"Don't worry, I'm sure Chan is planning on putting everyone through combat training," Mist 'assured' them.

"Is that supposed to be reassuring?" Rose asked, having noticed that the headmaster had a warped sense of humor and looked amused about the combat classes.

"Honestly? Probably. He's an exceptional teacher and a complete nightmare on the battlefield which is a rare combination that you should take advantage of. If I could actually reinforce my body and I didn't have to worry about my knees, I'd probably be trying to pick up some tricks, but my days of fighting in a ring are behind me."

"Boxing?" Sarah asked.

Mist shook his head. "I was never that crazy, it was never a question of if you were going to get hit with boxing, it was a question of how much. At least with Taekwondo people weren't trying to give you brain damage most of the time."

"How does that compare to the local cultivators?" Julia's doppelganger asked.

"I don't know, but skill doesn't really matter when your opponent can rip your arms off, which is why I'm going to work on tossing lightning and enchanting my gear as soon as I figure out how to create magical items. I'm too old to play fair and the deck is stacked against anyone that doesn't have qi when it comes to a physical fight."

"Seems a bit unfair," Vivian teased.

Mist turned to look at the gorgeous redhead, not surprised that people would happily part with large amounts of money to see her dance since she was tall and athletic, yet curvy in all the right places. "Life isn't fair. I'm willing to play nice in a game or in general but when it comes to a fight that matters, I'm going to do my best to win and if that means hitting you with lightning until you can't move, I'm okay with that. I can make all of the apologies in the world after we win the tournament but I'm not going to lose any sleep over hurting someone's pride in that tournament if it means I can get back to my family."

"Relax, I'm not going to let a bunch of magic jocks win if I can help it," Vivian assured him. "I put up with enough shit in high school from the idiots that can't tell the difference between lack of self esteem and lack of modesty. One is a completely valid life choice, the other is something you should probably see a shrink about. Besides, I like the idea of living for a couple of thousand years and looking damned good while doing it."

"I think everyone is pretty sold on learning magic and kicking ass," Nick pointed out.

"Fine," Julia muttered, unwilling to pass up the chance to learn magic just because she was stuck in a world filled with an excess of idiots.

"In that case, I'll leave you to consume the rest of the corrupted qi while I work on training my pet with the mirror. Feel free to use the tiles, just avoid the sphere since it's dangerous if you don't have magic."

"How dangerous?" Sarah's local doppelganger asked.

"It might turn you inside out or burn out your ability to use qi or just kill you," Mist warned her as he picked up the bags he'd filled with magical marbles, well aware that the sphere might be safe for cultivators to use but unwilling to risk it until he'd had a chance to test it on an asshole.

"Don't worry, we'll be careful," Tara assured him, well aware of the dangers of using magical items that you didn't understand.

"I trust you," Mist told Tara then turned and headed out of the room. "Minion, let's go."

“Why is that spaghetti dinner walking?” one of the Jacks asked.

Mist waited until his minion slipped out then closed the door and continued walking. 'I'm going to need a comfortable chair and a book while my minion fights. If he actually learns something, great, if not at least we'll get some cultivation reagents.'

0o0o0

Mist glanced up from the monster book when Dawn and Sabrina walked over to where he was sitting by the mirror on the annoyingly uncomfortable wooden chair he'd borrowed from the nearest classroom. "Hey."

"Where did you find the book…" Sabrina trailed off as she focused on the upside down drawing and realized it was a picture of a group of half naked girls in a strange room wearing less transparent versions of the school uniforms.

"I conjured it and don't touch the pictures," Mist warned them.

"I'm not going to steal your book," Sabrina assured him, slightly tempted to borrow it just to see what else was in it.

"I'm not worried about you stealing it, I can always conjure another one. The book is magic, if you touch the pictures you'll get pulled into the scene and you really don't want to visit some of them because they're seriously twisted."

"What's wrong with a locker room filled with half naked cheerleaders?" Dawn asked as she walked around so that she could look at it rightside up.

"Did you miss the fangs?" Mist asked with a touch of amusement as he absently kicked the evil copy of his noodle monster back into the mirror before it could attack anyone. 'This was easier before the doppelganger figured out that I actually wanted it to bring the loot out.'

"Oh," Dawn muttered when she double checked and realized that some of the girls did in fact have tiny fangs, not even noticing the noodle monster. "Vampires?"

"Yeah. They're not demonic but they'd probably leave you a pint low," Mist replied with a grin.

"Are they evil?" Dawn asked when she noticed that one of the girls looked like Willow.

"They're teenage vampires, what do you think?" Mist asked with amusement.

Dawn glanced at the girl that looked like Willow. "I think I'll skip that one, I don't need the lecture."

"You'd probably survive, they're just seducing people and having some fun, there are a lot worse monsters in the book, like Goldilocks."

"Like Goldilocks and the Three Bears?" Dawn asked.

"Yeah, she was trying to figure out which bear fit just right and then she grabbed a hatchet so she could make a mold," Mist explained as he flipped the page, revealing the inside of a fancy looking brothel with women wearing veils.

Dawn stared at Mist for a couple of seconds then winced when she realized what he was talking about. "That's fucked up."

"Yeah, the monsters aren't always the characters you expect though Goldilocks was usually the monster in her stories so that's not really a surprise," Mist replied as he skimmed the next story.

"Aladdin and the Forty Girls Jasmine Didn't Know About?" Sabrina asked.

"There's a story from back home about a street kid that finds a genie, falls in love and marries a princess, this is a bad parody," Mist complained as he flipped the page, not interested in reading or experiencing a story about Aladdin cheating. "The Hundred and One Girls That Aladdin Didn't Know About."

"Fair is fair," Sabrina offered.

Mist took a few seconds to appreciate the artwork of the mostly naked dancing girls then flipped the page. "Beauty and the Beast on a bed."

Dawn stared at the picture of Belle getting fucked from behind, surprised by who she resembled. "She looks like Hermione."

"Small world and everyone has a doppelganger?" Mist offered as he kicked the doppelganger or the doppelganger's duplicate back into the mirror. 'Were the images pulled from my subconscious when I created the book or is the book grabbing the images from the people reading it?'

"You know her?" Sabrina asked Dawn.

"Probably not, she just looks like a friend of mine," Dawn replied, enjoying the messed up yet somewhat tasteful picture of her friend, if only because she looked like she was having fun.

Mist flipped the page, revealing a red haired mermaid, "Roast Mermaid, yeah, I think we can skip that one." He flipped the page and the next one when he saw a picture of a giant covered platter and what looked like a royal feast. He scowled when he saw the title of the next story. "Knocking up the Sleeping Girl, yeah no." He skipped the next several pictures filled with dwarves with troll sized equipment approaching a girl sleeping on a table.

"I almost want to jump into that one to kill some dwarves," Dawn grumbled.

"Yeah," Mist agreed as he skipped over the next couple of pages, not seeing a point in mentioning that the original story wasn't all sugar and spice. He smiled when he saw a picture of a tower and a braid of long hair. "Rapunzel's Other Prince."

"Is that Link?" Dawn asked when she saw the picture of an elf wearing all green climbing the rope of hair.

"Link?" Sabrina asked.

"He's a hero from a story back home," Dawn replied, not sure how to explain video games.

"Probably…" Mist trailed off as he flipped the page and saw a picture of the hero using a pot to kill the witch that had imprisoned Rapunzel. "Yeah, I'd recognize the pottery abuse anywhere."

"That one seemed pretty reasonable considering the rest of the book," Dawn admitted, wondering what the catch was.

"That's probably because Link was the monster, he snuck in and killed an old lady with pot while she was minding her own business," Mist offered, trying not to laugh.

"Yeah no, she had it coming," Dawn replied with a smile as she enjoyed the larger picture of Link that showed off his muscles. "I could jump into that…" she trailed off as Mist flipped the page and she saw a drawing of Link and a long haired girl that looked like her sister in bed together. "Never mind."

"That's fair," Mist agreed as he kicked the noodle monster back into the mirror after it crawled out of it looking half dead.

"How many times are you going to kick your minion back in the mirror?" Sabrina asked.

"My minion's dead, this is the doppelganger or a copy of the doppelganger's doppelganger or something, I've been kicking him back in for a while, it saves on mana," Mist explained. "Speaking of killing minions, do you have a copy of the kitten rebirth ritual on you?"

"Sure, what do you need it for?" Sabrina asked as she pulled a copy of the technique out of her spatial ring and handed it to him.

"One of the upgrade options for the minions involves giving my minion one technique," Mist replied as he touched his tattoo and pulled up his minion options.

"And you're curious if they'd come back as a cat or if it would start making extra cats?" Dawn asked thoughtfully.

"I'm sort of hoping that changing the monster into a cat will fix the fact that it tries to attack me fifty percent of the time it gets into combat, but I wouldn't mind getting a bunch of spirit beasts out of the deal unless they start attacking me at the drop of a hat."

"Since when does turning anything into a cat ever help?" Dawn asked.

"There's a first time for everything. This is a copy, right?" Mist asked Sabrina.

"It's just a copy," Sabrina assured him.

"Cool," Mist replied as he used a couple of mana marbles to buy the technique for his minion, a touch surprised when the technique didn't vanish or turn to ash. "Huh, I was sort of expecting that to consume the paper or erase the text or something."

"Same," Dawn admitted with a chuckle.

Mist stepped on the mostly dead noodle monster as it came charging out of the mirror in a different location than the last couple of times. "Let's try this again." He paid the mana to resurrect his minion then pointed at the mirror. "Use your resurrection technique then walk into the mirror and kill your doppelganger."

The minion used its new technique then jumped through the mirror, wanting revenge on the creature that kept killing him.

"If this works, I'm going to want a minion," Sabrina said.

"And the ability to turn into a cowgirl," Dawn told him.

"Sure," Mist replied as he cast his Bestow Alternate Form spell on Dawn, giving her the ability to transform into a sexy cowgirl. "You should probably wait…" he trailed off as Dawn activated her new ability, causing a swirl of green sparks to surround and transform her.

Sabrina smiled as she checked out the busty redhead that looked a lot like an older version of Dawn with red hair and more impressive breasts. "Nice."

"On the other hand, I'm not going to object," Mist said as he checked the mostly naked redhead out, rather amused by the toy blasters she had on her belt. 'At least a C-cup, some curves in all the right places and six inches in height, that's a hell of an upgrade.'

"You give me the power, I figured it was only fair if you got to see it," Dawn replied as she checked herself out in the mirror, rather happy with the changes.

"That's…" Mist trailed off when his minion died again. He checked his minion's stat page, surprised by the changes. "Huh, I wasn't actually expecting that to work."

"You weren't expecting it to turn into a cat?" Sabrina asked, not taking her eyes off Dawn.

"I figured there was a halfway decent chance that it would turn into some sort of kitten abomination with tentacles," Mist replied, only half joking. "I'm just surprised that it fixed the fact that it likes to attack me when it gets into combat."

"Can you still upgrade it?" Dawn asked as she twisted around so that she could look at her butt in the mirror. 'Damn, I wish I could do this in the other worlds.' She was a bit disappointed when she checked her blasters and discovered that they weren't actually blasters or anything useful like paintball guns, just cap guns. 'I can probably fix that,' she mused as she turned back to her normal form, not interested in giving any of her students a free show on the off chance that one of them wandered down the out of the way hallway.

'It was nice while it lasted,' Mist mused as he paid to upgrade his minion's intelligence to the point where it was as smart as a human child, using up a decent amount of mana stones in the process. "Yeah, I can still upgrade it. I just upgraded its intelligence."

"You should give it the ability to turn into a catgirl," Sabrina suggested.

"I'm pretty sure the cowgirls would end up human but it's worth a shot as soon as it hatches from the egg," Mist mused, looking forward to seeing how much he could upgrade his new guard.

"Where exactly is the minion stashed?" Dawn asked.

Mist checked the location line on his minion's stat sheet. "It's on my desk, in my office."

"Since you fixed the minion, can we get tattoos?" Sabrina asked hopefully.

"If everything checks out, sure," Mist replied as he stood up and headed down the hallway toward the headmaster's tower.

"Great," Sabrina replied as she followed Mist, looking forward to seeing how much she could talk him into upgrading her new minion.

"Works for me," Dawn replied as she followed the other two, curious about the other stories in Mist's book.

0o0o0