Headmaster of Shadowfrost Part 9

Mist twitched and turned when he heard someone walking down the hallway behind him. "Julia?" he asked when he recognized the redhead. "What's up?"

"Dawn and Sabrina wanted to know if you had more mana stones and I needed a break from dealing with family that isn't really family," Julia replied as she walked over. "It's weird having a hot cousin that you have to keep reminding yourself is related. It's also weird having an alternate that's a village girl."

"I can imagine," Mist replied as he moved so that she could slip into the meditation chamber.

Julia slipped past Mist and looked around the chamber. "Where does the hole go?"

Mist turned back around so that he could see Julia. "There's a chamber under the sand that contains the bottom of the dragon vein, a bit of treasure and a very dead, and heavily mutated, dragon."

Julia turned and stared at Mist. "Dragon?"

"It certainly looks like a dragon, it has four legs and wings," Mist replied with a grin.

"Any idea how it got down there?" Julia asked.

"There's a circular hole in the glass ceiling that has some type of enchantment or formation that keeps the sand out. I'm not sure if it was built for the dragon or if the dragon just took advantage of it."

"Why would you build a secret chamber under the meditation chamber?" Julia asked.

"I don't know," Mist admitted. "It could be some type of vault or a secondary meditation chamber or maybe the sect always had a dragon? It's hard to say."

"At least I'm not the only clueless person around," Julia replied as she studied the glowing crystal sticking out of the sand that was emitting sickly green motes of light and a couple of blue motes. "Do you think the green sparkles are the corrupted qi?"

"Green sparkles?" Mist asked as he glanced around, not sure what she was talking about.

Julia gestured toward the crystal in the middle of the sand pit. "Right there…" she trailed off when she realized that he couldn't see them. "You can't see the sparkles or the glowing crystal, can you?"

"Yeah, no," Mist replied with a touch of annoyance. "The crystal is there but it's not glowing and I don't see any sparkles."

"I guess that means the sparkles are qi," Julia mused.

"Probably," Mist agreed. "Can you try absorbing them?"

"It's worth a shot," Julia replied as she focused on the green motes of light coming out of the crystal and used her technique to draw in corrupted qi. She lost her focus and stopped using the technique when hundreds of motes of light appeared out of thin air and started moving toward her. "Shit!"

"What's the matter?" Mist asked.

Julia stared at the sickly motes of light that were drifting in her general direction now that she'd started them moving with her technique. "I wasn't expecting the technique to pull in corruption to actually work and trying to pull the corrupted qi caused more of it to appear. The room is basically covered in it."

"I'm not surprised," Mist replied as his pet finished cleaning up the sludge that covered the treasure chest.

"Not surprised that I'm not an expert?" Julia asked with a touch of annoyance.

"No, you're doing pretty good considering you've only been here a couple of days," Mist assured her. "I was talking about the corruption, it's been building up for years. It's not surprising that it's covering everything. Give me a minute to tell my minion something."

"Minion?" Julia asked as she watched some of the motes of light get absorbed into her skin.

"Open the chest," Mist told his minion then focused on Julia and explained, "One of the spells I picked up from the cultists gave me the ability to give people magical tattoos that let them summon an upgradeable pet monster."

"Is it any good?" Julia asked.

"It would be a lot more useful if the minions didn't have a fifty percent chance to flip out and try to kill their summoner if it gets into a fight. On the bright side, one of the upgrades lets me see through its eyes and another upgrade gave it a cleaning ability."

"So it's basically an insane romba?" Julia asked with a touch of amusement.

"Basically," Mist replied with amusement. "I even gave it the ability to zap people."

Julia shook her head. "What are you going to do if it zaps you?"

"I'll probably just step on it and pay the mana to resurrect it, that seems to fix things and the attack isn't all that dangerous if you're human," Mist replied as his minion moved closer to the chest and looked inside. "Huh, five jade tiles, a glowing crystal sphere and a doll."

"A doll? Is it enchanted with something?" Julia asked.

"No clue," Mist admitted as he looked through the list of things he could purchase for his minion, trying to see if he could pick up the ability to see qi or mana. "It might just be a doll or it might be some type of golem that was hiding from the corruption and went insane."

"If we weren't stuck in a cultivation world, I'd say you're being paranoid but since we're stuck in a cultivation world, you're probably not being paranoid enough," Julia grumbled.

"It wouldn't have been my first choice of places to take a vacation but at least we have plenty of corrupted qi that we can eat for power," Mist replied with a grin as he bought mana sight and qi sight for his minion, causing the sphere to glow with a purple light and the tiles a soft red light.

"What would have been your first choice?" Julia asked.

"Probably a light hearted fantasy world with a system that wasn't in the middle of an apocalypse where I could learn magic to jump dimensions and worlds. Being able to improve items like Disgaea would be a nice perk but honestly, I can't really complain about getting summoned."

"Really?" Julia asked, surprised that he wasn't more annoyed.

"It gave me the ability to use magic and there's a decent chance that we can win the tournament in a couple of months which means I'll get the ability to open a portal back home. A couple of months of work for magic? That's a trade that I'm perfectly willing to make, especially since the cultists are willing to sell spells and we don't have a bunch of crazy cultivators trying to start a war."

"I'm going to miss classes and there's a decent chance that some of the young masters will try to kill us if we 'steal' their victory," Julia pointed out.

"I doubt most of the students are insane enough to travel to the edge of the Empire and pick a fight with an entire sect because they lost a regional tournament," Mist argued as he went back to looking for interesting abilities to grab for his minion. "Even if they're insane enough, I doubt they'd bother informing their sects where they actually went. They'd also have to convince me to actually open a portal and I'd probably just lie and tell them that they have to ask Chan or I'd open the portal to the bottom of the ocean if it's one way."

"That makes me feel a bit better," Julia admitted, realizing that anyone crazy enough to go after you would probably be stupid enough to get themselves killed doing it.

"Relax. Even if you're gone a couple of months, you can always tell people that you were kidnapped by cultists or that you caught a bus to Vegas to win a fortune at the casinos, what are they going to do, yell at you?"

"Probably," Julia muttered. "This is going to wreck my chances to get into a decent college."

Mist rolled his eyes, hoping he wasn't that dramatic as a teenager. "Were you planning on going to Yale or Harvard or some equally 'impressive' and overpriced school?"

"No," Julia admitted.

"Then it's not going to matter," Mist assured her. "Just bribe the administration to let you take the finals then pick up some classes at a community college and jump from there to a university when you figure out what you want to take."

"I don't think I could afford to bribe them," Julia admitted.

"Most Xianxia worlds have a warped economy where mortal treasures are next to worthless compared to spirit stones and spiritual resources which means we should be able to get a decent amount of treasure to bring back considering we have two spirit stone mines."

"And you'd just give it away?" Julia asked.

"I'm not greedy and it's not like I can fight in the tournament which means I'm going to need help, so why the hell would I complain about my friends making a profit?" Mist asked as he bought an inventory slot that his minion could use to carry things.

"Fair," Julia admitted, wondering what it would be like to never have to worry about money. "How are you planning on getting the loot up here?"

"I bought an inventory slot for my minion and it has spider climb, it should be able to grab the chest then climb up the walls and across the ceiling through the hole," Mist explained, rather amused when his pet moved the chest into the inventory slot and headed for the wall.

"That's useful, what does your minion look like?" Julia asked, wondering if it was getting a tattoo.

"It looks like a cross between Cousin It and a bag of pasta noodles," Mist replied, trying to ignore the view from his minion's eyes as it scampered up the wall and over to the hole in the ceiling then sort of pulled itself into the tunnel.

"Is that standard or do you have a way to change it?" Julia asked thoughtfully.

"I don't know, I've only used the spell once," Mist replied with a shrug.

"Why?" Julia asked. "Even with the chance of getting attacked, it would make a decent scout."

"I've had the spell for less than an hour," Mist replied with amusement. "I wanted to run some tests and see if there was a solution to the fact that every fight is basically a coin toss. If there's a way to calm them down, great, if not you'd have to kill them and the mana cost would get annoying, especially if we're looking at every student having one."

"Have you figured out a solution?" Julia asked as a noodle monster with sunglasses crawled out of the strange hole in the ground. "It's sort of cute. It looks like an 80’s mascot for an Italian restaurant."

"Not really," Mist replied as he bought his minion the ability to scan items and create note cards with the details. "Put the chest down and create note cards of each item."

"Note cards?" Julia asked as an open chest appeared in front of the minion.

"I bought it the ability to scan items and make note cards with the information," Mist explained as he continued looking through the list for interesting abilities.

"That's useful," Julia replied as the noodle monster finished conjuring a stack of cards and dropped them on the sand in front of it.

"Hopefully," Mist replied. "Can you grab the cards? I don't really want any of the corrupt qi getting out."

"I can do that," Julia replied as she walked over and picked the cards up. She quickly sorted the cards. "The chest is enchanted to protect the contents from moisture and bugs and to hide anything inside of it. The doll seems to be completely mundane if well cared for. It looks like the jade tiles teach one technique each. Glass and sand manipulation, a technique for opening portals to a shadow world that mirrors our own. It has a warning about monsters but doesn't actually give any useful details."

"A vague disclaimer is better than nothing," Mist pointed out.

"Probably," Julia muttered. "There's a technique to conjure spirit snakes that attack your enemies before vanishing, a technique to increase the durability of your ligaments and connective tissue at the cost of damaging your bones…" she trailed off when she checked the card for the last jade tile. "Why would they have a technique for creating dildos?"

"Maybe some of the girls didn't want to visit the brothel?" Mist asked, not sure why they'd stuck the technique in a chest under the sand.

"Never mind, that actually makes sense now that I read the description. It's a technique for conjuring permanent glass-steel dildos, they probably used it with the glass manipulation technique to create durable windows or tables," Julia replied as she checked the last card.

"Sure, let's go with that," Mist teased. "What about the sphere?"

"It's basically a touch activated teaching device. It teaches a magic user how conjure sheets of magically durable spidersilk, a spell to turn someone's bones into crystal, Portal of the Forgotten Mine, a spell to conjure an interactive book of monster porn and something called the Imperial Spell of the Black Gloves but it doesn't give any details, just a warning that you shouldn't use the orb if you're not a magic user and you value your sanity, as it’ll attempt to convert the spells into a format the user can use."

"That sounds interesting and potentially dangerous," Mist mused, figuring they'd save testing it on cultivators they didn't like. "Do you want to use the jade tiles?"

Julia glanced down at the jade tiles in the chest. "I wouldn't mind having the ability to manipulate glass or conjure glass-steel, the rest of them seem a bit dangerous."

"You might be able to use one of the body strengthening techniques to counter the damage to your bones but I'd want to ask a professional before I tried it," Mist suggested.

Julia shivered as she thought about the damage that sort of technique could do. "I think I'll let someone else be the lab rat for that one."

"Probably a good idea," Mist agreed. "Can you drag the chest over here so I can grab the orb without moving?"

"Sure," Julia replied as she reached down and picked up the chest, finding it surprisingly light considering it was made out of metal. She walked over so Mist could grab the orb.

Mist reached out and grabbed the orb and twitched as it imprinted the spells on his soul so that he'd never forget them. "Huh, the silk creation spell should come in handy as you can make tops or bottom sheets, complete with elastic and there's nothing stopping you from handing the sheets to a tailor."

"And the rest?" Julia asked, more curious about the rest of the spells.

"The Portal of the Forgotten Mine takes a lot of mana but it basically creates a pocket dimension in the form of a mostly played out spirit mine which is sort of neat because we could probably convert it into a training area."

"Or use it for stone?" Julia asked.

"Probably," Mist agreed, looking forward to playing with the spell a bit since it had a lot of potential. "The spell to turn a creature's bones into crystal will eventually kill them but it would probably take them a couple of days to a couple of weeks and the crystal is twice as durable as their bones so it doesn't really help against immediate threats unless they fly or swim. Okay, it is useful against some things."

"Unless you're planning on killing them anyway and you want the crystal," Julia suggested.

"Pretty much," Mist agreed. "The book spell creates books filled with dozens of different scenes of monsters of various types fucking people, they're all a bit random."

"What's the point?" Julia asked.

Mist shrugged. "If you touch the illustrations, they'll pull you into the book and you can have sex with the monster in the picture."

"That sounds painful," Julia said.

"And dangerous," Mist agreed. "Everything that happens in the books stays with you, including pregnancy."

"Lovely," Julia replied sarcastically.

"I'd probably try if there was a cute nymph," Mist replied with a grin. "Are you saying that you wouldn't have sex with an angel or some type of shape changing dragon that could be your Prince Charming?"

Julia gave Mist an annoyed glare, unwilling to admit that she probably would have some fun in that case. "No comment."

Mist laughed. "The black gloves spell conjure gloves that let people toss lightning from their fingers if they can pay the mana cost, which might come in useful if we can use the mana stones to power them." 

"That would make a nice trump card," Julia mused, wondering if it would let them win the tournament.

"Yep," Mist agreed as he put the sphere back in the chest, wondering if they could use them to give other people magic.

"Can I learn the techniques before you stash them in a vault or the library?" Julia asked hopefully.

"That depends, can I talk you into staying here and absorbing the corruption so I can take a break?" Mist asked, fairly sure that the corruption wouldn't seep out if she was absorbing it.  

"I should be good for a couple of hours," Julia assured him as she took the box and walked over to the sand pit, glad that she'd stopped by the restroom on her way. "Before you leave, let me try to learn at least one of the techniques to see if it causes my brain to leak out of my ears."

"Sure," Mist replied, not sure what he'd be able to do if something went wrong but at least he'd be able to run for help. 

0o0o0

"Seventy five bottles of beer on the walls, seventy five bottles of beer, take one down and pass it around," Mist muttered sarcastically as he conjured another mana stone, getting more than a bit bored since it was taking longer for Julia to learn the technique than he'd expected.

'Screw it,' he thought as he focused on his spell that conjured a monster book and cast it, creating a large picture book that resembled the picture books from his childhood, if you ignored the subject matter. He looked at the cover. "Dr. Lovecraft? Yeah, because that's not disturbing."

Mist briefly considered just tossing the book into a fire or something before deciding that it was probably just a nod to the nature of the perverted books and nothing to do with the other Lovecraft. 'Famous last words.'

He glanced over at Julia who still zoned out like she'd been for the last twenty minutes then turned his attention back to the book. He carefully opened the book and started flipping through the pages, being careful not to touch the illustrations as he didn't want to get pulled into a random page. 'Green skin, warts and a cauldron, yeah, I think I'll skip that one.'

He skimmed over the short and rather amusing story of a hag eating a particularly annoying fat boy named Dudley after he'd tossed a rock through her window. 'Little Red Riding Hood and the Werewolves?' he mused as he looked at the pictures for the stories, not particularly interested in having sex with the wolf. He stopped on the last page that showed a red haired girl with wolf ears in her late teens wearing next to nothing in a forest other than her iconic red cloak.

'Maybe,' he mused as he skipped to the next story. 'Hercules and the Seven Nymphs? I don't recall that particular trial but some of the girls might like it,' he mused as he skimmed the story, trying to distract himself from worrying about Julia frying her brain.

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