Harry Potter, Hero of Legend, Stories and Elves Part 2

"That was exhausting," Harry admitted as he flopped down on a fallen tree near the demon captain's tent, feeling like he'd just run a couple of miles while being chased by Dudley's gang on bikes.

"Because of the armor?" Neville asked, figuring the armor had to weigh a ton since it looked like it was carved out of crystal.

Harry opened his inventory and dragged the armor from the equipment doll to his inventory, causing the armor to vanish. "Not really, it only weighs five pounds."

"Seriously?" Tonks asked as she checked Harry for injuries, surprised that he'd made it through the adventure unscathed.

"It's heavily enchanted for protection, magic resistance and weight reduction, I'm just not used to running around a battlefield and hacking demons apart," Harry admitted as he accepted the jug of water that Hermione handed him.

"You get used to it," Xander offered as he stepped out of the demon captain's tent and walked over with a milk crate sized wooden box filled with loot.

Harry finished taking a drink of water. "What did you find?"

"Three rings, a keychain, a set of bracers, a cup, a belt and a pair of boots," Xander replied as he set the box next to Harry on the fallen tree. "We left the demonic milking machine and the cauldron in the tent."

"The more I learn, the less I want to know," Neville admitted.

"Yeah…" Harry trailed off as he used his new appraisal ability to check the loot and realized that one of the rings would drastically speed up a pregnancy of anyone wearing the ring at the risk of causing the children mutations. "That explains why a bunch of the demons were mutated."

"What does?" Hermione asked.

"One of the rings reduces the time pregnancy takes to a tenth of the normal time at the risk of mutating the children fifty percent of the time," Harry explained.

Tonks shook her head. "I don't think the elves are quite that desperate."

"Probably not," Harry agreed as he checked the next ring. "Oh, that's interesting the other ring gives any children you have while wearing it glowing red eyes, a basic language primer and an increased ability with a random weapon but it causes one to six mutations seventy percent of the time and makes the children more likely to want to have sex with you."

"That explains some of the weird weapon choices and the glowing red eyes," Xander offered, thinking about the demon that had been using a frying pan as a weapon.

"How is that useful?" Hermione asked, pretty sure the last two qualities would be deal breakers.

"I didn't say useful, I said interesting," Harry told her as he checked the last ring, not seeing a point in explaining the various ways the children would mutate as half of them were pretty horrible. "The last ring speeds up the growth of any children born while you're wearing it, to the point where they'll quickly reach about four years of development in a week as long as they can get enough food. It also gives them a couple of questionable life skills and basic knowledge that they should get growing up in a town."

"Questionable life skills?" Xander asked, curious what Harry considered questionable skills.

"Professional level of skill when it comes to skinning things, especially people, leather working, butchery, alchemy and cooking, along with reading and writing at a college level," Harry explained.

"How is cooking a questionable skill?" Neville asked.

"The focus is on cooking people," Harry replied as he turned his attention to the rest of the loot and tried to avoid thinking about the demons cooking people, realizing why Xander had left the cauldron behind.

"Right, demons," Neville muttered.

"That makes a certain amount of sense, they come through and kill everyone in town then cook them up and feed them to the horde," Hermione mused.

"I've seen worse," Xander said, thinking about his years in Sunnydale.

Harry briefly considered asking before deciding that he probably didn't actually want to know. "The keyring looks useful, it can conjure a temporary copy of any key it touches which might be useful if they ward locks against direct magic."

"It would also help with avoiding the trace when we get back," Sirius offered as he walked over and a large and spatially expanded box filled with random weapons on the off chance that the villagers were buying scrap. "Did you get anything else?"

"The boots give you a fifty percent boost to your running speed and halve the stamina cost and they don't have any horrible negatives, if you ignore the fact they're infected with jungle rot since we can probably get rid of it with a couple of cleaning spells. The cup gives you a large armor bonus to your groin at the cost of doubling the damage you take everywhere else."

Hermione shook her head. "I'm not sure that's worth it."

"Depends on the fight but yeah, I'd have to agree," Xander admitted. "What about the belt?"

Harry handed Xander the belt. "It basically doubles your physical abilities but it won't help if you already have better because of magic or abilities so there's no point in me keeping it as soon as I get my stats sorted out."

"Does anyone have an objection?" Xander asked as he looked at the rest of the group.

Hermione and Neville shook their heads.

"I'm good," Sirius replied, knowing he'd get less from the belt since he was out of shape.

"I'd love to increase my agility but you'd get more use out of it," Tonks admitted, willing to wait since her clumsiness wasn't really a problem while casting.

"Awesome," Xander replied as he put the belt on.

"What about the bracers?" Hermione asked as she glanced at the silver bracers covered with celtic knotwork.

"They're effectively ceremonial considering silver is a horrible metal to use for armor and the magic doesn't actually increase the durability of the metal. They adjust size and fit, provide a small amount of armor to your entire body, prevent most types of pregnancy complications other than mutations and double the number of children you'll have when you get pregnant as long as you're wearing them at the time."

Tonks shook her head. "That sounds like a good way to pop or end up with way too many children."

"I'm pretty sure popping counts as a complication," Harry argued as he tapped the mail icon on his heads up display, causing it to pop up a page with the letter on it as well as a couple of attachments. He shivered as he felt the magic bound in the message settle into his soul, causing a Property Translocation button to appear on his display next to the rest of his abilities.

"I would hope so," Hermione argued.

Harry checked the short message from the blue guy. "Huh. I'm just going to read the message, it's short. Check everyone with appraisal, I gave them a couple of abilities that should help with the curse. The journal teaches a useful spell that anyone can learn by opening it. Give the scroll attached to the message to Hermione, opening it will teach her a spell. The slime companion is loyal and can transmute demon corpses into useful stuff. She's also about as intelligent as a five year old so be gentle with it. On a completely unrelated topic, feel free to play around with your Property Translocation power, it's the best I could slip you without alerting the Demon King, once you get the hang of it, you'll have a blast."

"That's it?" Sirius asked.

"Apparently," Harry replied as he grabbed the scroll, pulling it out of the message like he would something in his inventory. He handed the scroll to Hermione then grabbed the journal and opened it. He blinked a couple of times when he felt the spell imprint on his mind or possibly soul, giving him the knowledge of a spell that would conjure a rather comfortable bed. "This would have made learning magic a lot easier at school."

"You'd probably get lazy or not actually learn how to learn spells," Tonks pointed out, thinking about some of the people she'd gone to school with.

"Does that mean you don't want the journal?" Harry asked as he held the book out.

"No, it just means that sometimes you need to put the work in," Tonks replied as she took the book. She opened the book and smiled when she realized that she knew how to wandlessly summon a bed. "Did you get a spell to summon a bed?"

"Yes," Harry replied as he used the spell, causing a four poster bed complete with silk curtains to appear in a clear spot.

"There are spells to conjure things," Sirius pointed out as Tonks handed him the book.

Harry smiled when he used his Appraisal ability on the bed and realized that you'd only need half as much sleep if you slept in the bed. "I'm pretty sure none of the spells you have can conjure a bed that doubles the benefits from sleeping in it."

"Not a chance," Sirius admitted as he opened the book, picking up the new spell.

"That's going to come in useful, more studying," Hermione said excitedly as she finished examining the wax seal on the scroll, wishing she had access to a library to look it up as it seemed familiar for some reason.

"Well, that was predictable," Neville joked.

"No comment," Harry replied as Sirius handed the journal to Neville.

"We're going to need all the help we can get." Hermione carefully opened the scroll, causing it to crumble to dust as the knowledge was imprinted on her soul. She frowned slightly when she realized that she had no idea what the spell actually did, just knowledge of how to cast it. "That's frustrating and a bit suspicious, the scroll didn't explain what the spell is supposed to do."

Neville used the journal then handed it to Xander. "It said anyone can learn it, do you want to try?"

"Might as well," Xander replied and opened the book, not really expecting much and surprised when the knowledge flowed into his brain making it as easy as using a fighting combo on a videogame. 'The gang is going to love this.'

Sirius glanced at Tonks then focused on Hermione. "Normally, I'd warn you against using spells that you don't understand but if the guy wanted to hurt us, I doubt there's much we could do about it."

"True," Hermione admitted as she turned away from the group in case the spell was dangerous or some type of joke and cast it, causing a large green spectral cock to appear out of her pants. "What the fuck?" she sputtered out, shocked by the result of her new spell.

Harry stared at the monstrous translucent cock in disbelief that turned to shock when his Appraisal ability informed him that it was functional enough to get girls pregnant if she wanted and that it worked with Hermione's sex related perks and insured that she wouldn't pass on any negative genes. "Sex perks?" he muttered as he checked her with his Appraisal ability. "Huh, okay, that explains why he wanted me to check everyone with my Appraisal ability."

"What did you find?" Hermione asked, momentarily distracted from the giant spectral cock sticking out of her crotch.

"Let me check everyone else," Harry replied as he quickly checked the rest of the group then his own abilities on his display, getting slightly distracted by his new abilities. 'Look at them later,' he told himself as he pulled his attention back to the group. "Don't shoot the messenger. It looks like everyone has Elf Magnet, Seeding Uncle, Hyper-Preggers and Heroic Bloodline while Tonks and Hermione also have an Easy Pregnancy ability."

"Hyper-Preggers? Is that the actual name of the ability or are you pulling a Ron?" Hermione asked, wondering if she should be glaring at him or not.

"It's the name my ability gives it, I'm not acting like Ron," Harry assured her, trying to stay serious about the entire thing, despite the urge to laugh at the insanity. "Having the ability means that every elf we impregnate will have more than one child per pregnancy. It could be as low as twins to as high as nonuplets, whatever that is."

"Nine," Hermione replied, wondering if the ability was trying to kill people.

"Ouch," Harry muttered. "Thankfully, it comes with protections from complications for pregnancy and childbirth so it's less dangerous than it could be."

"That's slightly less horrible," Hermione admitted, feeling slightly better about the ability.

Tonks glanced at Sirius. "I know it’s been a while for you, but if you find someone… you’re going to have to explain all this first and not after."

"There's a line between pulling a prank and being an asshole, I might have trouble telling the difference, but that one is crystal clear," Sirius assured her.

"Especially since the Seeding Uncle ability gives our sexual prowess and stamina a large boost and increases our fertility, meaning if we have sex and they can get pregnant, they'll get pregnant," Harry warned everyone.

"Probably just as well we didn't start in town, that sounds like it might overpower a contraception spell," Tonks warned them, wanting to at least bring up the possibility.

"Good point," Sirius admitted. "What about the Elf Magnet ability?"

"It makes us a lot more attractive to elves or at least the elves in this world," Harry warned them. "The description mentions a toggle but it's currently locked."

"It's almost like someone wants us to get a bunch of people pregnant," Xander mused, making a note to look into the local marriage laws before he went on anything that might be considered a date with any of the locals. "What does Heroic Bloodline do?"

"Any children the group has will have enhanced constitution, larger magic reserves and get copies of our abilities or similar abilities, which will be passed on to the next generation. The Heroic Bloodline ability should eventually fade away over the generations," Harry explained, not actually sure how long it would take for the ability to completely fade.

"Probably for the best," Tonks mused, curious what type of society her Metamorphmagus talent would cause if everyone or nearly everyone had it. "What about the Easy Pregnancy ability?"

Harry turned to look at Tonks. "If you get pregnant you'll only be pregnant for a week instead of the normal nine months and the entire process will be painless and risk free. It also gets rid of cramps and other issues."

"No cramps? I'll take it," Tonks said cheerfully, rather happy about the new ability, even if the rest of them were a bit odd.

"Did your Appraisal ability tell you how I'm supposed to get rid of it?" Hermione asked Harry, a bit annoyed that she couldn't dismiss it.

Harry double checked her spell. "It has a minimum duration of five minutes."

"That's new," Hermione mused, wondering if the minimum duration was specific to the world's magic or just this spell. "I'll guess I'll just have to wait."

"Yeah," Harry agreed as he pulled the slime out of the message, causing a soccer ball sized ball of slime to fall to the ground.

"Hello?" the slime asked, in a childish voice as she sprouted hands, opened her eyes and looked around.

"Hi," Harry offered, not sure what else he was supposed to say to an intelligent slime that looked like an upside down bowl of jello that someone had stuck googly eyes on that had grown arms.

"I smell demons, can I go eat them?" the slime asked hopefully.

"Have fun," Harry suggested, not sure what else he was supposed to do.

"Yes!" the slime replied as she bounced towards the nearest demon corpse.

"That's going to take some getting used to," Sirius admitted as he watched the slime devour the charged remains of the demon.

"Yeah, just a bit," Harry agreed as he pulled up his Demonic Binding ability, trying to get a better idea how it worked.

"Do we have an actual plan?" Xander asked as he glanced around, fairly sure that they should probably figure out what the next step was now that Harry had had a chance to catch his breath.

"Yeah," Sirius replied with a grin. "I'm going to use a slowing charm to slow my descent and then I'm going to apparate a thousand feet in the air and look around for a town, unless someone has a better idea."

"We could just use the spell they teach in the department to find the nearest town," Tonks suggested, doing her best to keep a straight face as there wasn't a spell to find the nearest town as far as she was aware.

Sirius blinked then turned and stared at Tonks. "What? Where did you learn that?"

"Moody," Tonks replied, managing to keep a straight face for about five seconds as she enjoyed the look of shock on his face. "Sorry, Mum said I should prank you if I got the chance."

"That's fair," Sirius admitted, knowing that he'd done worse over the years. "Arresto Momentum," he chanted as he pointed at himself. He apparated into the air so he could get a decent look around.

"At least he cast it before he apparated," Tonks said thoughtfully. "Most wizards don't think to cast it first until they've already tried."

Neville shook his head. "That would require common sense, most wizards don't have any."

"True," Harry agreed as finished looking through the descriptions of the top three most powerful demons that he'd killed. 'No point in keeping the captain long term but he probably has some useful information, like where he found the rings.' He pulled up the interface for his Soul Arts ability and checked to see if any of the demon souls his ability had captured could be turned into spells.

"Are we going to steal the tent?" Xander asked.

"Absolutely, it's enchanted, it's about twice as large as it should be," Tonks replied as she headed toward the tent, figuring they might as well finish packing everything up while they were waiting.

'Top three demons and two of the smaller demons.' Harry glanced at the spells that the captain's soul could be turned into as Xander and Tonks left to steal the tent. 'Demonic Taunt, drives the target into a rage and gives them a bonus to hit and damage me? Yeah, no thanks. Brand, inflict a target with a cursed tattoo with two or three minor negative qualities that lets me track them? That's slightly more useful and more than a bit dodgy.'

He checked the rest of the demons that could be turned into spells. 'Cursed fire, a protection spell that only works for demons and requires a sacrifice, a spell that summons a fire whip that is hard to control and a spell to boil a person's blood off the human sized demons and a couple of firebolt spells, a spell to summon a cursed demonic quill, two lust spells and a spell to permanently conjure a cursed loincloth from the minions that are powerful enough to be turned into spells.'

Harry checked to make sure the minions in question didn't have any useful skills then turned two of the least useful into tokens that would teach a firebolt spell. "That worked better than I was expecting."

"What's that?" Hermione asked as she looked at the copper coin with a rune etched into the face of it.

"One of my abilities lets me turn special demon souls into single use tokens that teach spells," Harry replied as he turned the demon soul into the token for the quill and another one into a token for conjuring cursed loincloths. "I grabbed tokens for a firebolt spell, a spell to summon a cursed quill and a spell to conjure cursed loinclothes."

"Why do you want a cursed loincloth?" Hermione asked.

Harry shrugged. "I'm curious how it works and the demon isn't worth more than a drop of experience for my stats."

"What other abilities did you end up with?" Neville asked, curious what he'd picked up.

"Demon Binding, Stealth, Synthesis and I'll get brought back to life if I die in this world, which isn't something I want to test considering I'd lose half of my unspent souls," Harry admitted as he bound the top two demons that weren't the captain.

"That sounds like a horrible idea," Neville agreed.

"Let's avoid testing that," Hermione said, not happy with the idea of Harry dying, even if he'd come back.

Harry checked to see if he could still turn the demons that he'd bound into spells. 'Warning: turning bound demons into spells will permanently destroy them. That makes the choice of what to do with the captain easier,' he thought as he bound the captain's soul so he could summon him.

"What does the Synthesis skill do?" Hermione asked, having a decent idea about the rest even if the specifics probably mattered a lot.

"Synthesis lets me combine two items to produce a third composite item. The nature of the synthesized item depends on the materials used and my system keeps a recipe list so that I can recreate items," Harry explained. "I also picked up Property Translocation but I'm not actually sure what it does, I got distracted."

"You should probably check while we're waiting for Sirius to land," Hermione suggested.

Harry pulled up the interface for his new ability and stared at the description. "Place the first item in the left box and the second item in the right box, you'll be able to permanently swap a property if you can pay the mana cost. This can be repeated as many times as you want."

"That sounds like a more powerful version of a switching spell," Neville mused as Xander walked out of the tent carrying a strange contraption that looked like a torture device.

"You should probably spend your experience before you run a bunch of tests in case we get ambushed or in case it kills you," Xander suggested as he set the strange milking machine out of the tent so they could collapse it.

"Good point," Harry admitted as he filtered the collection of demons he could bind by their alchemy skills. 'That doesn't help when half of them have Alchemy because of the ring,' he thought as he stared at the rather large list of demons with alchemy. He adjusted the filter to organize the list by amount and rarity of their recipes. 'Looks like only the top fifteen have unique recipes or a decent amount of recipes, good enough,' he thought as he bound the top fifteen alchemists, figuring they'd be more useful as alchemists than as experience.

Harry pulled up his stat page and checked the cost to raise everything. "Everything costs the same to buy a second level, which makes a certain amount of sense but I was sort of expecting a discount for something."

"Something?" Hermione asked as Xander walked back into the tent.

"Either my better stats or my less impressive abilities," Harry replied as he spent the experience to level his Magic to two and checked the price to increase it to three. "Looks like the price doubled to hit three, that's going to get expensive fast."

"If it keeps doubling? Yes, you'd quickly reach the point where the system is useless," Hermione warned him.

Harry bought his magic up to three and checked the price to increase it again. "Okay, never mind, it's merely adding the cost, not doubling it each time."

Hermione sighed in relief. "That's easier to deal with."

"We're going to be hopelessly outclassed, aren't we?" Neville asked warily.

"Sorry," Harry offered, wishing there was a way to boost everyone with his ability.

"Nothing to be sorry for, you're the hero," Neville replied without hesitation. "I just meant we're going to need to figure out how to avoid getting splattered once we run into some of the stronger demons."

"I'm hoping the elves have some ideas," Harry admitted as he spent the points to boost the rest of his attributes up to three and his magic up to five, burning through the rest of his demon souls. He closed the page and hopped off the tree he'd been using for a bench, practically bouncing because of excess energy.

"Hopefully," Hermione agreed, trying to stay positive. "Are you going to use the spell tokens?"

"Yeah, I got distracted," Harry replied as he used his Appraisal skill on one of the firebolt tokens. "Okay, that's easier than I was expecting, you just sort of focus on it and mentally activate it." He focused and mentally activated one of the firebolt tokens, causing the token to turn to dust and the information to flow into his mind.

"Are you going to test it?" Neville asked.

Harry pointed at a large rock on the other side of a clearing and 'cast' his new spell, sending a golfball sized ball of fire streaking across the clearing and into the rock almost too fast to track. "Huh, is it just me or was that faster than the balls of fire the little demons were tossing?"

"Night and day," Hermione replied. "I'd need a way to clock the spell but I doubt most people are going to be able to dodge the spell, unlock most of the hexes and curses in the Wizarding World."

"Can I get a copy of that?" Neville asked hopefully, wanting something to defend himself with.

'Sure," Harry replied as he handed him the other firebolt token.

Neville focused on the token and activated it after a couple of seconds of trying then pointed his hand at the rock and 'cast' the spell, finding it more like flipping a mental switch than any of the spells at Hogwarts. He almost missed the ball of fire hitting the rock as it moved just as fast as Harry's spell as far as he could tell. "I was expecting my spell to be slower."

"The speed is probably set," Hermione offered, wishing she had a way to discover the formula so she could figure out how it worked.

"It wouldn't surprise me, I got it from one of the minions." Harry used the token that let him summon a cursed quill, picking up the spell and causing the token to turn to dust. "If I try to grab the quill without explaining things, stun me."

"Okay," Neville assured him as he pointed his wand at his friend without any hesitation.