Mist Jumper Part 22

 
Prue glanced at the table that had nine books arranged in a row next to labels then over at a box of matchsticks next to a stack of two books labeled Duplication Trick. “Now that we’re all here, what’s the deal?”

Mist glanced over at his assembled friends as he gestured at the only stack of two books on the table he was standing next to. “The deal is that you use one of the duplication books then pick up a match and duplicate the other book so that the next person can do the same.”

“Then duplicate and use the other books?” Lily asked with amusement.

“Exactly, I’d rather not spend five minutes per book per person if I don’t have to. Once you’re done, the next person can repeat the process.”

Denis asked, “What do we need the matches for?”

Mist turned to look at Denis. “When I duplicate things, I basically trick the world into making a second copy of something by replacing something else.”

Leet shook his head. “Bullshit, I’ve seen you create duplicates out of nothing.”

Mist smirked. “Mostly just stagecraft, normally I just create a small piece of crystal with my crystal generation power then swap it for the duplicate.”

Phoenix asked playfully, “How many abilities are you hiding?”

Mist gestured at the other table he’d set up off to the side where there were several stacks of books. “You’ll just have to wait and see.” He wasn’t planning on handing out his ability to reality revision a person’s gender because he didn’t quite trust Amelia or James with the ability but he didn’t have a problem sharing most of his abilities with his friends.

Riley piped up, “This is going to be awesome.”

“I’m looking forward to upgrading my bug control power,” Taylor agreed.

Shaman grinned at her alternate. “I wouldn’t mind increasing the range of my animal control.”

“I think a lot of us are looking forward to increasing our abilities,” Phoebe pointed out.

Leo frowned slightly. “I have a feeling the elders would be screaming if they could see us.”

Chris snorted. “Thankfully they can’t.”

Prue glanced at Harry then at their daughter. “What about the munchkins?”

Mist glanced over at the kids. “It’s up to you but I was just planning on sharing the learning perks and Leaky Limiter until they got older. I’d rather not have them running around with the ability to upgrade everything they run into before they get enough common sense to know they’re not supposed to upgrade everything.”

Piper said, “I can see that.”

Harry spoke up, “Besides, we don’t need them harder to catch.”

“Hey,” Sarah complained.

Poppy laughed as she patted Sarah on the head. “You’re already a little speed demon.”

Prue picked up one of the duplication books and used it which caused it to vanish. She picked up the second book and a match then duplicated the book. She examined the cover of the copy for a couple of seconds then set the two books on the table. “At least we can stop asking you to duplicate everything.” She grabbed a small handful of matches then moved to the next book so that Phoebe could take her spot in front of the duplication books.

“There is that.” Mist didn’t mind duplicating things for his friends but it was nice to be able to share his abilities with his friends. He glanced over at where five of his avatars were still working on copying skills and abilities. “If anyone needs me, I’ll be in the hot tub working on upgrading my mana regeneration.” He turned and headed for the hot tubs they’d built. He wanted to boost his regeneration to a ‘reasonable’ level before he started working on his magic absorption and other useful abilities.

0o0o0

Cordelia brought her sword up as she danced past the goblin warrior that had been charging at her. She smiled slightly as her sword cut through the goblin’s chest like a knife through butter. She twisted to avoid the next goblin’s rusty spear then brought her sword down on the spear. She brought her sword back up and hacked the goblin’s head off before he’d even realized that his spear was ruined.

“There can be only one!” Xander shouted as he hacked off another goblin’s head.

“Still a nerd,” Cordelia muttered as she blurred forward with her supernatural speed and stabbed another goblin. She blinked as half the battlefield exploded in a massive ball of lightning. “What the hell?”

Pandora laughed as she tossed another massive ball of lightning at the largest group of goblins. “Bring on the thunder!”

“You’re all crazy,” Cordelia complained as she pulled her sword out of the dead goblin then swung it around to cut down another goblin.

Xander blinked as Pandora dropped another massive lightning ball on the party and the goblin horde that reduced most of the horde to twitching wrecks or blurred corpses then blurred forward and punched the last goblin standing which sent him tumbling. “Was that ever in question?”

Cordelia opened her mouth to reply then shrugged. “Point.” She frowned as she glanced over the large group of goblins that Pandora’s ball of lightning had fried. “You’re just lucky we’re immune to electricity.”

Faith blinked a couple of times as she muttered, “I need shades.”

“Hardly luck, I wouldn’t have used the spell if we weren’t immune to lightning,” Pandora replied as she walked over to start looting the goblins.

“Tell that to my eyes,” Faith complained.

Cordelia shivered as she looked at the large group of dead goblins. “At least they weren’t magic immune giants or dark elven battlemages.”

Pandora absently nodded as she studied the blue skinned goblin corpse mixed in with a bunch of dead goblin warriors.

Xander wiped his blade off on the back of a dead goblin then put it back in his inventory. “On the upside, we’d get better loot and skills for killing them, goblins drop shit.”

Cordelia scowled as she looked over the dead goblin horde. “Hopefully, if not I’m going to catch up on some television episodes and abuse my new gocha ability.”

“Where is your sense of adventure?” Pandora asked with a pout as she picked up a blue goblin corpse and stuck him in her inventory.

Cordelia snorted. “I like shiny things, if the monsters aren’t dropping loot then I’m perfectly happy to do something else, like spell research or making my way through our various DVDs.”

Faith turned and looked at Pandora. “Any reason you’re collecting blue goblins?”

Pandora picked up another goblin and stuffed him in her inventory. “The guildmaster mentioned that a decent number of goblin mages are blue, I’m going to try to talk Riley into figuring out if they can use magic because they’re blue or if it’s just a quirk of genetics.”

“Right, mad science,” Xander replied with amusement as he picked up a magical dagger off one of the goblin warriors. “Are you going to help us loot the rest before you talk to Riley?”

Pandora grinned as she checked the closest goblin to see if he had any coins or weapons worth claiming. “Eh, I might as well. If nothing else, I might find a couple of spellbooks thanks to Hermione’s loot ability.”

Cordelia frowned slightly as she looked at the small army of two hundred and some dead goblins scattered around the area leading up to the town’s rather impressive stone walls. “How many more goblins do they have?”

“No idea, it’s something to look into,” Xander replied as he picked up a book off a goblin wearing a shaman’s headdress. “At least we’re getting some loot.”

Pandora grinned as she found a weak magical staff on one of the goblins. “Not a total wash but still pretty crappy.”

Cordelia frowned slightly as she picked up a sword off one of the goblins that looked way too nice to be a goblin sword. “What did you find?”

“A staff of vines, it conjures vines around a target.”

“Something we need to worry about?” Faith asked warily as she worked on looting the various goblins.

“Nah, we could just rip them apart or teleport out of them,” Pandora replied as she stuck the staff in her inventory.

Xander smiled as he found a book on one of the goblins. “Remind me to thank Hermione again for the bonus books perk.”

“Just remember to give her copies of everything you can find.” Pandora pulled an expanded trunk out of her inventory. “Any objections to letting me use the corpses for a project?”

Xander turned and looked down his nose at Pandora. “No making zombies.”

“Or goblin bombs,” Faith pointed out ‘helpfully’.

“Zombies are nasty.” Pandora turned to look at Faith. “Goblin bombs?”

“Yep, you basically cut them open and stick explosives inside with a motion trigger
” Faith trailed off with a smirk.

“That’s nasty,” Cordelia and Pandora complained at the same time.

Xander shook his head. “Moving on
”

Pandora scowled at Faith. “I was just going to revive a couple and see if I could upgrade them and maybe convince them to work for me.”

“Why do you need goblin minions that aren’t minions?” Xander asked as he continued looting the goblins.

“I don’t need them but I’m curious if I can make something interesting out of the goblins.”

Cordelia turned and looked at Pandora. “I think think we need to get you a mad science jar.”

Faith grinned as she found a silver ring on one of the goblins. “Sweet.”

Pandora dropped a goblin into the trunk then reached down for another goblin corpse. “Mad science would be using ‘science’ to fuse the goblins together or reanimating them.” She tossed the goblin corpse into the trunk then picked up a book off the next goblin. “Thanks to the Vassal Tribe ‘item’ I have two dozen cheshire cat type monsters that think I’m their queen that I want to upgrade eventually.”

“Which means you’d rather practice on the goblins?” Xander asked with amusement.

“Pretty much,” Pandora replied as she stuck the book in her inventory.

“Just don’t upgrade them enough that they’re a threat,” Cordelia pointed out as she picked up a goblin in each hand. She walked over and dropped them in the trunk.

“I wasn’t planning on it.” Pandora wasn’t planning on upgrading them enough that they’d be a challenge for her, just enough that she could use them against some of the other monstrous humanoids in the world and figure out what to avoid when upgrading her cats and Aisha’s foxes.

“Do you want help?” Faith asked.

“Sure.” Pandora doubted Faith would object to her project.

0o0o0

Mist had barely orbed into the ancient dusty library with Willow and Hermione when he saw a strange floating metal and crystal drone spin around and unleash a blast of magical energy at him. Time seemed to slow down as his enhanced reflexes kicked in giving him enough time to raise his hand and deflect the blast back at the drone. He scowled slightly as the blast didn’t seem to damage the drone. He used his anti magic gaze on the drone which caused it to fall out of the air. He caught the drone with his telekinesis to keep it from hitting the ground in case it was more fragile than he thought. “You might want to grab what you need quickly.” He started scanning the magical drone.

Hermione frowned slightly as she glanced around the ancient shelves. “It’s going to take forever to pack everything.”

Mist finished scanning the drone then floated it over and stuck it in his inventory. “Not a bad pattern, we can probably use them to help defend the town.”

“As long as you can keep them from attacking the townsfolk.” Willow pulled an expanded trunk out of her inventory and set it on the ground. “Then we might as well get started.” She gestured and orbed one of the massive bookshelves into the trunk. “We can sort the books later.”

Hermione stared at where the missing shelf had been for a second in shock then turned and focused on Willow. “Do you have another trunk?”

“I brought extra,” Willow replied as she pulled another trunk out of her inventory. She handed it to Hermione then went back to work teleporting the bookshelves into her trunk.

“Thanks.” Hermione opened the trunk and looked inside to get a sense of where to place the bookshelves.

“Have fun looting, I’m going monster hunting.” Mist headed toward the exit to the ancient library.

“Have fun,” Hermione replied as she started teleporting the various shelves on her side of the large room into her trunk.

0o0o0

Grog the goblin twitched as he woke up in a metal cage in a rather dark and creepy cave. He glanced around at the various flickering torches then over at the two cloaked figures. “What is going on?”

Pandora stepped into the torchlight. “You died attacking the town, we brought you back from the dead so that you can answer a couple of questions.”

“Shit,” Grog complained as he tried to get his thoughts in order.

“Right, first question, are blue goblins born that way?” Faith asked.

Grog considered his options as he glanced between the two cloaked figures, his natural inclination was to lie but his tribe’s shamans were exceptionally good at detecting lies which meant that the two figures might have the same talents. He remembered getting stabbed in the chest which meant they very well might have brought him back from the dead as the legends claimed the great shamans of old could do. Either that or they’d healed him which meant they had access to healing magic which made torture a viable method to get him talking. “They’re born blue.”

“Are they born with their magic or is it trained?”

“Both.” Grog shifted uncomfortably, he’d rather not reveal any racial ‘secrets’ if he could help it but he also didn’t want to get tortured either.

“How would you like to be a blue goblin?” Pandora asked.

Grog snorted. “You can’t make a person a blue goblin.”

“A person? No, a goblin, maybe.”

“We’ve been trying for years to increase the number of blue goblins in the tribe, most are male and it doesn’t always breed true with normal goblins or humans.”

Faith reached out with her telepathy and read the goblin’s mind and promptly wished she hadn’t as she ‘saw’ various memories of rape and worse. “You capture humans for breeding stock
”

“Of course,” Grog replied proudly.

Pandora scowled at the goblin as she realized that ‘redeeming’ the goblins would take rather drastic measures. “Let’s start with turning you blue.” She blurred over to the cage then reached through the bars and grabbed the goblin by the wrist before he could react. “This might hurt.”

Grog tried to yank his hand back and stared in disbelief as he realized that he couldn’t budge his hand. “What are you?”

“A god,” Pandora lied as she focused on her upgrade power. She poured mana into her power and grinned as the goblin’s skin changed from green to a light blue. “That worked.” 

Grog stared at his arm in disbelief. “This is a trick, nothing more.”

“Can you upgrade him again?” Faith asked curious how much Pandora could push things.

“I’m not sure, let’s give it a try.” Pandora pushed more and more mana into the goblin until his skin changed to a dark purple. “I have a feeling he’d explode if we-” she cut off and stepped back as the entire cave exploded with fire.

Faith stared as the fire vanished revealing a partially slagged cage and the charred and broken remains of the goblin. “Holy shit
” she trailed off as she glanced at the melted metal torches and the smoldering remains of various fungus in cracks or nooks in the walls that hadn’t been instantly disintegrated by the heat.

Pandora studied the partially slagged cage. “Let’s hope there isn’t a tribe of purple goblins running around somewhere.” She scanned the dead goblin to get a minion pattern.

“Hopefully. Are you going to bring him back to life?” Faith absently watched the last of the burning embers die on the wall as she tried to wrap her head around their new upgrade ability. Being able to turn a goblin into a wrecking ball of a caster with a ‘little’ bit of mana was rather sobering.

“Probably, we should probably talk to the blue goblin first to get an idea of what they can do before we upgrade the rest so we can steal their magic.”

Faith shook her finger at Pandora. “Now you’re just being naughty.”

Pandora sighed as she used her projection ability to repair the cage. “No, I’m being practical. From what I saw in Grog’s mind, I’d have to rip out entire sections of every goblin’s mind if I wanted to remove their focus on rape and warfare. At that level of modification, it’s pretty much death of personality. I can probably save some of the women and children but unless I find evidence that Grog wasn’t typical of his entire tribe this particular tribe is basically a write off as far as I’m concerned. That means they’re going to die, if they’re going to die, I might as well get something useful out of it first.”

“And by useful you mean their magic?”

“Basically, yeah,” Pandora admitted as she pulled the blue goblin corpse out of her inventory. She dark orbed it into the cage then cast revive. “Welcome back.”

The goblin mage ‘woke’ up with a start. “What happened?” He twitched and frantically tried to back out of his cage through the bars when he saw the burned out corpse he was sharing a cage with. “What did you do!”

“That was Grog.” Pandora smiled at the goblin coldly as she reached out with her telepathy and started looking through his memories.

The blue goblin gulped as he looked at the two cloaked figures. “What do you want in exchange for not turning me into a pile of ash?”

Faith spoke up, “I’m afraid you’re mistaken, that was self inflicted.”

“How? Grog wasn’t a magic user,” the goblin replied in confusion.

Pandora scowled as she caught bits and pieces of memories of him and various slave girls. While he hadn’t been nearly as horrible as Grog, he’d still taken advantage of the girls. Then again if he hadn’t someone else would have. Not that it excused him for his actions but a case could be made that a decent amount of his mental ‘damage’ was more cultural than genetic. “He was after I turned him into a purple goblin.”

The goblin’s eyes went wide as he realised she was telling the truth and just how fucked he was to have drawn the personal attention of an angry goddess. He tossed himself to the floor in a pathetic sort of half bow/half flop. “Don’t kill me. How can I make this right?”

“Agree to serve me and I’ll let you live.”

“I swear it,” he shouted rather terrified that the goddess would change her mind.

“Excellent, in that case, you’ll have the chance to gather godlike power in your service to me.”

The blue goblin asked nervously, “What do I have to do?”

Pandora gestured toward the wall of the cave and conjured a wooden workbench and some random junk on it. She pulled her generous donation glove out of her inventory and dark orbed it to the goblin. “You need to convince your ‘friends’ to give you their power. Once you have enough power, I’ll send you back to your village to take over. You’ll be known as Grok the Destroyer by the time I’m done with you.”

Grok looked up at the goddess. “Thank you!”

Pandora gestured and turned herself and Faith invisible. “I’ll be watching.” She activated her dragon break ability. In one timeline she teleported back to the base with Faith to grab some lunch in the other she gestured and cast revive on Grog. She used her spell nullification gaze on the goblin to make sure he didn’t blow himself up again. She gestured and created a bubble around her and Faith so they could talk without the goblins overhearing. “I tossed up a spell so we can talk without them hearing us.”

“You make a creepy dark goddess, you know that right?” Faith asked with a touch of amusement.

“It was that or using mind control spells and I’m not a big fan of imperio. Once Grog gives him his power, I’ll look through Grok’s mind and start tweaking things to make sure he stays loyal. Normally, I wouldn’t but with any luck he’ll be in charge of the goblin tribe and I’d rather not have him stab us in the back.”

“I guess I can see that,” Faith agreed.

“I want to upgrade a bunch of the goblins to blue goblins then copy them and use the transporter and the flower we picked up in Star Trek to fuse them into different goblins.” Pandora hid her smirk as she saw the growing look of disbelief on Faith’s face. “Once we have an army of blue goblins we can upgrade them to purple goblins and claim their powers or just clone an army to use against the other races, muhahaha!”

Faith relaxed as she realized that Pandora was joking. “That wasn’t funny.”

Pandora pouted. “Not even a little?”

“Did Riley put you up to that?”

“We might have been brainstorming for a D&D game,” Pandora admitted with amusement.

Faith shook her head. “So what’s the real plan?”

“Before I explain my slightly crazy plan, I’d like to point out that I used dragon break which means it’s not really a big deal if this blows up in my face.”

“That makes me feel better but you’re still going to need a mad science jar,” Faith replied teasingly.

Pandora stuck her tongue out at Faith.

Faith smirked at Pandora. “Promises, promises.”

“I want to see what happens if we transfer five or six purple goblin’s worth of magic into Grok then upgrade him. If he doesn’t explode, we can probably convince him to give you his power so he doesn’t explode.”

“I’m pretty sure he’ll want to keep it,” Faith pointed out as she studied the two angry looking goblins.

“Eh, I have a feeling he’ll cooperate if I blow up his head then bring him back to life and spin a tale about how mortals can only hold so much power without my help. If we bring in a bunch of minions to ‘hold’ the power, we should be able to convince him to help.”

Faith rubbed her chin as she considered Pandora’s ‘slightly’ crazy plan. “I’m half surprised that you aren’t going to use your conversion ritual on them to drain them a second time.”

“I would but considering it’s my magic empowering them, I wouldn’t get much of anything out of it.” Pandora turned to look at the goblins who looked to be in a heated discussion. 

“No but I would,” Faith pointed out.

Pandora absently watched the goblins as she considered Faith’s idea for a couple of seconds. Converting over two hundred goblins into something more interesting would take a fair amount of work but it was an opportunity to help her friend. “What do I get out of it?”

Faith raised an eyebrow. “What do you want?”

“I’m going to need help taking care of the cats and training them, trade?”

“Deal.” Faith smiled as she watched Grog put the glove on and give Grok his magical energy and abilities. “I was sort of hoping he’d explode.”

“It’s early.” Pandora waited for Grog to finish giving up his magic then gestured and sent a stunner at the goblin. She dropped the barrier against sound. “One down, two hundred and some to go.”

Grok shivered as Grog turned to black mist and vanished as if he’d never been. ‘Hopefully she’ll spare me.’ He forced himself to smile as another dead goblin appeared in his cage.

Pandora used her Diablo resurrect on the goblin she’d teleported out of the trunk rather than revive so that she wasn’t leaving bodies scattered around. She had a feeling it was going to be a rather long day.

0o0o0

Laura took an involuntary step backwards away from the forge they’d set up in the warehouse as her brother pulled the sword he’d just finished crafting out of the barrel of water and the blade turned into an inferno of flame. “What the hell?”

Mist twitched and almost dropped the handle of the extremely bright swirling vortex of fire that was ‘pretending’ to be a sword. “That’s a bit more impressive than I was expecting
” he trailed off as his fire resistant leather work gloves caught fire. He stuffed the blade into his inventory then stuck his hands in the barrel of water.

Tara asked, “Are you alright?”

He pulled his hands back out of the barrel and wiggled his fingers, relieved that he hadn’t managed to burn himself despite his ‘immunity’ to fire and durability. “I’m fine, it’s still just fire damage.” He ripped the remains of the gloves off and tossed them in the trash. “Can I get my money back on the fire resistance enchant?”

Willow raised her eyebrows. “Did you actually pay money for the enchant?”

“Eh, point,” Mist admitted.

Laura glanced at the ‘upgraded’ copy of the Anvil of Fury. “How much mana did you pour into the anvil?”

“Tara and I poured everything we had into the fire aspect,” Willow admitted.

“We might have overdone it,” Tara admitted.

Mist smiled at the girls. “Just a bit.”

Willow frowned as she thought about the number of problems handing out weapons that lit everything around them on fire would cause the soldiers. “Should we look into fire absorption gear for the guards or go back to the drawing board?”

Laura piped up, “Both.”

“Oh?”

“The blade was hot enough to cause fire resistant leather to burst into flames. That’s not exactly something I want people walking around the town with but if we add the ability to toggle the flames then I think we have the start of a decent weapon.”

Tara asked, “Can you make spiked gauntlets on the anvil?” 

Mist turned to look at Tara. “Flaming gauntlets?”

“Flaming armor. The sword was hot enough to light fire resistant gloves on fire in less than two seconds, how hot would an entire suit of armor get?”

Laura stared at Tara. “And you’re supposed to be the nice one.”

Tara turned her head slightly to look directly at Laura. “I’m nice but that doesn’t change the fact that we have a bunch of monsters in the forest that want to overrun the town and the guards need all the help they can get.”

Mist said, “We’ll have to run some tests but I have a feeling the collateral damage isn’t going to be worth using the armor outside of item worlds or in rocky areas with nothing to burn.”

Willow said, “That’s not a bad idea. If we layer fire absorption, endurance, strength and agility enchants on each piece of armor, they’d be absorbing enough fire each second to completely heal themselves and the extra health from the endurance enchants should keep them from being one shotted by any of the mid level monsters in the item worlds.”

“If nothing else, running around the item worlds should give the guards practice and experience,” Tara pointed out.

Laura frowned slightly as they thought about the rocky area just outside the town. “There isn’t all that much to burn within a hundred yards of the town wall, as long as they can toggle the fire damage, the armor sounds useful.”

Mist turned to look at the various chests lined up under the workbench. “In that case, I’ll work on the gauntlets and we can run some tests.”

Willow glanced down at the extra Anvils of Fury they’d duplicated. “We should probably work on boosting the mana boosting aspect of an anvil so we can make a decent set of mage gear for the adventurers.”

“Sounds good.” Mist knelt down and opened the chest labeled ‘Elder Scrolls Glass’ that was under the workbench and pulled out several pieces of the green glasslike material they used for weapons and armor in the Elder Scrolls worlds. “This should work.”

Willow asked, “You’re not using adamantium?”

Mist closed the chest and stood up. “No real reason to, I like the glass look and I’m going to be treating the finished product with durability oil which means it will be nearly indestructible anyways.”  

Tara patted Willow’s behind. “Speaking of gear, we should probably play with the gocha cheat a bit once we’re done upgrading the mana boosting version of the anvil.”

Laura grinned as she looked at Willow and Tara. “Let’s haul the anvil to the game room, we can upgrade it and play with the gocha cheat while we roll characters for Leet’s latest adventure of doom.”

“One of these days we’ll actually make it through an adventure without losing half our characters,” Willow replied as she picked up one of the extra Anvils of Fury.

“Good luck with that.” Mist grinned as he continued working on crafting the left gauntlet as the girls left. Leet wasn’t the best game master he’d ever had but he wasn’t the worst and the games were decent stress relief as long as you didn’t mind your characters dying now and then.

0o0o0 

Chris Halliwell glanced over at Fred who was sitting across from him in the hot tub when he noticed a taco appear in her hands out of the corner of his eye. “Did you just get a taco from the gocha menu?”

Fred smirked as she used her identify ability to make sure that the taco like object her gocha cheat had given her was actually just a taco and found that it was. “Yes.” She took a bite of the taco and smiled in contentment at the delicious tasting taco.

Xander looked away from the labyrinth video game he was playing. “How much mana did that cost?”

Fred stopped eating long enough to reply, “Barely any, it was from a food gocha.”

“Nice.” Compared to some of the crappy weapons and useless trinkets he’d gotten all morning, getting a taco would have been a nice change, getting a twinkie would have been even better. The only halfway decent items he’d picked up all morning were an earring that regenerated 1% of the user’s maximum mana when the user killed a creature and a helm of opposed alignment which was actually pretty damned neat but not exactly something that boosted his abilities.

“At least some of the stuff is worth selling or giving to the guards.” Chris dumped all of his mana into a gocha for the Diablo world. He examined the ‘new’ leather belt with identify. “Damn, I think I just found my new belt or at least part of it.”

“What did you get?” Xander asked happy that someone had gotten something good.

“Nightsmoke, a unique belt from the Diablo world, its main ability is that it transfers 50% of the damage you take to your mana pool.”

“Boosting that to 100% would be one way to avoid needing to cast mana shield, I guess. What else does it do?”

Chris put the belt in his inventory. “It increases the defense of the belt it’s enchanted on, increases your mana pool by a small amount, reduces the damage you take by a tiny amount and increases a number of resistances by a small amount.”

Fred finished chewing the last bite of her taco then swallowed. “In other words, nothing earth shattering but we can probably turn it into something interesting if we upgrade it.” She looked at her options for the gocha cheat. “At least playing with the gocha cheat helps increase our mana pools.” She selected the moderately priced gocha option for boots and poured mana into it. She frowned slightly as she received a pair of worn out leather boots. She used her identify ability as she examined the boots. “Old and worn boots, they decrease your walking speed but they have a comfortable quality which we should be able to move to a different pair of boots.”

Cordelia asked as she walked over, “Can you move it to high heels?”

Fred turned to look at the naked ex-cheerleader. “It’s worth testing.”

Xander smiled as he let his gaze travel over Cordelia’s rather amazing body, despite being used to most of the girls walking around without clothes around the pools, he still appreciated the view. “What’s up?”

“I’ve been working on upgrading my mana regeneration and my shoulders are stiff, I need a back massage.” Cordelia glanced between Xander, Chris and Fred. “Please?”

Xander stuck his game in his inventory then smiled at Cordelia as he floated off the lawn chair he’d been sprawled on. “Sure.”

Fred piped up, “I’d take a massage if someone would be so kind.”

Chris gestured toward the other lawn chair. “Sure.”

“Thanks.” Fred floated out of the pool then floated over to the second lawn chair and sprawled out. 

Cordelia smiled as she sprawled out on the lawn chair where Xander had been lounging. “You’re the best.” She closed her eyes as she tried to relax.

Xander floated over and straddled Cordelia so he could work on her shoulders. He started massaging her shoulders as he asked, “What are you going to work on after you upgrade your mana regeneration?”

Chris climbed out of the hot tub and walked over to where Fred was sprawled out. He pulled his gaze off her bare behind then knelt over her so that he could work on her shoulders without straining his arms. He was just glad his ‘aunts’ weren’t as prudish as his actual parents because he had a feeling his parents would have freaked about him giving a naked girl a massage in ‘public’ never mind that the slice of heaven wasn’t really public. 

Cordelia turned her head so that she could watch Chris give Fred a massage. “I wouldn’t mind working on my adventuring gear.”

“Anything particular?” Fred asked.

“I wouldn’t mind some indestructible bracers that I could block with or maybe clothes that could morph into my full suit when needed. Thanks to Mist sharing his FISS ability we’re insanely durable but that doesn’t mean we can’t be hurt or that we won’t run into weapons that we’d rather block for one reason or another.”

Beth spoke up as she walked over with Rover. “If nothing else, we need something to enchant for the various body slots.”

Fred glanced down at the metal scottie dog then up at Beth. “What have you been working on?”

“Just working on my mana regeneration and playing around with the gocha cheat while listening to Dawn and Umy work on a plan for upgrading the town.”

“Any luck with the gocha menu?” Cordelia asked.

Beth walked over and stepped down into the hot tub. “Nothing all that impressive, just a bunch of little trinkets that might be useful if I can upgrade them enough.”

Chris asked, “Like what?”

“An anklet that creates an invisible field around your foot so you don’t have to wear a shoe. I’d have tossed it in the junk pile except anything you enchant it with is transferred or copied to the invisible shoe it creates.”

Rover looked at the water then ‘flopped’ down near the edge of the pool. 

Xander reached the edge of Cordelia’s butt then started working back up toward her shoulders. “That has some interesting possibilities for hidden armor.”

Cordelia snorted. “You just want to see some of the girls fighting in next to nothing.”

“I can’t say I’d object to seeing you killing demons in a loincloth and jewelry,” Xander admitted.

Beth snickered. “I certainly wouldn’t.”

“I will if you will,” Cordelia replied with amusement.

Chris absently listened to the others discuss clothing and the various trinkets they’d acquired as he worked on giving Fred a massage. He had a feeling everyone would get bored of playing with the gochas eventually but for now it was a nice way to shore up some of their defenses and increase their mana pools.