Myst and the Magic Shop Part 3

Kara glanced away from the screen where Myst was loading the game for the thirty seventh time after stabbing the shopkeeper to reset their inventory when she heard someone quietly approaching the door. She used her X-ray vision on the wall and door as she floated off the bed and over to the door, wanting to make sure it wasn't someone that wanted to cause trouble. She opened the door with a grin as Robin reached out with his foot to knock on the bottom of it. "Nice timing."

"Cool, I have snacks," Robin replied cheerfully as he walked into the room with a case of root beer and a shopping bag filled with a couple bags of chips and the supplies that Supergirl had texted him about.

"Perfect," Kara said as she closed the door.

Robin glanced at Diana who was sitting on the bed with a Kara sized gap between her and Myst then focused on Myst who hadn't even looked up from whatever video game she was playing on the unfamiliar handheld device. "What are you playing?"

"Skyrim, it's an RPG," Myst replied as he finished buying the shopkeeper's entire inventory, wanting to make sure the shopkeeper had as much gold as possible when he came back and sold potions because the character couldn't drop gold in a chest.

"Independant game?" Robin asked as he set the bag and case of soda on the table.

"It's a decently solid game," Myst replied, dodging the question as he marched his character across the street to the inn so he could get a room so he'd have somewhere to stick his potions and alchemy supplies.

"It's a bit boring, Myst has just been stabbing the shopkeeper and resetting her game," Kara admitted as she opened the case and grabbed two sodas.

"Why?" Robin asked, figuring there was some in game exploit she was abusing.

"It basically lets you reset the shopkeeper’s available gold so you can sell more to them and it lets you change their selection of ingredients and equipment as it's random."

"Do you want one?" Kara asked as she held out one of the sodas, looking at Myst.

"I'll grab it in a second, I want to dump my character's inventory in a chest," Myst replied as he had his character rent a room from the innkeeper.

"In a chest? Why?" Robin asked as Kara walked over and sat down between Diana and Myst.

"So I can steal it," Myst replied with a grin as he ran his character over to his room and started dumping everything in his inventory into the chest at the foot of the bed.

Robin glanced between the girls. "So you can steal it?" he repeated, confused.

"Yep," Myst replied smugly as Kara handed Diana one of the sodas.

"I'm missing something, aren't I?" Robin asked as Diana opened the can and took a drink, not sure how stashing your equipment in a chest let you steal it as you already owned it.

"Give me a minute to finish dumping my character's inventory and save my game then and I'll show you," Myst replied as he continued dropping everything in the chest.

"Sure. What other games do you have?" Robin asked as he walked over and sat down in the chair and opened his soda, figuring he might as well take the chance to relax while he could.

"Mostly RPGs with some giant bird racing mini games tossed in." Myst moved his character away from the chest then saved his game in the third slot in case opening a portal ate his save game. "Okay, let's see if this works," he muttered as he let his game system vanish and walked over to the bathroom door.

"What happened to the game system?" Robin asked, not sure what was going on as he hadn't noticed her blink or blur.

"It's a power," Myst replied as he opened the door, focusing on the game he'd just saved and his power.

Robin stared in disbelief as a portal opened into a hallway with rough hewn wooden walls lit by thick yellow candles sticking out of the tops of slightly curved animal horns mounted on the walls every ten feet. "What's going on?"

"We're stealing some loot," Myst replied as he stepped into the hallway in the game world, the scent of burning tallow hitting his nose now that he was inside the game world.

"How the hell?!" Robin sputtered, reasonably sure kryptonians didn’t have portals as one of their many, many superpowers. He glanced at Diana as she headed towards the portal, briefly wondering if she'd picked up a relic or something that would let her create a portal, but she wasn't holding anything and had never mentioned the possibility despite the possible uses over the years.

"Magic," Myst replied as he watched the dragonborn walk out of his room and down the stairs without even looking in his direction, completely oblivious to their existence.

"Is this something every mage can pull off?" Robin asked, fairly sure Wally would be sputtering about magic being nothing more than smoke and mirrors, but knowing that with Wonder Woman and Supergirl taking it seriously it wasn’t something to be dismissed as mere tricks.

"Not really, it's a gift," Myst replied.

"So you're a clone of a kryptonian from a high tech lab and you have a magical gift that the original doesn't?" Robin asked, trying to puzzle things out.

"The world is filled with mysteries," Diana offered, making a mental note to have Giovanni give Robin's team a lecture on magic when he had a chance.

Kara smiled as she walked into the game world and looked around. "Everything looks real enough."

"Is it safe?" Robin asked, cautiously stopping at the edge of the doorway.

"Provided we don't leave the town," Myst replied as he walked over and opened the heavy wooden door to the Dragonborn's room. He got the sense that he couldn't close the portal while he was in the game world, not that he was planning on ever testing that particularly self destructive idea. Well… unless Darkseid showed up declaring him to be the perfect mate before he managed to change back to male… better make that even after he changed back to male. He shuddered and pushed that thought far from his mind.

"What happens if we leave the town?" Robin asked as Diana slipped past him and into the medieval inn’s hallway.

"Monsters," Myst replied as he opened the chest by the wooden bed, grinning when he saw a large collection of ingredients, dozens of potions, wine bottles and weapons, both mundane and magical along with a scattered collection of magical items in the chest that was obviously larger on the inside then should be possible. He picked up a potion labeled cure disease and drank it, finding that it tasted unpleasantly of feathers and crab.

"What did you drink?" Kara asked as she walked over.

Myst scraped his tongue on his teeth a couple of times to try to get rid of the aftertaste. "Cure disease; it’s one of the things I give good odds of curing my condition."

"Do you feel any different?" Diana asked as she looked into the bedroom from the hallway.

"Not particularly, but then I was told I would have at least half a year before I began to feel the effects of my condition anyway," Myst replied as he picked up one of the thick leather alchemy tomes he'd had the Dragonborn buy from one of the shopkeepers. "Let's see if the books work for me like they do in the game."

"Are you sure that's a good idea?" Kara asked, not quite sure about letting untested magic mess with her mind even if just to implant knowledge.

"Not remotely," Myst replied cheerfully as he opened the tome, wanting to see if he'd pick up the basics of alchemy. He blinked a couple of times as he 'remembered' reading the book and watching herself mix up a potion. "I wasn't actually expecting that to work, but I actually know the basics and remember learning to mix basic potions. Let's go break the world."

"You're supposed to be a hero," Robin pointed out, fairly sure the news would have a field day if anyone overheard her talking about breaking the world, which as a kryptonian, was probably something she could make a decent start on.

"Relax, it's just a figure of speech, and once more, not a hero just not a dick," Myst replied as he handed Kara the potion book and closed the lid on the chest. He reached down and grabbed the chest, nearly losing his footing when the chest came off the floor without any real trouble, other than feeling strangely light and curiously heavy at the same time. "We need a scale, I'm having a hard time figuring out how much things weigh."

"You'll get used to it," Kara replied then muttered, "eventually. Let's see if this works on other people."

"Worth a shot," Myst replied, realizing it was a valid question.

Kara opened the alchemy book before she could change her mind and frowned when she realized she 'remembered' everything in the book as well as mixing several potions that she'd never actually made. "That was a bit disconcerting, but it worked, I know the basics of the subject and have a small degree of skill now," she said as she handed Diana the alchemy book.

"Just a bit, but it was either that or waste time learning the basics the hard way," Myst replied as he headed for the stairs.

"Where are we going?" Robin asked as he cautiously entered the hallway, realizing that his simple babysitting assignment had turned into an escort mission, which seemed appropriate since they were apparently inside a video game. Thankfully he had two senior members of the League along so his responsibility was basically reduced to bystander.

Diana glanced between Myst and Kara then opened the book, curious how the book would compare to the vague lectures she'd had on alchemy growing up.

"To the general store; I want to sell most of the potions and get enough gold to buy what I need from the other shops I'm planning on visiting," Myst explained as he walked down the stairs, looking forward to picking up enchanting and seeing what type of enchantments he could copy from Final Fantasy. 'You're getting ahead of yourself, sell the potions, get enough gold, then use the enchanting book and figure out what you can learn.'

"What type of monsters are in the area?" Robin asked as they followed Myst down the stairs, trying to get an idea of what kind of RPG they were in.

"Wild animals, goblins, trolls and dragons," Myst replied, fairly sure he was missing a couple of monster types but not particularly worried about the low level monsters, because he wasn't planning on leaving the town until he had better gear except for a quick trip to his first save near the 'class' standing stones so they could pick up a training booster before they started grinding their crafting skills.

"Dragons?" Robin asked warily.

"In the unlikely event that we run into a dragon in town, let Diana deal with it," Myst replied as they left the inn.

"Happy to," Dianna said as she handed Robin the book.

"Tacticaly sound decision," Robin agreed, making a mental note to look into grabbing more smoke bombs and something that could distact a dragon, possibly smoke bombs laced with capsicum or possibly even fear toxin. He opened the book and blinked a couple of times, finding the experience a lot more informative than most of his lectures in school. He handed the book back to Myst.

“I’m guessing dragons are actually mythical creatures here and not just a name for a species of large lizards with the ability to breathe something offensive?” Kara guessed.

Myst glanced around to make sure there wasn't anything strange going on then headed for the shop across the street. "Considering dragons are close to immortal in this world and their language can produce magical effects, yes."

"I'll play it safe and hang back then," Kara promised.

"Good, you need to learn to stop tanking everything. I’m still trying to break Kal of that habit," Diana pointed out, fairly sure the habit was going to get her in trouble one of these days. "Do any of the games have decent magical armor?" she asked, wondering if she could convince Kara to wear something more protective than her current outfit; super fabric or not, magical armor was much better at protecting from magical effects.

"There are more modern options in Final Fantasy than the ancient armor look they have available here, but we can probably figure something out or look at magical bracers," Myst mused. "We can grab a spell for conjuring armor here, it just looks a bit villainous," he admitted as they walked up the steps to Lucan's shop.

"Still not a bad idea for emergencies," Diana said as they walked into the medieval shop. She glanced around the shop before she focused on the middle aged man behind the counter with close cropped dark hair and a goatee, wearing simple homespun woolen clothes lined with fur.

Lucan smiled at the group of women and the young man dressed like a jester. "How can I help you?"

"Do you buy potions?" Myst asked as he walked over to the counter, hoping his plan was actually viable.

"Of course," Lucan replied. "My stock is a bit low at the moment, so I’ll gladly buy whatever you have available as long as they are of sufficient quality. I normally have some alchemy reagents for sale along with the occasional spell tome and winter clothes, if you’re interested in restocking your own supply of potions, but I’m also low on those at this time."

Myst walked over and set the chest on the counter then started pulling potion vials out and setting them on the table for the man to check. "No worries, I'm just selling right now."

Robin glanced over the collection of strange odds and ends on the shelves. "Any idea what's going on?" he asked Kara in a whisper.

"She's selling potions for gold," Kara replied quietly. "After we're done, we'll probably head back to the room and inventory the ingredients."

"We should probably look into getting some decent swords," Diana mused, thinking about the recent increase in trouble the League had been dealing with and how some of them could have been solved more quickly and with less collateral damage had she a bladed weapon handy.

"Alvor makes excellent quality blades," Lucan offered as he worked on counting out the gold he owed the nice young woman he was buying the potions from at a fraction of their value.

"We'll be sure to check," Myst agreed cheerfully, looking forward to getting a lesson in smithing, so he could start making blades as soon as he’d collected a decent amount of metal.

Robin sighed, fairly sure his report to Batman was going to raise more questions than he’d be able to find the answers to.

0o0o0

Robin glanced between the wooden chest on the bed and the bathroom. "What's the catch?"

"Catch?" Myst asked with amusement as he loaded his save game, wanting to make sure he hadn't corrupted it by entering it and removing things.

"We just stepped through a portal, stole a bunch of potions and left with a chest filled with gold, that’s not exactly heroic," Robin complained.

"I'm technically a civilian," Myst cheerfully reminded him as he checked his save game, making sure it was functional. "Relax, my power lets me enter a video game during the weekends, it's basically a simulation or a recreation as far as I can tell, not anything approaching reality."

"Can you pull people out?" Robin asked, trying to figure out how ‘real’ her video game was.

"No clue," Myst admitted as he let his game system vanish, happy that his save game appeared unaffected and the chest in the game was where it was supposed to be. "I've had the power for less than an hour, this is the first time I’ve tested it."

"In other words, you could be creating sentients and then wiping them out every time you reset the game," Robin argued, paling at the thought of worlds filled with thinking, caring individuals being wiped out at the press of a button.

"Or they continue spinning somewhere in the multiverse," Myst replied as he walked over and grabbed a soda. "The game’s hero didn't even look at the portal, so I'm guessing they're shadows at best, unless someone pulls them out of the pocket dimension, assuming it's even possible to do so, as you may just end up with a soulless shell rather than a person."

"Are you going to test it?" Robin asked warily.

Myst considered the question as he opened his soda and took a drink. "Not until I've set up a private island, acquired a spaceship or made a deal with Atlantis or a country that wants magic users or magitech engineers; even bringing back a plant to test things would probably break a bunch of laws designed to protect the environment."

"What about the stuff you brought back in the chest?" Robin pointed out.

"Now that you mention it, I should probably set up a clean room or something to make sure we're not carrying magical seeds back with us," Myst mused as he walked over and closed the bathroom door, not particularly worried about anything from Elder Scrolls making it through the portal, but enjoying making the argumentative hero a bit more paranoid.

Robin glanced between the two League members, who seemed perfectly content to listen to him argue about the possible dangers, while not seeming to be concerned themselves, then focused back on Myst. "Shouldn't you be more worried about diseases?"

"Considering I'm kryptonian and the first thing I did when I got back was drink a potion to cure disease, not really," Myst replied as he focused on the first save and opened the door, creating a portal to the standing stones. "Does anyone want a training boost before we start grinding alchemy?"

"How much of a training boost?" Kara asked as she floated through the portal and glanced around the wilderness, noting the faint scent of burned wood on the wind.

"Twenty percent," Myst replied as he stepped through the portal then walked over to The Thief standing stone and touched it, not sure how to describe the feeling that washed over him.

"Which one do we touch?" Diana asked as she followed through the portal.

"This one for alchemy, The Mage is for enchanting and The Warrior for smithing," Myst explained as he pointed at each of the standing stones in turn.

"Does the alchemy stone boost anything else?" Robin asked as he glanced between the three rock pillars set in the ground.

Myst stepped away from the stones so they could get the blessing. "A bunch of rogue skills, such as archery, lock picking, hiding in shadows and the like."

"Sounds good," Robin said as Kara touched The Thief stone, deciding that it would be stupid to turn down the possible boost in skills just because he didn’t know what they were doing was a hundred percent safe.

"Any objection to me grabbing The Warrior Stone so I can work on my blacksmithing?" Diana asked, figuring she could be working on that while Kara worked on her alchemy.

Myst gestured towards The Warrior Stone. "Go for it, we can always come back and switch."

Robin glanced at the familiar figure that was heading down the path away from them. "Same person?"

"Yeah, he's the protagonist," Myst replied as he walked back through the portal, wishing he had a method of tracking his magic effects beyond a vague feeling. 'This would be a lot easier with a gamer ability or something that gave me a heads up display.'

Robin touched the rogue stone then followed Kara and Diana back through the portal. "Shouldn't we be heading to the town?"

"Waste of time when I can just close the portal and open a portal to the other save and have a second chest to loot filled with alchemy ingredients." Myst frowned when he tried and failed to summon his Elder Scrolls system so he could test to see if he could work on the next steps while they were training. "So much for that idea."

"What's the matter?" Kara asked, having noticed Myst's frown.

"I can't summon my game system if the portal is open," Myst admitted, then took another drink of his soda.

"Have you tried your other system?" Diana asked.

Myst focused on his Final Fantasy game system and grinned when it appeared in his free hand. "That works, thanks." He selected Final Fantasy Tactics from his list of available games then handed the game system to Robin. "See if you can get through the tutorial while I work on collecting enough blacksmithing material to make training worth it."

"Cool," Robin replied as he sat down on the chair.

"Do we have an actual plan beyond initial testing and writing notes for which potion ingredients combine to form which potion?" Kara asked.

"Not really." Myst walked over and closed the bathroom door, closing the portal. He took a drink then focused and summoned his Elder Scrolls system. "It shouldn't take that long to sell some junk to the shopkeeper so I can reset the blacksmith's inventory without losing a bunch of gold."

"What do you think we can get out of the other game?" Diana asked.

"I wouldn't mind picking up some of the more interesting magical items but I'm mostly interested in picking up the Esuna spell so I can cure various status effects like poison, disease, and smoke inhalation."

"Smoke inhalation is a status effect?" Kara asked.

"Not in the game, but Esuna has fixed worse things," Myst replied as he loaded the last save.

"That would come in handy," Robin admitted, thinking about the number of times they'd rescued people from burning buildings or gotten caught in traps. "Would it work on the Joker's gas?"

"Probably," Myst replied as he ran his character back into his room to grab enough junk to collect all the gold in Lucan's inventory so he could afford to buy everything when he continually reset the blacksmith's inventory without losing all of the gold in his inventory.

"It's worth checking," Diana said as she opened a bag of chips.

"Having everyone able to heal injuries and poison would help save lives," Kara agreed as she grabbed the package of pens out of the bag and pulled the plastic apart enough that she could pull one of the pens out. She grabbed the notebook then walked over and sat down on the bed. "After you've finished buying enough ingots, I want to see the alchemy list so I can copy everything down."

"Good idea," Myst replied, figuring she'd be able to do it quickly without snapping the pen or ripping the paper which would give them a starting point for their own experiments when they started experimenting.