Mist in Empok Nor (Patreon)

Mist twitched as he went from sitting down at his computer to sitting on a command chair in a strangely familiar location that he couldn't place that looked like something straight out of a science fiction show or a horror movie since the only light was coming in through the windows near the ceiling and everything seemed to be made out metal or something that might be concrete, similar to what he imagined the command deck of a Soviet Oil Tanker probably looked like. "What the fuck?"

"Welcome contestant number sixty seven, you are the new owner of the Empok Nor, assuming you can disable the various traps and survive for a month. In order to make things a bit more interesting, certain parties have given you access to… The Chaos Gacha!"

"Chaos gacha, right…" Mist trailed off as he ran his fingers over the dusty console in front of him and realised that he could feel it and that everything was far too detailed to be a dream.

"You start with three gold tickets but I've taken the liberty of giving you five rolls on the curse wheel and union rules have forced me to give you an extra platinum ticket because of the dangerous starting zone. I can of course, remove the curse wheels but you'd lose access to the gacha. By accepting the chaos gacha tickets, you're waiving any right to sue myself or Fun Time Entertainment for kidnapping, any crimes related to relocating you or side effects of the gacha system itself. Of course, without the gacha, you'll be dead in a couple of hours because of the lack of air so we're covered either way."

"Lovely," Mist muttered, wondering why the name of the station was bothering him. 'Would one platinum and three gold save me in a death trap? Maybe if I was Domino, but if I was that lucky, I wouldn't be here.' He sighed as he realized he was going to have to take a chance if he wanted to survive. "Fine, I'll take the gacha."

"Excellent, love long and fuck!" the voice replied as a floating window appeared in front of Mist that looked like a game interface.

"Pretty sure that should be 'Live long and prosper," Mist muttered as five wooden red and black curse wheels appeared floating in the air in front of him and started spinning. He tapped the strange card in his interface with a platinum border, causing it to flip over revealing a collection of smiling demons. 'Summon Fiend? Summon fiends from the underworld to help, probably one of the better cards I could have drawn.'

He frowned as one of the curse wheels stopped. "Uh Oh: This is not good," he read aloud, wishing the curse wheel had given him a bit more of a description. 'Is that the one that hides another curse or was that the one that was some sort of joke?' Another gold card appeared in his list causing him to raise an eyebrow.

He sighed when the next wheel stopped and he realized that he was going to be in a lot of trouble if he was left alone. 'Sadism, hurting people makes you happy and the longer you go without hurting people, the more restless and uncomfortable I'll get. Great, and I can fucking summon demons, this isn't going to end well.' Another gold card appeared and he relaxed a little as apparently the curses came with a bonus so he might just survive after all.

He scowled when he saw the Gluttony curse that would force him to eat ten times as much food if he wanted to stay functional. 'At least it implies that I'll burn through everything I eat so I won't end up looking like Jabba.' Another gold card appeared, making him smile slightly.

He sighed when one of the curse wheels stopped on the Wraith of Flesh curse. 'So much for boosting my physical stats for the moment, they're locked at their current level and I'm going to need a bunch of powers I don't have to fix that.' A platinum card appeared, making his eyes light up. “Curse sucks ass, but a platinum card doesn't."

'Lost and Found?' Mist mused as he checked the description of the curse in his interface, glad that it had the full description. 'Okay, I'll get a compass and I have to track down any items I get from the gacha unless I get an inventory. At least the distance limits things to the station, unless the curse starts tossing things on the outside of the station and I have to do a space walk.' No card appeared so he guessed it was considered a minor curse more an annoyance than anything else.

'That would suck,' Mist thought as he tapped the other platinum card that had appeared when the curse wheels stopped spinning. 'Mirror, let's me temporarily copy someone's powers for an hour but it has a two hour cooldown, that should be useful for copying the demon's powers.'

Mist quickly tapped the rest of his starting cards and the cards he got from the curse wheels, wanting to figure out what his options were before he ran out of air. 'Tinker: Cloaking, Hera's Breast Milk, Training Booster, the ability to hand people my tickets, Greater Healing Light, Structural Analysis and Exchange. Exchange would let me swap powers if they're willing and Structural Analysis gives me a mental blueprint of objects or structures. Training Booster lets me use empty ability slots to quickly train, not sure if that works for physical abilities or skills but I can work with this.' 

He smiled when he noticed that his ability slots had doubled at some point, probably when he'd picked up five abilities. 'Should get a new one every five, if it's working like the stories.'

Mist glanced at the magic 'compass' that had appeared in his hand then focused on the two empty slots in his interface for powers. 'Demon summoning or tinkering?' He weighed his options for ten seconds then dragged the Tinker card from his ability section to the free slot and sighed when he realized that his ability didn't really cover the ability to understand alien tech, just building cloaking devices.

"Yeah, that tracks. Welcome to the dark side, we have cookies," Mist muttered as he dragged his Fiend Summoning ability to the second slot, figuring it was the only ability that might help. He focused on summoning a fiend that might have a clue how alien technology worked and activated his power, causing a busty purple skinned girl with two horns sticking out of her wild blue hair to appear out of thin air wearing a pair of overalls that reminded him a lot of Kaylee from Firefly.

Feat Achieved! Summon a demon

+1x Silver Familiar Ticket

"Hey boss," the demon offered as she glanced around the strange room. "Let me guess, you need something fixed?"

"Yeah, an entire station," Mist admitted as he glanced at the familiar card in his interface window then went back to looking at the cute girls, figuring none of the familiars would help.

"Nope," the demonic girl replied as she glanced around the strange room. "I'm good with technology and I've got a repair spell but fixing an entire station is going to take a couple of weeks and I doubt you have the mana to keep me active for that long."

"Do you think you can turn the life support back on?" Mist asked hopefully.

"Eventually," the girl offered as she walked over and examined the dead console. "I'd have to start poking things and wandering around until I find something I recognize. You should probably summon Sara, she's a friend of mine that specializes in enchanting jewelry, which includes spells to let you survive hostile environments like vacuum."

'I can summon random fiends, can I summon one with their name?' Mist focused on summoning the demon's friend and activated his power, causing another purple skinned demon girl to appear out of thin air that looked like Willow from Buffy, looking like she'd just stepped out of the shower since her red hair was wet and she wasn't wearing a stitch. He was guessing their appearance was shaped by his subconscious mind somehow.

"Hey boss, perfect timing, do you want to fuck on the table or the chair?" Sara asked with a grin then blinked when she noticed her friend standing there. "Xiana? What's going on?"

"We're in a time crunch, the boss needs something enchanted to generate a field of fresh air so he doesn't suffocate," Xiana explained.

"I’m normally summoned for more carnal matters. My hobby is not something I’ve been summoned for before, since if you can summon a demon you can probably handle minor trinkets. What are you offering for my non-sexual skills since they aren’t normally part of my summoning contract?" Sara teased Mist, knowing he could tell her to make it and she'd have to.

"I'm not selling my soul, what do you want?" Mist asked warily, not entirely sure that he actually had to pay the demons but figuring it wouldn't hurt.

Sara smiled when she glanced at Mist's hands and noticed the gold ring he was wearing on his right hand, figuring it was a wedding band which would make the entire thing a bit more naughty. "I want you to fuck me on the console while Xiana watches."

"Any issue with that?" Mist asked the other girl, not seeing a problem with her price.

"Nope," Xiana replied with a grin.

Mist pulled his ring off his finger and held it out to the demon. "Can I talk you into enchanting the ring first? I'm not into auto erotic asphyxiation."

"Sure," Sara replied as she pulled a pinch of crystal dust out of her inventory. "Do you want me to toss an always clean enchantment on it or maybe an eternal nourishment since it doesn't look like the station has any food."

"That would be fantastic," Mist replied, making a note to get her to teach him enchanting once he had time.

Sara burned through a fair bit of Mist's mana pool, enchanting the ring with a bubble of air and the nourishment enchantment that would keep him from starving to death. She double checked her work then handed him the ring and hopped up on the dead computer console. "A deal is a deal, strip and fuck me!"

"Sure," Mist replied as he put the ring back on and started stripping, hoping he wasn't making a mistake trusting his power to keep the girls from killing him since there wasn't a chance in hell of fixing the station without their help.

0o0o0

Feat Achieved! Survive having sex with a demon

+1x silver random ticket

Mist flopped down in the chair after dismissing the crazy sex demon to save mana, feeling like he'd been put through the ringer despite the fact that he was fairly sure she hadn't used any life or energy draining magic on him, just good old fashioned enthusiasm and puppy dog eyes.

"I'm surprised that you're still awake," Xiana teased.

"Barely," Mist admitted as he tapped the silver familiar card he'd picked up earlier. 'Toaster? This extremely high tech toaster was created by the genius minds in the Big MT. The toaster is capable of granting heating capabilities to technology and expertly disassembling technology into working parts... somehow. And its personality is coded to be a genocidal maniac who wants to burn the world down. I should probably wait to summon that until I've figured out a way to deal with the sadistic curse.'

He tapped the other silver card, causing it to flip and reveal a basket of fruit and berries. 'Bountiful Harvest: you're able to create ripe and tasty fruits and vegetables by expending your own energy. At least that means I'll have something to fall back on if we can't get the replicator to work.'

Mist sighed then swapped his tinker ability for his Structural Analysis ability and used it on the console, hoping that it would give him some information about the species that designed the console. "Fuck," he muttered as he realized why the name of the station was familiar.

"What?" Xiana asked, fairly sure he meant fuck in the annoyed way and not in the sexy way since he'd just spent the last twenty minutes fucking her friend.

"One of my abilities lets me use a touch of magic to create a mental blueprint of an object or construct. It's labeled as a Cardassian computer terminal which means I know where we are."

"And that's a bad thing?" Xiana asked.

"Just a bit," Mist replied as he tried to recall everything he could remember about the episode where the crew visited the abandoned station and Garak went insane. "If this is the station I'm thinking of, we're going to have to deal with traps and a group of insane soldiers trapped in stasis pods."

"What type of traps?" Xiana asked thoughtfully.

"I don't know," Mist admitted. "At least one of the air locks was rigged to explode if you weren't careful and I recall something about motion sensors and turrets but the details are a bit fuzzy, I haven't seen the show in years. I think most of the traps activated when the emergency power came back online."

Xiana shrugged. "Okay, that just means we need a trap breaking demon and someone that can sense souls and teleport."

"Do you have any suggestions?" Mist asked, not sure where to start.

"Lisa for dealing with the soldiers, she can teleport and sense souls and she's not above killing people while they're sleeping," Xiana suggested. "Maggie for dealing with the traps, especially if they're technological."

"Would it help if you had a homicidal toaster that can disable technology for spare parts?" Mist asked, thinking about his new familiar. 

"Probably," Xiana agreed, figuring that would help with the turrets.

Mist glanced at his mana bar on his interface, noticing that it was already below half thanks to Sara enchanting the ring and summoning the girls. "I'm running a bit low on mana, so try not to do too much teleporting around."

"I'll try," Xiana promised.

Mist focused on summoning Xiana's friend Lisa and activated his Summon Fiend ability, causing a busty yellow skinned demon with spiky yellow hair to appear out of thin air wearing a pair of shorts and a t-shirt. The fact that she looked like a late teens early twenties of Lisa Simpson cemented the fact that their appearance was shaped by his subconscious mind.

"Is this Deep Space Nine?" Lisa asked as she glanced around the command center.

"Right design, wrong station," Mist replied. "This is the abandoned and trapped station Empok Nor. I need a couple of insane soldiers taken care of and a bottle of milk located, Xiana said that you were the right girl for the job."

"A bottle of milk? I'm not a bloodhound or a detective, I can just sense people's souls," Lisa warned him.

Mist grabbed the magical 'compass' that would point toward Hera's breastmilk off the console and handed it to Lisa. "This should let you find it."

"Okay." Lisa reached out with her soul sense, easily finding the aliens on the station. "The aliens are in the same room, do you want me to kill them or drag them back here so you can sacrifice them so we can stick around?"

"I wouldn't mind staying longer," Xiana told Mist. “The repairs this place needs are going to take forever as is.”

"Does sacrificing people like that damn their souls?" Mist asked, wanting to double check.

"No, it just consumes their lifeforce. It's not any worse than just killing them," Lisa assured him.

"In that case, bring them back," Mist told her, not seeing a point in trying to heal the soldiers since they'd started off crazy.

"We'll be right back," she told him as she pulled a sword out of thin air and grabbed Xiana's arm. "Ready?"

"One second," Xiana replied as she looked at Mist. "You should try mediating to recover some mana, it helps. Let's go."

Mist winced slightly as the girl's vanished and his mana pool dropped by a fifth. 'I'm going to have to find a way to boost my mana,' he mused as he closed his eyes and tried to meditate or at least drift in an attempt to help his mana regeneration.

0o0o0

Feat Achieved! Practice Meditating

+1x Bronze Random Ticket

Mist opened his eyes with a smile, rather happy that his summons counted as him for the purpose of achievements. He tapped the card, causing it to flip and reveal a picture of a brown slime with googly eyes. 'Digestive Expulsion Independence? You never piss or shit. Don't ask where all the waste in your body goes.'

"That's probably for the best considering none of the restrooms work and they probably have something like three seashells with my luck," Mist muttered as he closed his eyes and tried to ignore the shadows in the room and the fact that his mana pool was slowly draining because of the girls.

Feat Achieved! Disable a Deadly Trap

+1x Gold Skill ticket

"Huh," Mist muttered as he tapped the card, figuring the girls had disabled a trap on the stasis chambers or something. 'Adept Chemistry? Your experience and knowledge in the field of Chemistry is on par with a Senior Scientist. You are very knowledgeable in the study of matter, such as what most substances are formed of, how most substances interact with each other, how to form chemical compounds and how to influence matter in the ways you choose.'

Mist frowned slightly when he realized that his knowledge of Chemistry didn't include most of the bullshit substances from Star Trek which meant he was going to have to do a bit of research once he got the computer up and running. 'At least it gives me a decent starting point.'

Feat Achieved! Kidnapping for profit!

+1x Silver Random Ticket

'It's nice to have minions,' Mist decided as he tapped the card, causing it to flip over and reveal a card with a picture of someone wearing a robe of shadows. 'Shadow Armor: allows you to create an armour of shadows around themselves that you can freely alter the shape of, the shadows are very durable and lightweight, while the armour is active your physical abilities are boosted and darkness abilities are more potent.'

Mist jumped slightly as his mana pool took another large hit as Xiana and Lisa reappeared with a pair of snarling Cardassians that had been gagged and hogtied with what looked like cut up pieces of a uniform. "Any trouble?" he asked, a bit surprised that Xiana was holding a glass bottle filled with milk.

"Nope, the milk was hidden in the room with the stasis chambers and the idiots weren't expecting to be grabbed the second they came out of the pods," Xiana replied as she handed Milk the bottle of milk. "You know that stuff has magic in it, right?"

"Yep," Mist replied as he twisted the cap off. "It's supposed to basically let me train my strength and durability into the supernatural range."

"Nice, maybe you'll last longer with Sara," Xiana teased.

"Can't hurt," Mist replied and drank the milk, finding it strangely sweet but otherwise not much different than drinking whole milk. 'It's not going to help because of my curse but it should help if I can break the curse.' He turned his attention to the aliens that were glaring at him, not sure if he was supposed to feel bad that they'd been experimented on or not since they were probably already decently suspect to start with. "Do you think one of them is enough?"

"To keep me here permanently?" Xiana shook her head. "Not a chance, they might be elite soldiers but they don't have any special abilities or anything, you're going to need to kill both of them."

"Can I borrow your sword?" Mist asked Lisa.

"Absolutely," Lisa replied as she handed Mist her sword, happy that her friend would get a chance to have some fun in a Star Trek world.

Mist focused on permanently summoning Xiana and cut off the first soldier's head.

Feat Achieved! Honorary Canadian: Commit a War Crime.

+1x Gold Random Ticket

Mist killed the second Cardassian the same way. He felt his mana drop to almost nothing as his power activated and bound Xiana to the mortal realm, stopping the drain of maintaining her from his mana pool. 

Feat Achieved! Apprentice Demon Binder: Permanently summon a demon to the mortal realm.

+1x Silver Familiar Ticket

"I'm almost out of mana, I'll summon you in a bit," Mist told Lisa as he handed her sword back.

"Sounds good," Lisa agreed, looking forward to working for him on a more permanent basis as he looked to be a major step up from the usual summoner she had to deal with who were either the ‘Slaughter My Enemies’ type or ‘Nerd who lived in their mother’s basement and didn’t realize it would work and has now soiled themselves’ sort.

Mist let Lisa vanish then turned to look at the dead aliens, slightly bothered about the fact that he wasn't really bothered by their deaths. 'Is it just shock or because they're homicidal lunatics or because they're Cardassians? Garak was decent enough, at least for a character and Dukat's daughter was nice, then again she was only half Cardassian so that doesn't really count.' 

"If it makes you feel better, they're probably in a worse place," Xiana offered. “They deserved a lot worse fate from what I could sense of them.”

"Sort of," Mist replied as he tapped the familiar card, fairly sure the soldiers hadn't been decent people even before the experiments that had twisted their minds. 'Tentacle Cleaner? A large ball of tentacles covered in a slimy substance, which is actually an incredible cleaning agent that has no smell or leaves any residue. The tentacle creature is very dexterous and skilled, being able to clean even the most complex of machinery without disturbing its mechanisms due to its morphing tentacles. No combat ability but they are very dedicated to their job.'

"Do you have any issues with helping and sticking around the station?" Mist asked. “I probably should have asked that before I off'ed the idiots.”

"You're still the boss and running a station for a bit sounds fun," Xiana replied as she walked over to the doors that probably led to the commander's room. "This would be a lot easier if there was power or if I had the right tools."

"We'll figure it out," Mist assured her as he tapped the gold card. 'Empathy, you can sense people's emotions and with training, you might even be able to point out why they feel the emotions and get more detailed sensations. The training booster should double the effect of training and that should jump a lot once I have extra ability slots I can leave empty to enhance the effect.'

Mist dragged his Empathy ability to the new empty slot then swapped his Structural Analysis power for his Training Booster ability, figuring it would help him figure out his new ability a bit faster. 'Happy and amused? That's better than being angry or spiteful,' he mused as he summoned his tentacle monster, causing a soccer sized ball of slime covered tentacles to appear in front of him.

Xiana turned when she felt another presence in the room. "What the hell is that? I'm not Sara, I'm not fucking a tentacle demon." Her emotions shifted to wary and suspicious.

"Wrong type of monster," Mist assured her.

"We clean," the tentacle monster offered, sounding like a small child.

"The slime is basically a magical cleaner, no residue or acid and it can clean delicate machines without causing damage," Mist explained.

"Huh, okay," Xiana replied and went back to trying to get the door open, emoting relief and contentment as she worked.

"Feel free to clean the room," Mist told his familiar as he closed his eyes and tried to mediate or at least drift while he waited for his mana to regenerate enough that he could summon Xiana's trap breaking friend.