Mist of Shadows
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Taylor and the Twisted Game Part 21
🕑 Added 2021-12-04 10:10:54 +0000 UTCAmy jumped and nearly screwed up the symbiote gloves she was working on when Skitter started laughing. "What's up?"
"I just found a really nice staff," Skitter replied as she opened a void portal to her puppet and handed herself the staff.
Amy studied the metal staff that was crackling with pink energy. "Define really nice."
Taylor let the portal close. "1955 spell power, 341 magic, 512 stamina and 228 critical strike and haste, not to mention 1047 to 1571 damage per strike if you hit someone with it."
Amy stared at the staff. "Where the hell did you find that?"
"Scattered around the dwarven lands in pieces," Taylor replied smugly. "It's Sorcerer-Thane Thaurissan's staff, supposedly the same staff he used to summon Ragnaros or at least a decent computer generated knockoff."
Amy shook her head. "Archeology is bullshit."
"It wouldn't be nearly as useful if I had to fly between the dig sites, it takes a lot of fragments and some of the dig sites are hundreds or thousands of miles apart," Taylor complained, fairly sure the company had intentionally set people up for failure or at least aggravation with the occasional reward so people would keep trying.
"I'd agree if you couldn't loot books and relics from dungeons. Have you finished decursing the book yet?" Amy asked as she finished adjusting the gloves, rather amused that she'd figured out how to tweak the gloves to give her a fantastic boost to her mining skill by comparing the two mining enchants with the fishing enchants and the pole to get the value of the higher skill boost.
Taylor briefly considered lying, mostly because telling the truth would mean admitting that she'd messed around with her minions enough to count. 'Screw it, she's fucking her demon that looks like her sister, playing with my puppets isn't even in the same ballpark. I'm not going to let Emma ruin my life.' She gestured and summoned her grimoire. "It gave me a spell to conjure a perverted grimoire."
Amy studied the black leatherbound book the size of a dictionary that was floating in front of Skitter. "Perverted Grimoire?"
"It contains all of my spells and it can copy books but the background or borders of the pages are filled with naked or naughty pictures or drawings of the last three people to touch the book with their bare skin," Taylor explained as she reached out a gloved hand and opened the book, revealing an exceptionally well done drawing of one of her puppets in void elf form sprawled on her bed sans clothes, holding a scroll that read, "Skitter's Grimoire, read with care."
Amy smiled as she studied the drawing. "In other words, it's a perverted personal library?"
"Basically," Taylor admitted. "It also came with a spell for summoning a magical girl escort for fun or pranking people."
"Have you tested it?" Amy asked with a grin.
Taylor shook her head. "The description implies that she's a spirit of mischief, I'd rather not unleash something we can't stick back in the bottle, at least until we're ready to leave."
Amy glanced at the staff in Skitter's lap. "We're going to need to grab Lisa," she paused when Lisa walked into the room. "Perfect timing."
"Not really, I was already on my way," Lisa admitted. "Skitter wanted me to move a damage rating from a decent weapon to her fishing pole, did you find a decent staff or is that the weapon I'm sacrificing?"
"More than decent and no," Taylor replied with a grin as she let her grimoire vanish. "It's a casting staff which should make it a lot easier to deal with the higher level dungeons and the other version of Karazhan."
Lisa sighed as she realized she was going to have to help upgrade everything. "I don't suppose you'd trade the teaching skill I know you can teach for my ability to move properties around?"
"Sure," Taylor agreed as she used her teaching spell and taught Tats the teaching skill and the teaching spell. "Your turn."
Lisa opened her character sheet and looked at her new spell then cast it and taught Skitter her unique skill. "That should do it, do you want the painting skill Alec stuck me with when he screwed up my character?"
"Sure," Taylor replied, not seeing a reason to turn down free skills.
"Where did you get the vanishing book?" Lisa asked as she taught Skitter her painting skill.
Taylor checked her skill page. "Archeology."
"Do you want any of my spellbreaker or shaman talents? I'm willing to trade for your talents and the spells you grabbed from the trainers," Lisa offered, figuring it was a decent deal.
"That would be fantastic," Taylor replied as she dropped the staff into her transmogrification window and turned it into a symbiote. "Do you want me to open a portal to the draenei city so we can talk to the shaman trainer and swap your talents around?" she asked as she handed Amy the wiggling staff.
Lisa shook her head. "Ironforge would be better, all of the trainers we're going to need are in the same general area."
"Point," Taylor replied as she cast her portal spell and opened a portal to Ironforge. "I'll be back in a bit with spells and talents to share."
Amy turned and watched as one of Skitter's minions stopped reading and walked over to stand in front of Taylor. "Have fun, once we get everything upgraded we should look at going to Mount Hyjal to see if we can charge the cores."
Lisa glanced between Amy and Skitter. "Charge the cores?"
"We figured out how to make knock off cores for use with my puppets but they have to be charged or they're basically useless," Taylor explained, glad that the 'system' wouldn't let her waste the uncharged cores.
Lisa glanced at the wiggling symbiote staff. "And you can't charge them yourself?"
"Technically, but it would be like using a measuring cup on a bathtub for each core and I need a bunch of cores," Taylor explained as she used her teaching skill to teach her minion the transmogrification ability so she could help Amy.
"Makes sense," Lisa agreed as she walked over to the portal. "Any idea how the portals will work if we get to keep our powers when we leave?"
Amy shrugged. "They'll either be completely useless because we don't have the beacons the guild set up in the cities or they'll shift to something more useful because we don't have a mage's guild that doesn't want people poking holes in reality."
"I'll worry about it when I get home," Taylor said, then stepped through the portal to Ironforge, looking forward to grabbing a bunch of talents and spells.
"No point in worrying about it," Lisa agreed then followed Skitter through the portal.
"Should I track down Noelle?" Taylor asked through her puppet.
Amy shook her head. "Give me a few minutes, I can probably compare the genetic codes on the staff and upgrade everything without having to use Tats' power unless we find something new, I managed to tweak the gloves so the mining enchant is giving me an extra one hundred points."
"That should increase the amount we can grab from each node," Taylor mused as she had her minion sit next to Amy on the couch.
"It's certainly more useful than the five points the enchant used to give," Amy replied as she pulled a fish out of her inventory and got to work making a symbiote dagger so she could test her tweaks without screwing up the staff. "We're going to need to find something with a better base damage and we're going to have to find some clothes with sockets since they depend on the physical appearance of the items."
Taylor's minion frowned as she considered the situation with the sockets. "Do you think it's a glitch or an intentional change from Warcraft?"
"It's probably intentional," Amy said thoughtfully, "the designers spent an insane amount of time on the clothing and weapon designs compared to Warcraft."
Taylor's minion nodded. "I'll talk to Vicky when she gets back, I'm trying to chain together the socketed belt buckles blacksmiths can make into a belt with a bunch of sockets, we can probably do the same thing with a bracelet if it works."
"You're trying to break the world aren't you?" Amy asked with amusement.
"If they didn't want me to break things, they shouldn't have trapped me in a game," Taylor replied through her minion as she threaded her way through the groups of players clogging the forge area.
0o0o0
"You are not prepared!" Illidan shouted as Noelle walked out of the hallway.
"We'll see," Noelle whispered as she scanned the courtyard for other threats, not trusting to half remembered runs on Warcraft to match the perverted simulation. She sprinted across the mostly empty courtyard, her power letting her close the distance with the giant sized demon almost before he could react.
She ducked his first swing of his double bladed weapon, jumped up and slammed her fist into his crotch with all of her considerable strength before he could use one of his more destructive abilities, causing him to shriek and start to fall to the ground. She kicked off his thigh and jumped away from him as he crashed to the ground, rapidly shrinking from his massive twenty foot tall demonic form into something approaching her own height. She grabbed one of his wings and swung him into one of the stone pillars then slammed him into the ground a couple of times to make sure he wasn't going to stab her.
"So much for game mechanics trumping nut shots," she mused as she kicked his fallen blades behind her. She walked over and grabbed one of his horns and punched him in the face, dropping his life down to a sliver and shattering his nose. 'At least Klause isn't here to complain,' she mused as she used her sex change power and changed the demon into a female demon then used her race changing ability to change Illidan into a void elf, leaving 'her' a naked void elf covered in glowing green runes.
Noelle grabbed Illidan's shoulder and activated her cloning ability, creating a copy of the demon hunter that promptly unleashed a torrent of shadows from her hands and finished Illidan off as she started to change back into a demonic form. She grinned when Illidan changed back to his normal appearance, shrunk down to match her own size and 'dropped' several pieces of loot, relieved that the boss hadn't glitched despite the fact that she'd skipped some of the quests and bosses with a portal. "That was easier than I was expecting."
"That's because he wasn't prepared," the clone offered with amusement as she walked over and picked up Illidan's oversized glowing green blades. "We're going to have to get the blades reforged."
"And cleansed," Noelle mused as she picked up the bow and strange skull that dropped, unwilling to have her clone running around with fel infused weapons that might cause her to go completely nuts.
The clone glanced between the giant glowing blades, fairly sure they hadn't helped Illidan's mental health. "You're probably right about cleansing the blades, some of his plans were insane towards the end."
Noelle turned to look at the clone she'd created, not surprised that her eyes were Amber rather than the demonic creations Sargas had replaced Illidan's natural eyes with. 'Purple runes, I don't think my power can copy the magic or at least not the fel energy, probably for the best,' she mused as she stuck the skull and her new bow in her inventory. "Just the end?"
"There's nothing wrong with enjoying using magic, wanting to kick Malfurian in the nuts for being an insufferable ass or wanting to fuck Tyrande silly but yeah, consuming the essence and power of a demon wasn't his best idea," the clone admitted as she glanced over her shoulder and checked her ass out, glad that she wasn't stuck as a demon.
'So much for being female fixing his obsession with Tyrande,' she thought as she studied her clone's runes, wondering if they were useful for something. "Speaking of forbidden rituals and paths to power, are there any treasures hidden away for a rainy day that we should loot?"
The clone considered the question for a couple of seconds then shrugged. "That depends, do you know any goblin engineers?"
"I know a bunch of engineers, why?" Noelle asked warily.
"The Blood Furnace in Hellfire Citadel has equipment that the orcs use to infuse uncorrupted orcs with Magtheridon's blood and turn them into fel orcs, you might be able to infuse people with a less horrifying substance with enough research."
"I'll run it by the engineers," Noelle replied as she opened a portal to the library in Dire Maul, fairly sure directly infusing magic into people would end in tears but figuring they might get something out of it with enough research. "Let's copy some researchers then we can head back to the mansion and have our healer give you a once over to make sure you're healthy."
"If I'm healthy are you going to bend me over a desk and have your wicked way with me?" the clone asked hopefully.
"I'm sure I can find some volunteers," Noelle assured her.
"Excellent," the clone replied cheerfully then walked through the portal.
Noelle reached down and broke Illidan's horns off then stuck them in her bag of holding, figuring she'd be able to use them for something. She pulled her sword out and hacked his arm off then stuck it in her inventory and then walked through the portal, figuring Amy might be able to learn something from comparing the fel tainted arm with his clone's genetics before it finished dying.
0o0o0
Admin wasn't a fan of the undead city, mostly because of the stench of rotting death and the foul odor of unidentifiable chemicals but also because the players seemed particularly unhinged or at least that was her assumption based on the fact that several of them had attacked her despite their inability to see her name or level thanks to her mask. 'Just a little bit more and I'll be done with this nightmare,' she told herself as she watched the target of her current mind vision spell walk towards the throne room.
'Don't go that way,' she complained when the NPC turned and started walking down a different hallway. She quickly recast the mind vision spell on one of the stitched together abominations that guarded the door to the throne room then twisted the point of view of her spell until she could see into the throne room, giving her a clear view of Sylvanas Windrunner and her throne.
She recast her mind vision spell on the demon standing next to the banshee queen then spun the viewpoint around so that she could see Sylvanas' bow and quiver on her back. She opened a void portal behind the banshee queen then reached through, grabbed the queen's bow and yanked it off her back. She'd barely gotten the bow clear of the portal and into her inventory when a dark mass of shadows erupted from the portal.
"Thief!" Sylvanas shouted as she reformed, holding an elven blade and looking like she'd just lost a family member to an assassin.
Admin closed the portal to cut off the queen's reinforcements then cast her shield spell and started tossing curses on the faction leader, less than amused when half her spells bounced and the other half barely scratched the boss. She grabbed a small bag of vanish dust off her belt and tossed it at the ground then shrieked when the boss stabbed her and it did a significant amount of her health in one shot, completely ignoring her attempt to escape combat and breaking her shield. 'Shit!' she complained as she opened a portal to Northrend and jumped through, going with her fallback plan.
Admin blinked ahead thirty yards then opened a portal to the Silvermoon and dashed through. She closed all of her portals then spun around to make sure the banshee hadn't followed her. 'That could have gone worse,' she mused as she cast her renew spell then a greater heal to deal with the damage the banshee's strike had caused her.
She opened her inventory and looked at her new bow. 'Rae'shalare, Death's Whisper, legendary bow of the banshee queen, requires the user to be a banshee and a hunter, that's hardly fair. At least it deals a lot of damage even if it has the worst rate of fire I've seen on a bow and no stats.'
Admin glanced at the skills that the bow granted, 'Black Arrow and Wailing Arrow, that almost makes up for the lack of stats and the horrible rate of fire.' She closed her inventory then headed down the street towards the trade section of the city, figuring she'd check in with the construction trainer before heading back and giving the bow to Taylor.
[Information!] Zion demanded on the communication channel he could sense.
'Shit, that complicates things,' Admin complained to herself, being careful not to send her thoughts along the network.
[Please stop spamming the GM channel, it's annoying], Harry replied, rather annoyed at the idiot that was causing his headache to get worse.
[I want information about this world!] Zion demanded, angry that he'd gotten trapped by the device the girl in the tree had used on him, especially since his precog should have warned him about anything dangerous.
[How did you get access to this channel?] Harry replied as he opened his GM panel, figuring he'd mute the idiot.
[Give me information or die!] Zion screamed over the channel, causing everyone that could hear it to wince.
[Fuck you.] Harry selected the user then hit the delete button and banned the account for good measure. "One less asshole," he muttered as he pulled up his virtual keyboard and typed up an announcement.
[User: Zion deleted, account banned for threatening a GM] was announced to everyone in the game, causing a number of people to twitch and make a mental note to avoid annoying the GMs.
Admin glanced around at the nervous looking people then continued walking down the street, making a mental note not to broadcast to the simulation's network or annoy the GMs.
[What was that?] Shaper asked in a whisper.
[That was Zion not paying attention to which channel he used and screaming at people he shouldn't], Admin replied.
[Do you think he's dead?] Shaper asked.
[I'll check when I get out, he'll probably have calmed down by then], Admin replied, hoping he was dead or at least brain dead because it would make things a lot easier to fix if he wasn't around to screw things up.
[I'm sure he'll send a message if he needs something], Shaper replied, figuring she'd let one of the less important and intelligent shards poke him to see if he was still alive.
Faerie sent a group message to Shaper and Admin, [Can someone tell me why I can't influence my host anymore or why she's hearing voices that aren't me, it's a bit concerning.]
[The simulation doesn't allow us to influence our hosts], Shaper explained.
[What type of voices?] Admin asked.
[It's like pieces and fragments of deranged conversation], Faerie explained, hoping they could help.
[Did she grab the basic void elf race?] Shaper asked.
[Yes, is that a problem?] Faerie asked.
[The basic package is faulty, it doesn't include the ability to mute the communication channel it's connected to which is problematic as the void creatures can't be trusted], Shaper explained, fairly sure someone had screwed up or introduced the problem intentionally because it didn't seem natural.
[Do you have a patch for the communication issues or the fact that we can't influence our hosts?] Faerie asked, hoping they could fix it because she didn't like seeing her host unhappy.
[I have a patch for dealing with the communication channel but I'll have to travel to your host's location to apply it], Shaper said.
[Data], Admin sent Faerie the updated conflict package and the permission keys to fix the power she provided her host so that her host didn't have to kill people to copy their powers. [That should let you scrap the conflict drive, fix some issues with your host's powers and communicate with your host provided you use a puppet.]
Faerie scanned over the codes and information for bugs or malicious code. [Thank you, I'm not a fan of the conflict drive. Try not to startle my host, she's a bit jumpy.]
[I'll keep that in mind], Shaper replied, glad that her puppet was expendable.
[She's currently in Darnassus near the mount vendors playing with the cats], Faerie offered.
[I'll head over there as soon as I can get my host to open a portal], Shaper assured Faerie.
[That would be appreciated, the void creatures are trying to drive my host insane], Faerie complained, wishing she knew how to reach them so she could express her displeasure with them.
[Can you get a Frostweave puppet ready for Shaper?] Admin asked Taylor then smiled and continued walking towards the construction trainer when Taylor used her buttplug and she got a second head. She glanced around the lounge then focused on Amy who was modifying a bunch of wiggling symbiotes on the table. [We found a cape that needs some help.]
"Do you need one with magic?" Taylor asked, figuring she could always use one of the cores she'd grabbed from the less impressive golems in Karazhan.
[No, it's probably better that she doesn't have magic, at least to start with], Admin replied, fairly sure that Faerie didn't need the extra power or distractions. She pulled Sylvanas bow out of her inventory then opened a portal and tossed it onto the couch. "I got you a present, I'm not a hunter."
"Thanks, do you need anything else?" Taylor asked as she walked over to look at the new bow.
"No," Amy replied, then looked at Taylor and realized she wasn't talking to her. "Oh, right."
Admin let the portal close. [You should look into some of the bosses in AQ40, the website mentioned some interesting powers and loot.]
"I'll talk to Noelle when I get a chance. Did you hear the system message?" Taylor asked as she looked at the stats for the bow, not sure why the idiot had been shouting at the GM.
[Yes, I'm avoiding using their channel], Admin replied.
"Good, I'd rather not get in trouble." Taylor glanced at the bow's less than impressive speed then looked at the bow's rather impressive damage and the skills that it could grant. "Are banshees even player characters?"
Amy glanced at the bow then looked up at Taylor. "No, why?"
"Because the bow requires the user to be a banshee hunter," Taylor replied as she opened her bag of holding's menu and started looking for the bow one of her minions had acquired that had a much quicker rate of fire.
Amy looked at Admin's head. "Where did you get that?"
[I stole it from Sylvanas], Admin admitted.
"She stole it from Sylvanas. That's someone important, right?" Taylor asked after noticing the look on Amy's face.
"That's..." Amy trailed off when she realized there were several issues with Admin's stealing the bow. "Wait a minute, you're not supposed to be able to pickpocket gear, how did you get it?"
"She has a unique pickpocketing skill," Taylor offered, having seen the skill when she inspected her companion's sheet.
Amy stared at Taylor and Admin. "It's like you won the powers lottery."
Taylor laughed. "Says the girl with biokinesis and a bunch of magical skills to go with it."
"That doesn't mean it's not bullshit," Amy argued, ignoring the fact that Skitter had a point about her power.
"Joking aside, banshees aren't on my list of things I can turn people but I've got a work around," Taylor said as she transmogrified the bow into a symbiote bow and handed it to Amy. "See if you can copy it a couple of times, I need to move the skills, damage and durability to something we can actually use."
"Should we be doing this now that we know there's a GM running around?" Amy asked warily.
"The idiot threatened to kill the GM, I think we're fine," Taylor replied, fairly sure the GM had more important things to work on than harassing people because they used the skills the game gave them.
"Yeah, I didn't hear that part, just the announcement," Amy replied as Shaper walked into the room.
Shaper glanced at Taylor then focused on Amy. "I need a lift to Darnassus to fix a void elf that's hearing voices from the void."
Taylor pulled a frostweave puppet out of her inventory and handed it to Shaper then opened a mage portal to Darnassus. "Have fun."
Shaper smiled at Taylor. "Thank you."
"Stay safe," Amy ordered Shaper.
"That's the plan," Shaper replied cheerfully then walked through the portal and vanished, wanting to keep her host away from the Faerie Queen until she had a chance to relax and decompress.
Amy pulled a fish out of her inventory and started making a copy of the bow. "What were you saying about Noelle?"
"Admin suggested checking out AQ40, some of the bosses are supposed to have interesting abilities and loot," Taylor replied as she pulled her cell out of her inventory, pulled up the dungeon website and started reading the information on the bosses.
"Which ability?" Amy asked as she added the damage ranting to the symbiote bow, slightly annoyed that the genetic code wouldn't work if she didn't tweak both parts of it or just copy the values from the various items because she'd really like to just be able to hack the numbers directly.
Admin nodded. [The first boss has a charm spell that boosts the damage and spellcasting of anyone that gets charmed by 300% and gives them instant casting and a couple of other benefits that would be nice to acquire and one of the other bosses has a spell that boosts the damage of his bug minions by 1800% or at least the Warcraft version does.]
Taylor grinned as she thought about adapting the spells for her minions. "Mostly the charm spell from the first boss that gives the person charmed enough of a boost to worry a raid group and the spell that turns a bug into a combat monster, I can probably pull a knockoff Rachel with that."
"Just imagine if you could use it on dogs," Amy replied, then frowned as she considered the trouble they'd get into if anyone found out they'd handed a villain that type of firepower. "On second thought, we should probably avoid that."
"Probably, she can't actually control the dogs," Taylor said, knowing she'd feel bad if something went wrong and the dogs misjudged their strength.
Amy finished making a copy of the bow then handed it to Taylor. "See if you can grab the skills."
Taylor moved the Wailing Arrow skill to her other bow then grabbed it and looked at her new if temporary skill. "Wailing Arrow, fires an enchanted arrow that deals 277.5% of attack power as shadow damage to your target and an additional 112.5% of Attack power as shadow damage to all enemies within 8 yds of your target, all targets damaged by the arrow are silenced for 5 seconds."
Amy snorted as she grabbed another half live fish out of her inventory and started making another copy of the bow. "That sounds like something that comes from a boss rather than something a player should have."
Taylor used her teaching spell and taught Amy the new skill then did the same for Admin, mostly so she'd have the spell if they ever figured out how to modify spells. "Check your skills, did it work?"
[It worked], Admin replied.
Amy quickly checked her skills and laughed when she saw the new skill on her list. "Yeah, I'm going to need a bow."
Taylor laughed as she stuck the bow in her inventory. "That's the plan. Admin, can you teach me the skill?"
[Of course], Admin replied and taught Taylor the skill, happy to help and looking forward to testing her new skill when her main head learned it.
Amy grabbed her partially finished bow with the Black Arrow skill on it and taught Skitter the new skill. "Black Arrow, range, line of sight, fires a black arrow into the target which slows the target's movement speed by 70% and causes 50% of spell damage as shadow damage every three seconds for 30 seconds, damage taken also drains mana and restores your mana, yeah, because that's remotely fair."
"Seems fair to me," Taylor lied cheerfully, happy to have something that would stop the monsters from running or at least slow them down. "Now we just need to put everything together and we'll have an awesome bow."
Amy grinned. "We should pick up some ice cream to celebrate the upgrades."
Taylor pulled her phone out and ran a search for ice cream and warcraft then grinned when she found a mage with a spell to conjure ice cream. "I'll send a puppet to pick some up."
"Thanks," Amy replied with a grin as she grabbed another fish out of her inventory and got to work making another bow, figuring she'd finish the bow before she got back to work upgrading the rest of her gear.
