Mist of Shadows
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Taylor Hebert Dungeon Girl Part 12
🕑 Added 2018-06-19 04:42:25 +0000 UTCTaylor watched the lightning wielding Diablo demon boss as the group reduced it to pixels with an overwhelming rain of fire from their various elemental pistols. “It’s sad but I almost feel sorry for it.”
Kevin snorted. “None of that, it wasn’t a fluffy puppy, it was a demon or at least a projection of a demon and it was trying to kill us.”
“I have agree with Kevin on this one,” Danny agreed as they carefully made their way over to the small pile of loot that the boss had dropped being careful to avoid the edges of the ‘lava’ pools. “At least he dropped a book.”
Randal stared at the orange potion the boss had also dropped. “Screw the book, I’m more curious about the orange potion it dropped.”
“Really?” Taylor asked in surprise.
“Orange elixirs in Diablo permanently boosted your character’s magic.”
“Okay, I can see why that would be nice,” Taylor admitted as she walked over and lifted the book off the robe it was resting on. She almost dropped the book in shock as she read the tooltip and realized what she had in her hands. “Holy shit.”
“Language,” Danny muttered.
“Sorry.”
“What is it?” Randal asked warily, it had to be something game changing with the way Lootz was freaking out.
“It’s a healing spell,” Taylor muttered as she thought about how many groups would demand books if they ever learned she could create healers.
Kevin laughed. “Sweet!”
Randal winced as he realized what certain groups would do if they learned Lootz could create healers. “Fuck!”
“What do you mean, that’s awesome, now we have two healers in the group…” Kevin trailed off as he realized what the problem was. “Shit, people would kill for that book.”
“And yet, it’s way too useful not to farm,” Danny said what everyone in the group was thinking.
“Who wants it?” Taylor asked as she glanced around the group.
“Can you use the spell on yourself?” Randal asked curious how useful the spell was.
“Any single target so I’d assume so.”
“You’re more likely to need it than I am,” Danny pointed out.
“Go for it, you have more mana.” Randal would love to be able to heal himself but they weren’t exactly short on potions. Besides, the demons were rather easy to shoot from range and the dungeon dropped decent magical items so they’d likely be farming it a fair amount over the next couple of weeks.
“Go for it, we’ll get more of them.” Kevin had a feeling they’d only hit the tip of the iceberg on what they could discover.
Taylor opened the book and smiled as knowledge flowed into her mind. She studied the mostly empty ‘spell’ list window that popped up. “Looks like the healing spell falls under white magic, it has an experience bar right under the title.”
Randal grinned. “Hopefully that means you’ll only need a couple skills to cover all of your spells.”
“Way better than having to train every skill individually,” Kevin agreed happily.
“I’m just happy I have a healing spell, I’m not going to be greedy,” Taylor replied as she picked up the golden potion and looked at the tooltip. “On second thought, I might have to be.”
“What does it do?” Kevin asked with amusement.
Randal chuckled. “I’m guessing something to do with mana.”
Taylor turned to look at Randal. “Good guess, it says it permanently boosts my magic stat and my mana pool by a small amount.”
“Which means you’ll have more to work with for spells and enchanting, right?” Danny asked curious just how useful the increase was going to be.
“That’s the theory,” Taylor admitted.
“Might as well test it, you’re the one with the spells.”
“Or I could try to learn the recipe.”
Randal shook his head. “I doubt your alchemy skill is high enough to reverse engineer a permanent magic boosting elixir.”
“I’ve been working on my alchemy, making cure disease potions with bits of the fire rat hide. Worst case, I get nothing and we try again later.”
“It’s probably a rare drop,” Kevin pointed out.
Taylor opened her alchemy menu. “All the more reason to figure out how to make it.”
“How useful was it in the game?” Danny asked.
Kevin turned to look at Danny. “You only got so many points per level so you needed elixirs to max your stats out. The maximum stat for each class was different, warriors had a high max strength and vitality, Rogues had a high max dexterity and sorcerers a high max magic, roughly 250, I’m not sure how much magic we have but I doubt it’s that high.”
“In other words, we might need a lot of potions?”
“Pretty much, yeah.”
Danny said, “In that case, you might as well try.”
Taylor put the elixir into her salvage box and hit salvage. She looked at the recipe that appeared in her recipe list. “Full magic potion, elixir of magic primer, sprig of mistletoe, four leaf clover, cup of apple cider... essence of pumpkin?”
Kevin frowned. “I can understand the full mana potion and maybe the elixir of magic primer, not that I know how to make it but mistletoe, apple cider and pumpkin essence?”
“Is that like the spice or something mystical?” Randal asked with confusion.
“I’m guessing it’s more complicated than pumpkin extract?” Danny asked warily.
“Probably,” Taylor grumbled as she looked at the ingredients she’d acquired from salvaging the elixir. “Wait, I got an elixir of magic primer, a sprig of mistletoe and a cup of apple cider, no dice on the pumpkin essence.”
Randal chuckled. “That’s still closer than we were.”
“Were you really expecting it to be easy to make?” Kevin asked with amusement.
“I was hoping,” Taylor replied as she salvaged the elixir magic primer. She blinked as she realized there were two different recipes, one was as easy as splitting a magic elixir into five and the other recipe required pieces from five different non magical implements of magic. She looked at the ingredients she’d gotten back. “I have a queen of spades, bits of rabbit fur, shard of a broken crystal ball.”
“How do those relate?” Randal asked curious how bits of random crap combined into elixirs of magic.
Taylor shrugged. “Pieces of a magician’s equipment set? It says pieces from five different non magical implements of magic.”
“In other words, party tricks?” Danny asked with a touch of amusement.
“Probably. I can also just split an elixir of magic into five vials of magic elixir primer.”
“So what you’re saying is, if we can figure out what pumpkin essence is, we can make elixirs of magic, right?” Kevin asked hopefully.
“In theory, yeah. Which means I’ll have to do some experiments or we’ll have to salvage another elixir and get lucky.”
“Sounds fun,” Randal agreed sarcastically.
Taylor picked up the robe and looked at the tooltip. “Wisdom Wrap, +5 bonus to magic, +10 to mana, +20% resist lightning, -1 damage from enemies, not bad, not exceptionally great considering the crappy armor rating.”
“You could always salvage it for ingredients.”
“Any objections?” Taylor asked as she glanced between the group.
Randal shook his head. “Unless you want it for a casting set, go for it.”
“Not particularly, I’d rather have the armor right now.” Taylor opened her magical crafting menu and tossed the robes into the salvage box and hit accept. She looked at the two popups for the resulting crystals. “Enchanted crystals, neat.”
“What do they do?” Danny asked curious how useful they’d be.
“One of them works as an ingredient that lets me add +5 magic to an item when I create it and the other one allows me to increase the mana an item gives the user while it’s worn by 2 points as long as the bonus mana isn’t more than 10 points.”
Randal snorted. “In other words, we can’t just break a lot of crap and boost our armor to the heavens.”
“Doesn’t look like it,” Taylor replied.
“Any idea why you didn’t get a crystal for the damage reduction?” Danny asked.
“Because that would be too easy?”
Kevin shrugged. “We’ll have to run some more tests but it’s probably random.”
“Either way, they’re useful.” Taylor slipped the crystals in her ingredient bag then turned to look at the stairway that went down to the next level. “Shall we continue?”
Danny glanced down at his watch. “I’ve got enough time for another level then we should probably get some sleep, some of us have work in the morning.”
“Yeah,” Randal agreed reluctantly.
Kevin smirked. “I’m glad I don’t open the game shop until noon on weekdays.”
“In that case, let’s head down. If it looks too dangerous we can always reset the dungeon.” Taylor smiled as she headed down the stairs and saw more of the lightning demons. ‘Hopefully they drop some decent gear rather than the random crap like the first level.’ She waited for the rest of the group to come down the stairs then gleefully opened fire with her fire pistol.
0o0o0
Taylor felt like sighing in relief as she walked into the hole in the wall second hand electronics shop that Kevin had recommended and the twenty something clerk didn’t even look up from her magazine.
The clerk didn’t bother to look up as she flipped the page in her magazine. “We don’t take checks and I probably can’t help you find anything, other than that have fun.”
“Drones?” Taylor asked absently as she glanced around the rather odd collection of broken or at least suspect electronics.
“In the back on the table.” She pointed in the vague direction of the back of the shop. “Most of them are broken beyond Frank’s ability to fix but you’re welcome to take a look.”
Taylor glanced around at the various used electronics as she headed toward the back of the shop. She could see why Kevin liked the place, everything was pretty cheap. She stopped in front of a smallish box with a dozen remotes in it. “Five dollars for the box?”
The clerk looked up. “Yeah, 5 dollars for the box of remotes or 50 cents a piece.”
“Okay.” Taylor shook her head then walked over to the box covered table. She glanced over the various boxes. ‘Five dollars, twenty dollars… fifty nine dollars.”
The clerk said, “The price just depends on how much the drones are worth and how much they’d cost to fix.”
Taylor looked at the five dollar drone, it had two broken blades and a busted camera but looked in decent condition otherwise. She frowned slightly as she noticed one of the drones was missing a ‘leg’. She doubted most of them were actually fixable or at least worth fixing unless you could cheat or were a tinker. She grabbed a twelve dollar box and the five dollar box then a drone remote from another box that looked better than the remote for the cheap drones. She took the two boxes up to the counter. “I’ve got a couple more things to grab.”
The clerk shook her head. “Knock yourself out.”
Taylor walked back over to the box of remotes and sorted through them. ‘Garage door remote, television, VCR, DVD player, Playstation 3, projector remote, car alarm remote, more television remotes, universal remote.’ She picked up the box and walked back to set it on the counter then headed over to the used computers. It didn’t take her all that long to realize that a couple of the used computers were better than the computer at the house. ‘Great, I’m going to have to come back when I have a way to cart things off.’ She frowned as she saw a seven dollar game system with a note on the top. “Banned for hacking?”
The clerk turned to look at Taylor. “Yeah, someone modded the system and they got caught which means it can’t be used online anymore. Considering most of the games for the system are online, it’s basically a fancy brick.”
“That makes sense. I can probably use it for a computer repair project through.” She picked up the game system then walked over to the counter.
“It comes with the power cord and the cable for the TV but you’re going to want to grab a controller unless you already have one.” The clerk pointed toward the wall of used controllers.
“Only have so many hands.” Taylor walked over to the wall of controllers and grabbed a couple of cheap controllers that should work, including one that had a large crack in the case. She walked over and set them on the counter.
“Anything else?” the clerk asked as she added up the bill.
“Not right now, I’ll probably be back eventually.” Taylor paid for her purchases then carefully stuck everything in the large bag the clerk was nice enough to give her. “Thank you.”
“You’re welcome, come again,” the clerk replied as she went back to reading her magazine.
Taylor walked out of the shop then headed toward the the next stop on her list. Thankfully it wasn’t all that many blocks before she found the next used electronics store on her list. ‘Honest Al’s electronics, yeah I doubt his name is Al and I doubt he’d honest.’ She glanced between the man behind the counter and the twenty something woman in worn jean shorts and a tank top that was buying a box of something. The shop was set up more like a pawn shop, where everything was behind the counter than a second hand shop where you could actually look around.
The man behind the counter turned to look at Taylor. “What the fuck do you want?”
Taylor blinked as she tried to figure out how the hell the man stayed in business. “Ah, I needed a remote controlled car…”
“Eh, I’ve got one, five dollars. The battery cover is missing and the contacts are a bit rusty but it’s yours if you have cash.” The man grabbed the remote controlled car off the shelf and set it on the counter.
Taylor stared at the piece of crap remote controlled car the man set on the counter. “Remote?”
The man snorted. “If I had it, the car would cost ten.”
“Whatever,” Taylor muttered as she took a five out of her pocket and handed it to him. Normally she wouldn’t have spent a dollar on the sad looking car but she was going to break it for salvage so she really didn’t care what it looked like.
The woman snorted. “You should have haggled.”
“Next time.” Taylor picked up the toy car and put it in her bag then left the shop as the two adults went back to whatever they were talking about. She headed down the street to the bus stop. Thankfully the bus only took three minutes to get there. She showed the driver her student ID as she boarded the bus then took a seat near the side door. She used the rather boring fifteen minute ride and walk to her house to try to organize her thoughts and figure out what she wanted to do for the rest of the day. Sadly the only thing she’d really figured out by the time she’d walked up the steps, unlocked her door and entered her house was that she needed to get a drone working so she could scout out the Final Fantasy dungeon.
She shut and locked the door then walked over to the living room table and pulled out her recent purchases. She opened her engineering menu then started salvaging the remotes for material and patterns. “Cases, circuit boards, emitters and buttons.” She put all of the components in the box the remotes had come in then pulled her flute out of her pocket. “Okay, let’s see if this works.” She focused on the various pieces of broken electronics and started playing her repair song. She almost stopped playing as she saw some of the cracks in the car seal up then vanish after a couple of seconds of playing. She glanced at the broken drone, while the music was restoring little bits and pieces the missing leg was still missing when she ended her song. “At least the car looks a bit better.” She put her flute away then picked up the car and stuck it in the salvage box and hit salvage. She grinned at the almost new parts she got out of salvaging the car. “This might actually work.”
She salvaged the two drones and the drone remotes then looked over her patterns. “Okay, if I use some of the circuit boards from the remotes and an emitter, I should be able to make a decent drone and a remote with a screen.” She glanced at her engineering skill level, it was a small sliver away from four. “Almost four, I should be able to get there before I make the drones.” She put the various parts in the box the drone had come in then grabbed the two boxes of parts and walked over to the broom closet. She focused on her workshop and opened the door then walked over to her workbench which she was fairly sure gave her bonuses thanks to her various tools.
She set the boxes down, set aside the bits she needed for the drone and remote then started assembling and salvaging remotes until she got an excellent universal remote. “Almost there.” She headed back into the living room, grabbed her game system and controllers then walked back to the workbench and salvaged the three controllers. ‘Three frames, two circuit boards, mess of wires and joysticks.’ She glanced at her three controller patterns and smiled as she realized she had enough supplies to make two of the best controllers. She selected the best pattern then hit accept. She blurred through the assembly then hit accept again and smiled as her engineering skill increased to four. “Okay, let’s see what we can get from the game system.” She dropped the game system in her salvage box and hit salvage.
She wasn’t overly surprised that the pattern required a decent amount of components, including a drive with an operating system on it that she needed a higher computer skill to create unless she wanted to copy it from another machine. “Project for later.”
She brought up her drone pattern and assembled the drone then the remote. She looked at the popup for the drone. “Remote controlled drone, non combat pet? Yeah, okay, my power is officially weird.” She took her drone and the remote then started working on learning to fly the drone. Thankfully, it wasn’t that hard and she had her drone flying around her workshop fairly quickly even if she wouldn’t be winning any flying contests for a good long while.
“Now for the real test.” She looked down at her small little video screen on the remote and flew the drone out of the dungeon and around the corner. “Okay, let’s see, now I just have to land it.” She landed the drone as carefully as she could then walked out of the workshop and turned to look at the drone that was sitting on the floor, exactly like it should be. “At least I know it can transmit through the entrance as long as the door is open.”
She closed the door then focused on her Final Fantasy dungeon and opened it. She scowled at the pitch black film over the entrance. “Show time.” She took a couple of steps back then maneuvered the drone through the entrance into the dungeon. She frowned slightly as she studied the small screen on the controller. “I’m going to need a larger screen, looks like an alley.” She carefully spun the drone around to get a look at the dead end alley where the exit was located then spun the drone around so that she could look out of the alley. “I should have put a microphone on it.” She carefully flew it down the alley then quickly pulled it up and back as she saw a large shadowy four legged creature stalking past the entrance to the alley. “Shit.”
It took her a couple of seconds to realize that the creature hadn’t reacted to her drone before she relaxed. She carefully moved her drone back to the entrance and stared at the little screen that showed what looked like a partially destroyed city. She flew the drone up about twenty feet then slowly spun it. She stopped as she saw what looked suspiciously like a man with one black angel wing floating over the city. She stared as he raised his sword and the screen turned white for a second. She scowled as the drone rocked in the air for a second before she could get it under control. “Okay, that can’t be good.” She adjusted camera angle and camera and stared at the destruction the ‘angel’ had caused to the town. ‘That’s probably the boss, I hope it’s the boss.’ She brought her drone back down a bit below the roof of the building across the street, hoping the boss hadn’t seen her drone. She turned it so she could see the large shadowy creatures stalking down the street. “I might have to just ignore this particular dungeon.”
She did her best to keep the drone just below the level of the roofs as she had it follow the shadowy creature until it joined up with a dozen other identical creatures in the middle of the street. She was just about to turn the drone around and bring it back so she could get the USB device it used for camera memory when she saw something on the ground that made her pause. “Why is there a black feather in the middle of the road, surrounded by a pack of nasty shadow creatures?” She watched as one of the shadowy creatures broke off from the group and headed down a side street. “Rotating patrols… yeah, this place is nasty and I probably need the feathers for something.”
“Screw it.” She carefully turned the drone around then flew it back toward the entrance, she wanted to grab the video and see what Randal and Kevin thought of the video before she tried to get closer to the boss and had it blast her drone. She carefully maneuvered the drone through the exit then landed it and shut it down. She glanced over at the hat the drone had blown off the rack. “I probably shouldn’t use it inside, at least the shop should be ready in a couple hours.”
Taylor shut the door to the dungeon then walked over to the computer and pulled up her search page while she waited for the drone’s blades to spin down. She typed in, ‘Final fantasy monsters, one wing’ then hit enter. She glanced over the various links until she found one for an Earth Aleph game that looked promising, “Final Fantasy VII, Sephiroth…” She clicked on the link and glanced over the combat/game information. “Great, his blade cuts through concrete bulkheads at range and everything else in his way, that flash might have been his supernova attack or maybe it was something else.”
She grabbed a blank USB stick off the desk then swapped it for the USB stick on the remote. She put the USB with the drone video in her pocket then frowned as she realized she was hungry. She glanced at the clock on the wall. “That explains why I’m hungry, Amy should be out of school soon and I can show her the salvage yard, on second thought I should check to see if the work crew is done.” She pulled her phone out and called her father as she headed to the kitchen to make herself a sandwich.
Danny answered before the second ring, “Is something wrong?”
“No, I just wanted to know if the work crew was done cleaning?” Taylor asked hoping she could at least use the office.
“They got an early start, they should be wrapping things up shortly so they can get to another job this afternoon, just don’t touch the wet patches of paint over the gang symbols and you should be fine.”
“Cool, thanks,” Taylor replied as she opened the fridge and grabbed the peanut butter.
“Anything else?” Danny asked.
“Nope, I’ll let you get back to work, love you,” she replied as she set the peanut butter on the counter then grabbed the jam.
“Same,” Danny replied then ended the call.
Taylor set the jam on the counter then closed her phone and set it on the counter while she made her sandwich, she had a few minutes before Amy was out of class which meant she could enjoy her lunch, such as it was.
