Mist of Shadows
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Taylor Dungeon Girl Part 9
🕑 Added 2018-06-09 03:56:49 +0000 UTC Taylor landed her hoverboard near the group then reached down and flipped the switch on the board to turn the electromagnets off. “We should probably build a remote to control the magnets into some gloves.”“That should be easy enough.” Randal knew that he could wire the remote even if Leet couldn’t.
Taylor carefully stepped off the board then pulled Kid Win’s book out of her pocket and held it out toward Amy. “Here.”
Amy smiled as she grabbed the book and opened it. She watched in fascination as her new menu opened and various patterns for hovercraft and related technology appeared. “Level one.”
“Not everyone can start as cool as I am,” Kevin pointed out matter of factly.
Randal snorted. “Right, now that everyone has their books, let’s hit a different dungeon.”
“I’m up for a dungeon, any suggestions?” Taylor was just glad that farming the extra books hadn’t taken all that long.
“Video game?” Kevin asked hopefully.
“Yeah, which one?”
Kevin frowned slightly as he thought about the various games he’d played over the years. “Let’s see, Zelda dungeons would probably have rupees which are basically gems that you could use as focusing stones, it might have heart containers and various magical items.”
Randal snorted. “Yeah, I’m guessing that any dungeon that has a heart container would be a nightmare and the magical items were situational at best.”
“What about the power bracelet?” Kevin defended himself.
“There’s no guarantee that we’d get it or that we’d survive the dungeon. We don’t have fairies in a bottle, we have to drink our potions and Panacea can’t bring people back from the dead.”
“Is that a no?” Kevin asked as he looked at Taylor.
Taylor shook her head. “I’m willing to explore if you want to, but I’d rather have power armor before I consider fighting the bosses.”
“Link didn’t have power armor.”
“Yeah and how many times did you die in that game?”
“That’s not-” Kevin complained only to be cut off by Randal, “She has a point, some of the monsters were a pain in the ass to kill and pretty much required a sword we don’t have.”
“We could get it?” Kevin asked hopefully.
“Do you have the triforce stuck somewhere, because I don’t.”
“We can always come back to Zelda once we have better gear,” Taylor pointed out as she drew her elemental fire pistol and started heading back toward the entrance.
“Okay, what about Final Fantasy or Diablo or X-Com?” Kevin asked as they followed Taylor.
Randal snorted. “Fuck X-Com, I’m not going in there without mind shields and something to deal with plasma cannons.”
Amy cut in, “I’ve heard Chris talk about Diablo, lots of demons that drop loot, how bad would that be?”
“That would depend on which dungeon we got dropped into, anything from easy enough to ‘oh my god’ why?”
Kevin smiled as he thought about blasting the shit out of a bunch of demons. “Could be fun.”
“It’s worth a shot,” Taylor replied as she saw a group of staff wielding gang members coming around the corner. “Incoming.” She raised her pistol and shot the guy in the front then smiled as he dropped a staff. “About time.”
Amy smiled as she shot the second gang member in the head and he dropped a pair of boots after turning into pixels. “Dibs on the boots.”
Randal laughed as he quickly shot the remaining two goons. “Let’s see what they are first.”
“That’s fine, I just wanted to call dibs on the boots,” Amy admitted with amusement as they walked over to claim the loot.
Taylor smiled as she picked up the staff and looked at the popup. “Oh, ice staff, nice.” She stuck it in her pocket then picked up the pair of leather boots and looked at the popup. “Boots of climbing, they stick to anything you need to stick to, including hoverboards.”
“In that case, you should probably salvage them.”
“Sounds good.” Taylor opened her magical creation menu and salvaged the boots. She blinked in surprise as she got a pattern for a climbing enchantment that worked on gloves or boots and a magical crystal that would let her enchant something with the same ‘climbing’ enchantment. “Huh, I was just expecting to get a pattern out of that.”
“Let me guess the crystal lets you enchant a pair of boots?” Randal asked with amusement.
“Or gloves. It’s basically just the enchantment in crystal form.”
“Can you normally turn enchants into crystals?” Kevin asked.
“Not that I know of,” Taylor admitted then smiled as she realized where he was going with his idea.
He smirked. “Exactly, might as well see if you can get a pattern out of it.”
She put the crystal in her salvage bin then hit accept and smiled when she got a pattern for enchanting crystals people could use to enchant things. “It ate the crystal but it worked.”
“Cool, because I’m going to want some boots enchanted.”
“I think we all are,” Amy agreed.
Taylor looked at the climbing enchant. “It’s just mana so that shouldn’t be a problem.” She grabbed the temporary hoverboards the gang had dropped and stuck them in her salvage bin for the patterns then continued walking toward the exit.
0o0o0
Kevin glared at the open doorway that led into the Diablo dungeon. “Is it red for anyone else?”
Taylor shook her head. “It’s blue for me.”
“Same,” Amy agreed.
“Yellow here. I know my armor is better than Amy’s so what the hell?” Kevin asked with annoyance.
Taylor reached up and took off her crown then blinked as the ‘film’ over the dungeon immediately changed to red. “Yeah, I’m guessing it’s a lightning resistance thing.” She put her crown back on then looked through her pockets and bags until she found a lightning resistance coat. She pulled it out and tossed it to Kevin. “Here, try that.”
Kevin put the coat on and smiled as the film swapped to yellow. “Okay, it’s a nice solid yellow, let’s go.”
Amy sighed as she realized she had her work cut out for her. “At least he has potions.”
“Let’s see how bad things are.” Taylor pulled her new cold staff out of her pocket then stepped through the door into the dungeon. She took a couple of steps away from the door then glanced around the cave that was lit by stuff that looked suspiciously like lava. Thankfully it wasn’t nearly as hot as real lava or they would have been in trouble.
Amy followed the men through the glanced around. “At least we won’t freeze…” she trailed off as she saw a large red demon with large horns and giant claws that trailed lightning making its way toward the group. “Shit.”
Randal brought his cold gun up and shot the demon then frowned as it did far less damage than he would have liked. He shot the demon several times then reached down and grabbed his handgun and fired several rounds into the demon before it turned into pixels. “Well shit.”
Kevin winced. “That was loud…” he trailed off as he saw an entire pack of demons charge around the corner and head for them. “Let’s go!” He gave Amy a shove toward the entrance to the dungeon then ran through the door.
Randal turned and followed Amy through the door.
Taylor blasted the charging demons with a stream of cold then turned and ran as her attack hadn’t done an appreciable amount of damage.
Amy scowled as she glared at the entrance. “Blue my ass.”
Taylor stepped out of the dungeon then quickly shut the door to the dungeon. “That didn’t go as nicely as I would have liked.”
“Final Fantasy?” Kevin asked, hoping that it wouldn’t be as bad as the Diablo dungeon.
“Can’t be worse,” Amy pointed out.
“We’ll see,” Randal grumbled.
Taylor concentrated on what she remembered of Final Fantasy which was a couple of the boss fights she’d seen clips for on YOUtube then opened the door. She frowned at the black film that covered the entrance. “Huh, yeah, let’s try Diablo again.”
Randal stared in shock at the black film that covered the entrance. “Yeah, I think we need better gear before we risk this one.”
“Or mechs,” Kevin complained as Taylor shut the door.
“What happened to mechs not being thematic?” Randal asked with amusement.
Kevin flipped Randal off. “Fuck off, the entrance was black.”
Amy shook her head. “We’re missing something.”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean the Diablo door was blue and yellow. We haven’t exactly had problems killing stuff in blue dungeons, so what are we missing?”
Randal frowned slightly. “She has a point. Let’s think about this logically, there were four types of damage in Diablo I, physical, magic, lightning and fire. Considering they’re using lightning that’s probably less than useful. They were shrugging off cold damage easily enough which means other types of magic are probably less than useful and they were durable enough to take multiple shots from our handguns so physical is probably out which leaves fire.”
Kevin shook his head. “Why would they be on a level with lava like pools if they weren’t immune to fire?”
Amy shrugged. “Does it have to make sense? We’re in a dungeon based on Lootz’s memories of a game or based on something her ability tossed together, does it have to make sense?”
Taylor sighed. “Considering the only thing I remember from Final Fantasy are a couple of clips from various bosses, that might have something to do with the dungeon of death.”
Kevin frowned slightly. “We’re going to stop at the shop after this, I’ll get you a system and a bunch of older games and you can play them, maybe that way your power will stop trying to use bosses for mobs or whatever the hell happened with the black dungeon of death.”
“Technically black might not be that bad,” Randal pointed out with a touch of amusement.
Amy snorted. “Bullshit.”
“I’m not buying it either,” Kevin replied with a touch of amusement.
Taylor laughed as she swapped to her elemental fire pistol. “Okay, let’s try this again, if it doesn’t work, we’ll try something else.” She focused on her Diablo dungeon then opened the door and glanced at the blue film over the doorway. “Looks the same.”
Kevin grumbled slightly as he checked his pistol. “It’s yellow.”
“In that case, let’s do this.” Taylor stepped through the door then looked around as the rest of the group followed her through the door. “It looks the same.” She brought her fire pistol up and shot the demon charging her three times. She smiled as it turned into pixels and dropped a cloak. “Looks like fire is the way to go.”
“At least it’s quieter.” Randal brought his pistol up to cover her as she walked over and picked up the cloak. “Anything useful?”
“It has an armor rating and feels like cloth which means it’s probably magic or tinkertech.” Taylor stuffed the cloak in her bag then walked back over to the group. “Either way, it should be useful for making armored clothes.”
Randal opened fire on the small group of three demons that walked around the corner. “Incoming.”
Amy smiled as the demons vanished under the storm of fire and dropped a staff and a crown. “Nice.”
Kevin glanced around at the various pools of ‘lava’ with a smile. “This area is going to make an awesome video once we run it a couple of times and get everything down.”
Taylor carefully made her way over to the staff and crown and picked them up. “Staff of fireball, twenty of twenty charges left.”
Amy said, “Hopefully we can figure out a way to recharge it.”
“What about the crown?” Kevin asked curious if it was worth using.
“It increases a person’s armor rating by a decent amount. Do you want to wear it until you find something better?”
“Might as well,” Kevin agreed as the group moved up to where Taylor was standing.
“We’re going to look like a bunch of drunk cosplayers by the time we’re done with the dungeon,” Randal complained good naturedly.
“Better than being dead,” Amy pointed out.
“Pretty much,” Taylor agreed as she headed deeper into the dungeon.
0o0o0
Kevin glared at the kite shield with a lion motif that Taylor was holding. “You’re telling me that getting hit actually hurts worse if you’re holding the shield?”
Taylor shrugged. “Pretty much, you take more damage from enemies if you get hit but your armor is higher which means you should get hit less. It also increases your blocking speed and strength. It’s also indestructible or at least it’s durable enough that it won’t take combat damage.”
Randal frowned slightly as Amy healed the gash on his arm that he’d gotten when he’d dodged a lightning bolt from the boss and hit a patch of razor sharp obsidian. “Between the shield and jester’s cap, I think the dungeon is trying to kill us.”
“Welcome to my world,” Kevin muttered.
Amy smiled as she finished healing the rest of Randal’s scrapes. “The Fool’s Crest isn’t that bad, sure you’d take a point of damage more from enemies than you’d take if you weren’t wearing it but you get a boost to strength, dexterity, vitality and magic and a large boost to hit points which means it’s probably worth it. Not to mention the enemies take 3 damage just for trying to hit us.”
“Which might be a lot or nothing,” Kevin pointed out.
“All things considered, I wouldn’t mind having more hit points.”
Taylor said, “They’re worth trying to salvage to see what we can come up with. If nothing else, we managed to grab a bunch of random magical weapons and armor that we can probably break for material.”
Randal said, “We should probably look at finding some decent padding at some point.”
Amy yawned then looked down at her watch. “On that note, we should probably call it a night. I’m sure that Kevin is going to want to play with his engineering skill and I want to get some sleep before class.”
“Yeah, I have a bunch of old inventions that I want to try to salvage for new patterns,” Kevin admitted.
Randal glanced at Taylor. “In that case, let’s go, Lootz can pick up a console tomorrow or a decent gaming computer.”
“Gaming computer?” Taylor asked.
“Let’s be honest, the more you know about games the better your dungeons will be or at least that’s our working theory. Think of yourself as a Tinker, consider it an investment.”
“I’ll see what I can figure out.” Taylor figured she could do some research online then open a dungeon that dealt with computers if she couldn’t find a reasonably priced computer. She turned and headed toward the exit. “It was a good night, we managed to get everyone engineering and we got some loot we can turn into decent armor for everyone.”
Amy pictured herself running around the street fighting muggers as she followed the group toward the exit. “I’m looking forward to having decent armor.”
“Don’t worry, I’m planning on spending most of tomorrow working on making armor for the group.” Taylor wanted to get the basics covered before they worked on more Diablo dungeons or started trying to figure out what was going on with her Final Fantasy dungeon.
“Kevin and I will work on figuring out what type of video we want to shoot in the hoverboard dungeon.” Randal was looking forward to freaking out the PRT with his video of the ruined city and the race against Kid Win he was planning on talking Lootz into.
“I should be free Friday night, if you want to try a test run.”
“Hell yeah!” Kevin agreed enthusiastically.
Taylor kept one ear listening for demons while Randal and Kevin explained their crazy idea as they headed back toward the entrance to the dungeon.
0o0o0
Danny turned off the television as Taylor walked through the front door. “How did it go?”
Taylor closed and locked the door behind her. “I managed to get the rest of the group engineering books and then we headed to a dungeon with lightning using demons and grabbed a bunch of armor, weapons and gold coins, some of which might actually be useful.”
“Sounds like you were busy.”
“A bit,” Taylor replied as she walked over and sat down on the couch. “I tried opening a dungeon to a game but it came up as way too difficult so I’m sticking it on the back burner for now.”
“Anything else happen?”
“We discussed ideas for buying the old auto salvage yard on the docks.”
Danny raised his eyebrows. “Why would you want that wreck?”
“It’s a place to store our stuff and salvage. Besides, we’re going to need a shop at some point if we want to build some of the more impressive hovercraft rather than just hoverboards.”
“If you want, I can take it to the lawyers at the union as long as you’re planning on hiring some of the union members.”
Taylor raised her eyebrows. “Hire them to what?”
Danny smiled. “Clean up the place, keep an eye on it, work salvage, there are lots of things we could have people do that would save you time and help the community.”
“If you can figure out how to set up the business, I’d be happy hiring some help. I should be able to turn the scrap into decent cars and boats or hovercraft.”
“In that case, I can float the idea to a couple of people in the legal department.”
“Thanks. Do you want to come dungeon running with me?”
Danny shook his head. “Thanks, but I have a long day tomorrow.”
“In that case I’ll stick to safe dungeons, like Winslow.”
“Best of luck, I’m going to get some sleep,” he finished the last of his statement in a mutter as he stood up, “I have a feeling I’ll need it.”
Taylor grinned as she headed to the kitchen to grab a snack before she headed to her Winslow dungeon. She wanted to farm more clothes, cloaks, masks, skill books and flute pieces.
0o0o0
Taylor laughed as she dashed past a group of annoying Emma look alikes then spun around and blasted the entire group with lightning. “This is getting almost pathetic.” She glanced at the various clothing drops then blinked when she saw a set of purple silk underwear that she hadn’t seen before. She walked over and picked up the panties and looked at the popup. “Emma’s favorite panties, +2 to sex appeal. Eww. I’m going to have to disenchant them.” She stuck them in her pocket then turned and headed off to kill Sophia at a run so that she could work on the new running skill she’d picked up from Sophia.
She stopped at the door to the boss fight then stuck her staff in and blasted the girls with a quick blast to get their attention. She turned and ran back down the hallway as her running skill seemed to increase faster when someone was chasing her. She turned and blasted the mob of knife wielding girls with lightning until they turned into pixels. “Yeah, I need something with a bit more challenge.”
She frowned slightly as she glanced at the various pieces of clothing and bills that had dropped off the girls. “At least it’s decent money.” She walked back to the boss room. “Hey Sophia, suck it.” She smiled as she blasted the girl with lightning until she turned into pixels. “Maybe it’s petty but that never gets old.” She smirked as she walked over and picked up the key to the treasure chest, the cloak, shadow vial and flute piece. She blinked as the piece of flute started glowing then changed into a complete flute. She stared as two popups appeared. “Song of Repair, this little song can repair things, the larger the target the more mana it costs. That’s useful.” She glanced at the popup for the flute. “Mother’s flute, from the ashes of despair hope is reborn.”
Taylor blinked back a tear as put her mother’s flute to her lips and played Mary Had a Little Lamb. She felt a weight lift from her chest as she knew that her mother would always be with her and that she had her mother’s flute back. She carefully slipped the flute into her pocket then used the key to unlock the treasure chest. She smiled as she saw another running book. “Okay, I think that’s enough hunting Sophia for a while.” She hauled the chest out of the room then worked on collecting all of the clothes and money from the various mobs she’d zapped then made her way out of the dungeon, collecting things as she went.
Fifteen minutes later, she’d stowed her treasure chest in the living room and was on the computer looking up armor. It didn’t take her all that long to realize that she had better options than bulletproof vests or chain shirts. ‘I just want blueprints for cloth armor and maybe some padding, where the hell are new heroes supposed to get armor?’ Another ten minutes of searching and various ‘crappy’ due it yourself sites later and she realized that most heroes either joined up with the Protectorate or hired someone to make them tinkertech armor. Sadly she couldn’t find any patterns for high tech armor. She frowned slightly as her next search gave her a link to a nice wiki for a multiplayer game system that had several different types of armor crafting that might work if she could open the right dungeon. ‘Okay, I have blacksmithing and the glass like material which should work for the solid pieces, tailoring and the armored cloth for the flexible bits which still leaves me with needing to find boots for everyone. Unless I pick up leatherworking, that would also help with car seats and possibly couches.’
‘Right, couches.’ Taylor shook her head then looked over the list of things she might be able to make with some type of game world leatherworking. ‘Okay, they have a bunch of types of leather, where the hell are players getting them?’ She smiled when she found the skinning skill a couple of minutes later. ‘Okay, they skin monsters for leather, I wonder if I could work on my cooking skills at the same time?’ She shrugged. ‘Might as well try.’
She yawned as she headed over to the broom closet. She reached out and grabbed the doorknob. ‘Okay, I need someone that can teach me leatherworking, skinning and cooking and I need a dungeon where I can get a lot of creatures to skin. I could use some elemental resistances too.’ She concentrated on what she needed then opened the door. She frowned slightly as the film over the door was a nice solid yellow. ‘I guess I can take a look.’ She stepped into the dungeon and blinked as she found herself in a cave with a man in furs sitting by a fire.
The man looked over at Taylor. “How can old Jeremiah help you Ms?”
“I was hoping you could teach me how to work leather?”
He looked her over. “First step is being able to kill something worth skinning, bring me back five rabbits and I’ll show you how to skin them and cook them, after that, we’ll talk.”
“Five rabbits, that doesn’t sound so bad.”
He grinned with amusement. “That’s the spirit. Just head out of the cave and take a left, you can’t miss them.”
Taylor turned and headed out of the cave and glanced around the dark forest. She looked at the three signs on the signpost. “Left, rabbits, straight, Fiery Tar Pits of Doom, right, Valley of Lightning.” She grumbled as she walked down the left path, “This is going to be fun.”
She wasn’t terribly surprised to see dog sized rabbits with horns happily jumping around the clearing eating various berries though she wasn’t all that happy about the rabbits being giant sized. She summoned her bow and quiver then ducked down and ‘hid’ hoping that attacking from surprise would help. She lined up her shot on one of the rabbits that was away from the others then shot it. She wasn’t terribly surprised that her arrow didn’t kill it though she was pleasantly surprised that the sneak attack had heavily wounded the creature and the rest of the rabbits didn’t charge her. She pulled another arrow then shot the bunny as it was running around. She frowned slightly as the rabbit didn’t turn into pixels. ‘Hopefully it’s actually dead.’ She shot it a third time to make sure it was dead. ‘Okay, no change.’ She carefully snuck over and grabbed the rabbit ready to let go and run at a moment’s notice if it twitched. She sighed in relief when the rabbit didn’t twitch then headed back to the cave.
Jeremiah looked up as Taylor hauled the rabbit into the cave. “That’s one. Now you just need four more and I’ll teach you how to skin them.”
“Fine,” Taylor turned and headed back to the rabbit area to kill four more rabbits. Thankfully it wasn’t all that hard to shoot the rabbits from a distance though grabbing them certainly made her nervous, mostly because of the fact that the entrance film was yellow and she kept expecting them to charge her or do something else potentially life threatening. Thankfully nothing of the sort happened and Jeremiah quickly showed her how to skin creatures and how to cook rabbit. After that he showed her a how to make leather boots which gave her a new crafting tab which was pretty neat as far as she was concerned.
Jeremiah absently tossed an old skinning knife at Taylor’s feet. “Here, have fun hunting rabbits, maybe when you get good enough you can go to the Tar Pits of Doom and play with the fire breathing rats, I don’t suggest heading to the Valley of Lightning without decent protection but the leather sells well.”
“Are you buying?” Taylor asked then sighed as he didn’t reply. ‘Never mind.’ She picked up the skinning knife then turned and headed out of the cave to get some practice skinning rabbits.
