Mist of Shadows
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Taylor Hebert Dungeon Girl Part 4
🕑 Added 2018-05-18 22:19:18 +0000 UTC
‘He wants a dungeon and I want him to think it’s too dangerous to go back, so goblins with alchemy.’ Taylor focused on what she walked then ‘opened’ the side door. She blinked as she saw a yellow field over the dungeon entrance rather than the familiar blue. ‘That’s new.’
Randal grinned as he saw the dungeon entrance. ‘At least they didn’t drive me all the way out here to shoot me or worse tell me it was closed.’
Danny briefly considered asking why the entrance was yellow then remembered that they’d implied they found the dungeon which meant that it had to have been yellow the first time. “Let’s do this.”
Taylor gave the dungeon entrance a dark look then stepped through the entrance into a dimly lit cave. She felt a shiver run down her spine as she studied the dark tunnel that led further into the dungeon as she waited for Randal and her father to step inside. ‘I should have grabbed my armor.’ She pulled the robe out of her backpack and looked at the popup. ‘Ornate robes, bonus 10% resistances and some armor, better than nothing.’ She was just glad that she’d stashed one of her swords in the back of the car and that her father had his gun because she had a feeling the dungeon was going to be a bit rough.
Randal stepped through the yellow field then looked around the cave with amazement. “This is awesome.”
Danny stepped into the dungeon then looked around. “This is going to be messy.”
“Don’t worry, I won’t get in the way,” Randal replied confidently.
Danny pulled his ear plugs out then handed Randal an extra set. “Here, the gun gets a little loud.”
“Let me guess, no weapon restrictions?” Randal asked with amusement.
“Not that we’ve noticed, is that a thing?” Taylor asked in confusion.
“Depends on the dungeon and the game.” Randal opened the package then put his earplugs in. He pulled out his laser pistol. “Let’s do this.”
Danny frowned slightly as he looked at the laser pistol the man was carrying. “Where did you get that?”
“A friend made it a long time ago, I try not to use it much but I don’t think he’d mind in this particular case, I mean dungeons, this is awesome,” Randal said excitedly.
Danny suddenly felt like there were two children in the dungeon as they headed down the tunnel.
Randal had barely made it to the mouth of the tunnel when a goblin dressed in pants and a lab coat jumped out pointing some type of tinkertech pistol at him in one hand and holding a flask in the other. He shot the goblin between the eyes as he noticed his finger twitch toward the trigger. He smiled as the goblin turned into pixels and dropped the gun. “Do we actually get to keep the loot?”
“It’s permanent if that’s what you mean,” Taylor replied as she watched the end of the tunnel to see if more goblins jumped out.
“We should probably decide how we’re going to split the loot then.”
“Might be a good idea,” Danny agreed.
“I get any books that drop on account of showing you to dungeon, we’ll split the rest?” Taylor asked hoping that sounded reasonable but still not sure how she’d ended up in a dungeon with someone she’d just met.
“Sounds good.” He made a mental note to ask her about books later considering a tailoring book had been in the chest. “You should probably grab the gun since you don’t seem to have a ranged weapon.”
“Thanks.” Taylor walked over and picked up the frost elemental pistol then twitched and pulled the trigger as a goblin jumped out at her from the shadows. She wasn’t prepared for the coherent beam of blue energy that turned the goblin’s arm into a popsicle. She stared in shock at the mostly dead goblin then blinked as the goblin died and dropped a potion. “What the hell?”
Randal turned and looked at the girl’s new gun. “Okay, that’s fuckshit.”
“Language,” Danny pointed out even if he agreed with the man.
“I don’t suppose I can borrow that at some point?” Randal asked hopefully.
“We’ll see,” Taylor read the popup for the gun. ‘Elemental Pistol, Ice, wow, that’s a lot of damage probably because it takes mana to charge it. 29 of 30 shots remaining, not bad.’
Danny shivered as he looked at the potion the goblin had dropped. “Is anyone else wishing they had better defenses?”
Taylor said, “We’ll just have to be careful.”
“Yeah, careful, careful would be leaving.”
“No, leaving would be cowardly, we just have to be careful.” He brought his laser pistol up and shot another goblin between the eyes that was trying to creep up on them. “And watch for ambushes.”
Taylor blinked as she looked at the potion the goblin across the very dark cavern had dropped. She hadn’t seen it or even heard it before it turned into pixels, even if she had she seen it she doubted she could have hit it at 60 yards much less between the eyes. ‘How the hell does a shopkeeper practice enough to make that shot?’
“Hopefully the potions are labeled.”
“Hopefully,” Taylor replied weakly as they moved into the cavern.
0o0o0
Leet looked up from the video game he was playing as Randal walked into their lair. He raised an eyebrow as he saw Uber’s new lab coat and the treasure chest he was carrying. “What the hell man? You send a joke text about a dungeon then you vanish for a couple of hours then I get a text, ‘Made it out alive, bbs’ so where were you?”
“In a dungeon killing goblins,” Randal replied smugly.
“In a dungeon, right, you’re playing new games without me, aren’t you?”
Randal rolled his eyes. “No, just take a look at the chest.” He walked over and set the treasure chest on the table.
“It’s a treasure chest, it’s sort of neat.”
“Open it.”
Leet rolled his eyes then opened the box then blinked a couple of times then stared at the stuff inside. “How the hell?”
“I’ve got a box, it’s bigger on the inside.”
“Did you blow our budget on a box?” Leet asked nervously.
“Nope, I got it out of a dungeon, same with the coat and my lightning gun.”
“Dungeon? Lightning gun, you bought a lightning gun?”
“No, it dropped off a goblin mad scientist… truth be told it looked a little bit like you,” Randal lied.
“You’re killing goblin versions of me? Who the hell programmed that?”
“No, an actual dungeon, there is a cape that creates dungeons.”
Leet raised his eyebrows. “Right, dungeons that drop loot…” he trailed off as he realized his friend wasn’t joking.
Randal smirked. “Exactly.”
“And you didn’t invite me?!” Leet shouted.
“It was a spur of the moment thing and I wasn’t sure it was real until I stepped into the dungeon.”
“But, but… dungeons and loot and you didn’t invite me?”
“I didn’t exactly have a chance but we kicked ass and I’m the first one they’ll call if they ever need another treasure box opened.”
Leet rubbed his nose. “Did you give them your number? Did you get a cape name at least?”
“She hadn’t picked one out yet, but I suggested Loot Master.”
Leet snorted. “I can’t see that happening, what about Lootz?”
“Probably not. Either way, I got an armored lab coat that absorbs a certain amount of electricity, no you can’t have it, a lightning gun with 21 shots left and some decent healing potions, oh and a potion that should shrink anyone I toss it at.”
“That’s random and I could use a coat that gives me resistance to electricity.”
“Sure but then your power would just come up with another way to kill you, this way, I’ll be safe.”
Leet couldn’t really fault his friend’s logic though muttered, “Asshole.” mostly as a token protest. “So what did the dungeon cape get out of it?”
“A couple different elemental guns, a book on alchemy that she seemed really excited about and some chemistry equipment.” He wasn’t going to mention the various alchemy recipes or ingredients she’d found because he didn’t need Leet trying to make strange potions, no good would come of that.
“Alchemy? As in chemical Tinker?” Leet asked in disbelief.
“Probably, I saw her with a tailoring book earlier, so probably.”
Leet stared at his friend as he tried to figure out if he should laugh or cry. “Okay… when are we going to track her down?”
“We’re not.”
“What? What do you mean we’re not?”
“I mean I left my number and I’m sure she’ll call when she needs help.”
“But… what if she doesn’t?” Leet asked in a whine.
“I shot the goblins like a god, she’s going to call,” Randal replied smugly wishing he’d brought one of their flying cameras with him so he could just show Leet.
“Okay, tell me everything!” Leet demanded.
“Well, it started when she came into the shop to get a treasure box opened.”
0o0o0
Danny sighed as he sat down at the kitchen table. “At least we found out what yellow means.”
“Yeah, warning, dangerous creatures,” Taylor admitted as she rubbed her arm. Thankfully the healing potions had fixed the rather nasty burn she’d gotten from the boss before Randal had managed to put it down with his laser pistol. “At least Randal was there with his laser pistol.”
“Yeah, locksmiths shouldn’t be that good.”
“You think he served in the military or something?”
“Or something, most of the people in the military aren’t that good, especially with a pistol.” Danny had some suspicions based on the man’s age and some of the stuff he’d said but he wasn’t sure if he wanted to voice them out loud. The only thing keeping him from being sure was that the laser pistol hadn’t exploded. Still, he’d heard enough about Uber and Leet to be reasonably sure that Randal was Uber. Still, if he didn’t confirm it then it was just a guess and thus he had some plausible deniability.
“Does that mean I shouldn’t call him up if I need backup?” Taylor asked with concern.
“Considering we had to admit that we’d never been in that particular dungeon after we almost got killed by the goblin chemists, it wasn’t exactly a leap of logic to assume you were the one making the dungeons. So yeah, the damage is probably already done. Besides, he seemed nice enough.” That last part had been a bit of a surprise for Danny, given some of the stuff that Uber and Leet had gotten up to but there were probably mitigating circumstances or maybe Randal wasn’t Uber, either way, as long as Taylor had her armor it should be safe enough. He knew they would have ran into serious problems without him.
“In other words, if I need the backup call?”
“As long as you call me first and let me know what you’re planning, having some backup is a good thing.” Danny was trying not to freak out about the idea of his daughter running around dungeons without him but the fact remained, there was very little he could do to stop her if she decided to raid dungeons.
“In that case, I think I’m going to the store.”
“Store?”
“I need a couple of rolls of cloth for tailoring and some of the alchemy ingredients are vegetables. If I mix them together and the magic doesn’t happen, I’ll be left with a disgusting but completely edible smoothie.”
“That’s a decent plan. Assuming you can make magic potions, what are you going to do with them?”
“Grab my costume and head to the hospital and see if I can get Panacea to prove they work. If I can prove they work, I can probably sell some to the PRT or the hospital.”
“For how much?”
Taylor shrugged. “That depends on much it costs and how long it takes. If all I have to do is go to the store and buy the ingredients then make them, twenty to fifty dollars a potion seems reasonable, if I have to farm the ingredients from that dungeon, buy them at specialty stores or if it takes longer than I’m expecting, a lot more.”
“That’s remarkably cheap.”
“It buys goodwill and sometimes that’s more important than the money. Besides, it’s not like I’m hurting for money considering yesterday’s profit.”
“Point,” he admitted. It was nice knowing his daughter would never have to worry about money.
Taylor opened her crafting menu and tapped her tailoring tab. “I should probably check online for the best place to get cheap cloth.”
“That’s probably a good idea considering you can buy entire rolls of cheap cloth easier than you can farm it.”
“We should probably test if the skill books work for other people at some point.”
He scratched his chin as he considered her idea. He had no objection to testing one of the books as long as Taylor already had it or it wasn’t useful to her. “You could always try to get another archery book off Sophia, considering you were planning on doing it anyways for the dye.”
“Not a bad idea if for no other reason than punching her face in is always fun.”
Danny shook his head. “Call if you need a ride.”
“That reminds me, I know you hate cellphones because of the idiot that hit Mom but I’m going to need one…” Taylor trailed off as her father took a breath.
Danny slowly exhaled as he balanced his completely reasonable dislike of the damned things against his daughter being able to call him if there was a problem. “Fine, let’s go shopping. We can pick up a couple of phones and the other stuff.” He figured two phones and a prepaid burner phone for when she went out in costume.
“Thanks, that saves me from figuring out a way to carry everything home on the bus.”
“We really need to look into a dungeon where we can get bags of holding. Actually, can you craft one?”
Taylor opened her tailoring menu and looked through her options. She was rather surprised when she found an option to make a bag, pocket or purse expandable. “Oh, neat. It takes mage cloth or better but yeah, I can expand bags or pockets.”
“Good, I’ve got a jacket that could use an upgrade but let’s deal with the shopping first. We can pick up a few of the cheaper options then you can make some test potions.” Danny stood up and headed for the front door.
Taylor had a feeling she was going to spend a lot of time in the lab over the next couple of days.
0o0o0
Danny stared incredulously as Taylor finished mixing a couple of tablespoons of flour and a couple of strawberries together and got a potion. Sure, she’d ground the strawberries up with a mortar and pestle then mixed them together with her alchemy set on the kitchen table but that should have resulted in a gooey mess, not a perfectly clear red liquid. “Let’s ignore how you got a clear potion by mixing flour and strawberries for a second, where did the glass vial come from?”
“Tinker bullshit, magic?” Taylor giggled as she looked at the popup for her completed potion. “Reflect damage, 5% of damage taken is reflected back on the person or creature hitting the drinker.”
“Five percent doesn’t sound all that impressive.”
“My alchemy skill is 1, I’m just happy that I got it to work at all.” Taylor wasn’t all that concerned with the low percentage for her potion considering her alchemy exp bar had increased a decent amount just from making the potion.
“Do you think the potion would be better if you used fresh strawberries?” Danny asked curious how her daughter’s completely bullshit power worked.
“No clue, I’ll have to run some tests at some point. I don’t understand the theory behind it, I just followed the recipe, you do this with this and you get a potion.”
Danny twitched slightly. “Does that mean you’re going to have to go back to the dungeon again for more recipes?”
“Probably not for a while but more recipes wouldn’t hurt.” Taylor noticed her father’s wince. “That said, I should have enough cheap ingredients to get a decent amount of skill before I start wasting ingredients we got from the dungeon.”
“Good, that dungeon sucked.”
Taylor shrugged. “As long as we stayed out of range and had Randal shooting things it wasn’t so bad.”
There had been way too many close calls for Danny’s peace of mind. “Please don’t go back without calling Randal, he’s pretty much the only reason we made it through the dungeon.”
“Yeah, we probably should have went back for our full set of armor and the shotgun.”
“Probably?” Danny shook his head. “Yeah, it would have helped at least a little bit.”
Taylor grinned. “Don’t worry, we’ll get better gear eventually.”
“It’s the eventually part that I’m worried about,” Danny admitted as he thought about the sheer number of traps that Randal had disarmed. He was more than a little worried about Taylor being home by herself and getting bored, sadly people would get overly curious if he brought her to work everyday. He made a mental note to step up his efforts to get her enrolled in Arcadia.
Taylor grinned as she went back to making potions.
0o0o0
Panacea frowned slightly as she looked at the rather tall blonde haired tinker wearing a labcoat over a decent looking pair of white slacks and a long sleeved shirt. The theater mask didn’t quite fit the scientist look but hid her face better than most masks she’d seen. She reached out and touched the test subject on the hand that wasn’t burned. She had to resist the urge to heal the damage as her power informed her about the man’s general health as well as his burn. She glanced over at the doctor that was ‘supervising’ the tests then back at the cape calling herself Alchemist. “Ready when you are.”
The test subject drank the pinkish red potion with a faint hint of distaste as it tasted a bit like ham which wasn’t his favorite. He relaxed as the pain in his hand vanished. “That feels better.”
The doctor sighed in relief. “Good to know.”
Panacea double checked the man’s vitals, he’d went from injured to healthy in the blink of an eye or at least uninjured as there were some minor chronic health issues that the potion hadn’t fixed. The most interesting thing was the potion didn’t seem to use up any of his biomass unlike her own ability. It also hadn’t cleaned the traces of alcohol out of his system or the build up in his lungs of tar. “Interesting, yes on fixing the damage, no on chronic issues.”
The man asked, “Chronic issues?”
“You drink and you smoke, you’re still a bit drunk.” Panacea resisted urge to make a snarky comment about him being drunk enough to stick his hand on the stove. “I’d quit the smoking if I were you but that’s generally good advice for everyone.”
The doctor said, “In your case, I’d recommend not drinking as well considering you’re a clumsy drunk.”
The man winced. “You’re an ass.”
“And you’re an idiot,” the doctor replied which shut the man up.
Taylor said, “Pretty sure alcohol counts as a poison which would require a cure poison potion.”
The doctor smiled at the new cape. “How many of those do you have?”
“A decent amount,” Taylor admitted.
The doctor nodded. “He signed the consent form so we might as well test it.” He glared at the man. “Unless you have an objection?”
The man sighed then held out his recently burned hand, amazed that it looked completely normal rather than burned or even red. “Fine.”
Taylor pulled a cure poison potion out of the rack of potions, double checked the label and the potion with her popup ability then handed it to him. She didn’t want any mistakes to ruin the test.
Panacea made sure she had a decent grip on the man’s hand then ‘watched’ his health as he drank the red potion. She blinked as between one second and the next the remaining alcohol in his system vanished. “Hmm, that worked and the tar is gone…” Panacea turned to look at Taylor. “That shouldn’t be possible.”
“Does that mean it worked?” The doctor asked with certain amount of controlled excitement.
“Yeah, I’m just not sure how. It really shouldn’t have.”
“Tinkers are bullshit.”
“There’s bullshit and then there is that, wait, where did the potion vial go?”
Taylor shrugged. “They just vanish after you drink them.”
Panacea stared at Taylor. “How does that even work?”
“Your guess is as good as mine, I just make the potions.”
“That…” Panacea glanced down at their test subject. “On second thought, okay, no worries the potions worked.”
The doctor said, “Great, in that case, we’ll run some more tests and then I’ll talk to the Chief of Medicine. I have a feeling he’ll be very interested in buying a decent supply of the potions. Panacea is in here way too much and this would help give her a break.” He turned to look at Panacea. “We love that you volunteer but we don’t want you burning out.”
“I’m looking forward to taking some time off.” Panacea gave the doctor a smile that was only half forced as she realized that she was actually looking forward to taking some time off without feeling guilty.
The doctor pointed at the collection of potions. “How many of these can we test? He is going to want to test some of these when you aren’t here and over the next week. Otherwise some beancounter is going to start waving red flags.”
“You can have all of them, they’re labeled.” Taylor wasn’t all that concerned about the cost of the ingredients as they were fairly cheap, ginseng, strawberries and bits of ham weren’t going to break the bank. She really wanted to add cure disease potions to her list of things she could sell but she wasn’t even sure what charred skeever hide was which made it a bit problematic. That and she wasn’t sure where to get hawk feathers that wouldn’t land her in trouble.
“This should help a lot. Do you have any questions for the test subject before I discharge him?”
“What did the potions taste like?”
“You mean you didn’t taste them?” the man asked wearily.
“I wasn’t hurt or poisoned. Don’t worry, they had proper animal testing,” Taylor lied.
The man said, “First one one tasted like ham, second one, strawberries.”
“Huh, interesting, thanks.” Taylor was glad they didn’t taste completely awful.
Panacea spoke up, “You have Alchemist’s number, I’ll show her out.”
“Thanks.” The doctor gestured for the test subject to follow him then picked up the rack of potions and headed out of the exam room they’d been using to test the potions. “Let’s get you discharged.”
Panacea waited until the doctor and test subject then turned to look at Taylor. “So, where did your “employer” find those?”
Taylor twitched slightly. “What do you mean?”
“You should invest in a voice changer. I’m just trying to figure out how chemicals and clothing relate.”
Taylor briefly considered trying to lie but then realized that Panacea was a hero and judging by her earlier performance, she sucked at lying. “I make dungeons.”
“Dungeons?” Panacea asked for clarification as she wasn’t sure how that related to the clothes or the potions.
“Dungeons like in video games.”
Panacea blinked as her mind connected the dots. “Wait, you’re telling me that you came to the hospital to sell your loot?”
“No, I made the potions, I was pawning off the loot in the market yesterday.”
“Explain.”
“I can open doors into dungeons, the monsters drop loot.”
“That doesn’t explain how you can make potions.”
“I found a book about alchemy off one of the bosses.”
Panacea stared at Taylor. “Let me get this straight, you can find loot and get skill books that make you a tinker?”
Taylor nodded. “That and I also got a book on archery that made me a lot better at shooting things.”
“Bullshit trumps.”
“Do you want to see a dungeon?” Taylor asked with amusement figuring the damage already done and getting Panacea on her side would help.
Panacea considered her options for a couple of seconds. On the one hand, it would get her out of going out with her sister and Dean, on the other it was potentially dangerous. “Let me call my sister and tell her that I’m getting coffee.”
“This might take longer than getting coffee.”
“Okay, coffee and dinner, anything to get out of having to eat with my sister and her boyfriend.”
“Sounds good.” Taylor smiled as she thought about which dungeon to take her to as Panacea sent off a text message to her sister.
Panacea put her phone back in her pocket. “So where are we going?”
“We need a door that won’t be disturbed while we’re in the dungeon and where do you want to go?”
“What do you mean where do I want to go? How many dungeons do you have?”
“I’ve explored a few, one is Winslow, one has a bunch of evil stuffed animals, one is a goblin dungeon that I’d need more gear for and I’m not supposed to go back to the other dungeon without bringing backup.”
“What am I?”
“A healer, I’d need a sharpshooter and a trap expert. Not to mention a brute would be nice.”
Panacea paused. “I have a sister that happens to be a brute.”
“Can she keep a secret?” Taylor asked warily.
“Moving on.”
“Let’s try the Winslow dungeon, just be aware the people in it aren’t actually people.”
“What do you mean?”
Taylor shrugged. “They turn into pixels when you defeat them.”
“That’s convenient and probably rules out pulling people in from other worlds.”
“That would be messy.” Taylor frowned. “That would also mean that goblins were real and that’s a fairly horrifying thought.”
“Nasty?” Panacea asked curiously.
“Monstrous little assholes and the ones in the second dungeon had some type of energy weapon.”
“Fun,” Panacea replied sarcastically as she grabbed the door handle. “Let’s go get coffee then we can figure out a place.”
“It needs to be somewhere no one will see the blue film over the entrance.” Taylor followed Panacea out into the hallway.
Panacea lowered her voice to a whisper as they made their way back to the elevator. “I’d say your place but there is always a chance of someone noticing me which wouldn’t be good.”
“We could go to the ferry terminal but that’s a decent distance from here.”
“Not to mention a decent chance of being followed.” Panacea’s phone beeped as she reached out to push the elevator button. She pulled her phone out and looked at it. “Then of course there is my sister, who is coming to meet the new cape.”
“Great, we can meet her at the coffee shop. I’d rather you didn’t mention the thing,” Taylor glanced at the people in the waiting room.
Panacea walked into the elevator the pushed the button for the lobby once Taylor walked in. “She’s a bit persistent.”
Taylor sighed. “I’d rather you didn’t mention meeting yesterday either.”
“Not a chance in hell, she’s still talking about the clothes, there is no way I’m admitting a damned thing about knowing where you got them or that I even know the person selling said clothes.”
Taylor smiled. “Thanks.”
Panacea asked, “How did you get your mask to smile when you do?”
“It was loot from the Winslow dungeon.”
“In other words, you have no idea.”
“Nope, none whatsoever,” Taylor admitted with amusement.
‘At least she’s not overly smug about her trump ability,’ Panacea thought to herself as they left the elevator and headed for the exit.
Comments
Chichi son
Panacea lowered her voice to a whisper as they made their way back to the elevator. “I’d say your place but there is always a chance of someone noticing me which wouldn’t be good” missing period
Mist of Shadows
It's fun.
Robert Buniff
Love this story. Can't wait to catch up.
