Taylor Hebert Dungeon Girl Part 10 (Patreon)

Taylor frowned as she studied the large vicious looking red dog sized rats that were patrolling around the bubbling tar pits. Not only did the area smell horrible, the tar pits seemed to randomly explode with hot tar which didn’t seem to bother the rats any but would probably hurt like hell if she got any on her. Normally she’d have just called it a night but she’d spent the last couple hours hunting the rabbits and making boots so that she could try to get the hunter to teach her to make something more useful than basic boots and she really wanted something new to work on. She was hoping taking him a couple fire rat hides would convince him to teach her something useful. ‘Great, maybe I can pull one of them and kill it without the others mobbing me.’

Taylor pulled a fire resistance potion out of her pocket and drank it on the off chance things went sideways then waited until one of the rats was by itself. She brought her ice pistol up and shot it then blinked in shock as five of the damned things turned and charged her as fast as greyhounds while breathing streams of fire out of their mouths that reached five feet in front of them. “Shit.” She turned and ran back down the path hoping they wouldn’t follow her, sadly they didn’t seem to have any issue with leaving the tar pits. 

Taylor barely made it to a narrow spot in the path between two large rocks before the group of fire rats converged on her mostly thanks to her head start and running skill. She brought her staff up and unleashed a continuous blast of frost on the creatures trying to roast her as she worked on emptying her ice pistol at the closest rat. She felt her life flash before her eyes as the streams of fire from the five rats overwhelmed her ice blast and resistances and started heating up her armor alarmingly fast as she tried her best to kill the damned rats. Annoyingly the rats weren’t content to just stand there and take the shots as they darted in and moved around to keep her from being able to target any of them exclusively. Thankfully as she was starting to worry about her fire resistance potion failing and the rats cooking her alive in her armor she managed to kill one of them which cut down the number of targets and fire coming at her which let her focus on killing the next most injured one.

She smiled grimly and kept firing as she killed the next rat and the incoming fire damage dropped below what her potion protected her from. “Die!” She smiled as she managed to kill the next two before the last one broke and ran. She gleefully gunned the fleeing rat down so that it couldn’t bring help. She quickly unequipped her overly hot pieces of armor and dropped them to the ground then pulled a healing potion out of her pocket and drank it. “That sucked.” She was fairly sure that she’d be dead or at least in a lot worse shape if she hadn’t drank the fire resistance potion. “At least my magical gear didn’t heat up.”

She took a deep breath then let it out as she tried to calm down as she pulled her skinning knife out of her pocket. She took another deep breath then let it out and started skinning one of the fire rats. She smiled as she got four leg bones that looked like they would make decent flutes, one fire hide and several chunks of fire rat meat from the rat. “I might have to come back when I get better resistance gear or a better plan.” She put the ingredients into her ingredient bag then skinned the rest of the rats, getting much the same. She put the loot in her ingredients bag then checked her armor. Thankfully it was merely warm rather than hot enough to burn her so she put everything back on then headed back to the cave.

Jeremiah smiled as Taylor walked into the cave. “I see you tried your hand at fighting the rats, if you bring me five fire pelts I’ll teach you how to preserve the elemental magic in the hides and to make gloves that shoot fire or a kimono that should help you protect from the flames. If you bring me another five hides, I’ll teach you the other trick.”

Taylor scowled slightly as she realized she’d have to kill more of the damned rats. She pulled the five hides out of her ingredients bag and handed them to Jeremiah. “Teach me how to create the kimono.”

Jeremiah nodded. “Wise choice.”

Taylor paid attention as he quickly showed her how to turn magical hides into magical leather without losing the magic that made them special. ‘This should help if I ever run into Lung.’

“Now for the kimono, you need two rolls of leather.” He quickly turned two of the rolls of leather into a rather nice looking leather kimono. “Here, I don’t need it.” He handed Taylor the kimono.

Taylor smiled as she looked at the popup. ‘10 points of fire reduction, not bad, not great but I’ll take what I can get.’ She equipped her kimono then headed toward the Valley of Lightning as she didn’t really feel like getting burned again right now. She stopped at the edge of the path and looked down into the valley of monstrous cat like creatures that had sparks of electricity dancing over them. From what she could tell the creatures started at about the size of a bobcat and were large enough that she could see them in the distance standing shoulder height to things she was reasonably sure were trees or at least large bushes.

She reached up and made sure her crown was on her head where it was supposed to be then summoned her bow and quiver. She studied the groups of cats wandering around near the entrance then smiled as she saw a grey cat sleeping in a tree near the entrance to the valley. ‘Sorry, kitty but you’ll respawn.’ She lined up her shot then shot the lightning cat and tried to ignore the extremely angry sounding hiss as the cat took a fifth of its health in damage and fell out of the tree. She wasn’t terribly surprised that the cat landed on its feet though she was a bit surprised that it sent a bolt of lightning at her rather than charge her like the fire rats had.

Taylor smiled as she felt nothing from the bolt of lightning that hit her and charred the ground around her in a rather large radius. She shot the cat with another arrow which dropped the creature’s health by a tenth. She ignored the return blasts of lightning as she whittled the cat’s health down to zero. She glanced down at the charred ground she was standing on. ‘Yeah, I’m not coming here without my crown.’

She carefully made her way toward the dead monster so that she could skin it trying not to think of it as a cat. She quickly skinned it and put the hide and meat in her ingredients bag. She picked out her next target and opened fire at a lone cat near the edge of the forest and sighed in relief as it opened fire with lightning rather than charge her. ‘Easier than the rats.’ She frowned slightly as she realized that she’d have to get rather close to a pack of cats if she wanted to collect her target so she stopped when it only had a sliver of health left and ran back toward the path. She wasn’t terribly surprised when it chased her once it didn’t have a decent shot. She was rather glad that the rest of the cats didn’t charge with it. She ran around the ‘corner’ of the area onto the path then spun around, loaded an arrow, pulled her bow back then shot the cat in the face as it charged around the corner. She listened as she loaded another arrow for any sounds of more cats coming toward her then carefully walked over and checked just to make sure.

Taylor wasn’t sure if she should be surprised or relieved when none of the cats tossed lightning at her or charged her. She walked back, skinned the monstrous cat and put the ingredients in her bag then walked back to the edge of the path to find another target. She pulled the staff of fireball she’d gotten from the Diablo dungeon out of her pocket, lined up her shot and sent two fireballs at the group of five cats lounging near the edge of the forest. She quickly sent a third fireball when the first two hadn’t managed to kill the charging beasts. Thankfully the third fireball dropped the pack of cats. She smiled as she looked at her staff. “Even if I can’t recharge you, still worth it.”

Taylor put her staff in the staff holder on her back then carefully made her way over to the cats to skin them. She finished skinning them and putting away her loot then looked at the next group of lightning cats. ‘I should probably see what the hunter can teach me then get some sleep, they’ll be there in the morning.’ She headed back to talk to Jeremiah.

Jeremiah looked up as Taylor walked into the cave. “The hunter returns alive from the Valley of Lightning, I’m quite impressed. Give me five lightning pelts and I’ll teach you how to create gloves that allow you to toss electricity at your foes or a set of leather greaves that can help protect you from lightning.”

“I’ll take the greaves,” Taylor replied as she pulled five lightning cat pelts out of her bag and handed them over.

“Watch and be amazed,” Jeremiah replied as he quickly turned two of the pelts into lightning leather then turned them into a set of leather greaves. “You look like you could use more protection.” He tossed the greaves to Taylor.

“Thank you.” Taylor smiled as she looked at the popup. ‘Lightning damage reduction 10. I have a feeling the cats do a hell of a lot more than ten damage.’

“If you kill more of the monsters, I’m always happy to trade pelts for patterns and the meat for recipes.”

“I’ll keep that in mind.” Taylor glanced at the door that led back to her living room then glanced at her watch. ‘I should have time for another couple of monsters.’ She turned and headed back toward the cats.

0o0o0 

Danny pulled his coat on as Taylor came downstairs looking a bit tired. “I’m surprised you’re awake.”

“I woke up and couldn’t get back to sleep,” Taylor admitted as studied her father’s clothes. “Heading to work early?”

“Yeah, I have a couple contracts to review and meetings to deal with.”

“Have fun, I think I’m going to be lazy and run some easy dungeons considering I’m not sure how many more free days I’ll have.” Taylor wasn’t really looking forward to going to Arcadia but at least Amy would be there.

“Probably. Before I go, did you find anything interesting last night?”

“I picked up a leatherworking skill in my new dungeon and a pattern for lightning gauntlets and some greaves that reduce electrical damage.”

“Lightning gauntlets?” Danny asked with a raised eyebrow.

Taylor grinned as she thought about the leather gauntlets she’d picked up from Jeremiah before crashing out. “They let me shoot streams of ‘electricity’ without having to carry around the staff.”

“Like a Sith Lord?” Danny asked amused.

“Less with the insanity and evil but yeah, pretty close,” Taylor admitted as she thought about the tests she’d ran just outside the cave before she’d decided to crash for the night.

Danny made a mental note to look into the laws about carrying concealed weapons. “At least that gives you a decent concealed weapon if you get attacked.”

“Better to have them and not need them.” Taylor wanted some type of electrical attack on the off chance that Sophia tried to kill her.

“Stay safe and stick to safe dungeons.” Danny knew he couldn’t stop Taylor from running dungeons but he was hoping that she’d stick to ‘safe’ dungeons while he was gone. 

“Don’t worry, I’m just planning on farming some leather and working on costumes today. I’ll leave a note if I leave the house.”

“Thanks, I worry.” Danny opened the door.

“Drive safe.” Taylor watched her father leave. She didn’t like lying to him even if she wasn’t technically lying, she was planning on farming more lightning leather and it was mostly safe thanks to her crown that nullified lightning. Of course, she doubted he’d see it that way, thankfully it was easier to ask forgiveness than permission. She headed for the kitchen to make some breakfast.

She opened her cooking menu and looked at her new recipe. “Onions, pepper, potatoes, mushrooms, carrots and fire rat… yuck, that can’t be healthy.” She raided the refrigerator for the supplies she needed then tossed everything into her menu and hit create. She blurred through the creation process and frowned as she got three covered bowls of stew that reduced the amount of fire damage she took by 20 points for thirty minutes. “Damn, that’s good enough to use.” She did some quick mental math and realized that between her new kimono and her resistance gear, she’d be able to kill the pack of rats without getting cooked which should let her farm enough fire pelts to learn some more patterns from the hunter and maybe pick up enough resistance gear that she wouldn’t have to eat rat.

She headed up to her room and grabbed another couple fire resistance potions and put on her gear then used her bedroom door to open a door to the leatherworking dungeon. She walked into her dungeon and glanced at Jeremiah who was standing in the same place he always stood. She waited a couple of seconds in case he wanted to say something then walked out of the cave and headed for the Tar Pits of Doom. 

Taylor stopped at the entrance to the tar pits and moved one of the bowls to her character portrait. She frowned slightly in distaste as she quickly ate the stew and realized that it was actually quite good, if spicy. She wasn’t sure whether it was better or worse that it tasted so good considering the main ingredient was rat. She pulled out a fire resistance potion then drank it. “Okay, let’s hope this works.” She grabbed her recharged ice pistol out of her pocket and shot the rat she’d shot last time then started running.

She absently noted the popup that informed her she got another level of running as she made it to the rocks. She twisted around and started shooting the pack of fire rats as fast as she could with her ice pistol as she unleashed a stream of lightning with her left hand at the pack of large vicious rats. Thankfully they seemed weak to lightning or at least it went right through their firebreath unlike the ice staff which meant that the rats were dead before her armor could heat up enough to cause her any damage. “Much better.”

She pulled out her skinning knife and worked on skinning the rats for their pelts, meat and bones. She stuck the ingredients in her bag then headed back to the tar pits to pull another group of rats while she had the boosts up.

0o0o0

Taylor glared at the miniboss or at least she was assuming the white tiger with glowing blue stripes standing on the mound in the narrow path that led deeper into the valley was a miniboss as it was by itself, looked suitably impressive, was blocking the path and she could hear tribal music coming from the general direction of the tiger. She pulled her arrow back, aimed for the creature’s eyes, hoped for the best and let go of her arrow. She rather pleased when her arrow hit the boss in the eye, dropping its hitpoints by a fifth. She was less amused by the cat roaring and slashing at her which unleashed a storm of lightning, the force of which tossed her backwards like a ragdoll. She’d barely managed to figure out which way was up when she was struck by five lightning bolts from the sky which rattled her bones, blew her eardrums and blinded her. She proved she was her father’s daughter as she cussed like a dock worker while she fumbled for one of the healing potions on her belt.

Taylor felt her stomach drop and her heart lurch as the healing potion restored her senses and she saw the hundreds of pounds of electric fury stalking toward her. She resummoned her bow as she got to her feet and shot at the cat and winced as it casually swatted the arrow out of the air. “Fuck.”

With nothing to lose and a vague idea of distracting it, she reached into her ingredients bag and grabbed a couple of chunks of fire rat and tossed them toward the cat as she slowly backed away knowing that there was no way she was outrunning the tiger. 

The cat sniffed at the rat meat, tossed another five bolts of lightning at Taylor then grabbed the meat and sauntered back to her mound.

Taylor pulled herself off the ground once more, having weathered it a bit better this time, then slowly backed further away from the damned tiger of doom! ‘More than one way to skin a cat.’ She relaxed slightly as the drumming faded into the background and the sounds of the jungle came back. ‘Okay, that sucked.’ She glared at the tiger. ‘Screw this, I should have enough to make everyone’s costumes.’ She turned and headed for the entrance as she needed a break from dealing with monstrous cats.

She glanced at Jeremiah, she’d already picked up everything he could teach her or at least everything he could teach her to make with the quality of lightning enhanced leather that she could get off the easy cats. She had a feeling she’d get better quality leather if she could get past the miniboss tiger but she needed help or at least some hearing protection and safety glasses before she tried again. She walked out of the dungeon then closed the door and opened her workshop. She walked over to her workbench and opened her crafting menu. She flipped to the leatherworking tab and looked at her choices for boots. “Faster movement or elemental resistance. Let’s see, I need feathers for the movement boosting boots and elemental leather for the resistance boots. I wonder if I can cheat a bit.”

Taylor looked through her ingredient bag until she found some hawk feathers she’d gotten from the alchemy dungeon then placed one of the feathers in her ingredients box. ‘This would be easier if I had a better interface that told me what the ingredients did.’ She added a piece of lightning enhanced leather then selected create, hoping for the best. She quickly cut the leather into the correct shapes for her new leather boots then stitched all of the pieces together. 

She smirked as she looked at the popup for the blue boots and saw that they gave the user a decent boost to their running speed, armor, and electrical resistance which was pretty neat as the value of the resistance was well within the range of what just the resistance boots alone were supposed to be. “Swift Boots of the Lineman. If I had decent crystals I’d enchant these with climbing for everyone.” She made a mental note to check the crystals she was growing to see if any of them were ready to harvest then created two more pairs of Swift Lineman boots.

Taylor looked at her options for greaves. “I need to find some magical greaves to salvage or something for more options, ah well, at least they look good.” She quickly created two sets of lightning eating greaves to go with the one she’d gotten from Jeremiah then moved onto making the chest pieces and lightning gloves she needed for her friends. She studied the blue leather outfits, they looked professionally made, or at least not made for the exotic games people usually used full body leather outfits for. She was fairly sure a professional costume designer would have put artistic designs and such on the armor to improve their appearance. “Doesn’t have to look decent, just work well enough that we can speedrun Diablo.”

Taylor packed the armor away in one of the chests then stepped out of the workshop and closed the door. “Okay, I need a dungeon that’s fun, something to help me unwind.” She focused on what she wanted and opened the door. She smiled as she saw the blue film over the entrance that showed a forest. “Looks good so far.” She stepped into the dungeon and glanced around the forest clearing. She raised her eyebrows as she saw a midget sized stuffed teddy bear standing next to a wooden table with a bear costume lying on top of it. “Weird.”

She glanced over the bear costume then glared at the bear in case it was going to attack her or something like that one dungeon with the damned plushies. She shook her head after a couple of seconds of it just sitting there doing nothing. “I’m getting too paranoid.” She turned and walked toward the rest of the dungeon. She blinked as a wooden signpost burst out of the ground and oddly familiar music started playing. She stared in surprise at the sign near the top of the six foot post for a second until she realized that the sign had words on it. “Costume required?”

The stuffed bear turned to look at Taylor. “It’s a Gummi Bear forest, thus you need to be a bear.”

Taylor turned to stare at the stuffed bear in surprise, barely stopping herself from blasting it. “What?”

“It’s part of the theme. Get with the program, listen to the music and get your costume on!” the stuffed bear sang with enthusiasm.

She glanced warily at the costume then at the dungeon exit as she tried to figure out if she wanted to hassle with the costume or just leave and try something else. “At least my friends aren’t here to see me make a fool of myself.” She walked over to the costume and picked it up. She frowned slightly as she looked at the popup. “Gummi Bear costume, fits over your clothes and grants the Gummi Bear status to anyone that wears it.” She equipped the costume then blinked while everything grew or she shrank as the forest suddenly looked a lot larger. “Great, I’m a *bleep* Gummi Bear.” Taylor blinked. “Bleep? What the *bleep*? How did I make a G rated dungeon?”

“You’re going to want to avoid the ogres in the first part of the forest, if you’re caught you’ll end up back here and have to start over,” the bear said cheerfully. “Feel free to pick the gummi berries, though they don’t do much on their own, but maybe you can find the recipe for gummiberry juice so that you can bounce around like an honest to goodness Gummi bear!”

“How do I find it?” Taylor sighed as the stuffed bear didn’t reply. “Fine,” she grumbled as she headed into the forest. She smiled as she quickly spotted a plethora of gummi berry bushes that had gummi berries on them. “Okay, maybe this won’t be so bad.”

She quickly hurried over and harvested two handfuls of berries before all of the berries vanished off the bush. “Okay, that’s annoying.” She put the berries she’d harvested into her ingredient bag then continued on her way. She gulped as she spotted a massive ten foot tall green skinned humanoid carrying a large wooden club, she was guessing it was an ogre. ‘Great.’ She glanced up at the various trees, thankfully most of them seemed sturdy enough to support her current weight and had branches she should be able to reach with her ring of jumping. She summoned her bow and quiver then carefully aimed at the back of the creature’s head and shot it. 

The ogre shouted in fury as it turned around and looked for the creature that stabbed it.

Taylor was less than pleased to notice that the orge’s hit points barely dropped a sliver from her sneak attack. ‘Great, so much for that idea.’

“Gotcha now!” the ogre shouted as it spotted Taylor.

Taylor raised her hands and sent two streams of lightning at the ogre. The lightning did slightly more damage to the ogre per second than her arrows had but it wasn’t nearly enough damage to do more than inconvenience the rather fearsome creature as it charged her. She turned and jumped toward the tree then jumped off the tree a second before the orge demolished it with his club. She blasted the ogre on her way down then jumped backwards as she continued to blast the ogre.

“Gummi Bear!” The ogre charged at Taylor swinging its massive club around like it was little more than a toothpick. 

Taylor barely avoided being splattered as she jumped to the side then turned and ran so that she could jump to the next tree. She blinked as something crashed into her back and she found herself back at the beginning of the dungeon. “What the *bleep*?”

The teddy bear spoke up, “I told you not to get hit or caught. Don’t worry, Gummi Bears are slippery critters so you’ll just find yourself back here if you get caught.”

“Good?” Taylor opened her status screen and checked her health. ‘Okay, at least I’m still at full health.’ She unequipped her costume then opened her magical crafting menu. She tossed the costume into the salvage box and hit accept. She blinked as the suit vanished and her enchanting tab opened to a new entry. “Huh, that actually worked.” She read the new entry with a touch of amusement as she thought about trolling the PRT. “Shape change: Gummi Bear, wearing an item enchanted with this allows you to swap to an alternate Gummi Bear form and back to your normal form at will. Might be useful, if only for amusement.”

She glanced at her tailoring tab that was also highlighted. She selected the tailoring tab and looked at the new Gummi Bear costume. ‘Huh, that one just turns you into a Gummi Bear, that could be fun to stick on someone, like Emma or Madison.’ She turned and walked out of the dungeon then closed the door and headed down to the kitchen to grab a snack and leave her father a note that she was going for a jog on the off chance that he came home for lunch.