Taylor Hebert Dungeon Girl Part 33 (Patreon)

Victoria felt like laughing as the adrenaline hit and she pushed her flight as fast as she could in her mad ‘dash’ toward the town. As much as she would have liked to hit a couple of the flying capes to test their durability and see what they dropped, she didn’t want to risk them having some bullshit counterattack power or shield like some of the people in the game.

She’d barely crossed the town wall when her mask’s danger sense screamed that she needed to dodge. She twisted out of the way of the first rose shaped projectile then took the second one on her shield, which popped it like a soap bubble. She twisted and dodged the next rose as she closed the distance, hoping that her shield would be back to full strength when she hit the idiot in the long coat and top hat that was trying to kill her. She dodged the next rose by dropping a couple feet then gleefully put on a burst of speed when her shield regenerated.

“Shit!” Greg shouted as the bitch shoulder checked his character and splattered him against the wall. “What the fuck was that?!”

“Greg!” his mother shouted from the kitchen.

“Shit,” he whimpered as he pushed the button to log out. “I stepped on something,” he lied, not wanting to get banned from playing his favorite game for swearing because someone was hacking.

“Ass,” Victoria complained as she picked up the cane and the boots he’d dropped. She glanced around the empty street then hurried into the item shop, wanting to be off the street as soon as possible. She frowned when her chameleon effect vanished as she stepped through the door. “Aww I liked that,” she muttered as she looked around the magic shop, comparing it to the version in the game. 

‘Same row of top hats, same collection of potion bottles on the shelf.’ She glanced at the faintly glowing spider web near the ceiling that was more or less the same as the game version then turned her attention to the old man behind the counter wearing an old fashioned black suit and bowler hat.

“Something I can help you with young lady?” the old white haired man behind the counter asked politely.

Victoria smiled as she walked over to the shopkeeper. “I have a code I was hoping to turn in and I’d like to see what you have for transformation items.”

“Of course, do you have the code for the prize with you?” the man asked as he grabbed a top hat off the shelf and set it on the table. “I also have a transformation necklace if you don’t want to wear a top hat.”

Victoria stuck the boots and cane she’d taken off the idiot in her magically expanded pouch then grabbed the post-it-note a smirking Kevin had given her and handed it to the old man. “Here.”

He looked at the note then grabbed a familiar looking tiara from the cabinet under the counter and handed it to her. “One authentic Virtue Girl tiara.”

“Virtue girl, right,” Victoria muttered as she put the copy of her tiara in her pouch then looked at the hat on the table. “How much for the hat?”

“One hundred gold per hat,” the shopkeeper replied.

Victoria winced as she tried to estimate how long it would take to grind 100 gold in the starting zone when the monsters might cough up a single silver piece if you were lucky and you dropped all of your money if someone killed you. She was just glad that she had plenty of gold from the Diablo dungeon, so she could skip that rather painful and probably lethal step. She pulled a bag of gold out of her pouch and set it on the counter. “I’ll take two. How much for the necklace?”

The shopkeeper grinned as he pulled a top hat from the shelf then set it next to the first hat. “It’s a touch expensive at 1,000 gold but it allows you to turn into a flying blaster.”

“Flying blaster? I’ll take it,” Victoria said, thinking about how happy Amy would be to have flight and a decent ranged attack ability.

“Excellent,” the shopkeeper replied as he reached under the counter and grabbed a necklace. “Might I suggest a couple healing potions and maybe something to cure status effects?”

“How much?”

“The healing potions are reasonable, only 10 gold. The best of the status curing potions are 50 gold.”

Victoria raised an eyebrow. “50 gold for a potion?”

“It cures all permanent status effects that can be put on you by another magic girl, including the ones that don’t vanish upon death. The ones for specific problems are of course cheaper but between you and me, they’re not enough cheaper to worry about unless you’re already afflicted and know exactly what you’re cursed with.”

“Ah, in that case, I’ll take a dozen of each,” Victoria replied, knowing the group would want examples to reverse engineer.

“Excellent,” the replied as he collected the health and status effect potions then started counting out gold coins to cover the bill.

Victoria pulled her cell phone out of her pocket and called Taylor while the shopkeeper counted the coins.

“You’re alright?” Taylor asked a touch relieved as she put Victoria on speaker phone.

“Yeah, I only had to splatter a magic guy on the way in, didn’t even get a scratch.”

“That’s good,” Amy said, happy that her sister hadn’t gotten herself killed.

“Don’t worry Ames, I’m fine,” Victoria assured her sister.

“Did you get your tiara?” Kevin asked hoping they could actually turn in codes.

“Yeah, I’ll have to talk to Mom about suing the company for stealing my look,” Victoria grumbled.

“You’re assuming they didn’t have permission,” Amy teased. She wouldn’t put it past Carol to stick the money in the New Wave account to help pay for damages and supplies.

“When are you coming back?” Gothic asked a bit worriedly.

“As soon as the shopkeeper finishes counting the gold, I’ll open a portal and jump ship,” Victoria replied.

The shopkeeper looked up from putting the coins in stacks for easy counting. “While you’re spending gold, do you want a cape upgrade for your magical girl form that creates rose petals?”

“Does it do anything else and how much?” Victoria asked, slightly curious about an item that ‘upgraded’ the magical girl outfits.

“It’s only two hundred, you have plenty of gold,” the shopkeeper replied as he went back to counting her gold.

Randal spoke up, “You might as well grab it, we can probably learn something from it.”

“Sure,” Victoria agreed, not really caring because it was the group’s money anyways.

Kevin mentally ran through the list of items the man sold in the game. “Do they have any bracers?”

“Bracers?” Victoria asked.

The shopkeeper shrugged. “We have some low end crap. I mean sure, we have some bracers, 20 gold for copper bracers.”

“Do they do anything special?” Victoria asked warily.

“They work as armor,” the man replied.

“Sure, add them to the pile then I’ll be going. I’ll talk to you in a minute.” Victoria ended the call then stuck her phone in her pocket.

The shopkeeper smiled as he grabbed a set of copper bracers and put them on the counter then snapped his fingers which caused the exact amount of coins to move across the counter and stack themselves in perfect rows. “In that case, have a nice day.”

Victoria stared at the neat stacks of coins then sighed and picked up her purchases as she realized the man had wasted time so that he could convince her to buy more stuff. She forced herself to smile at the old man. “Thanks.”

“You’re welcome. Come again when you need more potions,” the shopkeeper said cheerfully.

Victoria barely managed to keep her smile plastered to her face and not roll her eyes as she moved her purchases to her pouches. She pulled a scroll of town portal out of her pocket and used it to create a portal straight back to the garage. She took a last look around the shop then stepped through the portal.

Gothic pulled Victoria into a hug. “I’m glad you survived.” She was so relieved she didn’t even think to grope her.

“Give me a second before you close the portal.” Randal stepped through the portal then turned and looked as the door opened. He waved at the busty red haired magic girl in a sparkly translucent blue mini dress that was decked out in rune covered bracers, boots and shin guards as she stepped into the shop. He glanced at her perfect looking F cup breasts whipped out his cell phone and took a picture then turned and jumped back through the portal. “Close it!”

Victoria closed the portal then turned to look at Randal. “What’s the matter?”

Randal sighed in relief. “Someone else came into the shop and I’d rather not have one of the PVP happy magic girls running amok around here.”

Gothic giggled as she let Vicky go. “Amok, amok, amok!”

Amy glanced at Gothic. “This is why we don’t need any more amok because we already have our quota of crazy, we don’t need more.”

“Hey I resemble that remark,” Gothic complained good naturedly.

Taylor closed the bathroom door, closing the dungeon turned and grinned at Gothic then looked at Victoria. “What did you get?”

“Loot,” Victoria replied with amusement as she started pulling her purchases out of her pouches and putting them on the desk. “I picked up an extra magic hat so you can disenchant it to figure out how to create more.”

“That’s useful,” Taylor said as she walked over, picked up the hat and looked at the tooltip. “Okay, the hat changes you into a magical boy or girl depending, grants a questionable outfit, a boost to your physical stats, and a magical sword attack.”

“What about the other hat?” Victoria asked as she pulled the sword cane out of her pocket.

Taylor picked up the second hat and glanced over the tooltip to check to see if it was the same. “Same.” She opened her enchanting menu and dropped the hat into the disenchant box and tapped the icon. She grinned as she looked over her new enchantments. “Sweet, this makes things a lot easier.”

“What did you get?” Kevin asked, curious what she’d picked up.

“A couple really nice enchantments,” Taylor replied gleefully. “The main enchant works pretty much the same as the game.”

“In other words, we’ll get a menu and can change it?” Randal asked, already thinking about all of the game related shenanigans they could pull off.

“Looks that way,” Taylor agreed, rather happy that she could add an additional layer of misdirection between her cape persona and her civilian identity. 

Amy pulled Taylor into a hug. “Awesome! That should let me get out of the spotlight when I need to.”

“Happy to help,” Taylor replied as she hugged Amy, happy she could give the world famous cape a break from being in the spotlight.

Gothic snickered. “Awesome, I can look like other people which should help confuse the PRT.”

“Maybe we didn’t think this through,” Kevin teased.

“Seems reasonable to me,” Taylor teased back as she let go of Amy.

Gothic stuck her tongue out at Kevin.

“What else did you get?” Randal asked, curious what she’d picked up that had Taylor grinning like a loon.

Taylor said, “I can also set the person’s form when I enchant the transformation item which is probably what I’ll use on Noelle’s ring. I can also set the enchantment so only your outfit changes which might be useful for certain situations. More importantly I picked up an inventory enchant which is pretty sweet.”

“As in an inventory like the game?” Kevin asked hopefully.

“Yep,” Taylor agreed smugly.

“Gimme,” Gothic demanded playfully.

Taylor laughed. “Don’t worry, we’ll make sure everyone gets an inventory item but let’s worry about Noelle first so we can tell the PRT about the base, drop off Coil and claim it. Besides, that’s not even the most interesting enchantment I got off the hat.”

“Oh?” Kevin asked.

“Yep, I got an enchantment that allows me to imbue an item with a skill so it will basically teach you the skill if you use it.”

Randal stared at Taylor. “Any skill?”

“I need at least 5 ranks of skill to imbue it and you need five ranks in it to keep it but I haven’t seen skills I can’t use it for, including enchantment.” Taylor picked up the necklace and grinned as she realized she could learn a flight skill and an elemental attack skill from the necklace.

“Yeah, don’t do that, you might start a war and not just a gang war,” Kevin said quickly.

Taylor shrugged. “I wasn’t planning on it, but I wouldn’t mind learning flight then adding it to a skill item for the rest of the group.”

Gothic snickered. “Sorry Amy but it’s official, she’s my new favorite person.”

Amy grinned as she pictured flying with her sister. “No offense taken.”

Randal winced as he pictured a bunch of villains and governments trying to kill them over the magic girl items if the secret ever got out. “Can you make them bind-on-equip?”

“Thankfully,” Taylor replied as she picked up the cane. “I’d rather not let our training aids get misplaced, especially the ones that aren’t one use. It’s one thing when it’s a book, you read it and it vanishes, it’s another when someone could just pass the ring around and suddenly you have an entire army of flying blasters.”

“Okay, that’s a little scary,” Amy admitted.

“Does that mean we can’t upgrade the wards?” Victoria asked.

“It just means we have to be very careful about how we do it,” Taylor said as she looked at the tooltip for the sword cane. “Decent damage on the sword cane.” She set the cane back on the pile then picked up the boots and looked at the tooltip. “Boots of dodging, not bad.”

“They obviously didn’t help that much considering he didn’t dodge when I shoulder checked him because he was tossing Magical Roses of Doom at me.”

Randal looked down his nose at Victoria. “Roses of Doom?”

Victoria snorted. “He tossed one at me when I was flying in, it left a hole in the stone wall behind me and set off my danger sense so I hit him.”

“Seems fair to me,” Kevin agreed, not seeing a problem with splattering idiots in a dungeon.

“I also picked up a status curing potion that might help return Noelle to normal at least temporarily.”

Taylor picked up one of the green potions Victoria had picked up and looked at the tooltip. “Cures curses, diseases and any mental status effects.”

“That should certainly help. What do you need to enchant the transformation item?”

“Same thing as everything else, crystals and mana. I have a couple crystals and a couple random rings in my pocket that we can use.”

“Let’s get this dealt with,” Kevin suggested, wanting Noelle fixed before she went nuts.

Taylor opened a town portal outside the vault in the base that used to be Coil’s but was hopefully going to be hers. She picked up one of the status removal potions then stepped through the town portal. She walked over to the control panel as the rest of the group filed in behind her. She pushed the intercom button. “We found at least a partial solution to your problem Noelle.”

“Partial solution?” Noelle asked warily.

“The first step is a Tinker elixir that should restore your body. If that doesn’t work, we have an item that gives people a human form. I suggest taking the elixir first,” Taylor suggested as she pushed the button to open the vault.

“I’m willing to try it,” Noelle agreed as the door slid open, trying to ignore the voice in her head telling her it wasn’t going to work and that they were trying to trick her.

Taylor walked over to the opening and carefully set the potion down in the shadows. “That should help.”

Noelle looked at the potion warily, trying to ignore the voice in the back of her head. She walked over, knelt down and bent down so that she could reach the potion with her human half. ‘It can’t hurt,’ she thought to herself as she grabbed the glass potion vial, being extremely careful not to shatter it. She pulled the cork and downed the potion in one gulp. 

She shivered as a rush of cold swept through her, numbing everything and extinguishing the rage she’d been feeling for months. The mental changes left her disorientated enough that it took her a couple of seconds to realize she was standing on her human feet in a t-shirt that barely covered everything it needed to cover with no sign of her monstrous body. “How the hell?”

Taylor smiled at Noelle. “Tinkers are bullshit.”

“Do I still have my powers?” Noelle asked, unsure as she couldn’t hear the voice anymore.

“Let me check,” Amy said as she stepped up to the door.

Kevin pulled his attention off the vault. “Now that we know you have this well in hand, any objections to us dropping Coil off at the PRT?”

“Nope, go for it,” Taylor replied, wanting Coil out of her hair but needing to stick around to make Noelle’s transformation item if she needed it.

“Cool,” Kevin replied as he headed down the hallway to pick up Coil from where Richard was guarding him and the doctor.

“I’ll help,” Victoria offered as she followed him.

“Please check,” Noelle begged as she held out her hand hesitantly for Panacea to do her thing.

Gothic shook her head. “I’ll stay here in case Noelle needs some help.” Mostly she wanted to make sure that Amy was safe.

Amy carefully reached out with her gloved hand and touched Noelle’s outstretched hand. It was a relief to find Noelle’s connection to her power was back in her head where it belonged and that she was human again. The twisted mass that had been the Corona Pollentia and Gemma were now healthy separate organs that no longer resembled a particularly malignant tumorous mass. “You’re still a parahuman but the potion seems to have fixed your body.”

“How long until I end up a monster again?” Noelle asked warily.

“I don’t know. Days, weeks or months?” Amy sighed. “How long did it take the first time?”

“We noticed the problem after a couple weeks, things started getting out of control a couple months after I got powers.”

Amy nodded. “In that case, if you don’t notice a problem in a couple months, you’ll probably be fine.”

Taylor spoke up, “Either way, we’re going to set you up with a item that will give you a stable alternate form with a full coverage costume which should keep you from accidentally cloning people or changing into a monster while we look for a more permanent solution.”

“What would my alternate form look like?” Noelle asked, just happy that she wasn’t a monster anymore.

“You get to design that,” Gothic piped up.

“What?” Noelle asked in surprise.

“Yeah, it’s a thing,” Amy said with a shrug.

Taylor opened her enchanting menu then flipped to her new patterns and created a basic transformation ring so Noelle could pick what she wanted to look like for her more permanent ring. “You can use my ring to figure out what you want to look like, then I’ll make you a permanent ring.”

Noelle slipped the ring on then blinked as a computer like interface popped up. “Interesting.”

Gothic grinned. “Don’t worry, we’ll have you looking like a goddess before we’re done.”