Taylor Hebert Dungeon Girl Part 37 (Patreon)

Victoria glanced at Dean, Dennis and Taylor as they walked over to her locker. “Where’s Amy?”

Dennis said, “The office called, there was a six car pile up halfway through the period.”

“And they didn’t call me to fly her there?” Victoria pouted.

“I’m fairly sure she told the office about her hoverboard which is still unfair,” Dennis grumbled, slightly jealous that Vista had gotten one before he did.

Dean grinned as he thought about flying around the city like Chris. “I’m sure the hoverboards will be on sale eventually.”

“Yeah, probably way more than I can afford,” Dennis admitted, knowing that most of his money was locked away in a trust until he turned eighteen. He glanced at Taylor. “What do you think?”

Taylor shrugged. “It depends on how expensive they are, I wouldn’t mind having one.”

“Don’t need one,” Victoria said with a smirk.

“I’m a bit more curious where Amy picked up the sweet piece of tinkertech she used to open a portal in the hallway?” Dennis asked, rather curious as it matched the portal he’d seen in his MMO.

Taylor blinked. “Tinkertech portals? That’s a new one.”

“She probably got it from Neverland or Alchemist,” Victoria said, not sure if it was actually tinkertech or something she’d built to disguise her scroll use. “I’ll have to ask the next time I see Neverland.”

Dean said, “If you have a chance, could you ask her when the boards are going on sale to the general public?”

“Sure,” Victoria agreed, amused by the fact that Dean had already asked her.

“Thanks,” Dean said, happy that Victoria was in a good mood despite Amy not needing her help to get to the hospital.

“On that note, I need to hurry if I want to catch the bus,” Taylor admitted.

“Where are you heading? We can probably give you a lift,” Dean offered, not terribly concerned about the time as he had an hour before he had to be at the PRT to start an early shift.

“Home, I have some homework to work on,” Taylor replied. Technically she only had homework because she’d left her math for later because she’d been burning through her problems too quickly and didn’t want anyone noticing.

“Shouldn’t be a big deal unless you’re way out on the edges, you’re not, right?” Dean asked.

Taylor shook her head. “I wouldn’t want to impose.”

Victoria shook her head. “Nah, it’s barely a couple blocks out of the way taking Dennis home.”

Dean smiled. “In that case, don’t worry about it, a couple blocks is nothing, I like driving.”

“In that case, thanks,” Taylor replied, glad that she wouldn’t have to ride the bus home.

“In that case, shotgun,” Victoria said as she closed her locker and floated toward the door.

“I’d love to be able to fly,” Dennis said as they followed Victoria toward the parking lot.

“Flying would be pretty high on my list of things to pick up if I were a cape,” Taylor agreed.

Dennis chuckled. “I’m fairly sure that’s not how it works.”

“Considering all of the Tinkers that can make some method of flight, I beg to differ.”

“Fair enough but tinkertech has maintenance issues that keep them from just handing it out.”

“It can’t be that bad. There are two Tinkers in the wards and Kid Win can fly,” Taylor said, thinking about Gallant and Kid Win.

“Fair enough,” Dennis agreed, knowing he’d have to get through a rather thick folder of red tape in order to use Kid Win’s board let alone have him make something for him that he used on missions. Of course, there was no reason he’d know that if he wasn’t a cape which meant it wasn’t something he could talk about in front of civilians.

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Taylor glanced over her math homework one last time then put it back in her bag and looked up at the clock and smiled when she realized it had only taken her three minutes to finish the rest of her homework. “I might not be Alexandria or Legend but I’ll take it.” She pushed her chair back and stood up then opened her equipment page and started putting her costume on, thankful she didn’t have to put everything on piece by piece.

She finished equipping her armor then opened a portal to the lower part of the garage and stepped through. She frowned slightly as she glanced around the empty garage or at least mostly empty garage, the trash bags filled with what she was guessing were clothes sitting next to the Winslow portal was new though not unexpected.

Taylor glanced at the entrance to the movie theater, fairly sure she’d have more luck finding a needle in a haystack than finding which movie the group were watching. ‘In that case, I might as well work on crafting.’ She absently walked over to the tool cabinet they mostly used as a place to set things as she used her equipment page to look through her bags.

Lisa smiled as she exited the movie dungeon and saw Neverland pull a cheap looking plastic jewelry box out of thin air and set it on the tool cabinet. ”What are you working on?”

Taylor turned to look at Lisa. “I wanted to see if I could make a decent sized inventory ring.”

“That would certainly come in handy for looting the dungeon, especially if you can just toss bags in the slots,” Lisa agreed as she walked over to look at the collection of jewelry.

“That’s the idea,” Taylor agreed as she combed through the various rings and necklaces she’d found in the dungeons.

Lisa blinked as she looked at the various gold rings in the cheap plastic box, some of which had fingernail sized gems set in them. “Did you find those in the dungeon?”

“Yeah, some of them are a bit gaudy,” Taylor admitted as she pulled out a decent looking gold ring with a smallish sapphire in it. “What do you think?”

Lisa studied the rather expensive looking ring that was likely the least expensive of the gold rings she could see in the box. “It looks less ostentatious than the rest of the gold rings which is probably for the best considering a lot of them wouldn’t be out of place at a red carpet event in Hollywood or in a high class art museum.”

“We could always go with one of the plain silver rings for your inventory system if you’d like,” Taylor offered as she opened her enchanting menu.

“Nothing wrong with gold,” Lisa replied with amusement.

“Where are the rest of the gang?” Taylor asked, curious if they’d already left now that Coil was dead.

“Hitting the bathroom and picking up more popcorn and soda.”

“Does this mean you’re planning on sticking around?” Taylor asked, curious what the team had decided.

“We’re staying, if you’ll have us.” Lisa wasn’t sure she completely trusted Neverland considering the crazy number of things she couldn’t figure out the girl’s power but the movie dungeon was awesome and likely worth more than a few million if they played their cards correctly.

“I could use more friends.”

“You’re serious, aren’t you? No hidden motives, no questions?” Lisa asked, honestly a bit surprised that Neverland wasn’t asking more questions.

“It’s not like I’m sharing all of my secrets though I have a question that I’d like an honest answer to.”

“What’s that?” Lisa asked, trying not to feel like the other shoe was about to drop.

“Is there anything from your pasts that we need to deal with so it doesn’t screw us over?” Taylor asked, knowing that everyone had a past.

Lisa was just glad that it was something she had a ‘right’ to know if they were going to be part of her team rather than pointed questions about their past. “You know about Rachel’s issues. Brian just wants to help his sister. My parents would love to have me back so I could help them make money but they’re not really a concern in the grand scheme of things.”

“Alec?” Taylor asked warily.

“Yeah, he’s related to a powerful master, so the less visible he is, the better.”

“How likely is he to show up?” Taylor asked warily as she flipped to the page with her new inventory enchant.

Lisa shook her head. “It’s much more likely that we’ll have to deal with Alec’s siblings showing up for one reason or another.”

“I’ll put it on the list of things to work on defenses for,” Taylor replied as she selected the inventory enchant and tossed the ring into the box. She glanced at the parameters for the interface to make sure it was still set up from when she’d created her ring then slid the slider all the way up on the number of slots and hit accept.

“That would be great,” Lisa agreed, knowing a bunch of people with wealth and power would deeply and generously appreciate having some reliable defense against Masters and Strangers.

Taylor resisted the urge to start humming as she waited for her counter to hit zero. She smiled as she finished enchanting the ring and a tooltip popped up informing her that the ring had twelve inventory slots. She tossed the ring to Lisa. “That should give you an inventory with twelve slots.”

Lisa glanced at the ring then slipped it on her left ring finger and grinned as two rows of six mostly translucent six inch boxes appeared a couple inches above her ring. “Thanks.” She tilted her hand and watched the boxes stay a couple of inches to a foot above her hand depending on how she moved her hand then vanish when she tried to figure out what she needed to touch to make them vanish. She stared in disbelief at her ring. “How the hell?”

“Magic,” Taylor replied, not sure exactly what she was asking but having a pretty good idea she was talking about the inventory system. 

“Right…” Lisa trailed off as she focused on her new inventory and they reappeared. “Okay, you’re messing with me, aren’t you?”

“Of course not,” Taylor replied with a grin.

Lisa shivered slightly as Neverland’s smile stretched into inhuman proportions for a couple seconds before it returned to a normal smile. “You’re enjoying this way too much.”

“Probably,” Taylor admitted as she looked through her box. “Any suggestions for a ring for Rachel?”

“One of the plain silver ones is your best bet to get Rachel to wear it. Does gold work better than silver for your power?” Lisa asked, trying to figure out more information about Neverland’s power.

“Not that I’ve noticed,” Taylor replied as she picked out a plain silver ring and tossed it into her enchanting box. She selected her new skill enchant then looked through her options, rather relieved that literacy was on the list of skills she could imbue into an item even if it didn’t have an asterisk next to it like the skills she’d picked up from the dungeon. “Let’s see, I should probably adding running and healing so she can keep her dogs in good health.”

“Your power is bullshit, you know that right?” Lisa asked with a touch of amusement mixed with a healthy amount of envy.

“Surprisingly enough, you’re not the first person that has told me that,” Taylor admitted as she closed the jewelry box and stuck it back in her inventory. “Any clue what she’d want her costume to look like?”

“Not really, she normally just wears a cheap dog mask and her street clothes. She’ll be here in a couple minutes, you can ask her.”

“Sounds good,” Taylor agreed as Brian and Alec walked out of the dungeon. “Any trouble?” she asked as Noelle walked out of the entrance.

Brian shook his head, “Not particularly, Winslow was easy enough.”

“Almost too easy,” Noelle pointed out as she stepped out of the way so Gothic could exit the dungeon without touching her.

“I wanted to start you with something easy before I tossed you into the deep end,” Taylor explained as Gothic stepped out of the dungeon and looked around.

“Sounds reasonable though I think we’re more than a bit overgeared for Winslow.”

“More than a bit,” Alec agreed, thinking about the punch from one of the jocks he’d barely felt.

“Where’s my other half?” Gothic asked, disappointed that Amy hadn’t come with Taylor.

“She got called to the hospital during her last class. Dean had work so Victoria should be dropping by in ten to twenty minutes to help us smash things at least for a couple hours.”

“That explains it,” Gothic agreed, relieved that it wasn’t something more serious.

Noelle spoke up, “Speaking of work, do you have something more challenging for us than Winslow?”

Taylor said, “Sure, you can work on skinning giant rabbits and fire rats in a leather working dungeon, kill goblins in a cave dungeon or collect magical cloth in a plushie dungeon if you want.”

“Plushie dungeon?” Alec asked in disbelief.

“Eh, don’t knock it,” Taylor replied with amusement. “That’s where we found the pattern for our expanded pockets.”

“Ah, objection withdrawn.”

Brian asked, “In that case, any suggestions?”

Gothic said, “Dealing with the rabbits in the leather working dungeon just requires decent armor and ranged weapons. We can probably scrounge up enough fire resistance gear that dealing with the fire rats shouldn’t be too hard.”

Taylor said, “I’d rather leave the nastier goblin dungeon for when Player One gets here as he’s the trap expert.”

“Which is more helpful?” Lisa asked.

“At this point? The most helpful thing would be to give you ranged weaponry and martial arts books and a pile of elemental pistols and have you working on shooting rabbits for leather until your combat skills get to a reasonable level where you can kill the demons in Diablo without dying or getting seriously hurt.”

Brian frowned thoughtfully and nodded, “That sounds like a good place to start.”

Taylor turned to look as the door opened and Rachel walked in with Brutus and Angelica. “Are you up for hunting rabbits?”

“Do we get to eat the rabbits?” Rachel asked hopefully as she walked over to the group.

“They drop steaks that are actually fairly tasty so yes you can eat the rabbits,” Taylor offered.

“Count us in,” Rachel agreed, happy to have a decent supply of meat for her dogs that didn’t cut into the money she needed for other supplies.

Taylor glanced at her mana bar then hit accept now that she had enough to create Rachel’s ring. “Give me a second to finish creating Rachel’s ring then we can pass out the books we need and get started.”

“How far have you gotten in the lightning part of the dungeon?” Noelle asked.

“I can clear everything to the mini boss. I tried fighting it once, it tossed me like a rag doll and nearly killed me even with my lightning immunity crown thanks to the fact that it’s main attack is basically a lightning charged vortex. Victoria has managed to kill it a few times so you shouldn’t have too much of a problem as long as you’re using some resistance gear.” Taylor looked at the tooltip for the new ring. ‘Literacy, Running and healing, not bad.’

“I’m willing to try,” Noelle agreed, knowing her regeneration would go a long way toward keeping her safe.

“What are you going to be doing while we’re killing rabbits?” Alec asked.

Taylor grinned as she thought about her new magic girl amulet that should let her fly and toss elemental blasts. “Taking shots at the fire rats so that I can get enough rat leather to make the group enough resistance gear to keep everyone alive when you start fighting the rats.”

Victoria grinned as she walked in. “Looks like we’re just in time.”

Amy rolled her eyes as she followed her sister into the garage then closed the door behind her. 

Taylor turned to look at Victoria and Amy. “Yep, we’re just about to hit the leather working dungeon, are you up for killing the mini boss with Noelle?”

“Hell yeah,” Victoria replied excitedly, rather curious to see what Noelle could do if she went all out. “Sure, that will give Amy a chance to get used to her new tiara.”

“I could use the practice,” Amy admitted. She’d rather practice somewhere she wasn’t going to break things if only to keep her sister from gloating if she broke something.

Taylor held out the silver ring toward Rachel. “This should give you the ability to heal your dogs and increase your running speed if you practice.”

Rachel glanced at the ring then glanced at Gothic who gave her a nod. “Thank you.” She took the ring and put it on.

“Anything we need to know about the dungeon before we step in there?” Alec asked.

“Not really, you’ll be turning in hide to the leather worker so that he’ll teach your the basic skills, don’t worry about the patterns I’ll leave a folder of them with Lisa that you can use after you pick up the skills.” Taylor pulled five martial arts books out of her pocket and set the stack on the cabinet. “We’ll start with the martial arts books then move onto the ranged weapon books.”

Amy glanced at the storeroom that was connected to a dungeon door. “Is anyone still in the old dungeons?”

“Shouldn’t be,” Lisa replied as she picked up the top book and gave it a once over.

“Opps.” Taylor walked over to the storeroom and closed the door then walked over to the bathroom and closed the door then opened the leather working dungeon. 

“I’ll grab the extra elemental pistols,” Gothic said as she headed for the storeroom they were using as an armory.

Lisa opened the book then smiled as she realized she knew how to fight or at least the basics. “Bit of a head rush.”

“I already used the weapon book,” Brian said as Neverland pulled another stack of books out of her pocket. “That’s a neat trick.”

“Thanks, we’ll see about farming enough magical cloth to add pockets to your gear once we get everyone decent gear.” Taylor set the stack of ranged weapon books on the cabinet, happy that they dropped from Winslow as she’d farmed the hell out of it for various reasons.

Brian used the martial arts book and blinked as the experience bar quickly filled, emptied and filled repeatedly. “Ah, where is the bar supposed to stop?”

“When you run out of skill,” Taylor said with a touch of amusement.

“Ah, okay,” he replied as his experience bar finally slowed down after doing the same song and dance eleven times.

Alec sighed as his bar barely flopped over to level 2. “Fuck you man, fuck you.”

“I told you that you needed to practice,” Brian said with a touch of amusement.

Rachel warily reached out and picked up the book and opened it. She was rather surprised when the book vanished and she realized she actually understood some of the theory behind her street fighting.

Lisa smiled as she realized that Rachel had managed to use the book. “Gothic has a bunch of academics books that you should try to read before we hit the dungeon.”

Rachel shrugged. “I’ll try.”

Amy opened her leather working tab as she watched Noelle and the Undersiders use the books and get ready. “Rachel, do you want collars that will increase your dogs’ fire resistance?”

“That would be good,” Rachel agreed, knowing they were decently durable but not fireproof.

Noelle had a feeling the gang would flip over the dungeons when they got here, she just hoped that Francis didn’t say or do anything too stupid.

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