Taylor and the Twisted Game Part 22 (Patreon)

'I'm going to have to recruit her if we end up keeping our powers,' Emily Piggot mused as she watched Skitter carefully line up a silvery hoop with the other two links on the belt she was working on, demonstrating a resourcefulness with her phasing spell that Shadow Stalker could learn something from.

Taylor let go of the truesilver link she was holding with a pair of pliers and sighed in relief when the hoop dropped out of phase without merging with or phasing through the other loops. "It still needs a bit of polishing but here's hoping it works," she said as she dropped her phasing spell and worked on unclamping the belt from the vice she'd used to hold the links steady.

"You can always polish it after you make sure it works," Emily pointed out as she studied the ornate wolf's head belt buckle with gem sockets for eyes, wondering how long it would take once they got out for Hookwolf to take exception to the use of a wolf in her costume. "Are you going to do the same with the bracelets?"

"I'm torn between making casting bracelets and bracers that we could actually block with," Taylor admitted as she dropped the belt into her inventory so she could look at the description. "That worked better than I was expecting, seventeen of the twenty sockets actually work."

"Do both, you'll want some casual gear for when you're not expecting trouble," Emily pointed out. "Can you fix the broken ones?"

"Hopefully," Taylor replied as she used Tats' ability and swapped a meta gem socket from one of the quest helmets her puppets had picked up, using it to replace one of the broken sockets, giving her seventeen gem slots and a meta gem slot. She quickly sacrificed two more helmets for their meta slots, bringing her total up to three meta slots and seventeen normal slots. "It's a bit lopsided but I should be able to swap the bits so the meta gems fit on the sides and back so it doesn't look off center."

Emily glanced at the larger sockets on the belt. "What's the difference other than the size of the sockets?"

Taylor pulled a polishing cloth out of her inventory and got to work polishing the belt. "The meta gems normally offer interesting bonuses that you normally can't find on gems or even gear like spell reflect, damage mitigation or a boost to movement speed, probably because the only thing I've seen with meta gems are high end helmets so far."

"In that case, why not replace everything with meta gems?" Emily asked.

"You need a certain number of 'normal' gems of various colors to power the meta gems. If we're lucky we won't have to have seperate gems for each meta gem but we might have to balance things so I'm trying to keep the meta gems down to a reasonable level until I've run some tests," Taylor explained as she finished polishing the belt, making the silvery blue metal gleam.

"It's worth investigating," Emily agreed, wondering how hard it would be to equip her agents with belts that would turn them into low end brutes. "How much are you going to sell the gems for?"

"Right now? Nothing or at least close to nothing, once we get back?" Taylor shrugged. "It's going to depend on how well I can adapt everything I learn or if the company was lying about us keeping our skills and resources. I'm stockpiling resources on the off chance that I get to take them with me but I'm not going to count on it."

"Even if we can't keep anything, I'll make sure you get rewarded for the help once we get back," Emily promised, figuring she'd pay her out of her own account if she couldn't arrange a suitable reward for the crafting assistance and use of her mansion as a base.

"If we don't get to keep anything and we don't get paid by the company for surviving, I'll probably take you up on it," Taylor said as she grabbed a cheap linen belt from her bag of holding and dropped it into her transmogrification box. She selected her truesilver belt then hit the button and grinned when she got a gleaming metal belt with twenty sockets and the linen belt's less than impressive stats. "At least I'll have plenty of meta and prismatic sockets to move around."

"Does that mean you got it working?" Dennis asked as he walked over with Sherrel.

"I need to swap some of the sockets around so it doesn't look lopsided and run some tests but we're getting there," Taylor replied cheerfully, glad that her first creative project where she wasn't using the crafting system had actually turned out reasonably well. "Did you find anything interesting?"

"Surprisingly enough, yeah. The Idol of Brutality reduces the rage cost of maul and swipe by three which should help Vicky, especially if it stacks." Dennis pulled a rune covered blade out of his inventory and showed it to Taylor. "Of course, that pales in comparison to the Runeblade of Baron Rivendare. It gives you an unholy aura that increases your movement speed by 10% and increases your health regeneration by 20 points every five seconds, the best part is that it's subject to bonus healing because it's a spell."

Sherrel grinned at Skitter. "Meaning we're going to be nearly impossible to kill once you and Amelia spread the blessing around."

Taylor laughed as she pictured having an entire army of regenerating puppets clearing dungeons while she worked on projects. "Considering it gives you an aura, we probably can't stack it but we probably won't need to."

"Is the fact that it's an unholy aura going to cause problems?" Emily asked, wanting to make sure.

"It shouldn't, but we can have Amelia check for negative side effects," Dennis assured her as he pulled a helm out of his inventory and a pair of gloves. "The Helm of the Executioner gives you a flat bonus +2% chance to hit, which means we can probably stack it on everything and hit the bosses in the harder dungeons and the Death Grips gloves makes you immune to the disarm condition which should help when we're dealing with certain dungeons."

Taylor glanced between the metal helmet and the rune covered sword he was holding. "How many times did you run the dungeon?"

"Five times," Dennis replied with a grin, rather happy with his luck. "The experience dropped to almost nothing when I hit sixty two so we decided that we might as well check in before we swapped to a different dungeon."

"Do you have any advice for the dungeon?" Emily asked, knowing she needed a better dungeon to run than Zul'Farrak if she wanted to get done with leveling in a reasonable amount of time.

Sherrel shrugged. "Not really, we mostly just blasted everything but we're magic users."

"About that, you've got a decent amount of mana thanks to your gear, do you want a couple of damaging spells?" Taylor asked, figuring she might as well share some of the spells she'd managed to pick up.

"What type?" Emily asked.

"I'm a fan of the frostbolt volley spell that I picked up from a ghost in Karazhan that slows everything the bolts hit, it would give you more time to shoot them," Taylor replied with a grin.

"I wouldn't object to having a decent collection of spells," Emily replied, not seeing a reason to refuse extra powers since her basic hunter abilities would be enough to force her out of her job if they ended up keeping their abilities.

Dennis shook his head. "That's bullshit, can you hook a fellow mage up?"

"Of course," Taylor replied with a grin as she opened her transmogrification trade window with Clock so he could let her transmute the sword so she could unbind it. "Let's get the items sorted out first then we can run through the list and figure out what spells you want, Amy should be back from her Blood Furnace run by that point so you can probably talk her into upgrading your gear."

"Sounds good," Dennis agreed.

"Speaking of research, can I borrow your cell so I can look at some of the Outland dungeons?" Sherrel asked, wanting to make sure none of the dungeons they were going to explore had death traps or funky mechanics that would get them killed.

Taylor finished transmogrifying the Baron's sword into a symbiote sword. "Sure, give me a minute, I have a puppet looking at the Tempest Keep maps," she replied as she had the minion with the phone leave the lounge and head their way.

"Thanks," Sherrel replied as she studied Taylor's belt. "Are you going to put sockets on everything?"

Taylor shook her head. "Not right now, I don't mind moving qualities around for one piece of gear now that our upgrades are slowing down but I'm not going to do the same thing for twenty pieces of gear per person."

Emily nodded. "Especially when we don't need it."

"Basically," Taylor agreed as she opened another transmogrification trading window for the helmet. "We'll probably change our minds when the upgrades start slowing down."

"Makes sense," Dennis agreed as he dropped the helmet into the window. "Have you found any decent wands yet?"

"Not really but Amelia and I put together a decent bow if you'd like to learn to shoot," Taylor offered as she transmogrified the helmet into a symbiote and opened another window for the gloves.

"Sure," Dennis replied as he dropped the gloves in the box.

"That reminds me, who do I talk to about getting a new fishing pole?" Emily asked, figuring she might as well check with Skitter in case she had extra.

Taylor pulled a bow and one of her extra fishing poles out of her bag of holding and handed them to Emily after she transmogrified the gloves for Clock. "One drastically improved fishing pole and one bow of doom."

Emily opened her equipment page and looked at her new bow's stats. "You could shoot through an armored car with this."

"Probably," Taylor replied with a grin then pulled up her list of spells. "You're going to want some type of healing spell and a spell to cure disease and poison, probably a shield spell."

"That would certainly help," Emily agreed.

0o0o0

Amy pulled her attention away from the fiendish workshop and the large cyborg demon that was working on something that might have been an orc at some point or at least a simulated orc and glanced at Skitter's puppet. "Do we have a plan?"

"Don't die," Taylor replied cheerfully as she used her puppet's teaching ability to teach the demonic boss the teaching ability.

"I wasn't planning on it." Amy cast her shield spell for a bit of extra protection and because she didn't like pain then dashed across the workshop, trying to close the distance before the boss could do something problematic.

"My work must not be interrupted," the demonic cyborg shouted as he swung at the elf charging him.

Amy let her shield take the first hit as she reached up and grabbed the boss's hand. She quickly used her power to shut down his ability to control his limbs, dropping him to the ground in a heap of metal and flesh. "I'd like to make a trade, your skills for your life."

"You're going to die," the demon snarled as he unsuccessfully tried to force his limbs to move.

"Not today," Amy replied as she used her power to twist his mind to love her unconditionally after removing his immunity to mind control.

"Forgive me mistress!" the demon shouted as he quivered in place, knowing he'd displeased his goddess and wanting to make it better.

"I'd consider it a personal favor if you taught Skitter's puppet what you know about engineering and your mind control spell," Amy ordered the demon.

"At once!" the demon shouted enthusiastically as he used his new skill to teach the puppet everything he knew about engineering and his domination spell, happy that he didn't actually have to move his limbs to cast the spell. "What else can this miserable servant do to make your life better?"

Amy glanced over at Skitter. "Did it work?"

Taylor shivered when she opened her minion's engineering page and saw a bunch of schematics for less than pleasant things. "I'm not sure how much of his inventions are going to be viable without using fel magic but it's a start."

"Did you get his mind control spell?" Amy asked as she checked all of the connections and tried to figure out how the magical cyberware was connected to his body.

Taylor opened her minion's spell list and looked at her new spell. "Domination, it increases the target's damage and healing by 100% and lasts for ten seconds, not the best but it's a lot better than the standard mind control that cripples your target's attack speed."

"What can you tell us about the demonic blood infusion chambers?" Amy asked as she let her power study the demon's brain, trying to figure out if it was safe to copy his mechanical genius ability.

Taylor did her best to keep mental notes of what the demon explained but she wasn't a medical professional. "I'm only getting about half of that."

"Probably for the best," Amy replied as she turned off the demon's pain receptors and knocked him unconscious then started melting flesh and pushing the mechanical components out of his body so she could give them to Leet and Dragon to reverse engineer on the off chance they learned something useful.

Taylor frowned slightly as the boss sort of melted for a couple of seconds before he stopped breathing and a book appeared next to him. "Are you going to want his engineering skill?"

"Does your puppet have any curses or disabilities or any negative status effects?" Amy asked as she pulled a bag out of her bag of holding and started collecting the mechanical bits she'd removed from the boss.

"Not yet," Taylor replied as she read the description on the skill, "You've learned the forbidden arts of the Burning Legion, overuse of fel magic may have disastrous consequences for your mental and physical health."

"As in you'll go insane?" Amy asked as she finished looting the mechanical bits from the boss, not sure why the creature had gone with a giant pincher rather than something more practical for a replacement hand.

Taylor scowled as she flipped through the list of schematics her puppet could make and realized using most of them had a chance to cause permanent damage to her since she wasn't a demon anymore. "Apparently, most of the schematics have the chance of causing permanent negative side effects to the crafter because of the fel magic, anything from decreasing your mental stability to physically mutating you or turning you into a magic addicted wreck."

Amy snorted. "In other words, it's useless unless we can figure out a better way to power it."

"Technically you can use some of the schematics to push your engineering skill past the cap," Taylor replied as she skimmed through the schematics for the devices her puppet could make that only had physical side effects.

"How many of the negative side effects would transfer through the puppet?" Amy asked warily.

"No idea, it's probably worth testing something with physical side effects after temporarily turning myself and my puppet into demons," Taylor replied as she had her puppet walk over and pick up the book off the ground.

Amy stared at Skitter for a couple of seconds then sighed and used her unique skill to temporarily change Skitter's puppet into a demon. "I'm sort of regretting helping you get the skill."

"I'm not, we just have to decrease our risk to something reasonable," Taylor replied as she used Amy's skill and temporarily changed her race to demon. "Okay, let's see how badly this screws me over."

Amy shook her head. "You're insane, you know that right?"

"I'm aware," Taylor replied as she had her puppet walk over to the workbench so she could figure out what she had to work with. "I don't have a power, but every time I use a new schematic, I learn something new, a tiny fragment of what an actual professional from this world would know. I know that doesn't sound like much compared to biokinesis or magic but it might be all I get to keep. Even if I can't use anything else, boosting my cooking to an insane degree should let me get a decent job."

"Fair enough," Amy admitted, hoping she could fix any physical issues the fel magic caused.

Taylor grinned when she realized she had the components to create a fel bomb and a couple of useful devices. "You should probably keep clearing trash while I start tinkering on the off chance that it explodes."

"What are you making first?" Amy asked.

Taylor gestured at several of the metal bits on the table. "I have the parts for a fel bomb, a fel blaster that replaces your arm and a sensor system that requires ripping out your eye. Thankfully, you don't have to install it to get the points, just make it."

Amy shook her head. "Start with the sensor system, it probably won't explode."

Taylor selected the sensor system and hit the crafting button then watched the device come together over the next ten seconds as her minion built it. "Nice, my engineering increased by one and I don't see any notifications about losing any stats or weird effects. I also picked up a cooking pattern for roasted demonic eyeballs."

Amy stared at Skitter, wondering if she was serious. "Roasted demonic eyeballs?"

"Yep, they give you temporary regeneration and mutations and the chance of permanently screwing yourself over if you eat them," Taylor replied cheerfully.

"Why do you sound cheerful about something that's basically useless?" Amy asked suspiciously.

"Because we can hand them to monsters or pets and you can check the mutations, some of them might be useful and the side effects are for eating them, not making them which means I can gleefully make them to boost my cooking five points then sell them to shop vendors for a decent amount of silver," Taylor explained.

"Does that mean you'll need a bunch of different recipes to increase your skills?" Amy asked thoughtfully as she walked over and poked Skitter's minion on the arm, wanting to check her health and genetics.

"Probably," Taylor replied through her puppet as she opened a void portal for Alec and Aisha to step through into the dungeon. "Don't kill the demonic summoners, we need one of them alive," she told them with two puppets, so both groups would hear her.

Alec stepped through the void portal into the dungeon then took another step so that Aisha and the puppets could walk out of the portal. "No worries, we just want the free experience."

Aisha followed Alec through the portal then stepped out of the way as three puppets walked out of the portal. "Isn't this overkill?"

"Probably but I want to grab one of the blood infusion chambers," Taylor replied through her puppet then closed the void portal.

Amy watched the puppets head towards the hallway then focused on the puppet with the twisted engineering skill. "You either got lucky or temporarily turning yourself into a demon helped."

"In that case, I'm going to make a couple more devices," Taylor replied through her puppet then got to work making the fel blaster that replaced an arm, fairly sure one of the tinkers could come up with a better power supply or at least a safer power supply and turn it into an actual blaster rather than a replacement limb with a toxic power supply.

Amy took a couple of steps back as Skitter's puppet installed a glowing green power core into the device. "It's just as well we have cure disease spells."

Alec took a couple of steps back. "Is there a reason she's playing mad scientist?"

"I'm trying to get interesting patterns," Taylor replied as she sealed up the blaster and got another point of engineering. "That and I wouldn't mind ripping out the demonic power core and giving the rest of the blaster to Leet or Dragon to reverse engineer."

Aisha grinned. "If you get it working, I wouldn't mind having a blaster."

Amy took a step closer to the puppet, poked her arm and checked her genetics. "No changes so we're probably good."

"Cool, you should catch up with the puppets, they found a summoner," Taylor replied through her puppet as one of her other puppets taught the summoner the teaching spell. "I'll keep making devices until I run out of supplies."

"Let us know or drop the puppet if you run into trouble," Amy ordered as she headed for the hallway.

"That's the plan," Taylor agreed as she dropped the device in her puppet's bag and waited, wanting to make sure her friends got a decent distance from her puppet before she started working on the fel bomb in case something went wrong.