Taylor and the Twisted Game Part 24 (Patreon)

"This is a horrible plan," Dennis muttered under his breath as he studied the death knight sitting on the frost covered throne.

Ziz glanced around the massive audience chamber and focused on the death knight's sword that was giving her an unsettling feeling. "If it doesn't work, I'll pick him up and bash his head against the ground until he dies."

Admin gave Ziz a thumbs up, fairly sure the Simurgh could deal with the boss or at least hold him in place if their plan failed.

"It doesn't work, I'm running," Dennis replied as he shifted his stance and prepared to make his move.

"No shit," Leet replied as he raised his net launcher, stepped forward and shot the net at Athas when the death knight stood up.

Ziz used her telekinesis to hold the corrupted knight in place so the net could wrap around him rather than let him slash it out of the air with his sword or something equally as annoying.

Dennis quickly blinked forward, touched the net and activated his power, freezing the net in place and making it hard for Arthas to move.

"I'm going to destroy your soul," Arthas stated coldly as he glared at the group, struggling against the net that was holding him in place.

"You're up!" Dennis shouted as he slipped behind the Lich King and started poking bits of his armor through the gaps in the net and freezing them in time.

Admin blinked across the frost covered room and pickpocketed the stationary boss, happily stealing his overpowered sword. She stole his crown then ran off to the side and away from the boss, wanting to be clear of the blast radius when Leet shot him.

Dennis sprinted away from the extremely angry death knight, knowing what was coming next.

Leet tossed the net thrower back in his inventory and summoned his plasma rifle. "Embrace eternity!" he shouted as he aimed his rifle at Arthas' head and pulled the trigger, sending a beam of purple energy at the death knight that quickly burned through his life bar and reduced his neck to a charred stump.

Ziz floated off the ground as she glanced around the chamber, half expecting a horde of undead or an ancient sorcerer to reveal themselves and try to kill them. "Is that it?"

[World First: Lich King dies to the Mages of the Apocalypse Guild!] was announced to everyone in the game world as several pieces of loot appeared next to the corpse.

"Oops?" Leet offered, not sure how to feel about announcing to the world that their guild was clearing dungeons ten levels past where they should be and doing it with a handful of people.

"I was expecting him to glitch," Dennis admitted as he walked back over to check the loot.

"Same," Ziz agreed as she flew over and started examining the saronite walls. "Are you still up for cutting up the walls for saronite?"

"Of course," Leet replied with a grin as two weapons and a sample of primal saronite appeared in a popup window. "We're passing so Admin can just hand them to Skitter, right?"

Admin hit the need button on the polearm and saronite and hit greed on the staff.

"Okay, pass on the first two, vendor trash the staff," Dennis said as he passed on the first two and hit the greed button next to the staff. "We'll get better as soon as Skitter finishes demolishing the Return to Karazhan dungeon."

"How do I get there?" Ziz asked, already tired of running Zul'Gurub for the archeology discoveries and wanting a new challenge.

"You go in the side entrance to Karazhan," Leet explained as he studied the angles of the wall, wanting to make sure his beam wouldn't bounce and hit him on the off chance that it didn't cut through the wall.

Dennis grinned when the system awarded him the staff then turned to look at Admin. "What did you steal from Arthas?"

Admin pulled out her notebook and wrote, 'Frostmourne, it's a two handed sword. Speed 4, 2217 to 3328 damage, +197 strength, +150 magic, +263 stamina. It contains a pocket realm and using it would make you the new Lich King. The crown has the power to boost the wearer's psychic powers, including the Lich King's influence on undead, lets you look into the Shadowlands and lets the Jailer look at you.'

Dennis winced when he read the note. "In other words, move the damage rating from the sword and copy the crown, hopefully we can get rid of the bit that lets someone scry on you."

"You might want to check to see if you can figure out how to duplicate the pocket dimension," Ziz suggested as she floated over.

"Preferably without touching the sword," Dennis suggested as he opened a void portal back to the mansion. "If we're done, I want to get back to working on engineering, now that Skitter decided to teach the rest of us."

"Have fun," Leet suggested with a grin as he used a laser pointer toy to double check the angle of the wall he was going to try to cut.

Admin waved then followed Dennis through the portal, not seeing a point in sticking around the castle when she had tinkers to steal schematics and skills from. [I stole a nice sword.]

{I'm in the lounge}, Taylor replied absently as she tried to open her inventory and grab her buttplug so she could respond without taking her eyes off Amy's demon who was modeling some of the outfits that Vicky had created.

Admin froze. [How did you reply?]

{I just, you heard that?} Taylor asked in surprise.

[Yes!] Admin replied cheerfully as she headed towards the lounge to give Taylor the stuff she'd looted from the Lich King.

{That makes things easier}, Taylor replied as she closed her inventory. {Did the Lich King give you any trouble?}

[No, Clock was able to freeze the net and his armor in place], Admin replied as she followed Clock into the mansion. [I also grabbed his crown, do you know where the Shadowlands are?]

{They're the lands of the dead}, Taylor replied, thinking about one of the books she'd looted from the Scarlet Monastery that mentioned the afterlife. {Why?}

[Because the crown lets you look into the Shadowlands, boosts your psychic powers and gives the Jailer the ability to spy on you], Admin replied as they headed down the hallway.

"I don't think Mom would let me out of the house," Vicky mused as she studied the silk halter top she'd created that was just a bit too sheer to wear in public.

Amy pulled her attention off her pet demon's breasts before her sister could notice. "Probably not, you could probably get away with it at a club if you had a jacket."

"Or a sheer shirt," Vicky said thoughtfully, figuring the combination would make it pass muster for the most part, at least until some posted a picture on the boards or complained about it on their webpage.

{Sounds like something we should test}, Taylor replied, almost losing her train of thought when Amy's demon pulled her top off and tossed it her way.

"Why couldn't you get a normal looking demon?" Vicky grumbled, then turned and looked when the doors opened and Dennis and Admin walked into the room. "Great."

Dennis glanced between Vicky and Amy's demon, his gaze lingering on the demon's breasts until a shimmering red silk dress appeared on the demon that clung to her curves. "Testing new outfits?" he asked as he walked over to where Skitter was sitting on a couch watching the show with a faint blush on her face.

"I'm trying to find something that works with Skitter's belt," Vicky replied, glad that it wasn't Void or Armsmaster that had walked in on them. "Next time, just wait for Amy to use the equipment page and swap your clothes."

"I wanted a copy of the top," the demon replied with a grin at Vicky then slowly spun around so that Vicky could see the back of the glittering dress.

Vicky glanced at Amy. "How are you planning on explaining your demon when you get back?"

"I wasn't planning on it," Amy replied as Admin walked over and sat down next to Taylor, fairly sure she wouldn't get to keep her.

Admin smiled at Taylor. [Can you move the damage quality from the sword? I don't want to touch it.]

Taylor opened her transmogrification window and shared the window with Admin. {Just drop it in the box, we can probably sell replicas.}

Admin dropped the sword into the box, happy that she didn't technically have to touch it.

Taylor selected the symbiote sword pattern then hit accept, changing the rune blade into a symbiote. "They came back with Frostmourne, you'll probably want to duplicate the sword before I start trying to move properties around since we're going to want the damage rating and the pocket dimension."

"Drop it on the table. If I start going insane or want to keep it, get rid of it," Amy suggested, fairly sure her mental defense crown would save her but wanting to have a backup plan in case it wasn't enough.

Taylor dropped the creepy looking symbiote sword out of her inventory, letting it drop on the table without touching it. "Go for it."

"Are you sure this is safe?" Vicky asked warily as the demon took a couple of steps away from the blade.

"It should be fine," Amy replied as she walked over and poked the flat of the blade, trying to get a feel for the blade's genetics and ready to yank her hand away if she felt anything strange. "Okay, let's run some tests," she mused as she pulled a symbiote dagger out of her inventory and upgraded the damage rating, swapping out the damage codes for the ones she'd learned from the sword. She grinned when she checked her dagger and realized that it had a higher average damage than the sword because the dagger's weapon speed was a lot faster.

"Anything?" Vicky asked, slightly worried about her sister's smirk.

Amy grinned at Vicky. "I just boosted my dagger to do more damage than the sword."

"How did you pull that off?" Vicky asked.

"The weapon speed is lower which means the average damage per second jumps by more than double," Amy replied smugly.

Vicky glanced at the twisted dagger her sister was holding. "In other words, if you're not careful you'll lose a finger?"

"Probably," Amy agreed as she poked the flat of the sword's blade again, wanting to double check the sword's genetics. "You should probably move the pocket dimension quality from the sword to something else."

"Sure…" Taylor trailed off as her group of puppets got to the last boss in the Return to Karazhan dungeon and saw the alien spaceships. "Huh, do you think Dragon wants to rip apart a magical spaceship?"

"Is that a trick question?" Amy asked with amusement.

Taylor grinned at Amy. "No, I found a couple of Legion spaceships in the other Karazhan dungeon."

Dennis shook his head. "The question isn't if they'd want to take them apart, the question is how long it would take. I don't think we want to spend a couple of months in the game while they hack the ships apart on the off chance that they learn something we can use in the real world."

"Can you sneak in and steal the plans off the computer?" Vicky asked, figuring that would be easier.

"I can certainly try," Taylor replied as she sent a group of puppets to find Dragon, Armsmaster and Leet. She pulled a basic iron dagger out of her bag of holding and used her transmogrification ability to turn it into a symbiote dagger then used Tat's skill to move the pocket dimension property from the Frostmourne knockoff to the dagger, causing the sword to disintegrate and vanish. "Take a look."

Amy picked up the dagger and checked the description and the genetics. 'Huh, I could have sworn that other bit was connected to the twisted bit, maybe it was part of the soul stealing ability and just pointed there? Probably for the best that I didn't try to copy the rest of it,' she mused as she pulled her hand back. "I should be able to duplicate the pocket dimensions but we'll probably have to use portals to get anything out of them or figure out how the bank retrieves things."

"We could always rob the bank," the demon Vicky suggested cheerfully, causing everyone to turn to look at the two Vickys.

Vicky glared at her sister's demon. "We're supposed to be heroes."

The demon Vicky smirked at the other Vicky. "Have some balls, we'd be in and out before they even noticed."

Dennis shook his head. "We'd have more luck turning a bag into a symbiote and using an expanded bag to figure out how to code a user interface."

Taylor shook her head. "I can't transmogrify a bag."

"No but you can probably move the expanded quality to a living bag which might let Amy figure something out," Dennis replied with a grin.

Amy nibbled on her lower lip as she considered the best way to create a living bag on the off chance that she could jury rig some type of interface.

[You should get Amy to copy the crown], Admin suggested as she set the crown on the table.

Taylor reached out and touched the crown and blinked as she got a vision of a creepy man in a dark chamber staring at her before her vision shifted to watching one of her puppets kill an elite demon she'd seen wandering a couple of minutes ago and getting a strange necklace. Her vision jumped to a scene of her talking to a man in the middle of her courtyard before her vision was painfully yanked back to the strange man.

{Who are you, tell me your secrets!} the strange voice demanded.

{Fuck you!} Taylor replied as she yanked her hand away from the crown, instantly snapping the connection. "That was unpleasant."

"Let me guess, it's cursed?" Dennis asked.

"Or something," Taylor replied as she sent a group of puppets to hunt down the elite mob that she'd seen, curious if he'd drop the necklace she'd seen.

[Are you okay?] Admin asked warily.

Taylor glared at the crown sitting on the table. "I had a vision of a man in twisted armor in a dark chamber, I'm pretty sure he could see me."

"Lovely," Amy muttered as she glared at the crown. "Can you scrap it for the boost?"

"I'd need to touch it or have it in my inventory," Taylor grumbled, fairly sure she didn't want to touch it again with the connection to the stranger intact.

Admin reached out and grabbed the crown then opened a trade window with Taylor and stuck it in the window. [Here.]

"I guess that works," Taylor replied as she accepted the trade.

"You should probably stick it on something you don't care about," Vicky suggested.

Taylor pulled a copy of her mental defense crown out of her bag of holding then moved the psychic boosting property from Lich King's crown to the copy, causing the Lich King's crown to crumble to dust. "One psychic boosting crown that also gives protection from outside mental influence…" she trailed off when her puppets killed the elite and he dropped a necklace with an orange name rather than purple or blue, like they normally were. "Huh, I just found a necklace that creates force fields."

"What's the cooldown?" Dennis asked.

"Every thirty seconds you get an absorb shield for 25% of your maximum health for 30 seconds," Taylor replied smugly.

"Where the hell did you find that?" Dennis sputtered.

"Off an elite mob in the Broken Shore," Taylor explained as she opened a void portal and walked the necklace through. "It's called Prydaz, Xavaric's Magnum Opus."

"Sounds like it," Dennis replied.

"Can you duplicate it?" Vicky asked hopefully as Skitter closed the portal.

"It's a necklace," Taylor replied as she collected the necklace from her minion and transmogrified it into a symbiote collar.

"How many force fields do you think we can stack?" Vicky asked, trying not to look at the creepy and wiggling collar that Skitter handed her sister.

"No clue, Leet mentioned working on a force field, we'll have to run some…" Taylor trailed off when one of her puppets saw the man from her vision appear in the middle of the courtyard wearing jeans and a GM t-shirt. "Shit, so much for flying under the radar. We've got a GM in the courtyard."

"Fuck!" Dennis cursed as he headed for the door. "We should probably go talk to them before someone says something stupid."

"I'll finish up here," Amy said as she worked on learning the collar's genetics so that she could reproduce it.

"On it," Taylor replied as she followed him and had one of her puppets walk over to talk to the GM. "Hello, how can I help you?"

Harry smiled at the young red haired teenager in a black dress. "Sorry to intrude but I couldn't help but notice your guild's achievement for killing Arthas. You're going to want to avoid killing the last boss in the Return to Karazhan dungeon before you generate another message and one of the GMs comes looking for you."

"Are we not supposed to kill the dungeon bosses?" Taylor asked through the puppet as she continued down the hall at a run.

"Technically you can kill anything you want, the problem is the GMs are stuck in the simulation and most of us aren't particularly happy about it," Harry explained.

"Let me guess, you can't just run a script and kill everything in the Sunwell?" Taylor asked through her puppet.

"Not so much," Harry admitted with a sigh. "The people that set up the simulation have a sick sense of humor, we've got god-like powers everywhere except the one place we need it. We're limited to our basic class skills and level appropriate gear which means we're basically screwed without waiting a couple of years for people to get high enough that they could carry us."

"Or talking a parahuman into running you through the dungeon?" Taylor asked as she walked out of the mansion, trying to pretend that she was a lot calmer than she was.

Harry turned to look at Skitter and Clock. "Basically, if a GM is in the dungeon the last boss gets upgraded to his full power which means he'd rip through most groups."

"What are you offering?" Taylor asked as she walked over with Clock following her.

"Information and twenty thousand dollars when I get back to the real world," Harry offered, knowing he had a million and change waiting for him when he escaped.

"What type of information?" Taylor asked, hoping for a hint.

"I used to drink with one of the programmers, he was a funny drunk or at least I thought he was joking about all of this shit. If I'd known he was serious about making a deal with demons, I wouldn't have agreed to work for his company," Harry assured them. "Either way, I've got a pretty good idea of what you can take with you when you leave and what you can't."

Taylor studied his face for a few seconds, trying to figure out if he was telling the truth. "And you'll tell me if I agree to run you through the dungeon?"

"That's the deal, I'll even toss in an extra ten thousand if you can get me out by tomorrow morning," Harry promised.

"What happens tomorrow?" Taylor asked as one of her puppets finished making an Inscribed Crane Staff. 'Less stats than the chest piece I found in the other Karazhan dungeon, but 5813 bonus spell power is nothing to sneeze at.'

"My girlfriend gets back from her vacation. I might have led her to believe that I'm safe and sound and reading engineering books, if I'm not back by the time she walks through the door, I'm going to get a lecture about reading the fine print of contracts and lying by omission, I'd rather avoid the lecture and the smugness," Harry admitted.

Taylor stared at Harry. "That's worth an extra ten thousand dollars?"

"Almost," Harry admitted with a grin. "The real problem is, I don't want her logging in to rescue me and running into trouble before I can find her, it's one thing when it's a VR game, it's quite another when everything feels real."

Taylor scowled as she thought about the idiots running around Stormwind causing trouble. "I can understand that."

"Can we take the spells or the skills with us?" Dennis asked, hoping they'd be able to get something from the experience.

Harry frowned as he tried to recall everything his drinking buddy had said when he was drunk and rambling. "In theory, all of the mounts, skills and spells you earned should get converted into something you can use along with your physical and magical stats you picked up from leveling or at least my drinking buddy mentioned various tests where the test subjects got parahuman-like powers and the ability to conjure a horse."

"Does that mean you can give us powers?" Dennis asked.

Harry shook his head. "Sorry, I'd rather not break my contract on the off chance that the company made a deal with demons. Besides, I can't give you any spells that your class shouldn't have or any unique skills."

"You believe in demons?" Dennis asked warily, wondering if the guy was cracked in the head.

"I'm not sure it matters what I believe, I'm not willing to play chicken with a company that is willing to kidnap hundreds of thousands of people," Harry replied. "That's like walking up to the Irish mob and telling them that you're going to kick their asses. Maybe they laugh it off, maybe they don't."

"How crazy are the rest of the GMs?" Taylor asked.

"Titan is busy trying to make his way through all of the whore houses in Silvermoon, Vivian Darkstalker is having fun killing idiots in Stormwind, Mog the Undead Smurf is probably eating people in Undercity," Harry replied, fairly sure Mog had more than a couple of screws loose.

Dennis felt his stomach lurch. "Eating people? That's twisted enough when you can't taste it."

"I never said the rest of the GMs were sane," Harry replied with a shrug. "I mean hell, Joe likes fishing."

"What's wrong with fishing?" Dennis asked.

"Beyond the fact that it's boring? Nothing," Harry replied with a grin. "I'm not trying to scare you but eventually the rest of the GMs are going to realize that they're stuck and they're either going to want out or they're going to want some of the more interesting books, items and skills you've found."

"At which point they threaten to delete me, right?" Taylor asked, hoping he'd tell her that they weren't actually that crazy.

"Or worse," Harry agreed. "I'd love to say the company would step in and punish us for overstepping but it's a nasty world and a nasty game. It's hard to say how sane my fellow GMs are, Joe was ready to delete people because someone swiped his fishing pole."

'So much for staying under the radar,' Taylor mused. "That seems a bit excessive."

"I'm aware," Harry replied. "Luckily for your friend, Joe never read the manual for the GM tools, otherwise he would have just tracked the history of every GM fishing pole and your friend would have been screwed."

"In other words, we're living on borrowed time," Taylor complained as she tried to figure out the best way to deal with things.

"To be blunt, I think we all are," Harry replied, wishing he was lying.

"Can a GM teleport me out of the Sunwell dungeon?" Taylor asked.

Harry shook his head. "No, you're safe from the GMs if you're in the dungeon."

"In that case, let's grab some gear and head to the dungeon," Taylor turned to look at Tats when she walked out of a void portal with a tall athletic man wearing a pair of cut off breeches with his black hair pulled back in a ponytail with a leather cord. "More recruits?"

"He's the last member of my team," Lisa replied as she walked over to where Skitter and Clock were talking with the stranger wearing a GM t-shirt.

"Nice to meet you," Grue offered.

"Same," Dennis replied.

Lisa glanced between Skitter and the stranger. "What's going on?"

Taylor pulled her attention off Lisa's friend. "Harry is paying me twenty thousand to get him out of the simulation by tomorrow morning which means I'm leaving in less than fourteen hours."

"Problems with the GMs?" Lisa asked as she glanced between Skitter and the stranger, wishing she had more information.

"Most of them are a little nuts," Harry replied. "It doesn't help that one of the GMs is eventually going to figure out that your friend stole his fishing pole."

"Alec?" Brian asked, hoping it wasn't his sister.

"That would be the one," Harry replied with a grin.

"Sorry," Brian offered.

"Normally, I'd say don't worry about it but Joe's a bit obsessed with fishing," Harry warned him.

Taylor glanced at Brian's level over his head. "Change of plans, let's get the boys some gear so they can start leveling then I need to talk to Clock about a tattoo."

Dennis turned to look at Skitter. "What type?"

"I need something I can move a couple of bonuses to, maybe a jungle cat or a pixie that can move around and vanish?" Taylor asked, wanting something that she could hide on the off chance that it stuck around.

"I'll do some sketches and see what I can come up with," Dennis said as he pulled his sketchbook out of his inventory.

"Thanks," Taylor replied as headed towards the mansion doors. "Don't worry, we should have you both to a reasonable level in a couple of hours."

Brian glanced at Lisa then relaxed when she gave him a nod. "Thanks."

"Thanks," Harry offered as he followed the rest of the group towards the mansion, hoping he could escape before the rest of the GMs complicated things or the whispers on the edge of hearing got to him.