The Witch Tamer, Book 1

by Naosu N R

  "That's right. This is just a day in the park to them," I said.

  "Dungeons don't make good parks," she added.

  "Right."

  "OK, let's finish getting dressed and then we'll check on the others. Hey, can you help me with my bra?" she asked. "I have trouble with the back."

  "Uh, sure..."

  A bit unguarded towards me.

  It was hard for me to not eye the goods.

  But it was sweet in a way. She's showing me her feminine side.

  "OK, let's check out the others," I said.

  But we weren't prepared for what happened next.

  When we came out of the room, we tried to not scream.

  "Oh shit! Look out!" Mandy cried.

  I ducked just as a zombie went over my head.

  "What the hell?" I cried out.

  I activated my stun. (Its good that I'd practiced speed skill activation before now. It paid off.)

  Then again on the next one, while trying to get my energy shield umbrella enchant deployed.

  With two fast hits, and then a third, Mandy has dispatched the first zombie. Then I tripped the second while working my way towards the door.

  I have to get the apartment door shut.

  "What the hell happened?! Everyone get up!" Mandy cried.

  The other people that just joined us woke with a start.

  But the guy that was on guard duty is dead. At least I think he is. There's a trail of blood leaving the room and going into the hall. And it looks like he was dragged off.

  The most scary part is that there wasn't any noise. Somehow it'd happened without anyone getting a tip off to get up and that we were in trouble.

  The others tried to contain being upset.

  "How did that happen?!" Miguel shouted.

  "Try to make enough noise that everything comes to get us," Mandy shouted back.

  "Quiet! Not so loud! The zombies will hear us," Sadie protested.

  "It doesn't matter anyway. We have to move because that much blood will have tons of them reigning down upon us," Josh said.

  "Who is missing? Which one of you is gone?" I asked.

  They looked at each other briefly.

  "Uh, James I think. He's missing," Sadie told us sadly shaking her head.

  James appears to be the missing guy, and the one that was dragged off. And when he was dragged off he'd left the door open.

  But zombies are pouring in.

  We moved quickly. Swiftly we defensively withdrew to the room I'd slept in with Mandy, secured the door while the zombies battered at it. Then we went out to the window to where the fire escape was.

  I can hear the sounds of the door in the room breaking already even though its been only about 10 to 15 seconds.

  The girls in the team are squealing to hurry, in panic. All of us are trying to move fast.

  Thank goodness we all got outside the window in time! It was the bottleneck of the whole place. It would have been bad if they'd got to us there.

  We went to the fire escape cat walk instead, while climbing down trying to move fast, without tripping and falling down a straight vertical iron ladder.

  Or,... we'd intended to except there are zombies coming up that also!

  "Oh shit. Are we going to die?" Sadie cried out.

  "I'll save you babe. Stick with me," Miguel flirted shamelessly.

  "Help us keep them down," Mandy cried.

  "Assisting you," I said while pushing back two zombies using the damage absorption umbrella.

  "What does that do?" Josh is openly looking at my stuff.

  Mandy peeled off one of the zombies on my umbrella enchant.

  Then I had to reset the damage absorption with -10 mana, with a follow up stun on another zombie. That then set up a safe kill for the others.

  "Shit! We should have had this guy earlier!" Miguel exclaimed.

  "Is that a stun you used? Oh nice," Josh cried out.

  Right away I'm getting a few cheers since I have way more utility than anyone else.

  We ended up getting the zombies slaughtered, enough to fully retreat to the left into another apartment's window. It was a close call though. And all of us are shaken up.

  I hit a zombie with a stun that went after Mandy, as she was about to go in the window. Then Josh put a sword through its eye socket.

  We cleared out two more zombies before going in.

  This other new apartment stinks of rancid meat and worse. The couch is bit into and tore up with lots of dried blood and maggots in it; probably someone died there. And the room is really stuffy with bad air ventilation. But its safer than the other one, we were just in.

  "Its lucky we got all our gear," Sadie said.

  "Loot drop! We got a can of soup. Found it in the kitchen," she added excitedly, hefting it for us to see a few seconds later after activating her forage skill on the zombie bodies.

  "Nice! We will eat today!" Miguel cried.

  "Jeez, shut up people. Too loud," Mandy cried.

  "We can't help it! We haven't been able to manage the kills well after we lost our two mages. Sadie's forage skill does best with a monster kill that its used on. The room exploration rate's forage success rate is harder to use without it," Josh explained.

  "Forage skill huh?" Mandy asked.

  "That's right. Its our saving grace right now," Josh told us with admiration.

  There's a cool dungeon skill called forage huh...

  Sounds very useful and like a must have skill.

  We went a bit more trying to clear other parts of the apartments remaining rooms.

  1 more zombie in the other room, which Mandy and Josh dispatched.

  Then they secured the place, but only after opening up the windows.

  They are more and more impressed with our skills also, the further we go in.

  "We need to find a way to cut out the fire escape ladder set up. Its too easy for the zombies to climb," Miguel said.

  The others soon began to get excited.

  With my help, they can now safely fight the zombies! But without me its nothing!

  Mandy also was quiet about it, but I've noticed she's seen already that I'd enhanced her crowbar, because she's giving me a smug look while hefting it.

  One by one we move forward.

  I also found out my new skill costs 5 mana, lasts about 2 hours, and is basically a monster type motion sensor that shows up on my status screen's map display! This is perfect for navigating and avoiding large zombie clumps and preventing bite ambushes!

  (Although I wish the extent of the map display was larger, its only showing me a very small area.)

  Yes!

  This is good for avoiding bites. I can feel things near us, to prevent sneak attacks coming from around corners by undead, who already have a huge advantage in that they can smell us so easily.

  The others can't even fight without me! And with this skill and the others we can safely navigate!

  Still, it is tricky. I have to watch out for larger clumps of zombies.

  Twice we backed up to avoid the large pockets of undead.

  By 9 AM, we'd already cleared out 5 apartments on this level. You'd think we could do more, but its not that simple. We go slow, and take no chances. Its fine this way as long as nobody gets bit.

  But many apartments we avoided. There's 12 total on this level. And 7 of those have more zombies than I'm ready to pull per room, which we can't approach.

  We also have to do hide and sneak style tactics while I find the most open zombies that have the least percentage chance to bring friends, while we whittle them down.

  Many times we have to back up and avoid them stirring also.

  By watching the radar style map, sometimes you can tell when some of them are stirring from noise.

  (But if an undead is 'sleeping' will it still show up on a movement based map radar, I worried.)

  "Back up! Fast!" I told the others fast.

  We avoided that one.

  "Let's go rest a bit," M
andy suggested.

  "But we're doing so well! We've found 4 cans of soup already!" Sadie burst out.

  I didn't want to tell them that, that was still a starvation ration with this many people together. Let's hope they are the big cans also, not the small ones.

  "But we have to be careful managing Jay's mana. He needs to not lose too much mana at a time and we'd been going for hours," Mandy defended.

  My mana bar says 58%.

  We've done well. But there's the whole rest of the day to endure this stuff. And we can't just go 'XP' until 0% mana, that would leave us unable to defend at night.

  We pulled back to fortify our position, and have a brief rest. (Then we can go back out again soon after.)

  The others are trying to find lumber, nails and hammers especially to strengthen our defense fortifications.

  But the mood is up! We can survive.

  Still...we haven't found water yet. Its a big problem.

  Its 10 AM...

  We rested till about 12 PM.

  My mana bar went up a good amount from that much rest.

  ...

  While resting, the others decided to do their meals. The others divided up the cans. After all, we have to eat. Before I can realize it, Josh is handing out the canned food drops that have come out of ranger Sadie's [forage] skill.

  That forage skill is pretty inspiring! Definitely a must have for a dungeon team!

  But some of the cans we aren't even sure what they are without opening, because of missing labels.

  Josh got canned beans. Sadie got canned corn, and Miguel got canned vegetables while Mandy got canned fruit, and I got canned chili.

  Miguel doesn't look too happy with his. He wants Josh's beans. And I think Sadie does too, but that golden fresh corn looks good also.

  Mandy looks a bit worried.

  "Here," I gave Mandy half my chili in exchange for half her canned fruit.

  The fruit is appealing, but wouldn't have the substance to support one's body. So this was a good move. She brightened up also from me being giving with her.

  But the others didn't trade with each other to up their nutrient base like we did. That surprised me also. The group isn't as unified as I'd thought it was.

  "How are we going to get the other zombies out of those remaining rooms?" Josh asked while slurping from his can directly.

  He's a messy eater too.

  The others looked to me.

  "Those are too many for me to do. That would be suicide," I told them.

  "But we do need to secure the building," Miguel offered.

  "And we need to find James," Sadie said hopefully.

  The others gave her looks of pity. That's obviously a waste, but if we try to tell her that she'll just get mad at us.

  "I'm sorry Sadie but he's gone. There's no way that amount of blood could someone still alive. I think what happened was one of those shades executed some kind of sneak attack before he knew what hit him," Mandy said.

  She bit her lip and looked upset but eventually with a bit of coaching she relented.

  "So...there's one piece of information we need," I looked at Sadie. "You know what I'm talking about right?"

  She nodded. "You want to ask how the forage skill works right."

  "But we've already explained it," Josh frowned.

  "There's one part you forgot to talk about that, everything else depends on," I said.

  "Oh! I get it! You mean, whether or not it will let us use the forage skill on the same room twice!" Miguel said.

  "Shit. I was hoping you wouldn't bring that part up," Sadie offered. Looks like she didn't like thinking about that part, because of their stress and pent up fear.

  "But we have to talk about it. That's a big deal. I'd heard of dungeons for specific classes before. Like dungeons for mages, and for tanks also. It seems someone thought of making this city dungeon a place for rangers," Mandy said.

  "Th-that explains the tip I got then, when I bought the map of this place," Josh said.

  "You have a map?!" I asked in surprise.

  "That's awesome. If you have a map that could be a game changer!" Mandy said.

  Josh held it up. "Unfortunately its not a full map. Its just got three different teams map sections downloaded from their status screens of when they searched through this level. And one of the teams info was taken after they'd been killed here. So technically, maybe their section that they mapped was the most dangerous area? Who knows. But you wouldn't want to follow a failed team in right?"

  He has some good points.

  Josh used his status screen to project only the map section, and no other parts of his status screen into the air for us to look at. It looks cool actually.

  The rest of us gathered in close to look at it.

  "We're here," Miguel figured out easily.

  "Good. You're right," Josh said.

  "There's the zone line," Sadie said. "But both the orcs and zombies have been showing up in high numbers there. Its about 3 miles from here, where they clash. And just going from one house to another is a chore."

  Mandy glanced at me. This is why the car is a game changer also. But if I tell them about it now it will be a problem. I'll have to discuss this in more detail alone with Mandy. And she'll want a say in this also, because it goes above and beyond her duty.

  "So tell us, if this dungeon map is keyed for ranger training, then how often does it let you use the forage skill a second, or even a third time on the same room?" I asked.

  "Fine. I'll show you," Sadie sighed and looked unhappy.

  She held up a glowing highlighted version of her forage skill description in the status screen window (while also not letting us see anything else of her stats).

  [Forage skill; useful ranger skill for acquiring free food while hunting. Can be used in urban environments as well as non-urban wilderness areas. For wilderness areas, the base success rate is 10% +2% per level. Acquired amounts also go up with level. Also has drop percent chance of half that rate per mob kill while ranger is party to also obtain food drops (but must be an edible monster), provided that the ranger has participated in the combat. For urban rates, half the standard calculation is used with a -5% penalty. Can be used in individual rooms, plus sectioned housing within the same building. Ranger can use the skill per room once per day, however on second day there is a 90% penalty, and on the third day an 80% penalty, and so on.]

  This is a really great skill! Although working around its restrictions wouldn't be fun.

  Situations like now, this thing is really bad ass.

  "Oh crap. That means, we really do need to hit new territory every day then," I managed, after thinking about what I was reading.

  "Yeah, that's what it looks like," Mandy said.

  "Exactly," Sadie told us with a look.

  "And that's why we need you guys, because your skills and special utility gear let us push into more territory, which is necessary for us to keep going forward," Miguel told us with a fierce look.

  "That's right," Sadie admitted. (She's kind of the star of the show right now. A food skill...when we can't go to town, and where these maps are so big...)

  Miguel's look suggests they wouldn't let us leave them even if we tried, and even possibly by force.

  Without my damage absorption skill, as well as the stun skill we're useless.

  "Wait, I have a question. How much mana does that forage skill use?" Mandy asked.

  "Not much, since its partly a brain utility skill and applied skill. But interacting with the dungeon with mana gives it a boost. 2 mana per use when used in area searches, but no cost for affecting monster kill drops. But my mana regen is crap as a non-mage class," Sadie told us.

  "The ranger skill sure is useful," Mandy commented.

  "You got that right. We'd have died long ago if it weren't for her," Miguel said.

  Sadie beamed.

  "So we need to make every shot count," I observed.

  "We'd like you to consider joining our party,
" Josh said.

  They looked to Mandy first, maybe hoping she'd want to give me incentive.