The Witch Tamer, Book 1

by Naosu N R

  "Its up to Jay," she said.

  "First off, give me any mage scrolls you found. After that we can start there," I said. "Come on, I know you have some loot," I added.

  Success!

  I bluffed them into making them think we already had known they had some.

  But the truth is, just getting mage scrolls doesn't mean you get free skills. It does have a chance to let you transfer the inscribed mage scroll program into your status screen's skill tab. But it has a big chance of failing.

  I was surprised when both Sadie and Miguel gave me a scroll!

  Yes!

  I just have to transfer it to my system! And hopefully get a free skill out of this! A lot of the time dungeon scrolls are one shot spells. But it is possible to reverse engineer skills out of them, though there's a big fail rate.

  "We also want an equal loot share," Mandy said.

  "Damn it. You guys are making us poor," Miguel said.

  "Come on. The scrolls will help me defend you guys. If our utility goes up, that means more loot and cash for you. And I'll give back in other ways," I told them.

  "You better. We're desperate to leave this place, alive I might add," Josh added.

  I'll have to wait until tonight to try to transfer the scroll spell programs they gave us into my system.

  ...

  After that we went to hunt again.

  We tried to empty one of the rooms on the first floor, but had to kite the zombies back up to the second and even the third floor with organized pre-determined escape routes.

  We did this by staging a plan of falling back purposely while trying to separate the zombie pack from that room from each other, via the use of stuns and tripping. It worked until we got to the second floor. We separated 3 from a group of 7 zombies. But then 2 more joined coming out of nowhere.

  We had to go to the third floor, but stopped them at the stairs.

  Only...I lost 40 mana just on that one room. It was a hard fought room, with a whole family of zombies.

  Damn!

  After this skirmish we decided to roam kill outside.

  This worked pretty well.

  We found out the forage skill gets a bonus for searching near garbage bin dumpsters. (The food is clean though, because its dungeon summoned via a skill, not picked off the floor.) But the problem is that any food found there comes with a huge negative 20% quality penalty. None of us wanted to eat that greasy half spoiled banana we found.

  1:17 PM

  We cleared two of the alleys in a series of 4 skirmishes. (Lost -47 mana on this total, which was pretty good considering.)

  Battle of bourbon foraged in one near a homeless zombie's tent setup.

  Can of tuna fish found. (The others are excited over this one. It almost caused a fight.)

  Rope found at 1:28 PM. This will be useful. We can use it for tripping traps and all kinds of stuff.

  In my mind I keep thinking, just hang on until we can meet up with Melanie and Simone tomorrow. Then it won't feel so crappy here.

  1:29 PM

  Gained access to the back door of an office building. Obviously its empty and has no living owners like the rest of the undead map.

  The map detector skill I'm using suggests there are too many zombies for us to go in that door without setting up a trap of some kind.

  On the second alley we almost gained access to a sporting good store warehouse of some kind. But its likely to not have food loots, which disappointed the others.

  They are worried about this. When I asked why, the others said hardware types of stores take a small hit to the food forage skill, but may have a bonus for items instead.

  Naturally, since this wasn't a planned dungeon, we're only worried about food.

  1:51 PM

  My mana bar is at 63%.

  "Guys, I can only risk one more skirmish, maybe two before we go rest," I told them.

  "That wasn't part of the deal. I'm still the group leader," Josh challenged.

  "And you can be. We're not asking for that. But its better to be proactive on mana rests instead of waiting to be empty. If you have me go rest while my mana is almost empty instead, we'll be too stressed out and worried to rest it off," I told him.

  "I don't like it either," Miguel growled looking at us hard.

  "You don't have to like it. That's the terms. Or are you trying to break our agreement?" Mandy stepped forward protectively.

  "Easy guys. Take it easy. This isn't bad anyway. It will give us time to think about how to open up that one office building's door without getting bit. You saw how many undead were in that front lobby behind the black glass doors," Sadie added.

  "Well actually that's not a bad idea," Miguel relented.

  He and Josh are still growling at me.

  "Don't worry, we'll find more food. We just didn't do well in the alleys. But that was to be expected," I told them.

  "You don't understand. Some of the zombies 'reset' themselves," Josh told us.

  "What?!" I said in shock.

  "When?" Mandy asked in urgent tones.

  I wish he'd told us that sooner. That's a big deal! And its something that could really screw you up by not knowing!

  "You heard me. They reset themselves once a week. That's why I'm so worried," Josh told us.

  "So we have a few days right?" Mandy asked.

  "Not many. Like maybe two days," Josh added.

  "Do you know what day they reset? Shit that's awful. That means they could in theory spawn right next to us," I said.

  "That's how we lost our first mage," Miguel admitted.

  This keeps getting worse all the time.

  ...

  2:11 PM

  We went back to hide out and rest.

  But at times we had to watch out for floor roamers.

  We've also set up a series of shelters, ideally one in each building.

  7 more cans of food found, all thanks to the forage skill.

  And its even more telling when we see that when we try to find food cans or other food items without forage, its like a 99% fail chance. We come up empty every time.

  "So it seems like the 6th dungeon floor can ONLY be done with a high utility, ultimate defense party with forage skill users," Mandy whispered to me when we were alone.

  "That would also be a lot of leverage on the party of the one with that skill," I whispered back, so the others didn't hear us.

  But the others are worried because its sort of down on the nutrition requirements, and shaving it kind of thin on how much the body needs.

  We found a bag of rice, uncooked near the end that made it worth it.

  But we found we could find water without forage skill later. But we have no idea of its clean. (We'll have to do some heavy sterilization on it, just from the nature of this floor.)

  3 PM to 5 PM

  Rested in an apartment with the others standing guard.

  I used 40 mana to burn the two spell scrolls into my status screen's skill tab.

  One failed.

  But the other is a cheap ice shot lowbie skill. It uses between 2 and 5 mana, but should do 10 to 40 damage. But since I'm not an ice element, it instead does 5 to 15 damage, with shortened range. It will also take practice to get the ideal mana cost in use.

  I'll need a few days to have my status screen absorb the code however, before I can use it since I'm not an ice element.

  5:31 PM

  Hunted more zombies.

  We managed to set loose a whole bunch of them from the office building after setting up a bunch of trip lines. I also found out the ranger job has access to the trap making skill; which is why we were able to do this.

  And through that we set them lose and killed 11 of them.

  But it costed us the rope to have her build the traps, plus some salvaged lumber.

  By 7:14 PM, we've gone back into shelter, in the highest floors of any available building again.

  We didn't dare sleep in the same place where we lost the fourth team member. We are
in a different building. This time we'll be more careful.

  ...

  I sneaky like thought it'd be fun to use my hypnotism skill on Mandy, to make her think she likes being as close to me as possible.

  But then I decided not too. I have to have a reason to use my skills and not just abuse them.

  But then I thought it would be OK to try a limited test that was non-permanent. And it was nowhere near the level I'd used to help Simone and Melanie become my allies and have a better life.

  Huh?

  She resisted?

  Does this thing take time for it to take effect? And do I have to do it multiple times.

  I'd also confirmed by practicing it on a zombie before using it on Mandy, that the target doesn't perceive the skill is being used on them... EXCEPT when the skill fails.

  Before going to bed I checked my status screen.

  Health and mana bars are fairly good.

  Health; 103/108 (minor scrapes, no bites thank goodness)

  Mana; 142/366 (By morning this will be back to normal)

  Huh?

  I have a mage mail message.

  I clicked on it. To my surprise its from Melanie!

  I sat up straight.

  Its a video recording message also.

  I clicked on it to play it.

  As it starts, it turns into a big room. And I recognized it as the dining room over at my aunt's house. In other words, the house where Melanie grew up and where I'd recruited her.

  I'm a bit surprised. But then I see that Simone is with her.

  "Hey listen Jay. Your family told us where you are. Don't worry, we're coming to get you. We won't abandon you. My mom is recording the video for us. And she's the only one we're close to with enough magic power to help us send the video over the huge barrier in the dungeon. Anyway, mom says there's barriers over dungeons and that's why its difficult to send messages through them. This is why electronics can have trouble in there also," Melanie said.

  "But not impossible. It just costs a lot of mana," I heard the aunt's voice saying. It seems like she's holding up the recording device that's being used.

  "So yeah, mom will help us. But in return she wants you to enhance a few things for her. She's also going to help us get onto the floor you are on. I know its risky but I..." Melanie got all teary eyed.

  Simone next to her is also upset.

  She started speaking next while the camcorder held style video is being done.

  "Hey Jay. I know your family stole me. But I don't think it was a bad thing to be with you. I shouldn't think this. Melanie thinks you might be using mind control on us, but I don't mind. For the first time I'm in love," she hesitated and then coughed a bit while wiping away some tears.

  "Anyway, I'm going with Melanie. We're going in. We'll be joining you on the zombie floor. We will set this up to go through the gate onto the level 6 floor where you are at tomorrow morning at 12 noon. Please meet us there. We're so in trouble and going to die if you don't pick us up and save us. But...I feel like we're going insane without you also. I guess that's proof of mind control. But if love feels like this I still want it," Simone said.

  Simone has some backbone!

  Wow.

  "OK, that's enough. I'm going to talk now," my aunt said, acting professionally. She approached from the side, after setting the camera down. Its still viewing mostly Melanie and Simone but you can see its not being held.

  She turned the camera around and then set it on some kind of stand, so I could see her face.

  "This isn't charity Jay. Its a loan. I'm setting them up with an entrance into the dungeon floor, and a truck so they don't die in one hit. My driver will drop them off, and I'm not giving you the truck, it will leave after dropping them off with my driver. But I know what the 6th floor is like and its not good. I would consider a safer level once you have a chance to safely move. They don't have good chances to stay there long term. That is a guaranteed party fail zone, which is why people don't hunt there hardly at all. Some consider it an abandoned dungeon floor for that very reason. And also, this isn't for free. You will work for me for the equivalent of $50,000 worth of enhancing. Nice isn't it? Half of that is for equipping the truck and putting a front grill on it, so you can bounce zombies off it. Also I've also made sure it has two full gas tanks. Melanie also will owe me with her...unique skill. Don't fail me!" she said.

  Then she turned it off.

  Damn it.

  What an embezzler.

  I shouldn't owe her anything. Simone and Melanie are NOT her party members! They are mine.

  I hadn't considered how the effects of the mind control skill might make Melanie and Simone act out and seek me out, even to the point of endangering themselves!

  Shit, shit, shit!

  And next to me, in the middle of undressing Mandy is standing there horrified.

  "Oh my gosh..." she said in awe with wide eyes.

  I hurriedly sent a mage mail to aunt Sue to reject owing her that much money. And I sent the reminder of my parents anger, plus that Simone and Melanie are already my party members not hers.

  That brought it down.

  She still replied wanting funds for the drop, saying she would have to pay the driver a quest reward fee amount.

  Its a good thing I haggled it a bit. It turned into only somehow owing her $3,000 for this.

  Thank goodness. But that's still a lot.

  I went to the door to the living room where the others were camped out.

  "Guys. We have a huge problem," I said.

  Now how do I explain this when they don't have any reason to go along with this!

  Chapter 25

  It didn't take long for us to tell the others, we had other party members incoming. We did it the night before to not surprise them. Especially since it will require cooperation from the others to move we tried to let it out easy on them.

  The meeting took place in the living room, while they were trying to cook cans of beans over a homemade Bunsen burner over the stove in the kitchen.

  "What? So you expect us to go rescue some others?" Josh asked, flabbergasted while we're telling them that we're going to pick up two more people tomorrow morning.

  Sadie and Miguel at first were more quiet, but they look stressed out also.

  "Its...not exactly a rescue. They're coming to help out. They're my team members," I said.

  "You have team members...coming here? They must be crazy," Miguel snorted.

  "Look, more people means we can do this and hopefully all get home alive," I said.

  "Why are you upset? This is good. More people and more numbers of reliable people mean more survival. Besides you won't be doing the heavy lifting," Mandy told them jumping in to help me.

  "..." he didn't have a good response, since Mandy was pointing out that she and I would be doing most of the work.

  "But its not easy for us to travel. We'd never make it. Just going through one skyscraper is hard," Josh told us, looking lost. He's nervous and fidgety. And he keeps glancing at his teammates, worrying about probably keeping the team in his control.

  That's fine. I don't want the team. This is just temporary.

  "He's right," Miguel frowned.

  "We have a plan," Mandy spoke up holding up a hand.

  But I was surprised when Miguel slammed her hand away harshly, almost violently. "This is fucked up," he said.

  She took a step back, and is carefully appraising if he'll get violent I can see.

  I didn't realize their desperation had made them...unpredictable. Maybe its not a good thing to stick with them. The car still has gas in it also.

  "Hey, don't touch her. That's enough of that its not needed. Listen, we can minimize the risk. We have a way of picking them up safely. We'll solve that part for you. And you don't have to go with us, if you aren't interested in being a team," I said.

  The weird part is, don't these guys have to think about how to get to the zone exist anyway? That would be the same direction, if I
'm not mistaken.

  The others and Mandy flinched, and I realized its because the others read into what I'd said. Instantly the reaction of the others is extreme. They all looked at me intensely.