The Witch Tamer, Book 1

by Naosu N R

  In survival splitting the team or losing people is a big fear, because they think they will survive better in numbers.

  But I didn't want them to hurt Mandy. So I felt frustrated also realizing what I'd said.

  "Wait, what did you mean you have a way of picking them up?" Miguel asked.

  "I meant just what I said," I replied.

  "Are you saying you have a car?" Sadie asked, in shock.

  "Shit. They had a car this whole time. See? I knew we shouldn't have trusted them! They never told us that!" Miguel exclaimed.

  The three of them had their looks turn ugly.

  "We just met you. How can you expect that? And we've only been with you not even a few hours yet. How would we know we could even trust you to know that? We don't owe you anything anyway. Why would you think we were obligated to tell you about everything we know on the spot? And we haven't left you stranded or anything," Mandy said to him sharply and she doesn't back down but is in his face. Her instincts as a bodyguard are on Miguel particularly.

  But Josh is looking thoughtful but I can see enmity in his eyes.

  Miguel is looking guilty, maybe he has some common sense and realized they'd overreached. Yet, Sadie isn't sure what to do but is upset. And she doesn't realized she'd caused the reactions of the others.

  Then Miguel suddenly waffled back and forth, getting upset again. (Is he bipolar?)

  I think Sadie thought her response was more reasonable and quieted down, but not the other two.

  "But we lost James!" Josh argued.

  "Yeah but WE didn't lose him for you. You would have lost him anyway even if we weren't here," Mandy told him.

  "This is so screwed up! We're like half a party now. And now we have to deal with you guys!" Josh said upset still.

  "And Josh still would have been lost anyway! Even in a car you can't go out at night. And we still would have been inside that building. You chose that apartment yourselves before we had a say in it," I told them.

  "But you could have gotten us out of here at any time!" Miguel said again.

  Damn it.

  Miguel is trying to incite the others to do something stupid. He's a bit hot headed it seems.

  "We're in a dungeon! What part of this zone map looks safe to you at night, even in a car!" Mandy said back to him.

  "Tell him bro! We could have saved James!" Miguel said to Josh to incite us. Miguel had also shaken Josh by his shirt.

  "Whoa, easy. That's enough of that," Mandy told them.

  "The fuck it is! We want to get out of here. If you have a way out then fucking help us damn it!" Miguel shouted.

  He's way too loud, I thought. Actually all of them are and this makes this dangerous with tons of zombies around.

  So I stepped back. And I was lucky I did, not realizing what he was about to do.

  He lurched forward with his knife towards me.

  Mandy caught her own crowbar against it, and kicked him in the knee. He goes down. Thankfully she'd been watching and recognized his posture as an attack move. (But which skill did she use to know and do this?)

  But then he tried to draw a gun on us. It wouldn't have worked since its a dungeon. But it could mean also that he would have used it later in the same way once we're out.

  I used my stun spell formula skill, just then. It hits him hard and he has no resist. I'm actually lucky that I got the stun on him, which sent him to the ground before the others decided if they were going to help or not.

  Mandy made sure he was on the floor face down with her knee in his back, not gently also.

  Good. Thank goodness the stun worked! Even though his level is higher than mine, he has very low magic resistance as a fighter class!

  "Do that again and I'll have to put you down," Mandy told him boldly.

  "Let's just calm down," I told them with Miguel on the ground held still.

  "Look. You guys might be upset that we had a car. But a car doesn't guarantee being invincible in here. We still would have had to lay low during the night. We still have a limited amount of gas for it, which is way staying in it at night wouldn't have worked anyway, and we have no way of replacing that gas. Its not run by magic, and its not armored either. Its an ordinary car. The monsters can still trap you especially the darker it is. And we didn't let you get hurt. Besides, didn't you find some loot and get XP also?" I asked.

  "He's right unfortunately," Sadie told them.

  "Only because you have the forage skill," Josh told her.

  Miguel's eyes seem to light up when they mentioned it.

  "Let's just calm the freak down," Mandy told them.

  "Give me back my weapons, damn it," Miguel spat at her and swore.

  "We'll give them back, when you calm the hell down. But the gun is useless. And we don't owe you or anyone else here," I reminded him.

  "If the gun is useless, then give it back to him," Josh said.

  "Right. So you can shoot us at the dungeon exit?" I asked.

  "OK. Everyone needs a time out. We're too loud also," Sadie told them.

  "Everyone just go to different corners. And calm down," I told them.

  It took a few minutes for that to happen.

  Mandy and I went to one room, the others stayed in the other.

  ...

  As soon as we'd closed the door Mandy pulled me close to whisper to me.

  "You don't think they'll let us go do you? We can't risk them going after us in the middle of the night to rob us. Right now they are totally desperate and think the car is the only way to escape safely. They might even hurt each other for it, not just us," Mandy told me.

  "You think so?" I asked.

  "I've seen it before," she frowned. "Its exactly the type of situation that caused the death of my last boss. We should consider busting out on our own soon."

  "OK, let's plan for it. But let's go carefully and no rush on this."

  "Agreed," she said.

  We laid low a few minutes.

  Quickly we brain stormed.

  In theory, since this is a family sponsored survival activity to get me to level up, we can use and look for any resources here. And I do need to stay here anyway, even if that other group isn't here, no thanks to my family's schemes.

  First, we'll check the grocery stores in the undead city zone map (still dungeon floor level 6). Also, we can check if the gas stations here have fuel. We can look at key places in the town dungeon map, even if they have zombies.

  Like some big cities have National Guard supply stations in them. We don't know if this one has one or not, but we can look.

  "And where is the city hall?" Mandy asked.

  "Why are you interested in that?" Josh asked.

  "Its a dungeon. The key parts of the dungeon would be places like that wouldn't they? Aren't you curious what's there?" Mandy continued.

  "She's probably right. But it would have bosses attracted to places of power also," Sadie told them.

  "You think city hall has resources?" I asked.

  "They often do in basements. People used to have bomb shelters in older towns from the cold war for example also, that would include emergency supplies also. And this town is a mirror of a human Earth town; but sometimes the expiration dates have been neglected. And who knows what we would find," she warned.

  "Again that's right I think. Let's avoid city hall. But I'm interesting in your thinking of which places would have different things," Josh said.

  I quickly found Mandy has quite the bundle of skills.

  I'm glad I hired her as my main choice.

  She has a survival skill, but its not as good at finding food as the 'forage' skill in the status screens. She also has experience in combat off the grid with the same survival experiences. She knows how to handle herself well, as a bodyguard 'knight' magitek class. And she doesn't back down or wimp out if things get rough.

  "What other skills do knights have?" I asked.

  She shrugged. "If I had armor I'd be a better tank. I can't tank without armor
. We get a skill called armor efficiency, which grants bonus defense per armor item that other classes don't get. I get a really good block skill also that starts up. Plus, my shield skill has a shield efficiency skill that functions similar to the armor efficiency but with bonus damage absorption and block, beyond just bonus defense. Our weapon skills are good too, but the soldier class has us beat in pure offense stat comparisons."

  "You think it will come to that?" I asked.

  "In the dungeons, anything can happen," she warned me. "And if you can help me find some armor pieces it would help me be more effective."

  So it sounds like armor is expensive? That could be a drawback for a magic job like hers; knight.

  She was a bit poor before I recruited her. She's not skill-less, but no armor can be rough. But in an undead map in a way that's not a drawback since any scratch would be deadly anyway. But if I can help her acquire armor bits, she could be a lot happier.

  But on the plus side, with all the modern technology and magic, plus enchanting, it would be possible to get armors that are very thin and sleek but very high defense statted, which wouldn't look bulky.

  We made a map of some of the locations to hunt in.

  For instance, this town is a copy of the normal city, although I'm not sure which one. So in theory, it should have greenhouses, and other useful places to look at for equipment and tools. Everything in a normal city could in theory be scavenged here, with 'probably a lot' of elbow grease.

  [Status notification; bonus XP awarded; 500] then showed up on my status screen.

  "Um, what just happened?" I asked.

  "I got that bonus also," Mandy told me. "I'm guessing the system can give bonus awards for activities done to increase our survival. This planning session must have satisfied those conditions. Since this was a planning session, it happened to work as real 'XP'."

  "Anything else you can add?" I asked.

  "Just that I hope we can work this out. It will be hard for us to maneuver without the ranger's forage skill."

  ...

  Twice during the night there were darkling attempts to get into this apartment by monsters, and very likely darklings not zombies. And they are more scary than zombies in some ways.

  We also heard them shrieking at night.

  The shrieks of the darklings is eerie and sharp, and obviously monstrous while being unlike any living thing. It also sounded like one of the shrieks during the night came from the building not far from us where we used to be camped out yesterday.

  One of the darkling attempts resulted in actual combat with the team in the other room calling to us for help to fight it at the front door.

  The darklings are freaking scary; way scarier than undead because their forms are so twisted and nightmarish. It seems also that they have very minor shape shifting skills, not on the level of changing their whole form, but doing a few features seems doable.

  "Help! Help us!" Sadie called out. "Its getting in! Hurry!"

  "We're sorry! Help us!" Miguel called out.

  We then burst through the door to find the weirdly shaped darkling breaking through the front door with Josh and Miguel trying to hold it off while Sadie was trying to poke at its eyes with a homemade spear.

  What the freak?!

  As if the zombies weren't bad enough...

  The darkling looked like an 'air swimming' stingray monster except with two sets of sail wings and with 3 tentacle like stinger tails that it was using to try and both block and stab at the other 3.

  Josh used his 'block' skill to try to stop an attack from one of the stingers. But then another swiped at him trying to push him back. (-4 damage)

  The third stinger blocks Miguel's attack.

  "Careful! Only one of the stingers has poison," Mandy warned while charging forward.

  Oh shit. Poison too?!

  I'll need to find out if all of the darklings have poison or only certain ones, I thought.

  This thing is huge. But oddly enough it also has six sets of eyes also.

  Weird.

  The combat continued.

  Miguel slashes at it finally getting through the defense. But its not easy. This is a big fish so to speak in terms of toughness. Just one slash felt like it hardly even damaged it!

  "Look out!" Mandy warned. She was right to warn us!

  But then I got a surprise when my stun skill only stunned one of its tentacles instead of all of them!

  "Whoa!" I was pushed to the floor by Mandy, barely avoiding an attack. She also managed to block it to not hit her also. (A cover and a block skill used at the same time?! Knights are sure useful.)

  We kept up the pressure, but it was raising a ruckus. The darklings didn't have to hold back on noise because they can sprout wings and fly off.

  "Guys, that noise is going to bring zombies up here for sure," Josh said.

  "After we fight it off we have to get out of here," Sadie said.

  But its harder than it looks to fight the darklings. They have a combat toughness that is more like at least maybe five zombies together minus the infection bites. And the fact that it can split its tail to fight us also didn't make it any easier.

  "What the freak?!" Miguel called out.

  Just as he'd landed a blow on its tail, severing it, the other tails split and grew a new one its place!

  "Shit, you'd think this was a boss the way they act," Josh said.

  "Wait, the other tails shrunk a bit when it split the extra one off!" I pointed out, which I'd just noticed.

  "Helpful but we still need to fight it," Miguel said.

  Mandy continued to block blows coming at me. One of the biggest problems with this monster is that it knew I was the biggest threat here! And it was way smarter than other monsters I'd faced so far! So even with two knights in the party using aggro skills, it still kept trying to stop me from using my stun!

  Plus, the blunt weapons had a hard time against the strange blubbery and ink fluid like body and skin of this strange monster.

  Within another minute we'd scored 3 more hits. I'd also stunned 3 of the 5 tails. (One was severed. This left one remaining tail, with it forced into defense mode!

  Amazing!

  Knights are really cool and bad ass. Their defensive power is great. And there is some offensive power also, with some neat combo moves. (Too bad Mandy won't show me her status screen, but well just having her on my side is good enough.)

  "Guys, don't let it escape! If it does it could come back with friends! They are smart monsters," Josh warned, as it had finally figured out it might need to run.

  Miguel managed to lasso a chain around it, not as a class skill, but just as a guy thinking fast. And he already had a rope. (I think he had this in his bag. And he has some kind of snare skill also, I just found out.)

  But just when we were managing to start to really damage it, several zombie adds occurred.

  !

  So the darkling can bring zombie trains?!

  Just how smart are they?!

  "Look out! Adds!" Mandy called out.

  I managed to get my stun up on the first zombie. Then with the equipment enchant, I was able to blind the second zombie add, which made it run into a wall and start chewing on the wall after missing us.

  Weird...but at least we have confirmation that blind can work on zombies!

  "Help!" Josh called out.

  He took the third zombie.

  Then Miguel took the fourth while all of them are shouting at me for help. This left only Sadie, and Mandy to deal with the darkling!

  The next round I barely kept Josh from getting bit with another stun, but then had to use my second blind use on the fourth zombie, and coach Miguel off it.

  I slammed my crowbar over and over into the first stunned zombie.

  ...

  The fight seemed to never end.

  By the end of it, I'd lost most of the mana I'd regenerated while we slept. (-57% mana) My mana bar is vastly lowered, I frowned.

  19 zombies were kill
ed.

  1 darkling killed.

  It was all from the same, very long fight! And the darkling was like a small mini-boss in some ways. I don't want to face them again.