The Witch Tamer, Book 1

by Naosu N R

  Weird.

  There's even stuff like this? I guess its not worthless, but I'd been hoping for some kind of glorious combat items.

  That one worked, but on the wrong item?

  Is there such thing as an enchant system that is random? Or maybe its a chance for deviance.

  But then a few minutes later while we struggled I realized it could have become a food producing item (water) because we'd been thinking about food all day!

  "It could be worse. I was actually worried about water too," Melanie said.

  She reached out and took a sip of the canteen before anyone else could.

  "Its so hot today," Simone said wiping the sweat off her forehead.

  "Oh wow. This water is so good. Its ice cold!" Melanie said, laughing as she tried it. "Oh that's good stuff!"

  "Let me try some," Shelly pleaded.

  Soon the others were fighting over who could hold the water bottle.

  Shelly is giving me the strangest look right now, like she's alarmed. "What the freak...?" I heard her whisper.

  ...

  At one point it was only about 2 hours from sun down.

  We had been trying to make our way over to that place with the survivors while leveling up. I hadn't totally committed rescuing the survivor group. But we had been under the impression that if we could carefully make our way there, then it wouldn't be a bad thing if we could manage a rescue.

  But finally Miguel spoke up. "Guys, we need to find shelter and lay low for the night. Only 2 or 3 hours more sun light. Its not a good idea to be out right now. Sometimes the zombies get more active before dark. Darklings can sometimes come out before sun down, even though the sun hurts them."

  "Wait, what do you mean by that?" I asked.

  I hadn't considered they might could find ways of hunting early.

  "A huge town map like this the skyscrapers are so tall that huge shadows create openings for them, despite that sunlight can burn them," Mandy explained.

  "As a healer, shouldn't you get a sunlight skill?" Miguel asked Shelly.

  "..." Shelly just shrugged and shook her head.

  "Darn. We were so close to rescuing survivors!" Mandy cried.

  "I don't think it was that close. We did get closer. But look, that whole area has a huge swath of zombies in it. We can't just storm through that. Its blocked. This way is no good. Tomorrow we'll have to even try a different approach entirely. Another whole street," I pointed out.

  "Jay's right," Melanie said.

  They didn't want to admit it. But this street was cut off.

  "But there is a lot of restaurant alleyways there. Look! One of those might give us an approach," Melanie said.

  "That's possible. We can try again tomorrow," Simone said.

  Mandy seemed satisfied.

  Miguel is hopeful also.

  Those two are hard to deal with because both want desperately almost suicidal to help and find others, with the hope that their lost friends are in there. Its almost dangerous trying to keep them both restrained.

  ...

  During the night, we had to mobilize everyone to fight 3 darklings.

  Shelly doesn't have any spells useful for darklings. This I found interesting, because her anti-undead skill doesn't work on them. This means they aren't undead. At the same time, they are more individually unique.

  The one we fought a couple days ago had multiple tails and the ability to split its attack power among the tails, and still be able to split as many off as it wanted.

  These ones weren't like that at all.

  One darkling had 4 wings and would use them to attack instead of fly.

  And another one had two heads and three tails, but fought like a big cat.

  Luckily I had enough mana from resting during the night. But tomorrow I'll be more tired, from being woken up several times.

  It also seems like the darklings have a guaranteed chance of both loot and the dungeon dollars; whatever they are. We found 291 dungeon money from the 3 of them. We had to split this up however, but as Mandy is already being paid by my parents and the others are my minions that means only losing a third which goes to Shelly and Miguel.

  Income up by +194 foreign dungeon world currency registers in my status screen.

  My status screen is still figuring out how to process this money, so its kept it separate from the other money. Plus, its got some question marks and error code around the words 'foreign dungeon currency', which its labeling it as.

  ...

  We found 2 cans of food today.

  Given that there is a whole team of us that's stressful.

  But the team spirit and good feeling among my team in the evening feels good. That tends to wipe away the worries that we're mostly (not all) in a family atmosphere at the end of the day.

  The apples will last us 2 more days. We are going through them a bit faster than normal because Shelly stole one. And Miguel claims he marches on his stomach and can't help it. He wouldn't say exactly how many he took, but pleads forgiveness.

  When pressed by Mandy, he says he would definitely steal food, but not monetary loot, or real value stuff.

  So far we believe him, but this won't work if we don't get that forage skill pretty fast. And even worse, I'm worried that we may have to level Simone even more then to get the forage skill to consistently produce.

  ...

  In the morning, I checked our statuses.

  Name; Simone Mansfield

  Race; Human

  Magic job; NA

  Level; 6 → 7

  Health; 61/64 → 65/71

  Mana; 2/2 → 3/3

  Mana Regen; 1

  Health regen; 2 (per day)

  Element affinities; mind, enchantment

  Str; 23 → 24Agi; 40 → 41Con; 46 → 47

  Int; 54 Wis; 44App; 94

  Skills; athletics, jogging, defend, block, parry, evade, Search

  Gear list;

  Bikini top

  Levis pants

  Sneakers

  Baseball bat 0 → +1 (enchanted during the day)

  Buckler 0 → +1

  ...

  I didn't level up today.

  But I did get a permanent bonus in my defense skill (+1).

  Chapter 31

  An atmosphere of great danger is in the room. Sounds of combat and shouting are rending the air.

  "Block it! That's good! Keep it up!" Mandy coached.

  We're in heavy combat. This is probably the hardest fight I'd been in so far.

  When the terrible blows hit my enchanted item shield charge, I can barely stay on my feet if I'm leaning forward almost to the point of falling. I almost fell several times, because of the strength of the monsters threatening to overwhelm the shield.

  Somehow I held on.

  Whew...

  Here comes another blow. Brace for it!

  Bam...the damage absorption enchanted shield sounded an echo. My fingers are clutching at its handle. Surprisingly this thing is quite sturdy after becoming enchanted.

  The others are around me. I sometimes catch them cringing when a blow looks severe coming at me. But they perform their roles well as direct damage, and other crowd control.

  We'd stumbled into a darkling nest while investigating this building. And because they are darklings their intelligence is quite high, making them extra dangerous. Their claws and teeth are quite terrible to watch for also.

  But because its darklings, I can have Mandy sort of act as a secondary tank without too much trouble.

  Its currently 11:31 AM.

  I have up shielding the monsters blow, the damage shield ability of my enchanted umbrella (which is now at +3 enhancement level, since this morning.)

  But this monster we're fighting really hits hard! Its build seems like offense, but it also has a lot of health I think also?

  This monster is trying to do some kind of power strike, by bracing his strength to try to overcome my shield! Devious! To think that he'd try to channel his adrenaline!


  For a brief moment even I was afraid, but the shield charge held.

  I'm trying to also watch its movements and learn something while acting as our tank also. You can learn to watch monsters' moves and how they will use patterns and movements in typically the same way. But this also means the first few seconds of the fight before you know their patterns you can have openings in your defense.

  OK, watch his center of balance and legs...that will reveal his movements!

  Mage tank...?

  Who would have thought it could happen.

  It can exist with a special enchantment build like mine. But only in a situation like this. Still, I don't have an aggro skill, so if something goes after another team member I literally have to push them out of the way and take their place wherever they were standing.

  And that's scary when huge jaws and teeth are pointed at me.

  This thing tried to snap its jaws over my head, but I blocked it.

  Scary!

  I had to reset the charge on the umbrella virtually every minute.

  Melanie uses a spear strike for -12 damage, hitting it hard.

  Mandy attacks using a defense prioritized combo maneuver, landing 2 blows for -14 damage each.

  Miguel has to wait in the back. We can't risk using his small stack of arrows either, because if we have to flee or if the fight doesn't work out, we'll have lost all his small stack of arrows.

  I blocked again, absorbing the enemy's attack power with my skill.

  This skill is amazing. I still had to reset it each time!

  This monster is seriously damaging the energy absorption of the charge by nearly 40 damage points each hit! This reminds me how serious it is to fight darklings and zombies both! Without this damage nullification a party would be in real trouble. Healers would have a hard time with serious damage like this.

  Zombies tend to do about half the damage this guy is doing, as far as I can tell, and actually often more like a quarter damage but then the virus infection achieves the deadly poisoning of the blood not long after. But the other darklings didn't hit this hard either, compared to this guy! I think many of them were hitting from 20 to 30 pounds. And they'd also have strange skills also.

  Like this one also has a damage absorption ability himself, which is made from some kind of mana skill to produce an oily slick on its body to make hits feel rubbery and softer.

  "I'm having a hard time getting him," Simone groaned while missing her spear strike.

  The spear strike skills are helpful.

  "Just hang on. Don't let him hit you, use the length of the spear to stay out of reach," I coached.

  But still Melanie and Simone struggle with skills. Also because, everyone is so individually unique, not every job build goes the same way from one person to the next, even if they have similar skills.

  "Why aren't you using the stun?" Melanie asked me.

  "I did. He resisted it the first two times. Then I to keep up with the damage," I grunted after absorbing a hit that almost knocked me over. Briefly my sneakers almost lost their grip because he'd tried to push me horizontally, but then I managed to reverse being pushed back.

  Somehow this darkling looks very similar to a giant evil fat lizard.

  Its weird.

  Now it has numerous wounds. But its just so strong.

  "Look out! Its using a skill!" Mandy cried out.

  "She's right," Shelly said.

  We found out Shelly lacks buffing skills as a healer. But her heals aren't bad. Her max mana pool isn't great however.

  I rolled out of the way barely avoiding a charge attack that broke the wall, where we're fighting.

  "Crud. That charge skill will attract attention won't it?" Simone asked.

  "Possibly. But not always. The zombies don't like the darklings. That works in our favor," Mandy said.

  "There's a charge skill?!" I exclaimed while huffing to get out the way.

  "Of course there's a charge skill!" Miguel exclaimed, mad at me.

  "Look out, its trying to re-position to use that skill again! And that skill does more damage than the normal attacks that you could barely withstand!" Mandy yelled to me.

  I can see it is repositioning itself again, and very angry.

  Come on, come on...hang in there, I kept thinking.

  "Don't let the charge hit you!" Melanie yelled at me while I was trying to dodge another charge!

  "That's weird. Why would they have an exception when nothing else does?" Miguel asked.

  "I don't know. But its true," Mandy replied.

  "That's true," Shelly added.

  "Shelly do you have any attack skills?" I pleaded.

  "Its not undead. So my skills won't do much on it. Sorry," Shelly frowned. Still, she is hitting us with some kind of low power regeneration skill. I can feel its warmth and light.

  I then absorbed another attack, and then hit the energy shield reset. I tried to stun the darkling again. But it resisted.

  This is good that I'm not gambling too much on any one skill, I see. If I'd only been working on the stun skill we'd be dead already.

  This means I must branch out into other new skills.

  And to do that, I have to keep trying enchant something every day!

  A few minutes later the darkling mutant giant chick is dead.

  However, a new problem emerged.

  The darklings drop a kind of meat, but its covered in an oil filth, or some kind of mana saturation resembling oil filth.

  "That means we can't eat it," Simone guessed, looking at Mandy questioningly.

  "I...think you're right," Mandy confirmed.

  But we found out a few things.

  First, this darkling had probably 800 health points or more! This is truly astonishing. And with that 800+ health comes a similar higher range of Strength (STR), Agility (AGI), Constitution (CON), and other key stats.

  This thing in a normal human city would be a terror that would be quite unstoppable by non-murim leveled up adventurers. Military vehicles might do some damage, but such vehicles would have taken time to mobilize also, requiring civilians to actually point and signal a threat.

  This is way more health than the normal darklings. It was only a few seconds later, that Mandy confirmed...

  "Guys, I think...I think, that this was a boss!" she said.

  "What?! You guys killed a boss?" Miguel said excitedly.

  "That's not good. I thought we avoided the pink dot on the map that was the boss?" Melanie asked.

  "This is a sub-boss. Whatever that violet dot was its worse than this by far," Mandy frowned.

  "Guys, my guide says this floors bosses drop good stuff," Miguel said excitedly.

  "No way," Simone gasped as Mandy holds up a treasure loot drop!

  "Yes!" Mandy cried.

  The item...

  A status screen pop up shows; [You have acquired floor hidden treasure loot; 'ranger boots; +10 to movement, +5% evasion, +5 armor. Usable by; Jay]

  "If we get her about 2 more levels, and keep her using the search skill, Simone should be able to use this," Mandy emphasized.

  "But she can't now?" I asked.

  "Not yet. Its class specific. The only reason you can equip it is because you are an enchanter, probably," Melanie reasoned.

  "Hm...that makes sense," Mandy nodded.

  "Wait, does this mean we can keep hunting for those?" Melanie asked Mandy.

  "We could," she replied.

  "Not today we can't. Too dangerous. This thing used up over half my mana pool. We need to find a spot to rest and come back tomorrow. I'd prefer a few more enhancements up also, because this thing was so terrible," I told them.

  "Understood," Mandy nods.

  "We have to come back bro. This is good shit and we could make some money doing this. That thing had good default enchants. Its worth a lot and could be repeated. We can increase our combat potential by having you and Simone equip it. As well, we can sell off any extras. The enchanted stuff made by murim players
often doesn't get good pluses like that movement and evasion bonus," Miguel told us.