The Witch Tamer, Book 1

by Naosu N R

  "I'm confused. Why is he acting like a good guy? They really are 'black hats' right?" per another.

  But the rest of them are now sober.

  The agent in charge now had to increase morale of those hunting for evidence, to prevent them from thinking this family was innocent, which would wreck their investigation.

  Some people left the room to act on investigating the new clues. Others were trying to find and identify the boy and the thugs.

  "You guys are going to be team 3," the remaining group was told.

  "Wait, we are team 3? What are we supposed to do now? Our target was supposed to be Jay. But if he's a good guy, how the hell are we supposed to trick him into being bad?" one of the women asked.

  "This is so screwed up. Too bad. All that surveillance got nothing and instead made him look heroic," another said.

  "Did anything else happen there today?" someone asked.

  "Well, a few hours later he comes out and is picked up by a very good looking woman in a big black fancy new truck. They drive home after doing some business with the shops. Try to find out who she is for us also. But for the mission, stay on Jay," one of the techs said.

  "She has a nice lift kit at least," one guy said.

  Some were annoyed at his comments.

  "OK, we'll find out who the woman is. We want to know anyway, even without you asking us. Is she a girlfriend, sister, business acquaintance or something else," another said.

  "She has a vibe like a romantic interest. See! Right there, she's clearly sharing a romantic hug and kiss with him. But its odd because she looks older than him by maybe 2 or 3 years. And if she's got the car, and has those looks, why would she serve him when she could have him serve her?" one said.

  "OK, well we need to know what he's doing in the dungeon also. There's loads of crime potential in a dungeon," one agent said.

  "Maybe chicks like dungeon adventurers now? Could it be a trend?" another asked, turning the conversation differently.

  "If so, maybe I need to go dungeoning myself," another guy said.

  "Back to the topic. We need to catch them," the supervisor interrupted.

  "The only way we can do that is if we field a dungeon team ourselves tomorrow and start showing up to this spot every time he comes out here, or sort of following him in to make sure he's not killing people or worse in there," one said.

  The FBI agents looked a bit stressed out.

  Actually most of them didn't dungeon much, since it was so risky. They were supposed to do it once a week. But if you didn't have high health regen and mana regen or mana skills that was practically impossible.

  "Maybe we can plant someone in his team for the dungeon?" someone asked.

  "Who does he already team with? Do we even know that?" another asked.

  "I don't know. But we'll have to hurry. We only have about 4 hours before he's going to this place next. Do we even have any assets that are dungeon usable?" one guy asked.

  "I don't want to do that. I already had a shooting this month. I've had enough excitement," one guy said.

  "My wife is 6 months pregnant. If I went in, she'd skin me alive," another said.

  "Uh...I haven't taken my field certification tests for that," one said.

  "I'll do it!" one volunteered.

  "Um, Smith. You do know guns don't work in 'The Tower' dungeon right?" one woman asked him.

  "Oh shit. I'm a marksman. Why didn't you tell me that? I would have died for sure," Smith is now saying now.

  "So no volunteers. That sucks," another said.

  "Can we see if another department has a retired dungeoneer working as either an FBI agent somewhere or something else?" one said.

  "OK, let's do that. Even if they transfer us, that's more worth it than going in the dungeon. Without being a magic job that's suicide," one said.

  The boss had to go with it. Asking for more than human limits wasn't possible, even with the FBI.

  ...

  But just when he was about to give up one of the team leaders office was visited by the techs.

  "Sir, turn on the news," the tech said.

  "What is it?"

  "Just do it."

  He did so, and the story was in mid progress.

  "...authorities say today the brother of an LA police department member was saved from an attempted mugging and possible murder today by an unknown benefactor yesterday afternoon. The undisclosed person's name is being withheld, but thanks to the heroics of a single individual, three thugs were sent home packing!"

  "Thanks in part due to a new patriot law clause, this legalizes magitek defense for use against civilians in trouble."

  The news video continued, while keeping some details vague. But there was already a lot of speculation but also a few facts.

  "Damn it. They jumped on it first, before we could," one said watching it.

  A few others are mad also.

  "This will make it harder for us to do anything. If the victim he rescued wasn't a high profile figure we could do more. But it seems like its a cop's family member or something," someone grumbled.

  "If that's the case, the cops won't let us lock him up. They'll take it like he's one of them," someone said.

  "Maybe," one didn't want to agree.

  "We could still try," one of them said without having any guts to their voice.

  The team leader turned it off. "I already know about that. We all do," he said.

  "Sure we do. But there was a new development that we'd missed," the tech told him.

  "What?" the other guy listened but frowned.

  "It said this guy was the little brother of some LA cop. I looked her up. The LA cop is named Valerie Rodriguez. She's been a cop just long enough to have a little bit of street experience, and works in a cruiser with a partner. She's perfect for this. We can tap her to help us with this guy. And I think she'd do it. She has a 4 year degree, and is a go getter. She'd done some dungeon experience also, but doesn't have any magitek affinity, which seems to have impeded much of her progress in it. Her team busted up last year, and so she has stuck to only patrol. We'll totally have her leveraged by this guy being the one that helped her brother. There's no way she'll say no to us," the tech told him.

  "So we can still salvage this huh?"

  "OK, we can try that..."

  "Really? But her family member was rescued by him. Are you sure she'd do this with us?"

  "Shit. You might have just his us a home run man. Arrange a meeting. Have her come to our office. We'll also try to give her a recruitment offer to work for us also at the same time. We've got this in the bag," he gave him a high five.

  Some in the room felt like the others weren't listening to them, when they said it wouldn't work.

  "I can have it set up. Lots of LAPD don't get this chance. Its a good temptation also," the tech said.

  "Why is this a big thing she'd jump on again?" someone asked.

  "Well if she's a cop, if we offer her a spot in the FBI or CIA instead for helping us, she'd love to have more power and money. So yeah she'd do it."

  "I don't see why she would."

  "Ignore him. We're right. This is the ultimate offer to recruit her for 'the big leagues' if she helps us lock him up. Then we could spin him to turn on the family in exchange for leniency," one said.

  "What's her name?"

  "Valerie Rodriguez."

  ...

  But an added problem in the mix was that they couldn't predict which days, Jay would be at the Los Angeles river 'Tower' entrance or not.

  ...

  Jay point of view

  I'd had to have Melanie meet me for lunch at school with her truck because there's no way I can bring in stacks of throwing knives into a school. That'd for sure go over well!

  I was so excited to do this that I'd almost forgot that Melanie wants to have 'spouse intimacy' in the truck instead of help me train.

  I guess I'll be late for class...crap.

  Maybe I'll skip dungeoning today to
finish this order?

  It didn't take long to do them but it was the fails that dragged it out. With Melanie's amplify ability my enchant success rate goes up by +15, making it so 1 out of 3 enhancement effects works. I'd gotten 3 of them to +1 this morning.

  My mana bar is full around 11 AM.

  Then with Melanie helping me during lunch time, I keep enhancing everything I can dropping my mana bar to less than 10%.

  The result is 13 throwing knives at +1.

  That's what my mana will let me do for now. I'll need a rest before doing more.

  That's pretty good for a novice. Its also not that easy to enchant an object. It is done within about five minutes. But even though the skill is automated using the status screen system, it takes a bit of effort. I end up sweating a bit like I was holding my breathe for awhile as I try to push the energy into each item.

  But I messed up.

  Plummeting my mana to 10% fatigued me considerably and made me sleepy in a sort of illness like state. (The body isn't built for having so much energy loss fast without a need for a nap.)

  But I was waiting for my health regen tick to bring my health bar up a bit more anyway.

  I ended up with my head in Melanie's lap to rest. She's good at letting me do this and seems to enjoy it.

  She'd been telling me her sisters are still mad at her, but its worth it while stroking my hair obsessively. Then I fell asleep.

  When I woke up, I realized we were at home in the garage. She'd drove me here after seeing I was too drained. Plus all the days I'd been dungeoning until around 8 PM at night had been like burning the candle at both ends which makes me tired.

  I soon realized it was going to take more than one day to make all these throwing daggers. But I also needed to get to the point of being able to use them myself, and I just didn't have any good range skills.

  I kept at the grind.

  Its free money!

  My skill gives me income that will help a lot. But other jobs don't have this. People can hire themselves out as muscle or hired goons with their skills as mages or other magic jobs. But they don't get to call the shots or work for themselves as the bosses.

  So my advantage is awesome!

  Plus, in terms of morality its very hard to consider working for someone as a good person, when they may ask you to execute someone, or have questionable ethical dilemmas.

  And its hard to find a party of good people right away anyway, since they'd probably already figured out that they couldn't trust others.

  But also I was grinding in a different way trying to chip away at Simone's mental armor. I had resisted using charm on her yet. But she's not getting any closer to being friendly, though she is patient and tolerant.

  It ends up being fun to be in my room, because of my parents rules that Simone and Melanie aren't allowed to wear clothes in the house.

  I've also noticed how much Simone and Melanie look alike. But there are personality differences. Both are 'looker' blondes with really nice hair, faces, skin, and full breasted slim figures.

  But Melanie likes rich things, nice things, and money. She can be kind of sweet and loving also; but that might just be my mind control on her.

  Simone on the other hand seems very quiet and not unfriendly but just bottled up, and not just from what my family did to her. Simone is also a bit darker tanned in the skin than Melanie, but both have nice skin tone and look to them.

  "What the hell are you doing over there! Go back to your own room," I heard my mom yelling at Diego again.

  That asshole.

  Is he trying to use that X-ray vision skill again. This is what, the third or fourth time now. So I'm sure he has some kind of supernatural skill like X-ray vision. My previous hunch was correct.

  I need to stop that.

  Wait, can I enhance or enchant my own door? And what if I can unlock an option to make it too solid to look through?

  I sat up while using Melanie's legs as a lap pillow.

  Simone is on the recliner near us, reading a magazine, but sort of still hanging back and quiet as usual.

  I targeted the door and then used my skill.

  The enhancement skill failed at first. But then took on the third try! It worked.

  But its not an X-ray vision blocking skill unfortunately. And I'm out of mana. I'll need to wait till tomorrow.

  I'm pretty sure my mental state, and my thoughts affect the enchant options. So I believe if I focus enough I can get a type of enchant on the door that I'd like to counter him.

  ...

  At 11:02 PM, I woke up briefly.

  With more mana I tried again and reinforced the enchant charge that I'd already placed.

  The enchant on my door worked!

  The pull down menu appeared. Then, 'X-ray vision blocker' appeared in the choices. But I can't pick it yet, because it requires 2 charges of enchants stacking. This means I'm not even half way through the process.

  But to think I could make and create this, using skills is very cool!

  It will have to wait until tomorrow to build up enough mana to succeed amid several fails. It also seems like if I fail once I won't lose the previous charge that's already set in.

  Just like that a few days passed.

  I got the door to be 'X-ray vision blocked'.

  My cash stash is going up. And so is my XP. I kept working up both my own enhancements and trying to gain enhanced stuff that I can sell.

  I had also had to be careful of making sure I didn't leave my cellphone out where Simone could grab it. I also had to keep it password locked all the time. If that were to happen my family would kill her. I've also noticed that the maids don't trust Simone, and keep an eye on her constantly, especially when I'm not there.

  But they would only behave that way if my parents told them to watch over and chaperon us, to make sure she doesn't flee, escape, or if they thought I'd let her go. (They may have thought this, suspecting my 'good' behavior streaks, despite my trying to hide it.)

  I can't blame Simone for not being trustworthy to them. She never asked to be here. But I worry about her mental health a lot. This is also why I often give her stuff to read.

  Several times also, Sue's family has kept trying to get me to go over there and be with them, and even bring Melanie. But dad told me if I did that he would hurt me, and hurt Simone. And then he'd be forced to kill Melanie.

  I was so shocked that he'd said that. But he says that's the price I have to pay for having a human girl. I have to keep them in line.

  Seriously this is messed up.

  But unexpectedly he'd told me that in front of Simone. And before the weekend had hit, she's suddenly anxious to talk to me and even talkative, after seeing that in some ways I'm also a prisoner to my family.

  I hadn't expected that. But it means also that I am willing to risk trying to use charm on her now, after her natural 'faction towards me' is increased a bit more. This will mean an overall bigger long run gain.

  Plus, an unexpected bonus was that I did find out there were websites with murim forums out on the internet from my brother Ryan, who wants me to hurry and smarten up and help the family make tons of money after leveling up. (So him saying that confirmed that, he wanted to help himself, not me.)

  With Melanie's help I had her compiling lists of various skills on notebooks. But the trouble is that I have to sort of hide what I'm looking for from Melanie whenever its a mind element or mind control skill. And its slow work. The physical combo attacks within the magitek status screen system seem infinite alone. So I'd just told her to make lists of everything while I was at school, but focusing on what we can use.

  By Friday, Melanie had found some clues.

  "I found out that it does say if the target hates you, the benefits of mind skills are less than if they liked you and you used them," Melanie told me.

  "Aren't mind skills weak though?" Simone asked while doing a crossword puzzle.

  Unexpectedly she's interested in dungeon leveling up also may
be? She's clearly showing some interest.

  (I'd also been getting more supplies for Simone to try to keep her happy; books and crossword puzzles. She really likes fashion magazines, reading, exercise (of what's allowed), and the treadmill.)