The Witch Tamer, Book 1

by Naosu N R

  "You guys are too loud," Mandy warned, ever the serious one.

  The right side two houses are further down. And the furthest from that has the least zombies. All of these have special masonry walls blocking the view.

  Instead of going into them directly, and since its fairly rural with our back to wilderness we crossed over the back wall and risked the wilderness.

  Stun!

  I stunned the first zombie.

  The first one has three friends. I put up the umbrella shield with an activated charge to block the others.

  Slam! They are blocked.

  "How...do you have such awesome tools?!" Shelly exclaimed.

  Until now she's been quiet. But now she's in awe.

  "Mother fuckers bite proof," Miguel said frowning. "Wish I had that."

  "That's a good thing Miguel," Simone reminded him.

  "Whatever...fucking insane," Miguel growled.

  Mandy bashed the second one's head in.

  Then we dispatched the others.

  But then a series of several skirmishes occurred!

  Another skirmish.

  Then another.

  Then another.

  We lost an hour with maybe 5 total skirmishes, within that hour that didn't end quickly. Each time I get stressed out worrying about protecting them from bites, using my cheat tank skill.

  Some of the zombies heard us!

  We soon found its trickier outside of residential areas in wilderness.

  But what makes it workable is the map detection skill!

  This thing really shines now in the wilderness!

  There's tons of dry pine trees and ready to burn wilderness here. (Fire spells are suicide here, Shelly warned.) But with all the pine trees we could be snuck up on easily without my skill!

  "This is so cheaty with you here! OMG!" Shelly suddenly cried out.

  "Look out! Behind you!" I warned, seeing a new red dot sneaking up behind Shelly.

  Mandy saved her ass.

  5 zombies dispatched.

  Then 3.

  Then 4.

  Between each one I used the damage absorption charge reset.

  After that 7, and for this skirmish I used my damage absorption charge on the umbrella multiple times.

  "You guys...this is so much freaking XP. There's already a bonus on zombies because of the high risk," Mandy said amazed.

  "Watch out. Some on the other side of that masonry fence," I warned regarding the wall nearby.

  Ahead of us is the furthest most isolated mansion's backyard in this neighborhood.

  "Oh jeez. They have a pool. And its unsoiled!" Melanie gasped.

  "Too loud," Mandy warned with a lilt.

  "All stop!" I warned.

  "What? What is it?" Simone can see the troubled look on my face.

  "This detector is acting up," I said.

  "Why? What's it doing?" Shelly asked.

  "I see a purple dot on the motion detector map. But its not supposed to have purple. All so far are red," I said.

  "Oh shit. Back the freak up now," Mandy said.

  "Why?"

  "Purple is for bosses, you ass," she said.

  "So we go to a different place then?" I asked.

  "Yes. Very. We aren't ready for a boss, particularly with this team," she added.

  We ended up going to a different cul de sac.

  But there's another problem. Several really.

  First, we get an emergency message from my mom. I haven't looked yet, but its not like her to do that unless something bad just happened.

  Second, we are wondering why the boss zombie has human prisoners.

  "That's really fucked up. How could a zombie have human prisoners?" Miguel asked with an odd look on his face.

  "Could it be a mistake?" Simone asked.

  "Let me see," Shelly said.

  I showed her the map display on my status screen, but with only the map visible and my other stuff in censorship mosaic.

  "Wow. Blue dots. Yeah, those are live people. How the hell does undead have live humans?" she whispered.

  "So not a mistake? I can't believe it," Melanie said.

  "Its real. I can't believe I'm saying it also," Shelly said.

  We're in shocked silence for a bit staring at the mapping program.

  "We should get farther away from here. I don't like it. Something unnatural as a boss is bad enough. But something with prisoners is 10 times worse than a big boss," Mandy urged.

  Somehow after that we are very afraid. And rightfully so.

  And we couldn't help but wonder if that's the reason why every house on the boss' cul de sac has food...

  This whole street feels evil and unnatural. We had to leave just from it feeling so weird and evil, not long after that.

  Chapter 30

  Stress...

  We just had an argument.

  It ended up with the team disputing about where to go next. Sometimes influencing people means they care more, so they will fight for your interests more. And this can create friendly fire.

  Thank goodness the argument ended. But its not that they don't agree with me, or won't listen to me. Dealing with life and death makes them more talkative, even with the mind control.

  Shelly especially was trying to get us to go see if we could loot jewelry stores in the zombie town. If the focus was to get cash it wasn't a bad idea. She seems puzzled by some of the reactions of those tied to me and why they are so loyal. She doesn't state this openly but I can see it on her face when she's puzzled.

  But as things stand, we still hadn't solved our situation of getting a forager skill user, or a ranger yet.

  "So why don't we just raid grocery stores and stuff that would have had food before this town was zombified?" Simone asked.

  "That's not a bad idea! There are stores in this zombie map. It might have even started as a real town at one point," Miguel said.

  "What do you mean?" I asked.

  "I mean it might not be a fake town. When something is dungeon created, you sometimes wonder if that means it was ever real, or fake all along," he said.

  "Oh."

  Melanie glared at him. But probably because she can see I don't want to do it and I'm shaking my head. "You don't understand. In a real zombie apocalypse, the grocery stores would be the first looted."

  "We still have to try, right?" Shelly said.

  "Its true it might be hit. But how would we know if we haven't been there yet?" Mandy asked.

  Long pause...

  "Can we try the grocery store for food loot please?" Simone pleaded to me.

  "Let's do it."

  "OK, we can try it. We'll just search a couple grocery stores right now. But for our team goals we can't think about food only. First, we have to get Simone to level 10 AND induce the ranger job class for her. If not we're sunk," I said.

  "But the apple tree," Miguel reasoned, but was interrupted.

  "The apple tree was next to a boss. Something that looked beyond our ability to fight. We got lucky that he never found us. We won't be able to count on that in the future. So let's not count on apples, so much as anything else we can find in zone," Melanie argued.

  "And pray the undead can't infect the apples," one of them added.

  That last comment left a bad taste in our mouth.

  But a dungeon that spawns an apple tree that always puts out apples is something else...

  They don't get it. I like apples too.

  "Let's put it to a vote," Shelly said smugly. She thinks I don't see that she's ribbing Melanie to help her, and thinking Melanie would.

  "Everyone that wants to make some 'serious' money and go with me raise their hand! Also, I am the party healer. Without a healer you are nothing," she said rubbing salt in the wound more, and while smiling big.

  Miguel and Shelly raised her hand.

  Opportunists...

  Those guys have no clue how deep we're in the muck right now. Food is really hard to find in here. In fact, food could be us
ed as money in here, if we ran into other people! This is what they don't realize!

  Then Shelly sees Melanie is looking at me and not raising her hand. She's shocked.

  "Everyone who wants food, now raise your hand?" Shelly said with a down scornful voice, clearly showing she doesn't favor this option.

  Shelly is an idiot. And spoiled. She's probably got a dimension pocket full of food. But she won't be able to be counted on to share any of it.

  I raised my hand for going after food first. I am a realist. And the apocalypse that fried the normal world did make us refugees. So we can't count on stores anymore.

  Then Mandy, Melanie, and Simone raised their hand with me. They were also waiting and watching to see which way I'd fall.

  "Traitor!" Shelly said.

  "I do what my boyfriend does," Melanie said.

  "You mean husband," Simone corrected.

  "R-right. I m-meant that," she said.

  "I thought Mandy was your girl?" Miguel asked.

  "Uh...I uh...am," Mandy said.

  The other girls are shocked.

  "I'll explain later," I told them.

  "So...multiple girls. Jeez, you are the man. I'm right to follow you," Miguel nodded at me.

  "How could you? We've always been a team," Shelly said staring at Melanie for voting differently.

  "Well for me, the part where you said that only healers matter, made me want to screw with you in spite of what Jay and his lovelies want," Mandy said.

  The others are nodding too now. But some of them snickered at her comment.

  "I didn't say that," Shelly said upset.

  "But you said close to that. And that's what you meant," Mandy told her.

  We took a break in a multi-level parking garage on a different part of town, not wanting to be near that super hard, now untouchable big boss zombie's street.

  But we'd soon decided to rest and use that same spot the rest of the day also.

  We were so lucky we didn't run into him. But maybe we were only safe because he probably thought our smells were the prisoners he already had with him. And Mandy says that boss zombies can smell humans further than other zombies.

  I feel a lot of anxiety. My inner spirit is telling us its not the right time to do this boss but to come back later. AND, to get the hell out of there!

  ...

  An hour later.

  Miguel is healing up a bit more. This is because he says he has enhanced healing stats, that he put points into in leveling up he says. He still has a hard time.

  I should investigate how to raise the health regen per day stat myself actually.

  We lost one arrow from him. But he found material for making 7 more.

  We keep hunting for the rest of the day.

  We did find another violet ping on the map program of two other bosses today. But I don't dare do them yet, until we can come up with a strategy and know more about them. And hopefully also more combat strength and more enchants would be better also.

  We also more than anything have noticed the bosses are death traps and shouldn't be engaged lightly, until you believe you will overkill them. If you attempt to overkill them you maybe might survive. If you think you can barely beat them, sort of beat them, or do an average win, you will surely die.

  Such is the way of the Tower of Babel dungeon.

  ...

  Near evening...

  But while I was having sex with Simone near the end of the day, Mandy ran up to me, where we were hiding behind an empty trash bin, and while I was making Simone groan.

  "Jay! You have to see this! Come with me!" she said.

  Then she saw what we were doing. She was a bit startled but then froze to a stop. But instead of moving away she's staring at us.

  "I don't care Jay! Just finish first. Don't stop now!" Simone moaned.

  Mandy stood there watching, while we finished.

  ...

  Mandy took us to the top level of the parking garage, where she'd been acting as a look out. Its not quite sunset yet, and we're in the part of the year where the sun sets later in the day.

  We see two buildings near us with 'HELP! We're alive' signs in several variations.

  "They are probably dead already," I said.

  "I thought that too. But look in that top window, they have a cleverly shielded metal barrel with a fire going in it. Someone is waving there," she points.

  Shit.

  There really are survivors there!

  "C-can we try to save them? Please!" Mandy pleaded.

  "Its risky. I don't know if its even doable," I said.

  "Jay. You don't understand. Two of my siblings went missing in the dungeon. I have to hope to save everyone we can," she urged holding my wrist.

  I glanced at my wrist.

  "S-sorry," she said.

  "Its OK."

  "Jay, your skills are beautiful. Nobody has the chance that you do! You are the only one who can do this! Its like you shine everywhere! And jeez you are only what, level 8? I still have trouble here and I'm over level 20! This zone map isn't even visited by most dungeon teams because of the difficulty, and you are basically holding us up! And I think Shelly also fears this map also, and she's probably around level 19 or 21-ish," she pleaded.

  "If this dungeon isn't visited by others...maybe we should leave," Simone said.

  "NO! Don't! This is the best map for turning you into a ranger class," Shelly told her.

  Simone seemed satisfied, but still wary. "Is that so."

  "It is. We work on getting you some way of sneaking and sniping to avoid them. Then just keep at it, and hope no one gets bit."

  "Yeah, no bites. Small detail there about that," someone sounded depressed.

  "One bite is all it takes. That doesn't sound good."

  "We can stick to roof tops and strategy. We avoid getting caught out in the open. We can do this," I told them.

  "Yeah roof tops are only good if there's no fires," Mandy told us.

  Everyone looked at her funny.

  "What? Just saying..."

  "Don't jinx us."

  All of us are wary.

  In a zombie map, the only time you can relax is when you are asleep in a bunker like defense posture and while hiding.

  Its been pretty stressful thinking about having to hold the time by myself.

  "I don't like it," I said looking at those two buildings.

  They were pretty far away.

  "But you can do it! You can rescue them!" she pleaded. "My two missing siblings have been missing for over 3 years. We'll never know what happened. But you can stop this for real! And jeez, your mana pool is way huger than it should be for your level!"

  "..."

  "I'll think about it," I said finally.

  "What if...if you can be a success on your next enchant attempt, you'll agree to it?" she asked.

  "That's unfair," I frowned.

  "But if you could do it. It would mean you really have a chance," she urged.

  Eh...so unfair.

  Plus, she'd at some point undone the top two buttons of her white blouse and is leaning forward trying to get me to give in with the cleavage temptation method.

  "I'll decide after the next two enchant attempts," I said.

  "Yes!"

  I walked away.

  Its not that easy to get a success in enchanting. I might have tons of time to work this out.

  There was a lot of combat.

  Simone leveled up to level 7 by mid-afternoon. But we didn't quite get there to level 8.

  But surprisingly I succeeded in one of the enchant attempts.

  [Endless Water Canteen enchant achieved] registers on a ping in my status screen. I'd been trying to enchant one of the bucklers. But instead it took effect on my canteen.