The Witch Tamer, Book 1
Page 51
But if I'm not careful I could end up doing damage also. I'd have to be careful.
What would I do?
"Jay? Please help her," Melanie told me lovingly.
"You can help her?" Linz asked.
"Possibly."
"If anyone can you can. You helped me. So I'm sure you could help her," Melanie said.
This whole time also this sexy bandit girl has been rubbing her body up against me also. This is very distracting.
Melanie and Simone didn't particularly like it, but had tolerated it to help the other girl.
"Help her Jay," Simone urged.
"What's your name?" I asked.
"..."
She stared off into space.
Is she catatonic?
She was pretty. Her hair was dirty and she hadn't been allowed baths recently. And she was in a really awful state.
But she was once a blonde I think.
"You have to try it," Melanie said while glaring at Linz.
"I-I didn't do that to her. It was the others. I didn't like it, but the boss was too powerful and would get mad easy," Linz told us.
I don't know if I want to even know.
"Linz, for now your orders are to stay glued to my side and be good. No more banditry. You understand. I want you to be good now," I asked.
Linz...for the first time looked ashamed and looked at the ground before nodding. "I...don't even have the right to apologize. But I do love you. I-I'll do whatever you ask. Even if you ask me to take responsibility."
"Stop her! Grab her!" Melanie suddenly shouted.
Simone and Melanie ended up tackling Linz!
Whoa...
When the dust settled I realized that with the mind control in effect, Linz had suddenly become very aware of her previous sins. It was completely unexpected. And she'd been overcome with guilt and anguish.
She'd been about to cut her own throat! It was fortunate that Melanie saw it in time.
We better slow down. I hadn't meant to make her feel that much guilt.
Wow.
This could have far reaching effects.
I spent a few minutes calming Linz down.
"Quick, find the keys to the chains of the blond girl," I told the others.
"He keeps the key himself. We'll have to cut her out," Linz told us still crying.
"To do that we'll need Mandy's help," I said.
I used a charm technique on the blond captive.
"Don't hurt yourself. I need you," I told this new girl. (The dirty naked one, not Linz.)
"OK..." she mumbled stiffly, looking a bit downcast.
The others sort of pitied her at this point. Seeing she'd almost ended her own life even scared them.
Wow...
I really have to be careful with this power. Its almost too cheaty!
I began to think about how to adjust the mind control skill.
What if I used the charm skill in a modified sense to give this girl the will to live and survive? Or the will to fight back? Possibly the will to believe in a future together, and that things could get better?
I have to try.
I used a huge burst of almost all my remaining mana in the girl. My willpower was filled with feelings of will to survive and heal and live. And to have a future together. I used the spell formula for charm, but flooded it with many times more mana than should be necessary through the spell program
She suddenly fell over. Overcome and passed out.
Oh shit.
Did I accidentally kill her?
Oh crap.
...
I woke up after a nap.
I'd had to nap.
But before napping the others had been trying to console that we'd done the right thing.
"Sh! Its OK, I'm here," I heard Melanie say with her hand on my chest.
I checked the clock.
"Its about 5:30 PM, almost," Melanie said.
"What's our status?" I asked.
"Shelly's trying to rest up and get
enough mana to finish stitching you," Mel told me.
I looked around.
At first I was worried when I saw I was in a room filled with plastic sheeting along the walls.
"Yeah, I know that scared me too. But Linz said that's how they keep the zombies from smelling them. Most of the rooms here have plastic sheeting in them. Its kind of amazing that they'd think about a trick like this to avoid detection. The only problem is...if you think about it, it took bandit class jobs and activities for them to discover this trick. You understand what I am saying?" Mel asked.
Plastic sheeting.
A certain serial killer TV show that was popular recently came to mind.
And some of the plastic sheeting has dark rust colored stains on it.
"She says it was the bandit prince guy mostly. But some of the others were pretty awful also," Melanie said.
Gross...
"So before you get up, there's something you should know," she said.
"What's that?"
"Linz wasn't originally a bandit class like the others. We checked her status plate after she told us. She'd been captured and tortured like that blond girl to join up with the bandit prince guy, or the torture wouldn't stop. And it seems that's how he'd turned others in the past," she told me.
I felt a lot more pity now.
And now it explained why Linz was a bit unstable when she saw the things she'd done, when I adjusted her mind.
I decided to get up.
"Come on, we'll get you something to eat," Mel told me with a smile.
I have the others check on Linz a lot, out of worry, but she's doing OK. But she does look a bit depressed.
...
We collected a lot of treasure.
But one of the issues is that the bandit prince guy did have his own inventory slot system. So most of the really good things he kept for himself while letting his men fight over the rest.
$798 USD collected.
$413 dungeon dollars.
Mail vest (?) received. (I can't use it.)
Combat boots received. (I might be able to use these.)
But the ring collection in a jewelry box fascinated me.
This stuff is perfect for enchants!
What a treasure trove.
We also found a whole box of health potions.
These the bandits had been trying to verify if they were even health potions at all. (Some non-health potions do also look like red health potions. And without an alchemy skill, it takes a long time just to even figure out one of them.)
We also found out Shelly can identify them also, and she'd already started a few.
The others are torn between having me use red health potions now, or use a bit of time to use only Shelly's skill.
(Red health potions are hard to get, I reminded myself.)
Miguel now has a 'machete +1'.
He's really happy about it, and has never had a really great enhanced item like it before.
Mandy found a nice tool belt, with an armor stat enchant in it.
But one of the best things was finding a small spell book from a downed mage in the bandit prince's room. It will take time to analyze it.
...
We had dinner at 7:31 PM.
...
At 8:03 PM, I received a status notification in my status system notifying me that I'd cracked the code on that spell formula that I'd been trying to analyze this whole time!
I opened up the window and then looked at it.
But seeing it, I was a bit shocked.
[Safe Zone] spell formula enchant acquired registers in my skill tab.
Wow. This thing is amazing.
But it will take time to figure out what its for and how to use it. It seems to be some kind of enchant skill.
And that would explain why I'd not heard of it before, since enchanters are few in number.
!!!
What? What is this even for?
The name sounds interesting. Its n
ot what I would have expected.
I also set my system to analyzing more code after making camera slot style pics of the spell book pages I'd just acquired. Then I'll be able to have my status screen system analyze the code on them.
I picked this one first, over the other one, because it will be faster to study this simple one. But the other one is more advanced and it might even take months to acquire even one spell formula on an advanced mage spell book.
This is amazing!
In theory, I could acquire tons of different spell formulas using this thing!
...
A few minutes later there's a knock on the door.
I looked up to see a frowning Shelly standing there.
"Hey come on in," I smiled.
But she frowned even more.
"There's something I need to tell you," she said.
"OK?"
The sound of her voice sounds extremely serious.
"First, the skill I used to keep us alive from that bandit group wasn't a functioning spell but a 1 shot treasure device. So I can't use it again. After using it that one time it broke," she frowned.
"Sorry."
"Well I lived. So I guess it was worth it. Without that protection device we would have been really badly injured. Maybe I would have died also. My max health bar isn't that big yet," she said shrugging.
"That was a really tough spot," I nodded.
"Yeah about that..."
"Go ahead?"
"The bandit leader was level 33. Plus he had extra stats from achievements and who knows what and gear bonuses. We should be dead. The only reason we weren't is because that device spell trigger scroll was super powerful and had tons of mana stored in it," she said, really mad.
If he's level 33, we better watch out. That ass might come back and try to finish the job. Especially if he realizes we're much lower level than he is.
"Also, the other thing is that I think Mandy is spying on us. I heard her talking to someone just now. But she was hiding it. It doesn't look good," she said.
Damn.
So we have enough confirmation.
We need to do something about that now.
But I also can't lose Mandy because she's really strong compared to the rest of us. And without her we would die fast in here.
And its an irony that I might end up being able to trust that Linz girl more than Mandy. Right after that I also went to check Linz status screen and stats.
Name; Linz Young
Race; Type Human
Magic job; Scout
Level; 21
Health; 206/206
Mana; 73/73
Mana Regen; 4 (per hour)
Health regen; 9 (per day)
Element affinities;
Str; 22+3Agi; 51+2Con; 48+2
Int; 43 Wis; 64App; 92+2
Skills; athletics+3, defend+3, evade+3, block+2, parry+6, Search+6, Forage-2, Detect Traps, Guerrilla warfare, range arms proficiency, crossbow weapon proficiency, aiming, aiming shot (basic), sneak attack
Magic skills; Stealth Detection, Stealth, Ambush Strike, Inventory Slots (2)
Gear list;
Monster Leather Customized Mana Skin Suit (???)
Sneakers
Crossbow
Monster Fang (??) Dagger +3 X 2
Later, I wanted to check the status screen of the other girl also.
But I can't because she's passed out still from what I did.
The others verified she's still breathing and alive. They've cleaned her up also. She's resting now also, so I don't know how badly off she is, or how improved she is.
Wow.
Until now this is one of the real game pieces I'd had a chance to see a good status screen on. Everyone I'd seen until now has been well, pretty close to my level.
In theory, Mandy's stats might be higher than Linz's...except Linz is overpowered for her level. Even I can tell that by looking at her. But I can't tell by how much.
She might have resisted my mind control...
Except she has no magic resistance skills.
Plus, I suspect she didn't really want to be doing whatever they were doing before with the 'bandit club'. Maybe on some small level, this regret helped me overcome her resistance at the right time, plus bonuses from coming from the Demon lord's clan.
...
I enhanced Mandy's buckler by +1 while we rested in this bandit hide out. It was a bit draining, but we can't go out.
But then she was trying to get me to do all her gear, pleading even.
My skills are so coveted because enchanting costs money that it can cause problems.
Now all the others are asking me to do their gear also. All of them. But then Shelly realized her gear is enchanted and enhanced both beyond my ability to do already.
What a headache.
Ironically, Linz wanted me to do her shoes, with the hope of maybe getting a sneak skill bonus.
[Linz' shoes enhanced to +2.]
And before bed, I find out Melanie has leveled up.
Name; Melanie Williams
Race; Type 349F human hybrid
Magic job; Amplifier
Level; 12 → 13
Health; 124/124 → 129/129
Mana; 146/146 → 152/152
Mana Regen; 5 → 6 (per hour)
Health regen; 3 (per day)
Element affinities; Mutation Buffer
Str; 17 → 18Agi; 26 → 27Con; 43
Int; 63 Wis; 61 → 62App; 95
Skills; athletics, mana affinity (enabled), defend-4 → -2, evade, block, parry, danger sense(new!)
Magic skills; Amplify +1(13% or 18%), Mana Sensing
Gear list;
Sleeveless tank top
Shorts
Sneakers
Baseball bat
Spear
Combat boots, armor; 5
To reward her, Melanie and I made love before going to sleep.
But I got greedy and made love to Simone right after that, with Melanie in the same bed still.
Chapter 34
I get up. Then I went to the bathroom near me connected to this room.
It looks like the others set me up here in an elite office.
After seeing it a bit more, with my flashlight (normal mode, spells unused), I can see that this place was an office building. Plus,
Then I got a drink of water. Man, my throat is so dry and chapped.
The cool clean water feels good going down.
"Hey there," the bathroom door behind me clicked softly.
And I can see Linz has come into the bathroom.
"Hi."
She's not wearing a shirt, or pants. And only a really small black thong.
"I was wondering when you were going to wake up," she smiled.
She didn't wait for me to flirt with her, but she just threw herself onto me.
"Sorry, this can't wait," she added.
It took only a few seconds before she was ripping my clothes off.
But even weirder, Melanie came in also at the same time with only shorts on, to also make love with me, but was horrified that she'd gotten here a few seconds to late.
Rather than leave Melanie hid behind some boxes while rubbing herself, staring at me.
Near the end, I realized Linz knew Melanie was there and liked it!
I went back to sleep, with the clock at 4:57 AM.
...
While I'd been asleep for a bit, I was startled at the next event that happened.
Simone woke me up around 7:30 AM, and just buried herself onto my hilt. She was moaning a lot when my bedroom door was thrown open and Linz came in.