The Witch Tamer, Book 1

by Naosu N R

  Damn. I didn't know there was something like that.

  "So what is it, some kind of evolved undead?" Melanie asked.

  "Yes. Evolved," Linz told us. "And nothing is worse than them. You thought the darklings were hard to fight? These guys are worse. A lot of them are in the level 40s ranges also. So picture a level 40 with bonus stats and extra strength. This means also that we should withdraw for now, and anytime you see them in the future," Linz told us.

  "Something level 40 would kill us easily. She's right," Rita said.

  "You can't fight it either?" I asked Rita.

  "No! No way. And I wouldn't even if I could. They are over con for their level in terms of stats. The only good thing about fighting them is that they solo and don't team up. But that's only because they don't like sharing the meat," she added.

  "Duck! Its looking this way!" Simone said.

  Shit...shit, shit.

  We all ducked.

  But did we duck in time!

  And what the hell kind of undead was that?

  "Was that a boss Jay?" one of them asked.

  "I can't tell. It was out of range. But I doubt it," I said.

  "That one was sentient. We have to up our game!" Linz told me.

  We didn't go out after all.

  There were 2 other survivors with the one guy we saw. And they looked like adventurers. But it seems that they got eaten too in front of our eyes.

  One of the great things about this building is that it has a pretty good view.

  But I'd messed up.

  I thought this building had 6 floors on the main building, not counting the sub-basements. I thought that, because the main lobby floor has a really high ceiling.

  But I was wrong. It has 9 floors.

  And that means we have a lot more to clear!

  ...

  I forced Simone and Melanie to work on range weapon skills when we got back to the third floor of our building. And we set up a shooting range in one of the third floor's rooms because its got the most distance away from monsters in our same building both up above and below us. This way I don't have to worry about the sounds of arrows, crossbow bolts, or throwing knives hitting the board targets we've put up, causing trouble for us.

  Well,...we'll still keep a watch.

  We laid out more traps also, mostly trip lines, but also some cans on strings to alert us if anything is creeping up on us.

  Trip lines are great for zombies, for a lot of reasons.

  I need to rest. I want to sleep and feel so freaking tired. But its hard to do that when I am worrying about our safety in an undead map.

  Also the others are insisting I upgrade their gear now constantly.

  I tried to send a mage mail to Valerie's phone. What's she up to anyway? Lately things have been weird, and I thought I could ask her stuff about what's going on. But I can't get through. Strange...

  ...

  Wife intimacy time with Melanie before supper, while they were cooking it.

  After dinner more wife intimacy time with Simone.

  I've been feeling pretty horny lately, but anyone that gets to have 3 different women would. I ended up having a wife intimacy turn with Linz at the end right before bed.

  Chapter 37

  The next day...

  It had been going like any other.

  We stopped after a big skirmish with a particularly tough darkling.

  There was a drop for a metal pauldron. Its nice and shiny.

  I decided to experiment.

  "Here try this on, Simone," I asked.

  I handed her the metal pauldron that we'd found. This was a hard to find loot we'd gained.

  We stopped while she's examining it.

  But then I see a bit red X on Simone's status screen.

  "What was that?" I asked.

  "Oh... the status screen system is saying that I can't equip medium type armors. That's a drag. I wanted to try it on," Simone frowned.

  "Actually its not surprising. A ranger is a light fighter class scout. So of course you won't be able to use medium or heavy armors," Linz told us.

  "Then what can I..."

  "Leather, reinforced leather, and special enchanted armors," Linz told Simone.

  Just then Simone's status screen pinged.

  She shows me...

  [System notification; 'Murim player' Simone has gained access to light and upgraded light armors. Light armor proficiency skill gained!]

  So she did NOT get the ability to equip this metal armor piece. But it exposed her mind to the idea that, 'hey I should wear armor!', and therefore she thought in her mind she might be able to use other armors.

  Then the system granted it?

  Let's see, what other limitations does it have, I thought while we're trying various things.

  So her status system and her mind 'discovering it' should be how it works. At least maybe that's a simple way of thinking about it.

  "Nice."

  "Good. That will help keep you alive, if we can get the gear to match the skill. This is a good upgrade. Also you should learn how to maintain the gear also," Linz said.

  "I thought you could use that skill. My hunch was right," Miguel said. (As an archer class, his skills are sometimes similar to ranger skills for some things.)

  "Wait, does everyone already have this skill?" Simone asked.

  The others looked at her screen. She'd covered up a lot of it, and didn't have it in stealth mode.

  "Its going to be fine. Just try to do your best," Rita said.

  "Its not going to be fine. She needs to be realistic. Leather armor does NOT protect you from zombie bites," Linz told her.

  "What? What did I say wrong?" Rita asked Mandy.

  "I think she meant to say that its a start, but there's more to do. But in a way both of you had good points," I said diplomatically.

  "The skill doesn't grant you optimum defense right away Simone. It will start light and then increase the defense numbers as your stats, level, and skill with this skill go up. And monsters can get past leather. It will mitigate some damage but not all, which is why I still have a job," Shelly told her.

  "I didn't know that," I said.

  "Well as a mage you don't really use armor," I was told next.

  I...didn't like the sound of that. So I tested it and its true.

  Darn...

  I guess I'll have to build my way out with better enchants, etc.

  At the same time, the metal pauldron went to Mandy. But its not a terribly great pauldron piece; but better than nothing.

  A pauldron huh?

  Its basically a shoulder piece that goes over one arm shoulder's side. That's pretty much it. It does cover a not so big bit of the chest and back with it, if its a bigger one. This one is very simple and doesn't give much protection.

  Linz opened up an inventory slot and then gave Simone a light leather armor set.

  [Simone has equipped leather armor set; leather mail skirt, leather cuirass, shin guards, wrist guards.]

  (No helmet? Maybe that's a different set up I guess?)

  (I also should have expected she had all that, looted from the Bandit Prince's treasure room and armory.)

  "Don't just stand there. Put it on," Rita told her.

  "Yeah, let's see how it looks," Mandy said.

  "Go on," Linz told her, but giving me a smile.

  "We'll have to show her how to wear it," I told them.

  "I'll help," Rita moved forward and began helping her.

  Simone began putting it on.

  It took a bit of time but is worth it. But Linz doesn't have other sets to give to the others.

  It looks good. Because its modern leather armor made in a modern age, it doesn't look as drab as something made in a medieval era. It looks pretty good actually. And possibly there's a simple enchant to help make it fit Simone's size.

  "That's a nice gift, Linz. Thanks," I said.

  "No problem! Anything for you boss," came her reply.

  "Yeah tha
nks," Simone told her.

  We compared this with the special magic item that we'd found earlier from that boss that was ranger only. And it seems the special ranger only, 'ranger boots' are better than this default armor.

  The non-magic armor has no bonus stats also, which didn't surprise me but I confirmed anyway, so I'm not guessing about everything.

  "Thanks for the armor," Simone said.

  "I'm doing it for Jay, not you. But yes, it will be OK. Work hard," Linz said with a smile to me.

  Yeah, if I hadn't mind controlled the beautiful faced Linz, she'd totally be going the villain route right now...

  "I'm still grateful," Simone added.

  I risked enhancing the cuirass and the mail skirt right away to +2 each. That also was good practice, plus I didn't lose much in the way of mana.

  Plus, right now my mana regeneration rate is pulsing strong.

  This morning I'd enchanted the damage shield umbrella up to +4 before we left camp. That had eaten up about (-80 mana) before we'd left camp.

  Unfortunately further attempts to get pauldrons from darklings didn't work. We killed 2 others, but they dropped nothing on one, and 12 dungeon dollars on the other, and a can of food.

  ...

  We continued to explore, but we're staying away from the 5th floor of this building.

  The pharmacy building is across the street from us. We'd gotten closer to it, risking an hour between 11 AM and 12 PM to see if we could get close to use my detection to scan it.

  But we didn't push into it, instead pulling back and sticking to more easily defended areas. It seems like also that there's a lot of zombies around the pharmacy. (Maybe from when they were zombififed?)

  The building next to it is a butcher shop and flooded with too many zombies also. This means approaching the pharmacy building from the ground level is suicide. This is why we didn't go forward any further. And in fact our withdrawal was quite fast.

  Linz thinks there might be a way to set a barrier in front of the butcher shop and light it on fire, and kill the zombies inside without taking a scratch. They are still thinking about this and we'll plan it tonight.

  But if anything goes wrong, it could mean half the city is a flaming inferno, which would pose significant survival risks for us. Burning buildings are not something easy to control. And it could keep us up all night just trying to not get killed by smoke, and zombies both. Or darklings also.

  We see another interesting building. This one...we're calling 'The Bank'. At least it looks like a bank, but its hard to tell with the writing from this dimension looking all foreign to us.

  The others want to find out if there's money in it.

  We are using the ranger to scout more. They have a sneak skill,...that Simone is trying to master and acquire but not quite there yet. Still, at some point it should pay off.

  She did manage to pull us away back into the alley out of sight just in time.

  Then we see why.

  The bank...

  The odd part about it, is that this 'bank' has huge giant size zombies chained to huge blocks of granite at equidistant lengths, surrounding the plaza that this building rests in. With something that big, they have incredible weight, and they have literally like six steel chains on each of their legs tying them to the huge granite blocks, that also look recently carved.

  Who put the giant size zombies there? And why?

  Its an efficient guard system, I noted.

  Whoever put them there would have nobody ever want to go anywhere near those things, ridiculously scary and tall. And they'd have 'no payroll expenses' for that either.

  Did they use necromancy to do that, I wonder?

  We didn't dare go closer, because the giant size zombies are so big, we worry if those steel chains will hold them properly. They look like they are about twenty feet tall. And this is a reminder that life is fragile.

  We also didn't let them see us. Their giant size would make getting them riled up. And there's always the fear of what would happen to the chains if they got mad and hungry enough at us?

  There's simply no way of getting closer without a suicidal party failure of epic level.

  But what's in the bank that someone would get giant zombies to guard?

  That seems like a mystery for another day. We'll have to level up first, before we come back.

  Another building not far from this is a floral shop with 2 floors above it, that look like residences.

  Naturally all of this doesn't seem to be the only buildings. There's actually tons of buildings and high rises here. But these are the ones that look like we could capture without having to risk losing a man, and or that might have something good inside.

  We'd snuck back into an alley when...

  "Oh shit. Guys...darkling coming," Shelly warned.

  "Oh crap. Why's it out in the day?!" Rita warned.

  I renewed my pacify skill on Rita. (Its acting weird on her...on a normal person or monster it would make them not want to fight. But with her it lets her fight instead of have PTSD.)

  "Its coming this way!" I warned the others.

  ...

  We got through the darkling fight, but had terrible damage.

  Party Health;

  Jay; -20% health

  Mandy; -27% health

  Linz; -9$ health

  Rita; -14% health

  Shelly; -28% health (why did it go after the healer so much?)

  Melanie; -12% health

  Simone; -17% health

  Miguel;(Staying in the safe zone enchant to keep it active for us. Plus he's 'tired', or at least he says he is.)

  We got 2 cans of food, and 87 dungeon dollars for killing this thing.

  But it was a tough battle.

  We fought two smaller ones after that while retreating to the safe zone. We won, but everyone is really tore up. (1 can of food each from the smaller ones. And 43 dungeon dollars and 37 dungeon dollars dropped.)

  The others are worried why the darklings are so smart.

  Now we can't go out for 2 days because all of us smell like blood from our wounds.

  At least we can rest well in the safe zone enchant spot.

  ...

  We'd gained 4 cans of food using the forage skill today!

  Yes!

  This is not counting cans of food gained from other means. Its enough to keep our party alive but not really balanced meals.

  ...

  I'm trying to analyze more code while we rest from our injuries.

  One of them looks like I could probably unlock it, if I had a few more days.

  The others are practicing sparring in the safe zone area. This is allowed as long as there's no real aggression.

  Simone is working on the sneak skill.

  The others are trying to get range skills of all kinds, plus practice blocking.

  This really is a good chance for me to enhance our stuff!

  I got the shields for Mandy and Rita up to +4 enhancement. I managed to get a blocking enchant on Rita's shield.

  And I got a tearful hug of gratitude for it.

  Linz isn't using her buckler right now, but working on a dual wield type build now. (Do those even work?) She must have her buckler in a spatial inventory slot system of some kind. Its not unusual for adventurers with real skill to buy these, but they are expensive.

  I hear they are going for 1 slot for 10 grand now. ($10,000 USD).

  ...

  I get a message from that police woman Valerie asking me where I'm at. She says its urgent that I talk to her and to call her back tonight.

  Only I couldn't get through when I tried to call her back.