Chapter 12: The Pied Piper’s Curse

The strange flute sound resonated throughout the city, and Lucy immediately realized that it was hypnosis magic.

The melody that seeped through the ears stopped thinking and took away control of the body.

There were many items of this type in Ragnarok.

Among them, the item that hypnotized with the sound of the flute was the ‘Pied Piper.’

The item, which was made with a fairy tale theme, was famous for its strange ability to control infant NPCs.

I thought that if I were a child, I would be included, but that wasn’t the case.

As you raise your illusion skill, your mental manipulation resistance naturally increases, so Lucy’s mental resistance was currently close to overspec.

In order to hypnotize Lucy, it would be impossible without an illusionist of the same level.

Lucy listened to the sound leisurely.

Soon, the messy music stopped and silence flowed through the city again.

With this, she figured out the serial disappearances.

The disappearing children and the whistle sound, most likely someone was using a magic item to kidnap the children.

If she had been burning with a sense of justice, she would have said, ‘Let’s go save the children!’

But Lucy didn’t do that.

Not only was it not her job, but even if she had gone to save them, she didn’t know where they were right now, and it was almost time to return to the castle.

‘This is the guards’ job.’

Still, she decided to give the guards a brief tip on the way, because that was the least she could do.

Lucy hurried her steps toward the night checkpoint, and then she encountered an unexpected situation.

At the checkpoint, the old man she had parted with a moment ago was holding onto the guard’s trouser leg and earnestly asking for something.

Even from afar, the old man’s condition was unusual.

His hair was disheveled and his face was stricken with thought.

He looked like he had aged ten years in the blink of an eye.

Lucy approached the old man, and although she had a vague idea of what was going on, she tried to talk to him.

“What is it?”

When the old man saw Lucy, his eyes became even more desperate and he grabbed her hands tightly.

“Good to meet you, you!

Uh… Please find my granddaughter!!”

He begged as if he was about to lose his breath, and Lucy, who had roughly figured out the situation, didn’t cut it short.

“Did my granddaughter disappear?”

“While I was looking away for a moment… Please!

She’s the only blood relative I have left!”

Lucy hesitated for a moment at the old man’s earnest request, whether to help or not, thinking about it, there wasn’t that much of a connection, but.

When she suddenly looked up at the night sky, the sun seemed to be far from rising, because the old man had arrived in the city earlier than scheduled.

The time Lucy had originally been supposed to protect the old man was 4 hours, and there was still some time left before that time ended.

Soon, Lucy let out a faint sigh and pushed the old man’s arm away.

The old man looked as if he had lost everything in the world at the thought of being rejected.

“You clearly said you were a merchant.”

“… Why are you suddenly asking that?”

“If you’re a merchant, you’d probably be well-informed about all sorts of things?”

“Of course… But why…”

“I’ll take this commission personally.”

“Really!?”

“But I’ll charge you a separate commission fee.”

“If it’s money, I’ll sell my carriage to give it to you! So please!”

Although she didn’t want money, Lucy didn’t bother explaining because time was of the essence.

In any case, since she had accepted the commission, she had to complete it.

In order to do that, she had to finish the job quickly.

The first thing she had to think about here was to pinpoint the location of the missing children.

However, coincidentally, Lucy had no search skills at all.

On the other hand, she didn’t have enough time to go around asking around and the chances of finding them were low.

What was the best course of action she could take?

Whistle, magic items, hypnosis, children disappearing one after another.

After much thought, a brilliant idea occurred to her.

An eye for an eye, illusion for illusion.

“Have you heard any reports of a child acting strangely recently?”

“Huh? Um… I think I heard there was one of the kids at the orphanage.”

“Please guide me to the orphanage right now.”

“Right now..?”

The guard didn’t look too pleased.

It was because of the ‘Apprentice Pendant’ around Lucy’s neck.

In a situation where even veteran adventurers were helpless, it was difficult to expect a mere apprentice swindler to solve the problem.

In the face of such uncooperative attitudes, Lucy had no choice but to use illusions on them.

Magic Skill.

Hypnosis.

The guards who had lost focus immediately began to follow Lucy’s order to ‘guide them.’

Lucy finished ordering the elderly who were also under illusions to wait at the guardhouse for a moment and headed towards the orphanage.

Grace Orphanage.

As soon as she entered the building, she cast a wide-area illusion on everyone inside.

She was pressed for time and, above all, it was too much of a hassle to explain the situation to each and every person.

21 orphans.

2 caretakers.

After gathering the members inside in the bedrooms, she ordered the guards to point out the child who was acting strangely.

The child the guards pointed to was a little boy named Philip.

I heard that the caretakers desperately tried to stop him from going out in the middle of the night as if possessed.

It was clear that he had been bewitched by the ‘Pied Piper.’

Lucy approached the boy and took off her mask in front of him, then began to use ‘brainwashing’ to pull out the boy’s memories.

While most things are not remembered when under the spell of illusion, that is only in the conscious part.

Our brains store a lot of information even in the unconscious; the problem is that the person himself cannot remember them.

Here, Lucy came up with a solution to pull out those memories by using illusion in reverse.

Soon, the brainwashed boy remembered what happened that night.

“Why did you go out that night?”

“My friends called you….”

“Where did you call me?”

“A dark place…. deep underground…”

What he found out was that the children were kidnapped somewhere underground, and based on the information the guards had, he was able to pinpoint the location.

[They say that there is an underground passage in Gray Town that was built a long time ago for evacuation purposes.]

Most likely, it was there.

Lucy decided to head there right away.

She couldn’t help but have an unpleasant feeling about kidnapping them in a closed space.

Central Plaza.

I heard that the entrance to the underground passage was adjacent to the central square.

They said that you have to go through the secret passage to get there, but since it was built so long ago, even the guards didn’t know the exact location.

Then there was only one way.

There was no other way than to force it in.

Lucy stomped her feet on the ground with all her might and began to search for the weakest part of the ground.

Eventually, she found a place that seemed to be empty underneath.

When she put her ear to it, she could hear the sound of a passage, but other than that, she couldn’t feel any other signs.

Lucy, who was certain that this was the underground passage, took out the enchanted weapon ‘Firebird Staff’ from her inventory.

The staff for destruction magic had a powerful fireball skill, so if she poured her vast magic power into it, she would have no problem breaking through the ground.

She poured her magic power into it, and a red fireball was created above the staff’s beak.

She threw it at the location she had marked in advance.

Boom!

Thanks to that, it was like waking up all the city residents in the middle of the night, but the effect was certain.

With a loud explosion, a 10m diameter hole opened under the plaza.

As expected, it was connected to an underground passage.

Lucy jumped down there without a moment’s hesitation.

The passage was about 5m underground, and the road was wide enough for a train to pass through, and had the eerie atmosphere characteristic of tunnels.

From now on, she had to be alert.

Based on the circumstances, there must be an unknown kidnapper here, and it was highly likely that he had noticed the intrusion from the explosion just now.

Although she was confident that she was a strong being in this world, she still had to prepare for any eventuality.

She prepared thoroughly by equipping [Evasion of Death], [Bracelet of the Dead], [Pendant of the Undead] that she had used last time from her inventory, and [Dragon Robe] (robe form) with superior physical defense effects.

She headed toward the dark passage.

Thanks to the sphere of light created with lighting magic illuminating the way ahead, her vision was not uncomfortable.

By the time she reached the central point, the eerie atmosphere had become uncontrollably strong.

The vacuum sound characteristic of a closed space and the musty smell felt everywhere made Lucy’s forehead wrinkle.

Long ago, when she had visited the closed ward as a test of courage, Lucy thought.

‘Surely there won’t be any ghosts coming out…

If it was a monster or a demon, she could just beat it up, but if it was a ghost, it would be a different story, for example…’

While she was lost in such useless thoughts, a fork in the road appeared before her eyes.

The path split into two, and just as she was about to contemplate which way to go, a foul smell began to emanate from the path on the right.

Lucy quickly illuminated it with lighting magic, and one of her eyes widened.

There was a pile of corpses filling the passageway.

The stench was the smell of rotting blood.

It was a gruesome sight, but the one silver lining was that most of the corpses were adults.

‘Should I fly away?’

That thought passed for a moment, and soon an ominous presence was felt, and the corpses that were thought to be dead began to rise from their places one by one.

-Eww…

The corpses let out the groans of the dead.

This was because someone had used necromancy to turn them into ghouls.

An encounter with a horde of zombies in a sealed tunnel?

Lucy was astonished at the sight before her eyes.

“This is like a total horror movie…”