Chapter 201
‘It’s already four of them.’
The child who went to the academy, the one sent on an errand, the one who went out to play with friends… even after a day passed, then two days, they still hadn’t returned.
They had already been reported to the guards, but no news had come that the children had been found.
In a situation like this, it was impossible not to worry when a child didn’t come back on time. Maybe this time too, something had happened to them.
“You should go in and rest. I’ll wait a little longer before heading in.”
“Yes.”
Seeing the director’s worried face, Jailo’s own mood sank, and he slowly headed back into the orphanage building.
Sigh.
He did so while hearing the director’s long, weary sigh.
“Who’s there?”
“Jailo, my friend.”
“But… that friend’s older sister is missing?”
“Yeah! She’s not a biological sister, but an older girl living at the orphanage… anyway, she hasn’t come home for three days.”
“Hmm.”
Ceres, who was cooking stew in the shop’s kitchen, looked up to see Yulia, who had come to visit the shop for the first time in a while.
She wondered why a child who had recently avoided the shop entirely had suddenly come today—maybe she had urgent news to share.
“Did she go to the academy but never return?”
“Yes!”
“Have they reported it?”
“They did. But it seems it didn’t help much. It was the same when Dave went missing back then…”
Hearing that a child had gone missing, Yulia’s expression darkened as memories of her friend Dave disappearing came to mind.
The incident, which ultimately ended with him being killed by his father, still left a strong impact on the child.
“Jailo’s really worried. Other kids have gone missing and haven’t returned, and Anisha doesn’t either.”
“…Other kids too?”
“Yes. Including Anisha, that makes five children who haven’t returned.”
“……”
…Five. It wasn’t common for five children to disappear from the same orphanage.
‘Could these kids have been taken to an illegal auction or something similar?’
The first thought was that there might still be places like where Zien had been taken, where children were being sold illegally.
‘The Crown Prince said he would conduct a large-scale investigation.’
After the last incident, investigators were to be sent not only to the capital but to every orphanage in the empire, to check whether anything illegal was happening.
That fact was already public knowledge across the empire. Still, were there any brazen people bold enough to continue trafficking children even under these circumstances?
“All the missing children… like Dave…”
Yulia bit her lips hard before finishing the sentence, swallowing the words as if afraid that speaking them might make it real.
“I’ll look into it.”
“Really?”
“There’s nothing difficult about finding out.”
It seemed easy enough to find out how the investigation was progressing.
‘I should also check with Sky.’
It wouldn’t hurt to request information from Sky, the intelligence organization.
“Hehe.”
Hearing that Ceres would take care of it, Yulia brightened considerably.
“But, Yulia…”
“Yes?”
Ceres quietly called Yulia while gently patting her head, looking at the child’s hands.
“What’s that you’re holding?”
“…Huh?”
“Why do you have a teleportation spellbook in your hands?”
Her sister had never given her that.
Since entering the shop, Ceres had noticed the familiar item in the child’s hands and couldn’t help but be curious. Why was it in her hands?
“……”
Yulia slowly looked down at her own hands—and then realized her mistake.
She had planned, as usual, to go meet Uncle Kainel. But upon hearing from Jailo that a familiar older girl had gone missing, she had rushed to come find her sister, completely forgetting the teleportation spellbook in her hands…
“Yulia.”
“Hehe……”
“Yulia.”
“……”
Trying to laugh her way out of the situation, Yulia finally lowered her head as she saw Ceres’s narrowing eyes.
‘Uncle…’
She had been caught red-handed.
[Skreeek!]
Thud!
[Kk…ii…iek…]
In the darkness of the Black Forest, centipedes about one meter long wriggled and crawled everywhere.
“Still, it’s a B-rank Black Forest, so it’s easier than I expected.”
Shhaaak!
“But don’t get too careless.”
“Of course.”
The mercenaries who had entered the Black Forest steadily advanced while taking down the monsters.
Fortunately, the Black Forest wasn’t high-ranked, so dealing with the monsters wasn’t too difficult.
“The boss side, the captain went there, right?”
“It should be done soon.”
The Halo Mercenary Group, well-known in the southern region, was mostly composed of A-rank mercenaries, including the captain. Though small in number, their skills were widely acknowledged.
Confident that the mission would proceed safely, they entered the B-rank Black Forest without hesitation.
[Skreeek!]
Shreek!
While waiting for the captain and comrades to finish off the boss, the mercenaries handled the remaining monsters one by one.
“They’re taking a while.”
“Yeah.”
After a long while, the mercenaries started feeling uneasy. For a B-rank Black Forest boss, this should have been the finishing phase, yet no news had come.
The monsters should have disappeared once the boss was defeated.
Boom-
“……?”
At that moment, the somewhat tired mercenaries paused, feeling a strong tremor in the ground.
“What’s that sound?”
“Who knows.”
Boom-boom-
The tremors grew stronger, and the mercenaries’ expressions gradually hardened. Something was approaching their location.
BOOM!
“……!”
“…What is that?”
Soon, the mercenaries spotted the monstrous creature coming from afar and froze in place.
“That’s… the boss?”
“…No way.”
This was just a B-rank Black Forest…
It was a completely new creature unlike anything they had ever seen.
Were all the monsters gathered together into that form? They couldn’t even imagine attacking it.
Corpses hung on its spider-like legs…
“……!”
Realizing that the corpses were their captain and comrades, despair sank even deeper into the mercenaries’ faces.
