WARNING: This chapter is outright horror! The rest of the story is a comedy. Feel free to skip to the next chapter if you want.

Trigger/Fear warnings: Mind control

 

The day Simon Hunt arrived in the small Yugoslavian village nestled between the Alps, he stole every woman’s heart. From blooming young lady to newly minted mother, all were wooed by his otherworldly charm and beauty. Many a husband was left feeling jealous of this stranger.

The next day, Simon Hunt stole their minds. Any and every thought the villagers had revolved around him. Women professed their unrequited love, even those who were merely young teenagers or already married, much to the chagrin of their fathers and husbands. Even those very men could not help but think about the stranger, and not just in worried whispers. They too felt enchanted by his very presence. One man even talked of being ready to die for Simon, as if he had been a lifelong friend.

Day three. He stole their souls. Something terrible came over the women of the small village, who left their homes, clawing their way out through tooth and nail if they had to. As if enchanted by a devilish pied piper, every single woman save for the youngest of children and the elderly made their way to the newly moved-into mansion at the edge of town. Fathers, husbands, and brothers tried to stop their loved ones from leaving, but just as many men fought to allow the women passage.

After all, Simon Hunt had called for them. And what were lifelong friends to do other than oblige?

---

Slow, yet harsh footsteps rang across the hardwood floor. It was coupled with suffocating breaths made through a much too tight gas mask. They were the only sounds that echoed through the richly decorated palace.

Adam, a Polish man in his thirties, cursed at the noise. He would’ve preferred subtler footwear, but his old and battered shoes were all he had. Everything on him was some form of leftover from his time serving in World War II. He couldn’t imagine his country wanting them back after the six hundred miles he’d journeyed in them since the conflict ended. A journey that was hopefully about to end too.

The gates and main entryway were left unguarded, the wrought iron fencing and marble steps practically welcoming Adam’s intrusion. He was met with angels depicted in the stained glass windows blowing on trumpets, regal red banners, and exquisite trophies as he walked the deserted halls. All remnants of old Soviet influence that had long since abandoned the area, only to be replaced by an even greater shadow.

A name hung on the man’s lips, and he wanted so badly to shout it at the top of his lungs. “Emilia, Emilia! Where are you?!” But he bit his tongue back with a snarl.

A steady creaking eventually echoed out as Adam rounded the corner. The Polish man slowed his pace and approached its source, right hand at his side. It was coming from a closet door barely creaked open. Adam steeled his resolve and placed his left hand on the door’s handle. With one final exhale, he threw it open.

Inside was a man and a woman in the throes of passion. The woman was wearing loose, translucent robes that left nothing to the imagination, while the man was dressed in a thick coat with a rifle slung across his back.

They both looked up to stare at Adam, their jaws agape at the unexpected intrusion.

Adam didn’t give them a chance to properly respond. He pulled out his pistol and fired a round straight into the man’s head, killing him in an instant. He turned his gun towards the woman, who after several seconds, widened her eyes.

Adam regarded her with his own cold gaze, one that merely cloistered the last smoldering ember inside his heart. An ember as warm as the woman’s reddish brown hair.

She opened her mouth and began to scream. The sound pulled the Polish man out of whatever funk he was in, and he quickly slammed the butt of his pistol into her head.

The woman was softly lowered to the ground, gently cradled in Adam’s arms.

He then let go of her and looked towards the other man. “Pfft, fortunate for me that these are the kinds of guards he keeps around.”

Adam left the closet and shut the door behind him, continuing his search for his real target.

It didn’t take long to find what he was looking for. The air began to fill with a brownish red gas as Adam passed through a large, wooden door. It forced him to slow his pace, though not as much as the naked women scattered across the floor. Some were young, others just past their forties. Many of them were visibly pregnant. The others simply weren’t yet showing.

They were splayed languidly, gripped in multiple euphorias. One of which was the opium vapor floating through the air, the other…

“So this is supposed to be what the Romans did to pass the time, eh?” came a gruff, accented voice back from the room’s entrance.

Adam quickly turned around and reached for his holster before dropping his hand and letting out a sigh. “Oh, it’s you, Niko. I thought I was about to be ambushed.”

The newcomer was dressed similarly to Adam, in that he too wore a gas mask that covered most of his face. Beyond the most striking feature, he had on a long, green coat, brown linen trousers, and scuffed leather shoes.

“Does anyone here look like they are in a state to be performing an ambush?” Niko let out a muffled chuckle through his mask. “I cannot imagine anyone capable of getting back up after a drug-fueled orgy!”

“Except for the man of the hour, of course.” Adam turned back to the front of the room.

The main feature of the bedroom was, of course, a bed. It was a massive bed. Something right out of a fairy tale with how much space it took up. Its translucent silk curtains were pulled back to reveal a man. He lay naked, his glory fully exposed and pointing towards the heavens. Around him was a quartet of women, similarly nude, and either loosely gripping at his limbs or simply lying in place. The inner circle of his unholy harem.

The two men approached the bed and climbed on top of it using the stepping stool helpfully laid at its foot. They slowly made their way towards the front, careful not to trip on the sprawling, spring-loaded mattress.

“Come on, Niko. You’ve seen what this man can do, how can you be so sure the opium is enough to keep him at bay?”

“I am not. That is why he came to me to purchase something stronger for himself. I prescribed him Dolantine and the strongest opiates I had, courtesy of a ‘lost’ Nazi drug stash. Enough to knock out an elephant!”

“And you’re sure that will keep him down? That you didn’t mistake it for amphetamines?”

“Do I look like one to take risks?” Niko looked offended. “I double checked what I gave him and coupled it with enough botulinum toxin and anthrax to kill an entire herd of elephants! The deadliest neurotoxin and bacteria in the world respectively, the prescription and disease also courtesy of misplaced Nazi property.”

Adam simply looked ahead.

“Is something the matter? I thought you would be happy now that this monster has been laid to rest.”

“I don’t know. He took everything from me, from us! He may be gone now, but so is my wife. Killing him won’t bring her back-”

Adam froze in place. His gaze slowly turned towards one of the women laying by herself on the bed. Thirty two years old with a head full of flowing, auburn locks, she brought forth a terrible mix of emotions within him.

“Emilia, Emilia!” the Polish man shouted as he bounced his way towards the woman. He gently held onto the back of her head and bare shoulder with his hands while trying to gently rouse her.

“Mmh, Simon?” Emilia asked in a groggy yawn.

“No, it’s me, Adam! Your husband! I’m here for you!”

“Uh? Simon? Make me yours, Simon! Give me more, give me another!” She placed a hand on her stomach.

Adam could make out a slight bulge on her abdomen. His face froze as he slowly let go of the woman and rose back up. He turned back towards the man at the head of the bed and reached towards his holster.

A firm hand gripped his shoulder before he could pull out his old war pistol.

“Adam, stop, it is done! That monster strolled through each of our villages, and like some sort of pied piper, took away every single woman. Our wives and daughters fell victim, so did our sisters, our mothers! But it is over. He is dead and he may never hurt another again. It is time to move on and rebuild our lives, whatever may be left of them.”

“Erh, Emilia. Come over here, baby girl, let me see that bump I put in you…” mumbled a deep voice.

Niko withdrew his hand and instead slammed it into his own holster. Both men withdrew their pistols and pointed them at the man laying at the head of the bed.

“Huh, who’s there?” asked the same man.

A pair of gunshots rang out through the mansion. Several women raised their heads, but soon collapsed back onto the floor, overtaken by the intoxicating vapor.

“Enough botulinum to kill a herd of elephants?” growled Adam.

“You read today’s news, no? Of the dead circus elephant? That was me, I made sure to test it first! But come on, I was expecting Rasputin, not the devil himself!”

“Then… What is this thing?”

“Ahh,” the naked man slowly sounded out. He looked at his stomach and the two bullet holes that were already beginning to visibly heal. “Thattt. Hhhurt. [Skill: Uninterrupted Ple-]”

Another pair of gunshots rang out, one connecting with his head, the other with his heart.

He blinked.

The two ex-soldiers continued to keep their pistols aimed at the man. Their brows were covered in sweat, but they dared not wipe at it. It would only take a split second for the man to activate his Skill and murder them.

“It appears that he has stopped talking,” said Niko after a full minute.

He slowly walked over to the man and looked at the hole in his head. The bullet was lodged deep in his skull, but every few seconds it would inch ever closer upwards.

“The damage is healing itself, but I think you hit the part of his brain he would use to hex us.”

Adam let out a sigh and dropped his arm. “Seeing as how we’re not yet dead, the drugs at least had some effect, I’ll give you that. But what will we do with him now?”

“You know of the witch hunts of old, how they would be burn victims at the stake? Barbaric, I know, but we have no other-”

“He deserves it.”

“…he does. Come, let us drag the body to the back courtyard. His allies in town will think of it as another one of his bonfire orgies.”

---

There were no screams.

A roaring fire lit up the evening sky, throwing ash towards the heavens. It took several hours, but the petrol-soaked wood finally burnt away the last of Simon Hunt, Scourge of the Slavs. Or Seducer of the Slavs, depending on who you asked.

“200 years, my ass.” Adam spat a wad of saliva into the fire. It sizzled on contact.

“That is simply what the legends say, the old nursery rhymes. Perhaps 200 years between their appearances is an exaggeration?”

“Well, they were wrong!”

“They were wrong about many things. About how these chosen ones should be worshiped as heroes, about how often they appear. But one thing they told the truth about was how powerful they could become. This man truly was a full-blooded demon.”

“I looked at old records and did some math. It’s happening sooner.”

“Of course it is, why would there be one in 1948 of all times? It has only been 50 years since the last one!”

“And 112 since the one before that. And 178 before that! The gap is shrinking, and who knows how long it will be before the next one?”

Niko remained silent.

“You were wrong, my friend. This isn’t over. The world’s not ready for another System User, and neither are we.”

Niko let out a sigh. “My mistake. But even at this rate, we at least have several decades until the next one comes. So perhaps today we could simply celebrate our first victory?”

“Victory? Tell me something, how long have we been following this creature?”

“Two years, since the day you found that he had run away with your wife, and I found out that he had gotten all of my daughters pregnant.”

“And he spends a week in each town, right? How many women does he sleep with during each visit?”

“He sleeps with all of them! All of the ones below 50, at least.”

“I mean an actual number, how many?”

“Few thousand on the lower end, tens of thousands on the upper.”

“And how many of those women end up pregnant?”

“…”

“Well?”

“…All of them. All of them! It makes no damn sense, even if he were to produce gallons of seminal fluid every day, how would he be able to get them into that many women in so little time?! That would mean less than a minute per woman if he spent every waking moment over the week having-”

“It’s magic. Fairytale magic. He doesn’t even have to touch a woman to make her pregnant. He doesn’t even have to look at them! Don’t you remember that one father in Slovakia, he locked his daughter in her room and boarded up her windows, yet she still ended up pregnant by merely touching herself! Just being near him forces his baby into you! The sex is simply a beacon for his dark ritual!”

Niko took a deep breath. “Yes, he was scary. Very scary. But he is now very dead. So what is your point? Have we not won?”

“Do the math, Niko! Fifty two weeks in a year, and he has been active for at least two, if not many more. 104 weeks, with several tens of thousands becoming pregnant per week, that is 100,000 babies to be born! At least! Every village he passed through will collapse due to the population boom, who will care for the now single mothers? The husbands they each cheated on? Yugoslavia is about to face a crisis!”

“…he should have gone to Russia in that case. They could have used the extra population with how many Stalin sent to their deaths during the war.”

Adam slowly turned to his friend and stared at him with dead eyes. Finally, he let out an exasperated sigh. “Alright, fine, we won today. He is no more. I admit it, are you happy?”

“Great!” Niko clapped his hands together and brought forth a newfound vigor. “I know this one brothel in town that still has some women left! They are apparently too old to get pregnant, so not of interest to that asshole.”

“Niko,” Adam glared at his friend. “You know I’m married.”

“Are you, though? Last I checked, your adulterous ex-wife is now a widow.” He pointed towards the ashes.

“Well, perhaps you’re right about that. Emilia was charmed into making a poor decision, so why not me? If I choose to forgive her, then she should have it in her to forgive me. Let’s celebrate!”