The Piper’s Discordant End
The sound of the flute echoed through Hameln. Of the three, one had been dealt with, leaving two. In truth, there was no need to continue the fight. He could simply feed the children of Hameln to the rats, hand over the remaining few to some slaver, and collect his coin. He had already incited them to hate the strangers and turn on each other; he could just leave. But Hunold found the Hansel he had seen earlier deeply unsettling. Even though he had supposedly reduced the boy to bone dust mixed with flour and ash, he couldn't shake the feeling that something was wrong.
'I’ve never seen him before, never heard the name. Yet, he feels strangely familiar.'
The face of a stranger felt known. Hansel seemed to have no idea who he was, but Hunold felt an inexplicable sense of recognition, as if they had met before. There had to be some connection between them. An old friend? Impossible. He had slaughtered every living thing in the village where he was born—a place whose name he couldn't even recall—leaving no traces behind. He had only one person he could have called a friend in his life, and that Hansel fellow didn't look anything like him. Besides, he had only met that friend twice; it was doubtful they could even be called friends.
He could just walk away, but the thought of leaving them alive was so bothersome that he knew it would haunt his sleep for weeks. It was wiser to eliminate everyone connected to that boy here and now.
'I'll beat them to the brink of death and let these villagers finish the job. They want to spit on the one who helped them? Let them drown in their own resentment.'
"Pitiful citizens of Hameln! Do you wish to save your children? Then kill these foolish strangers who dare to defy me! Stain your own hands with their blood!"
Once again, he stirred the pot of hatred, incitement, and hostility. Someone, their mind corrupted by the poison seeping into their weakened heart, snapped. A farmer, who had been groveling at Hunold’s feet just moments ago, lunged toward the two strangers.
"Uwaaaaaaaah!!!!"
These were the people who had come to their village, caused no harm, and instead of fleeing when the crisis struck, had stepped forward to fight. But the irrational terror of facing an inescapable harbinger of death, combined with the desperate urge to save their children, drove even the kindest souls to such ingratitude. The farmer wept as he charged, knowing full well this was wrong, silently praying for someone to stop him.
Bang! Thwip!
Someone did stop him. Two friends, a bullet and an arrow, intervened.
"Gah!"
With a bolt and a bullet lodged in his arm and leg respectively, the ordinary farmer—not some superhuman capable of shrugging off such wounds—collapsed and rolled on the ground.
"Sigh. How pathetic. To be swayed by such a moron."
"Is this what it feels like to be insulted after helping someone, or to witness such base ingratitude?"
Gretel and Pinochia had fired without a moment’s hesitation. Their cold, unwavering resolve froze the Hameln villagers, who had been on the verge of being swept up in a wave of hatred and killing the strangers—and each other—at the slightest spark. Even Hunold, who had incited them, was momentarily stunned by their ruthlessness.
'If they’re like this, using the villagers as shields or hostages is completely meaningless.'
Seeing travelers who weren't even from Hameln taking the lead against a swarm of rats, he had assumed they were either rare, truly good-hearted people who protected others, or at least neutral parties who wouldn't harm anyone but their enemies while under contract. He was dead wrong.
Hunold’s own tactic was to avoid direct confrontation, hide, and use innocent people as shields or hostages to threaten his opponents. Those with even a shred of justice or morality would see their attacks dull and their reactions slow. Eventually, he would whittle them down with an endless barrage of fodder before delivering the killing blow. But if his opponent felt no hesitation in cutting through innocent human shields—justifying it as "not killing a person, but breaking the enemy's armor"—then the only option left was a disadvantageous direct confrontation.
"By the way, where did Hansel go? Where is he wandering off to?"
Hunold didn't miss the mutter from Gretel as she aimed her bow.
"Hansel? I killed him."
"What?"
Thwip!
The provocation hit the mark; Gretel’s voice turned sharp. Following Gretel’s arrow, Pinochia leaped instantly toward the rooftop where Hunold stood, but he dodged after releasing a swarm of insects to obscure her vision.
"These bugs are merely annoying; they cause no significant damage."
She brushed the insects away with her hand. In truth, even insects that bit and sucked blood to cause extreme pain meant little to Pinochia.
"That's right. They're just small bugs. But I can deal plenty of damage. Andante!"
While she was distracted brushing away the pests, Hunold pulled a musical score sheet etched with various notes from thin air and hurled it at her. The beam of the score sheet curved elegantly, wrapping around Pinochia and pinning her down.
"Hm, this is?"
It wasn't a magic incantation meant to stop the opponent, but something akin to a physical beam of light shaped like a musical score. It succeeded in binding Pinochia’s arms and body. He prepared to follow up, but this wasn't a one-on-one duel. Gretel’s furious onslaught began.
Gretel, who had scaled the wall, mimicked Pinochia’s fighting style, wielding a dagger in one hand and a small crossbow in the other. She lunged forward, thrusting the dagger while firing the crossbow in the direction he tried to dodge. A small bolt aimed at his head accompanied a strike meant to slit his throat. She used the two different weapons with alternating speeds—one fast, one slow. A syncopated rhythm. Simultaneously, she added a slow, varied kick. After a strike with the crossbow, she threw the dagger. She kicked at his crotch while simultaneously jabbing her fingers toward his eyes. She feigned picking up a dropped weapon to lower her stance, then pivoted on her right foot to unleash a low, spinning kick with her left.
She used only two weapons, yet Gretel’s attacks were incredibly varied and colorful.
"What did you do to Hansel? Answer me, you rat-brained piece of trash!"
"I told you, I killed him."
"Lies!!"
"Hansel died by your hands? Even to me, that sounds like nonsense."
"Kuh!"
Pinochia, having given up on breaking the score sheet with brute force and deciding to fight with kicks while still bound, intervened, delivering a flying kick to Hunold’s side. As he was kicked through the railing and fell, Gretel fired her crossbow again. This time, she wasn't just spraying shots in hopes of a hit; she was aiming carefully for multiple shots.
But Hunold’s incantation was faster than the crossbow’s aim and the trigger pull. The mouth is often faster than the hand.
"Allegro!"
The sonic shockwave he had shown several times before. This time, it was an enhanced version. An explosion caused by pouring oil into a gunpowder warehouse is always more powerful than a simple spark.
"Ugh!"
"Kyaa!"
The score-sheet-shaped light binding Pinochia shattered, triggering a cacophonous explosion and a shockwave. It was as if violin strings had snapped, as if someone had smashed their fists onto a piano’s keys at random. He blew into his flute with harsh, irregular breaths, lacking any sense of rhythm. He struck a drum as if to shatter it. It was a symphony of dissonance that made one want to cover their ears. If one could call that music, then the final death throes of those poor, high-quality instruments—victims of a meaningless vandalism that would make countless buried artists break out of their coffins to attack—manifested as violence and hatred toward the audience.
The house where the three had been fighting collapsed, swallowing the mechanical doll and the hunter. The performer gripped his flute, spun his body to regain balance, and continued his performance.
"Vivace! Cantabile! Dal Segno!"
Sonic explosions and a barrage of magic bullets shaped like musical notes, fired from the floating score sheet, poured onto the crumbling building. Unfortunately, perhaps because the performer’s skill was so abysmal, the mechanical doll and the hunter were not entranced by Hunold’s music and managed to escape the collapsing structure in style.
Amidst the falling debris, a hooked wire was fired, anchoring into another building, and they used it to grapple. With the momentum of the retracting wire, Pinochia and Gretel, who was tucked under her arm, safely escaped the gap in the crumbling building. Even in that moment, Gretel fired a large arrow she had fashioned by gathering light.
Kwang!
"Hiiik."
Regrettably, it struck just in front of Hunold’s feet, missing him by a hair’s breadth. Had she not been firing while tucked under someone else’s arm while escaping a collapsing building, it would have pinned Hunold’s feet to the ground. It was a true waste.
"By the way, I analyzed the connection between the musical terms you use and your attacks, and it turns out you’re just slapping them on without any meaning at all, aren't you?"
"Yeah, so what?"
It was true. Hunold had never learned music systematically. He was merely using those terms as substitutes for battle cries like "Hup!" or "Yah!" He had simply picked them up from a musician who had left Bremen shortly after the Four Sacred Beasts were defeated by the Queen. In reality, he only knew how to play the flute; he couldn't even read sheet music. To think that someone pretending to be an artist would answer such a critique from Pinochia so confidently and without shame—it was an insult to art itself.
After Pinochia, it was Gretel’s turn.
"You, say it again. Hansel is dead?"
Seeing Gretel’s ominous aura, as if she would rip his mouth open and cut out his tongue for speaking out of turn, Hunold chose to provoke her again instead of cowering.
"No, he didn't die, the rats ate him whole. Without leaving a single scrap of bone. The one who ate the most of Hansel’s meat is probably the new Hansel now, right? I should call that one Hansel from now on."
Hunold placed a black sewer rat on his hand, stroked it affectionately, and kissed it.
"Ah! Hansel says so. He says he doesn't want to date a woman with a foul temper like you. Actually, he said he’s a homo who likes men, and he felt disgusted pretending to date you."
Veins bulged on Gretel’s forehead and around her eyes.
"Yeah, go taste the back-door pleasure of that homo bastard."
Thwack.
Suddenly, something pierced through Hunold from behind and exited through his chest. The blood flowing from his body and the wounds were clear, and even the trickles of blood were visible, but whatever had stabbed him remained unseen. He wondered if it was a hallucination or an auditory illusion, but the taste of blood surging up his throat and the metallic stench were real. And the voice that spoke from behind was unmistakable.
It was Hansel—the one Hunold had believed to be dead just moments ago. The one he had been certain had turned into bone dust between the flour and the ash.