The Alluring Call
I watched Tom, Danny, and Pyutel drift forward as if in a trance, then quickly checked the others for the same symptoms. Thankfully, the rest of the group seemed unaffected. They turned to me with puzzled looks, clearly disturbed by the behavior of the three men ahead.
“Wait, where’s this sound supposed to be coming from? Is there something wrong with my ears? I don’t hear anything.”
Meni tilted her head, digging into her ear with her pinky finger. Pyurie’s eyes widened in surprise when she realized she couldn’t hear it either.
“I can’t hear anything. Why are they walking ahead like that, oppa?”
They really can’t hear it?
To my ears, it sounded like distant, murmuring voices—people chatting softly somewhere far off. The fact that no one else could hear them made me wonder if this was some kind of prank. But when I looked at Sezanne and Yanne, both girls shook their heads. They couldn’t hear anything either.
“Aha! It’s gender-based. Only the men can hear the voices!”
The distinction was now obvious: the three men stumbling forward in a daze, and the rest of us who heard nothing. Yet even though I could hear the sound clearly, I wasn’t affected like they were. The voices reached me, but the enchantment had no hold. Something was protecting me from the mental compulsion.
Maybe the buffs I keep active are blocking it.
“Master, what should we do about them?” Yanne asked, her voice steady despite the strangeness.
“For now, we follow. Whatever’s making that sound to lure men is probably the monster on the third floor. At least we won’t have to wander aimlessly. Pyurie and I will take point. Meni, you guard the rear.”
Since Pyurie was from the mountain race, she was the natural choice to lead us through this jungle-like forest. The three men had already pulled far ahead, so we hurried after them.
“Huff… huff… Master, we’ve been walking for over three hours. Why won’t they stop? Aren’t they tired?”
“There are footprints, but no monsters or animals anywhere. This place feels wrong,” Pyurie added quietly.
Even I was starting to crave a break. The jungle heat was brutal, and everyone was drenched in sweat. We had been sipping water as we moved, yet exhaustion still crept in. The three men, marching forward without rest or hydration, had to be far worse off. Still, they pushed on, completely fixated on whatever called to them through the trees.
“Master! Look over there!”
Yanne pointed. White bones gleamed among the undergrowth—too large for a human, with the distinct shape of a four-legged hoofed animal.
“There are more over here,” Sezanne said.
The skeletons were tangled in the branches. Dozens of them. These creatures had likely been enchanted just like the men, walking until their bodies gave out.
Only now did I understand how the third floor of the Green Dungeon dealt with intruders. It bewitched the mind, forcing victims to walk until dehydration killed them. Women were immune to the effect, but since most dungeon explorers were male, this mental attack was devastatingly effective.
“Pyurie, let’s rest. Tie their hands and feet with rope.”
She moved like a rancher roping calves, flinging the line with practiced ease and quickly binding the three men’s legs together. They struggled desperately to keep moving but only succeeded in collapsing into a tangled heap.
“No! I have to go! It’s calling me! Let go!”
“Baby! I’m right here! I’ll come to you—just come here!”
“Mother! We’re on our way! Please wait! We must hurry!”
Their frantic shouts were too loud. We stuffed cloth into their mouths and gagged them.
“It appears to be mental magic,” Sezanne said after examining them closely. “There are so many varieties that only affect men. As a follower of Tulcherus, the God of Fire, I’m afraid I have no countermeasures.”
We forced the men to drink water mixed with salt and vinegar to fight dehydration, then drank our fill as well. The sweat had taken a heavy toll on all of us.
“Whew… I feel a little more human. So what now?” Meni asked bluntly. “Should we tie them up and send them back to the second floor? Leaving them like this seems dangerous.”
Since the buffs seemed to protect me from the enchantment, I kept the largest of the three—Tom—as our guide. I cast healing and vitality buffs on Danny and Pyutel.
“Huh? It’s not working.”
I even added a luck buff, but they remained lost in the trance. So it wasn’t the buffs protecting me after all.
Then why am I immune? What’s different?
No clear answer came to mind.
“We’ll keep them moving but make sure they eat and drink enough to stay alive. They should lead us straight to whatever controls this floor. Let’s move.”
Every two to four hours we pinned the men down, pried their mouths open, and forced them to swallow salted vinegar water and soup. It was grim work.
“Human bones over there!”
After ten hours, we began finding the remains of people. The skeleton Yanne pointed out was half-buried in a tree trunk. Its expensive-looking armor had rusted beyond repair, but a large double-bladed axe lay nearby, its edge still gleaming with deadly sharpness.
“That’s a B-Rank mercenary tag,” Sezanne noted. “The guild will pay a reward if we return it.”
“This axe is made from magic ore. Expensive,” Meni grunted.
Coming from a woman with dwarf blood, that was high praise. I snatched up the axe immediately. After fighting those melting flowers on the second floor, I had wished for a proper edged weapon.
As we continued, more skeletons appeared—many half-swallowed by the trees, just like the mercenary. They hadn’t simply collapsed from exhaustion. Something far worse had happened here.
“M-Master… over there…”
Yanne’s voice trembled. Ahead lay a pond the size of a small reservoir. The water was crystal clear, almost inviting. But the countless skulls lining the bottom made it anything but.
“This must be the end of the line,” I muttered.
The three enchanted men couldn’t see the bones. They tried to walk straight into the water, but Pyurie yanked the rope and forced them to sit. I scanned the area.
“This feels like the destination, but I don’t see the one responsible.”
“Master! I found something.”
[...Run... Abandon everything... You must go back...]
The crude message looked like it had been scratched in haste—perhaps by someone who had briefly broken free of the enchantment, or by a companion trying to warn the others.
“What now?” Yanne asked.
“First, we eat. Tie them securely to that tree. We’ll be able to rest easier.”
Pyurie was binding the men to a massive trunk and preparing fresh gags when I felt the wood shift beneath my feet. The movement was aggressive. I rolled backward just as branches whipped through the air where I had been standing.
“The tree’s moving!”
I thought it was another Ent, but I was wrong. This was far worse. Every tree in the forest had come alive, stretching countless branches toward us like a living nightmare.
“Tentacles…?”
The branches of the tree holding the three men had already pierced their stomachs and thighs. They pulsed and gulped like straws, greedily sucking out fluids and life. The sight instantly connected with the skeletons we had seen—bodies half-buried in trunks, drained dry.
They hadn’t simply died of exhaustion. The trees had dragged them in and fed.
“Sezanne! Use Fire Wind Cutter to blast them back! Everyone, set the trees on fire! These are all man-eating monsters!”
I shouted the orders and charged with the double-bladed axe, swinging at the tentacle still feeding on Tom. The weapon Meni had praised cut clean through the wrist-thick limb in a single blow.
But it was too late for the three men. Their bodies had been hollowed out. I poured healing potions into the gaping wounds anyway and cast recovery buffs, though I doubted they would survive.
Then I pulled a beer bottle from my inventory—one of the Molotov cocktails I had prepared after learning the importance of firepower on the second floor. Gasoline and thinner mixed inside, rag stuffed in the neck. I had worried whether they would work properly in this world.
With equal parts anxiety and hope, I lit the rag and hurled it into the mass of writhing trees.
[Whoosh—BOOM!]
The effect was better than expected. While it couldn’t match a proper Fireball, each bottle delivered roughly half the destructive power. Ten of them turned the forest into an inferno. The carnivorous trees sprayed stored water to fight the flames, but the oil spread across the liquid, making the fire rage even hotter.
“Move to the pond! Don’t breathe in the smoke!”
We dragged the three barely-living men to the water’s edge and collapsed, watching the forest burn.
“There were never any separate monsters on the third floor,” I said. “The entire floor casts the enchantment. Every single tree is the monster.”
“Then… do we have to burn the whole floor?” Yanne asked.
“If we can, yes. The smoke seems to be venting that way, so we shouldn’t suffocate.”
I handed the remaining Molotovs to Pyurie and told her to throw them at any unburned sections. But suddenly her eyes went glassy. She stood perfectly still, staring into nothing.
“What the—?”
Sezanne and Yanne fell silent next, their expressions blank. Then Meni froze mid-motion. I felt the bottle in my hand change shape.
“Starbucks…?”
The burning dungeon vanished. I now stood inside an ordinary Starbucks café. In my hand was a warm mug of caramel macchiato.
“Illusion magic?”
The shift was so abrupt it was almost comical. If this had happened on Earth, the realistic modern setting might have fooled me. But after living in a fantasy world, the sudden jump to a modern café screamed illusion so loudly that even a VR game newbie would have spotted it immediately.
The entity behind the enchantment must have layered illusion magic on top of its mental compulsion. Curious how far it could push the fantasy, I calmly took a sip of the coffee.
“Not bad. It seems to be pulling from my memories to create this attack. But what exactly is it trying to do?”
I had expected it to drag me back to the most painful moment of my life—the brutal 5-0 defeat in the LDK semifinals five years ago. That would have been the hardest memory to resist. Instead, it had chosen an ordinary café. I couldn’t guess what kind of mental attack this was supposed to be.
“Did you wait long? The bathroom line was insane.”
A woman sat down across from me. Only then did I understand the choice of scene.
This was the day before my birthday—the exact one-week anniversary of when I had started dating Sejeong. The night we had spent together.
The illusion wasn’t attacking me with my worst memory. It was attacking with my happiest one.
Seeing Sejeong smile and ask, “What? Are you thinking about something else?” I couldn’t help but smile back.
Fuck. The illusion magic is really well-made. Is this thing using AI?