Chapter 194 – Allen: I Didn't Expect You to Be That Kind of Headmistress
"This is a demon. It must be handed over to the Church."
From within the crowd, Headmistress Shire eagerly stepped forward with her suggestion.
"No way. I caught it."
Allen flatly refused, like a child fiercely protecting a toy.
If he hadn't witnessed everything with his own eyes, he might've actually agreed to her demand.
"Allen, maybe… find something to wear first?" Gu Yi offered a somewhat awkward reminder.
At the moment, Allen was completely covered in mud, stark naked beneath it. The young nuns around them blushed furiously, breathless—not from shock, but because they'd clearly been struck by his looks.
"I'll just smear on a little more mud."
Allen noticed some of the dried sludge beginning to crack and flake off, so he went to reapply and thicken the layer.
"The demon should be placed under our care. Just get dressed first," Headmistress Shire said, trying to reason with him.
"Nope. Hehehe…"
Allen spun around and dashed into the woods, dragging the monster behind him, still bound in deep crimson chains.
The whole scene resembled a bratty child who'd picked up some sun-dried dog poop, mistaking it for chocolate, and ran away with it while the adults desperately yelled for him to throw it away. Naturally, the kid assumed they were trying to steal his "chocolate," and sprinted off, stuffing it into his mouth.
Not long after, Geralt returned, having rescued over a dozen children.
Some of them had been starving for so long they'd slipped into comas.
The moment the nuns saw the new children, they looked utterly confused—there wasn't the slightest trace of recognition. And yet, their clothes were clearly from the orphanage.
Meanwhile, Headmistress Shire had gone deathly pale, her eyes flitting about, trying to avoid anyone's gaze.
"It's a Forgetting Lich," Geralt said gravely. "There are still many child remains back in its lair."
The nuns grew more bewildered, but from his words, they began piecing together the truth—that many children had gone missing, and for some reason, they had completely forgotten them.
"A vile, evil Forgetting Lich…" Agatha said through gritted teeth. "These creatures feed on children. They sneak into towns at night to steal kids, and they're born with mastery over forgetfulness curses, making the victims' families forget their very existence."
"Exactly. They live nomadic lives, constantly changing locations to avoid detection. There are very few successful cases of them being slain by Witchers," Geralt added.
If the families forget their lost children, they naturally never seek help.
And since Witchers rarely linger in any one place, they don't typically dig into local secrets.
"I'm back."
At that moment, Allen reappeared.
He had caked himself in another thick layer of mud—only his eyes and a row of gleaming white teeth were visible. Behind him, the Forgetting Lich remained bound.
Given his stubborn, uncooperative attitude, somehow, it all kind of made sense.
"How did you manage to discover the Forgetting Lich?" Agatha asked curiously. Somehow, he had stumbled into catching the true culprit.
Allen looked at her with pure sincerity. "What's a Forgetting Lich?"
Agatha pointed at the creature behind him. "That monster you caught. It specializes in forgetfulness magic."
"So that's a Forgetting Lich? I thought it was a Dark-type Slime."
Allen looked immensely disappointed. Then, with a sudden jolt of realization, he exclaimed, "She must've used a forgetfulness curse on me! That's the only explanation for why I didn't recognize what she was."
Smack!
Frustrated, Allen wiped the mud off his face with one hand and slapped it right onto the Lich's head.
The—
The Forgetting Lich looked utterly wronged.
Totally being bullied just because she couldn't speak human language.
"As for how I found her, it was really quite simple. I just used my brain a little," Allen said smugly.
But to the others, it sounded like he was calling them all brainless.
He plucked a twig from his head and used it like a cigar, striking a cool pose. But no matter how you looked at him, the scene just got more and more absurd.
"When I saw the doll, and combined that with the environment, the first thing that came to mind was this horror film I once watched—Forest Fiend..."
Before Allen could finish, Agatha interrupted, "What's Forest Fiend? And what's a horror film?"
"Don't change the subject. You'll know in a few hundred years."
Allen carried on, "In the movie, the monster also loved eating kids. It could also make people forget the victims. But the key difference was that it could also possess a woman's body."
He paused for dramatic effect, took a deep pull from his twig, then exhaled in satisfaction before continuing, "That's when I thought—maybe the real culprit is something similar. So I used coins to test it out."
At this point, Allen looked expectantly at Agatha, clearly hoping for a follow-up question to create a dramatic dialogue rhythm.
But Agatha just stood there, confused, staring blankly. She clearly didn't get what he was aiming for.
"…Why use coins?" Gu Yi asked, cutting in.
"Excellent question."
Allen shot Agatha a look of disappointment and said sourly, "Mount, we've got zero chemistry. Yao-Mei would've gotten it right away."
"Considering the suspect's forgetfulness magic, even if I memorized the number and faces of everyone here, the curse would still wipe that from my mind. So I used coins—a perfect tool to bypass causality. The first time, I handed out 111 coins when checking the headcount. At breakfast, I gave out only 110. Obviously, someone was missing. And because I was just counting coins and not targeting anyone specifically, the spell couldn't trigger."
Everyone fell silent.
Even the Forgetting Lich looked bewildered.
This kind of logic was absolutely wild—normal people wouldn't even think of it, let alone replicate it.
And the cost was outrageous. For a whole town, you'd need thousands of coins. And once handed out, you weren't getting those coins back.
Suddenly, Allen grinned and raised his voice: "The accomplice—are you going to step forward on your own, or should we wait for the children to point you out?"
The children rescued from the tree hollow, now awake, all turned their gaze toward Headmistress Shire, who was trying to hide among the crowd.
As everyone's eyes focused on her, she panicked and tried to argue, "The children must be under the demon's influence! They're definitely minions of the demon! The scripture says demons are masters of deceit!"
But no one believed her anymore. The truth was right in front of them.
"Headmistress Shire, how could you do something so cruel?"
"They were just innocent children!"
The two assistant headmistresses angrily confronted her, unable to believe that the woman they once knew as gentle and kind was capable of such monstrous deeds.
"I get it now," Agatha murmured. "The Headmistress must've signed a life-binding blood curse with the Forgetting Lich."
"…The hell did you just say?" Allen frowned. "You expect me to guess the rest? Picking on a mentally unstable guy, huh?"
"Blood curses are the Lich's second ability," Agatha explained. "Once signed, they extend a person's life, but the signer becomes a servant in return."
Thanks to her explanation, the other nuns finally began to understand.
A few months ago, Headmistress Shire had been suffering from a long, drawn-out illness. Then one day, she suddenly recovered and claimed it was divine favor. Naturally, the clergy had no reason to doubt her faith.
But the truth was, she'd submitted to a demon—feeding innocent children to the Forgetting Lich in exchange for more time to live.
"The frog of impatience has always been rubbing your belly," Allen said with disgust. "I didn't expect you to be that kind of Headmistress."