Hearing Miss Nightingale Odelle's words, Yalina fell silent.
Levi glanced at Yalina, lifted the birdcage, and walked into the room. "Come take a look."
The room was brightly lit, yet completely empty.
Following behind, Yalina paused slightly when she saw this, then looked at Miss Nightingale Odelle with some confusion.
Miss Nightingale Odelle said nothing, only directing her gaze toward a corner.
Only then did Yalina notice that there was an entrance to a basement there.
Levi had already used Detection to confirm that there was no danger in the basement, so he did not hesitate in the slightest and walked down. Yalina hesitated for a moment, then followed after him.
The basement was lit by flickering candlelight. It wasn't dark—if anything, it felt rather bright.
Around them were large wooden barrels, filled with wine, bread, smoked meat, and other food.
But that wasn't what stood out the most.
A naked young woman's corpse lay on the ground, the scene in disarray—it was clear she had been violated before her death.
The ground where she lay was marked with an eight-pointed star magic circle, within which was an inverted pentagram. Around it were densely carved magical runes, exuding an aura of evil.
Levi cast Detection on it—
[This is a ritual used to worship an evil god. Through intercourse with the girl, through sexual abuse, the girl is killed at the peak of extremity to please the evil god, in exchange for its blessing.]
[The evil god's rank is too high. No further information can be detected.]
Seeing this information, Levi fell silent.
He had originally thought this was just an insignificant, ordinary fairy tale instance—the Robber Bridegroom. But now it involved an old witch of unknown strength who liked turning girls into nightingales, and even an evil god.
This fairy tale world… the waters run deep.
But then Levi recalled—if this was a composite world of Grimm's Fairy Tales, demons and God appeared quite frequently in those stories. This world had never been simple to begin with.
At that thought, Levi's gaze sharpened slightly. He decided it would be best to keep a low profile.
Strengthening himself still had to come first.
At this moment, Yalina recognized the identity of the naked corpse from the gold ring and her appearance. Her expression turned grim as she said, "That's the daughter of Knight Ferdinand from Oakwood Town."
"I'm certain it's her."
"This ring bears the crest of the Ferdinand family."
"And she has the distinctive red hair unique to their lineage."
"These people are far too bold. Aren't they afraid of the Oak Baron's wrath?" Yalina said, her tone complicated.
"Followers of an evil god—there's nothing they wouldn't dare do," Levi replied calmly.
His gaze swept over the barrels, and he noticed an old woman hiding behind one of them.
She looked to be around sixty, her back hunched like a tree bent under wind and snow. The wrinkles on her face were like a dried riverbed, crisscrossed, each line etched with the marks of time. Her hair was sparse and graying, and she wore a faded coarse apron stained with flour, grease, and unidentifiable splashes of broth.
When she was dragged out, her expression remained calm.
Yalina looked over. "Why is there still someone else here?"
Levi had already used Detection to learn everything about her. He said, "She's the bandits' cook. Her son was also one of them—but he's already dead."
Every time the bandits went out to plunder, they suffered losses. The cook's son had simply been unlucky enough to die during one of those raids.
But the old cook didn't see it that way. She blamed the other bandits for her son's death.
She had been waiting for an opportunity to take revenge on them.
She just hadn't found it yet—until Levi arrived and killed them all.
This old cook was the one who had helped Yalina in the fairy tale The Robber Bridegroom.
In the original tale, she drugged all the bandits, knocked them unconscious, and fled with Yalina. Later, Yalina exposed their crimes in public, and the bandits were executed, avenging the wrongs done.
Of course.
There was no need to go through all that trouble now.
Levi had already killed every single bandit.
However, she still didn't know that yet.
When the old cook heard Levi casually reveal her situation, she was stunned.
Yalina was also curious how Levi knew all this. For a moment, she even suspected that Levi might be working with the bandits—there were simply too many coincidences.
But Levi was a mysterious wizard.
Thinking it through, she dismissed the idea—there was no need for him to do such a thing.
She looked at Levi, her gaze flickering.
Levi ignored the two of them. His gaze swept across the basement a few times before he turned and walked out. Seeing this, Yalina immediately followed behind him. The old cook hesitated for a moment, then also walked out of the basement.
The moment she came out, she was shocked to see the wooden barrels filled with beer and food automatically fly out of the basement and land inside the room.
The old cook instantly realized Levi's identity—he was a wizard.
Then it was no longer strange that Levi could casually state her situation in a single breath.
After all, Levi was a wizard!
But only true wizards would understand the weight behind Levi's few simple words.
There were hardly any wizards who possessed a skill like his!
That, however, was another matter.
Back to the present.
Levi gathered the spoils of war. He had already used Detection on the three bandit leaders and the lesser bandits—none of them had anything valuable on them. In the end, he found that only the wine and food stored in the basement had any worth.
Following his principle of not leaving empty-handed, he took some wine and flour and placed them onto his alchemical carriage. Of course, the carriage had limited space and pulling capacity, so he didn't take much. As for things like dried meat and black bread, Levi didn't take them—there was still plenty of food left in the basement.
With this wine and flour, Levi no longer needed to buy flour from Yalina's mill. He could set off directly.
He hadn't forgotten—
The Magic Mirror Queen had sent a Great Knight leading a pursuit after him. The two sides were separated by five days' distance. If Levi stayed in one place too long, the other party might catch up.
Although, with Levi's current strength, a Great Knight was no longer his match—hadn't he just easily killed one earlier?
However, what Levi was wary of was the Magic Mirror Queen behind them. He had no idea what kind of trump card she might have prepared for the Great Knight.
So, for the sake of safety, Levi decided it was better to leave sooner.
Oh, right—actually, these bandits weren't completely without anything good.
Levi had found three different kinds of wine in the basement: white wine, red wine, and yellow wine. If all three were consumed together, a person's body would die immediately, but their soul would become as delectable as wine.
This was the true offering the bandits had prepared for the evil god.
He hung the birdcage containing Miss Nightingale Odelle at the front of the carriage, then said to Yalina, "Farewell, beautiful Tulip Lady."
"Thank you for this encounter."
"The bandits have all been dealt with. As for the rest, I believe you can handle it."
"Oh, right—give that old cook beside you a small piece of advice: take whatever valuables you can and leave as soon as possible."
"Encounters are always brief. It's time for me to set out on my journey once more."
"I hope that one day, we'll have the chance to meet again."
Levi smiled, waved his hand, and was about to climb onto the carriage, ready to drive alone into the forest, toward an unknown distance.
"Wait."
A sudden impulse surged within Yalina. Gathering courage from who knows where, she called out to Levi.
Levi turned back to look at her. He had a fairly good impression of this woman.
Under Levi's gaze, Yalina's heart pounded violently—but she knew that if she didn't seize this opportunity, there would never be another.
So she swallowed, looked at Levi's face, and said, "Mr. Levi, we agreed to give you a quart of flour as payment."
"Yalina, as you can see, I don't need it anymore," Levi replied.
"But you still need to bake the flour into bread. The village has ovens that can help you bake it," Yalina added, offering another reason.
"Thank you, but I won't be needing that either," Levi said with a slight smile. There was a small stove on the carriage that could barely be used to bake bread.
"But you only have flour. To turn it into bread, you'll need the baker's treasure," Yalina insisted.
What Yalina referred to as the "baker's treasure" was actually a starter dough.
In this era, bakers would keep a small portion of previously fermented dough as a starter for the next batch. Through repeated inoculation, this maintained a symbiotic culture of natural yeast and lactic acid bacteria within the dough, used for making bread and other fermented foods.
But Levi didn't have such a thing.
However, he wasn't worried at all.
Because this was something that could be obtained from nature.
You could crush sugary fruits like grapes or figs, or soak grains in water and expose them to the air, relying on natural airborne yeast to initiate fermentation.
This method simply carried a higher risk and was more prone to failure.
But for Levi, that wasn't a problem.
Levi had Detection and Gathering Technique. Detection could easily assess the success rate, while Gathering Technique was even simpler—once he managed to produce yeast capable of fermenting bread, he could directly collect that yeast.
So when it came to making bread, Levi had no concerns at all.
After saying this, he looked at Yalina.
Yalina was in extreme inner turmoil. Seeing that Levi was about to leave, she finally blurted out, "Mr. Levi, please let me follow you. I want to wander the world with you."
"Oh? Why?" Levi showed no surprise at her words. Instead, he asked with interest.
"Because… because I don't want my future to be marrying some knight in town, with the farthest place I'll ever see being the borders of Oakwood Territory. I don't want to be like a bird, trapped inside a cage," Yalina said with a serious expression.
"…" Inside the birdcage, Miss Nightingale Odelle had only one thought—are you being polite right now?
The corner of Levi's mouth lifted slightly. "Will your parents agree to this?"
"And what about what's happening here? You'll need to deal with it as well."
"Give me a little time. I'll take care of everything," Yalina said, her expression extremely serious as she made her promise to Levi.
"Oh."
"In that case, Mr. Levi, does that mean you agree to let me board your carriage and travel with you to the ends of the world?" Yalina asked, looking at him with hopeful anticipation.
"If you believe you won't regret it, then you may board my carriage. However…"
"However what?" Yalina pressed.
"However, you'll have to work," Levi said. Having someone accompany him on his journey was also a good thing—it would be less boring.
Upon hearing this, Yalina's eyes lit up with overwhelming joy. She immediately assured him, "Of course, that won't be a problem."
"Please give me some time to settle things here," Yalina said to Levi.
Levi nodded calmly.
...
One day later.
News spread throughout the entire territory that Knight Jacob had suddenly died of a severe illness.
The Oak Baron expressed deep regret and sorrow over this, and granted Yalina's family—his fiancée—a compensation of one hundred gold coins.
As for the forest estate that the Oak Baron had granted to Knight Jacob, it was reclaimed.
Yalina, devastated by grief, decided to leave Oakwood Territory and travel to a port city where her relatives lived to continue her studies.
Many people felt saddened by this—most of them men.
As for the women, a small portion of them instead felt pleased in their hearts.
The death of a certain knight's daughter within Oakwood Territory drew little attention.
Even fewer people knew that, deep within the forests of Oakwood Territory, in that manor, there had once been a group of people who worshipped an evil god.
At this moment—
On that forest path, a carriage rattled along.
Yalina sat at the front, holding the reins. Beside her hung a birdcage, inside which lived a nightingale.
Levi, meanwhile, sat inside the carriage on a chair.
Yalina wanted to follow him on his adventures, and since Levi had a good impression of her, he allowed her to join.
However, Yalina wasn't there to enjoy herself—she was there to work.
As it happened, she knew how to drive a carriage, so she took on that role.
While driving, she curiously asked Levi inside the carriage, "Why did the Oak Baron suppress the matter of the bandits worshipping an evil god?"
"It's simple." Levi didn't answer, but Miss Nightingale Odelle in the birdcage spoke up instead. "Once news of bandits worshipping an evil god spreads, the Church would have grounds to intervene."
"The Oak Baron doesn't want the Church's authority to expand within his territory, so he suppressed the matter."
"Of course, this is only because those bandits have already been killed by Lord Levi."
"If they were still alive, it wouldn't be so easy for the Oak Baron to do this," Miss Nightingale Odelle said. As someone born into nobility, she understood these subtle calculations far better than Yalina.
"Why?" Yalina didn't understand the meaning of Odelle's last sentence.
Odelle shook her little bird head. "Because the dead cannot speak—but the living will spread word everywhere."
"I see." Yalina understood immediately after that explanation. "If Jacob and the other bandits were still alive, the Oak Baron couldn't possibly ignore the existence of such a group after learning about them. But eliminating them wouldn't be easy either."
Yalina recalled the strength of those bandit leaders—they had all reached knight-level, and one of them had even reached Great Knight level.
"So he would inevitably have to bring in outside forces—and if he did that, the Church would definitely find out."