A sound of the bending wood echoed in the silent house. Although the house was still intact, there were numerous items scattered on the ground. It was clear that the house had been ransacked.
Noel, searching for the clues about the map, entered this house with precaution. Despite this house being the seventh house he investigated, he didn't lower his guard, thinking the potential of a small demon left behind by the bandits.
'Still, this is a quite full house. Looking at the papers that are scattered around, it's clear that this person knows how to read and write. But because of the mine operation, there are a few records about the mine, making this village have a better literacy skill than the rest.' Noel thought while roaming around the house.
Suddenly, he stumbled upon a small box on the ground. It was already half opened, so he approached the box and opened it.
The inside was only a two sheets of paper, overlapping each other. Due to the position of the box and the paper, Noel knew this box had a quite amount of jewelries before. But now, there were only these two rolled paper left.
Still, the fact they were in this box meant the paper was quite important.
He took out the paper and opened it before gasping. "Got it."
As expected, the paper was related to the mine. The first paper was a map of the mine while the second one was the deed of the mine.
Unfortunately, before he could look at the map thoroughly, Anna entered the house while saying in a low voice. "Noel. Follow me."
"What's wrong?" Noel glanced at her while rolling the paper again, putting it in his bag.
Anna didn't say anything. She simply left the house, leading Noel to the outside of the village.
After five minutes, she lowered her body to hide behind the bushes while pointing forward. "Look at that."
Noel furrowed his eyebrows and didn't believe what he witnessed.
It turned out Anna had found the mine. There was a huge entrance to the small hill, but that was the last thing Noel noticed.
What shocked him was the cage that trapped a dying woman and a demon.
"That's…" Noel sucked a cold breath. After bonding more with the commoner in the fort, he could see people equally now. That was why seeing a person devoured by the demon angered him.
He had the urge to take out his sword and slice the demon. But what infuriated him the most were ten people surrounding the cage. They were laughing as if everything was an entertainment.
The dying woman didn't let out a single sound, but from the bruises on her body and her ragged appearance, it was clear that she had been treated cruelly. And she soon died after getting bit by the demons.
Anna said in a low voice that only they could hear. "This is disgusting. The woman was played by them until they were half-dead before they used the body to feed the demons."
At the same time, Anna couldn't say more than that. In her past life, she once treated people like that too. That was why she became so angry.
"A few days to a week." Noel narrowed his eyes, glaring at them coldly. Anna suddenly covered his eyes when she felt a bit of killing intent leaking from his gaze. She didn't want them to be exposed, so she pulled him back while saying, "Calm down."
Noel's body trembled as he took a deep breath.
"Sorry." Noel shook his head helplessly. "I lost my calm."
"Anyway, what did you say earlier? A few days to a week?"
"Yes. That's the time they broke the people they kidnapped and fed the demons. In other words, the moment they raided the village, they had no more humans to play with and feed the demon." Noel nodded.
"That's…" Anna also felt disturbed by those words.
"Still, it's not safe to charge right now." Noel glanced at Anna and said, "I'm going to move up our schedule a bit. If possible, I'm planning to save whoever manages to stay alive until now."
Anna nodded. This was the first time Noel didn't bother to say something about her death. It would be amusing to him if she experienced that kind of torture before her death, but Noel seemed to have forgotten about the grudge when there was innocent party involved.
'Not only in this occasion, but also when we saved the kids, he could put down his grudge to me… I don't know what to say other than it's amazing.' Anna thought for a moment before noticing something different. 'Wait a minute. In my past life, this method was spread around. But who came up with that kind of method?
'Now that I think about it, this incident caused a bit of trouble to the Demon Banner Army. And there was going to be an invasion of the demons that caused a great blow to the army… Noel rose from that, but it was clear that the Demon Banner Army was targeted. Don't tell me, there's someone who spread this method?' Anna sucked a cold breath.
Noel didn't answer her but still glanced at her.
"I just have a wild speculation. There's no way the bandits can come up with this kind of method."
"So, you're telling me someone is pulling something from behind?"
"That's just a speculation. I'm not sure of it yet, but if it ends up true. This method will be spread to other bandits."
Noel found the idea to be ridiculous since he had no memory about the past life, but he couldn't dismiss the potential either. With how low the literacy skill in the village was, it was clear that the bandits shouldn't be able to come up with this method, much less capturing the demon.
"Then, ask them about it." Noel decided to take the precaution.
"Yes. But we need to be careful about it because we don't know their number."
"That's true." Noel thought for a moment. "Instead of three days from now on, we'll attack them tomorrow night. During the day, we'll observe them."