Chapter 20: Rescue Operation

The storeroom by the garden was easy to find.

Relying on the mansion itself, a moderately-sized annex storeroom stood quietly there, with gravel pathways leading to both the garden and the mansion.

However, the only problem was that the storeroom door was locked.

Ronald and his companions had no key at all.

Seeing this situation, Thomson immediately began to complain,

"This is..."

Thunk—

He had barely started speaking when the voice of the middle-aged peddler stopped abruptly.

Facing such a level of hindrance, Nade simply kicked the door. The wood embedding the lock split with the sound, causing the door lock to reach its end of life prematurely.

Creak—

An unpleasant scraping sound emitted between the wooden board and the ground.

Without saying a word, Nade pushed open the door and walked in boldly with a lamp, leaving the dumbfounded middle-aged peddler behind.

He entered.

The size of the storeroom was no different from what it looked like from outside.

Two upright shelves filled the walls on both sides, and at the back was a slanted cellar entrance. The ladder mentioned by the man stood in the corner, and tools like axes and saws were scattered in a toolbox.

It was a space clear at a glance, with objects clear at a glance.

Looking around, Nade soon began to instruct,

"Thomson, you go move the ladder; Ronald and I will grab the tools."

"Everyone, move quickly."

"Okay, okay."

Perhaps to make up for his earlier mistake, or possibly intimidated by Nade,

Thomson didn't argue and simply carried the heaviest ladder back alone.

Meanwhile, Ronald and Nade each picked up tools from the toolbox.

Axes, hammers, and saws, enough to break the floor.

————

From leaving to returning, not much time had passed.

But stepping back into the warmth of the fireplace always seemed to relieve a bit of stress.

Looking at his two companions, ensuring neither showed signs of fatigue, Ronald asked,

"Should we head straight there without delay?"

"No problem."

As they left the living room, the surrounding light immediately dimmed.

To reduce the chances of being discovered as much as possible, the three didn't carry lanterns and thus began to grope their way forward in the dark on the first floor.

Since there was no need to use the stairs to access the ground floor, the first floor's layout was significantly different from the second floor.

To reach the location corresponding to the broken door on the second floor, the three first bypassed the stairs by the side of the living room, then passed through a circular corridor.

They finally came to a locked room after bypassing a washroom.

Nade stopped in front of it.

He reached out to stop the other two, and then spoke softly,

"This is the place."

"Ronald, I'm going in."

"Okay."

Without needing to say another word, as soon as Nade's voice fell, Ronald began to guard the surroundings.

Thomson was simply unreliable for this kind of job—it had to be him.

The corridor in the darkness was silent—

Other than Nade fiddling with the lock with a hairpin he produced from nowhere, even the air seemed heavy.

Click—

In probably less than ten seconds, followed by a faint sound.

Nade gripped the doorknob forcefully, then gently turned it.

The door opened!

This guy was really good at picking locks!

Although it was just a common door lock, the fact that Nade could pick it so quickly with just a hairpin was telling of his abilities.

Ronald turned around, looking at him with a complex expression before entering the room.

Tick-tock—tick-tock—

It was a very ordinary bedroom.

An ordinary bed, an ordinary wardrobe, ordinary windows.

Only near the edge of the window, the sound of water droplets hitting the floor was anything but ordinary.

If one had a sensitive sense of smell, they could even detect a faint smell of blood.

It was blood—

From a broken ceiling, dark red blood trickled down a cracked piece of wood before spreading over the gaps in the flooring.

"It's from before."

"Exactly."

Ronald and Nade exchanged a glance, silently reaching an agreement.

They recalled an earlier incident upstairs where a 'mother' had been abusing and confining her 'daughter', along with the sound of wood breaking.

Now on the first floor, everything became clear.

Using that piece of wood, the 'mother' had brutally nailed her own child to the floor!

Of course, now was not the time to be appalled by her cruelty.

There was extreme urgency.

"Thomson, come help with the ladder."

"Okay... alright."

Bringing over the ladder they carried to the window.

Just as Thomson was about to set up the ladder, his actions stopped.

Next to him, Nade and Ronald were looking at him with a very strange expression.

"What... what's wrong?"

Isn't it just about chiseling off a bit around this stick through the body to make a space big enough for people to pass through, and then we're done?

Facing their eerie gazes, Thomson cautiously asked.

Then, Ronald covered his face with his hand.

He really preferred talking with intelligent people.

"You don't really think that we're going to follow that man's method and break the floor, do you?"

"Isn't... isn't that the plan?" Thomson was still confused.

While Nade was opening the window and climbing out, Ronald explained:

"Breaking the floor would make too much noise and inevitably attract that 'woman'. We need to set up the ladder outside and go directly to the second floor to rescue the child."

"Eh?"

Blinking, Thomson followed up with another question:

"Then why are we operating inside the house?"

"Can't we just bring the ladder directly from the storeroom?"

"Because you can see the first floor from the second-floor windows."

Resignedly, Ronald clarified this for Thomson, and decided not to keep calling out to him anymore.

Compared to Nade being such a counterpart, the middle-aged merchant just felt powerless.

But in reality, there were more people like Thomson.

One could only say it was understandable...

Following Nade outside, the two of them swiftly set up the ladder.

With the merchant securing the ladder below, they climbed up one after the other to the second floor.

Through the window on the second floor, the scene inside laid bare.

In the room, ruined in a fit of rage by the earlier 'mother', barely any piece of furniture remained intact.

The room was a total mess, as if it had been a den for a group of wild animals.

And, close to the window, a girl in a white dress lay on the floor.

Just as Ronald had guessed, her scapula was pierced by a broken chair, and she was almost entirely immobile, stained heavily with blood.

Yet, despite this, the girl's bright eyes continued to fix on the window.

She was waiting for someone to rescue her!