What Witch? This Alchemist is Breaking Bad!

About an hour later, Leon carried a bag of tools on his back and arrived at a spot halfway up the mountain side by side with Rena.

Rena once again glanced uneasily at the shovel and axe sticking out of Leon’s shoulder strap.

They had all been taken from her house.

The whole scene looked disturbingly like someone was about to be taken into the mountains, killed to silence them, and buried on the spot.

“Is there really a path into the labyrinth?” Rena asked softly.

“Keep quiet.”

Leon held up the lantern and climbed a short distance up a gentle slope along a narrow path carved into the mountainside.

He kept pushing aside the grass on the slope to inspect it, and finally discovered a small pit filled with loose gravel behind a clump of weeds.

He set down the bag, picked up the shovel, and began digging.

After about six or seven minutes, the sound of the shovel striking something hollow echoed out.

He lifted his foot and kicked forward, and the remaining碎stones collapsed with a clatter, revealing a pitch-black opening.

“Here, come up!” Leon waved to Rena, who was waiting below.

Rena lifted her skirt, tied it up briefly, and then climbed up after Leon.

“You go in first.” Leon handed the lantern to Rena.

“This is the entrance? Will there be something inside?” Rena asked uneasily as she stared at the dark opening.

“Relax. There won’t be any danger,” Leon urged.

With no other choice, Rena took the lantern and bent over to crawl into the cave, which was barely over one meter tall.

She felt her way forward step by step, with Leon following closely behind.

The inside of the cave was damp, and the occasional sound of dripping water could be heard.

After walking bent over for a short distance, the space suddenly opened up.

Rena saw scattered points of faint light.

Looking more closely, she realized that many plants and mushrooms were growing on the stone walls of the cavern, some of them emitting blue or green bioluminescence.

From time to time, insect chirps could also be heard coming from the undergrowth.

“So this really is a labyrinth!” Rena raised the lantern and looked around curiously.

Places like this, completely devoid of sunlight, normally would not be so full of life.

However, the labyrinth was an exception.

The power of the Primordial Witch Moilai allowed all kinds of vegetation to grow out of nothing in the dark underground space, which in turn attracted animals and formed a self-sustaining ecosystem, providing breeding grounds for the Magical Beasts she created.

Although she was a Witch, this was still the first time Rena had ever seen a real labyrinth.

Before she could look around any further, the lantern was taken from her hands by Leon.

Leon walked deeper into the cavern.

The lantern light illuminated a rusted iron barred gate embedded in the rock wall, its surface completely tangled with vines.

He set down the bag, pulled out the axe, and began smashing the chain on the iron gate with brute force.

The chain had originally been extremely thick—something no ordinary firewood axe could cut through.

However, after decades of corrosion in this damp environment, it had long since become brittle.

Leon quickly shattered it, pulled the broken chain aside, and forced open the barred gate.

“Why did you know there was a labyrinth entrance here?” Rena asked.

“After the Church’s knight orders seal a labyrinth, they don’t immediately block off every entrance. They always leave a concealed entrance for inspections, to prevent incomplete handling that could let the labyrinth revive. The inspection work is usually handled by the local Inquisition, so the location of that entrance is marked in the Inquisition’s memorandum archives. I saw it before,” Leon said as he gestured for Rena to follow.

After the labyrinth had been sealed, nothing had gone wrong for a full ten years, so the Inquisition had only sealed this entrance in a perfunctory manner.

Given the atmosphere of the Hamel Inquisition, no one would be conscientious enough to regularly trek into the remote mountains to inspect an entrance that had been blocked for over twenty years.

After passing through the iron gate, the two walked a short distance along the tunnel.

An opening with obvious excavation marks suddenly appeared in the stone wall on the left.

Leon glanced inside and led Rena in.

Inside was a spacious stone chamber.

The ground became noticeably flatter.

Leon raised the lantern to look around.

Unlike the damp entrance area, this space was relatively dry.

Various items were piled on the floor: a messy fire pit, overturned stools and small tables, and several abandoned tents.

“This place is…?” Rena asked.

“As expected, there really was a temporary encampment left over from when the knight orders purged the labyrinth!” Leon surveyed the area with satisfaction and nodded, then walked around to inspect it again.

“Very good. We’ll raise Magical Beasts here from now on. This will be your new workshop.”

“You… you really intend to do this?” Rena hesitated.

“What else? Did you think I brought you into the mountains for an hour just to go on a date?” Leon shot her a glance, then gestured toward the empty stone chamber.

“We’ll plan this place out. Make a list later of what you need, and I’ll prepare it. Once the new workshop is set up, we’ll move your Magical Beasts over here to be raised!”

Hearing this request, Rena imagined a massive amount of extra work appearing out of nowhere, along with the risk of being discovered.

She couldn’t help but let out a long sigh.

“Did you just sigh?” Leon’s sharp gaze swept over her.

“N-No, I didn’t!” Rena stiffened and hurriedly shook her head in denial.

“I’m starting to think you don’t seem very enthusiastic about cooperating with me,” Leon said as he carefully scrutinized Rena.

“Mr. Inquisitor, may I offer a small reminder?” Rena raised her hand and voiced a tiny bit of dissatisfaction.

“I was threatened into cooperating with you…”

“Threatened?” Leon spread his hands.

“You were already selling Mana. You just switched to having a different person help you sell it. I could have threatened you into working for me for free, but instead I offered you a fifty-fifty split. My goal is to earn three million, which means you can also earn three million. What exactly are you dissatisfied with?”

“But if I cooperate with you and get caught in the future, the crime I’ll be sentenced for will definitely be more severe!” Rena muttered softly.

“If you’re that afraid of trouble, why did you become a Witch in the first place?” Leon stared at her in confusion.

Thinking carefully, this little Witch was really strange.

Most people became Witches for no more than two reasons.

One was eternal youth and beauty, but Rena was still young enough that she shouldn’t be anxious about that yet.

The second was the ability to extract Mana and reap enormous profits.

Yet Rena didn’t even know the value of Mana and had been selling it to Mrs.

Hannah Weislan at one-tenth of the market price, apparently living in poverty the whole time.

In that case, why had she become a Witch?

After all, once a Witch was caught, even if the sentence wasn’t death, she would never again have the chance to obtain anything resembling true freedom.

“That has nothing to do with you…” Rena clearly didn’t want to discuss this topic with Leon.

“You should look at it from another angle. The moment you became a Witch, you’d already committed a grave crime. What difference does a little more or less make? Do you know? I’ve seen Witches in the archives who accumulated tens of millions in assets by selling Mana, and others who married nobles, poisoned them, and seized their property. Each one of them went big!” Leon said, then spread his hands toward Rena again.

“And then look at you!”

“W-What about me?” Rena was suddenly pointed at and became flustered.

“You actually let some countryside old woman treat you like a cash cow and slaughter you! You’re truly the most pathetic Witch I’ve ever seen!” Leon shook his head at Rena with a sigh, looking like he was furious at her lack of ambition.

Compared to the cases in the Inquisition’s files, Rena’s behavior really was an embarrassment to the Witch community.

“I don’t want to be successful in that kind of thing, okay?!” Being judged like this, Rena protested angrily.

“Aren’t all the Witches you mentioned caught in the end? What happened to them in the end? Say it!”

“…Burned to death.” After a brief silence, Leon answered.