"Eris, before all the heavy talk started, you said you had something you wanted to discuss with Master, right?" Christina asked as she and her fellow Disciples made their way back to their residence.
"Hm? Is that so?" Lucas, who was eager for any kind of distraction right now, also raised his brow and turned a curious look to his big sister.
"Ah..." Eris, who was just reminded of this, halted her steps and blushed slightly, embarrassed something so important had slipped her mind.
Of course, the young girl couldn’t be entirely blamed for this.
The possibility that illegal activities were happening in the poor southern residential district, including the trafficking of children, was indeed a serious issue, but the news of an impending war had been so shocking it naturally pushed all other topics and thoughts aside.
Unlike many of the other impressionable youngsters who had participated in the meeting, Eris was in no way interested in trying to test or distinguish herself in war. She had already lost one home to a massive conflict she had no ability to control or even effect, so she naturally wasn’t eager to risk losing another now.
Fortunately, according to everything she had heard tonight, Eris understood that war with the Darr Kingdom was a somewhat distant, future problem, one that she knew she could play very little role in preparing for.
However, although she wasn’t as smart as her Senior Brother, or as strong as her Junior Sister, that didn’t mean there was nothing useful Eris could do. She could help solve problems in Misty City, even if they were ’small’ ones, like the ones in the southern district, leaving less for everyone else to have to worry about.
Thinking as such, Eris began sharing what had happened to her today at the orphanage, her story quickly grabbing both Lucas and Christina’s attention.
As sad as it may sound, neither Lucas nor Christina was particularly surprised that children were being ’sold’. In both of their opinions, while this was definitely immoral, it was also an unavoidable reality that they couldn’t do anything about, at least in the short-term.
What’s more, the practice of accepting generous ’donations’ in exchange for an orphan child wasn’t forbidden by any of the Kingdom’s Laws. Sure, the practice was frowned upon, but no one in power made any moves to curb it as doing so was considered a futile exercise.
There would always be poor, and their lives would always be harsh. Doing whatever it took to survive was only natural.
However, Lucas and Christina both knew the children in the orphanages around Misty City and were friends with many of them, which made this issue personal.
What’s more, there was a difference between some aristocrat or rich merchant buying an adopted daughter they intended to raise as family, or purchasing a young boy they planned on training for a special role in their company, and someone who was clearly snapping up children like disposable products.
Whatever was going on in the southern district clearly leaned closer to the latter scenario, which was completely unacceptable to the young boy and girl.
Lucas immediately had a number of ideas about what could be done to disrupt this unsavory operation, but considering it was his Junior Sister who had first discovered this issue, he decided to let her take the lead on it for now.
Of course, he would carefully monitor the situation and if things started going awry, he would step in, but Lucas also understood that if Eris truly wanted to grow and mature, she needed to take on responsibilities of her own, not just follow him or Christina around forever.
Thinking so, the young boy asked, "What do you want to do about this, Eris? Do you have some kind of plan?"
Knitting her brow, Eris seemed to be mulling something over in her head.
She did have an idea, one she had thought up earlier tonight, but it was still very much a work-in-progress, so she wasn’t quite sure how to explain it clearly.
Seeing Eris so deep in thought, Lucas waited patiently, as did Christina who was probably thinking along the same lines as her Senior Brother. This was her Senior Sister’s project, so while Tina was more than happy to assist, letting Eris act independently was also important.
The trio continued walking in silence for a while before Eris suddenly declared, "If Master is willing to assign me some help, I don’t think catching that bad man will be hard. Once we catch him, we can make him tell us what he’s up to and hopefully help the kids he’s already taken."
Lucas and Tina nodded, agreeing with this assessment.
A single Squad of guards would probably be enough to ensure this Bellamy character had no way to escape.
That, however, wasn’t the biggest issue, and Eris seemed to understand that.
"The problem is what comes after that," Eris muttered, her brow scrunching up tightly, "I only found out about this by accident, so who knows how many times similar bad things have happened in the past without anyone knowing? I want to stop such things from ever happening again!"
Lucas admired his big sister’s sense of righteousness, as did Christina, but the two of them knew what Eris was talking about was a pipe dream.
The orphanage system throughout the Rockwell Kingdom, or rather, throughout the entire Blue Sky Continent, functioned off of two sources of income, charitable donations, and adoption sales.
Unless you could solve that fundamental problem, immunizing the orphanages around Misty City from corruption and child exploitation was basically impossible.
Lucas actually intended to do just that, by shifting the model away from adoption sales to a completely government funded system, but before he could do that, he needed to massively increase government revenue.
Only when the kingdom was so wealthy that the price of taking care of orphan children was no longer perceived as a burden but rather as a responsibility would things permanently change.
Still, the young boy didn’t want to discourage his Junior Sister, so he began searching for the words necessary to gently explain this harsh reality to her.
Before Lucas could find those words, however, Eris made a surprising proposal, "That’s why, I want to set up a Guild."
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