A week and a half had passed since I set myself after Glasses' boss with not much in the way of luck.
During that time I'd investigated the Athena familia and found that they were actually pretty much what Tsubaki said they were. An atypical exploration familia with a fair number of level twos and apparently quite a few inventions to their name. As far as I could tell, they genuinely tried to help people and most of their inventions ran along that theme, something their Goddess encouraged from her seat in Altena.
During my 'stealth grinding' I hadn't seen anything out of place, though I also hadn't breached their compound, nor had I exactly been comprehensive in my stakeout. I couldn't really spare too much time away from the dungeon if I wanted to reach my level up goal… that and standing around waiting was just not my forte.
I don't have the patience for sneaking around or stakeouts alright? Sue me.
Still, something about them did raise an eyebrow; I'd seen their doorman welcoming a potential new recruit and the way he talked about the familia reminded me to some degree of Glasses. Not in the 'I'll dissect you and defile your corpse with science!' kinda vibe obviously, but rather just the passion with which he spoke of the familia.
Doorman seemed absolutely convinced that his Goddess would improve the world with their inventions, even spending a good while waxing poetic about it instead of just letting the already on-board recruit in. Passion in and of itself wasn't a bad thing, but I'd seen enough mad scientist archetypes to know how that kind of sentiment could get out of hand.
The history of my world was full of doctors who justified the horrors they'd committed with the potential benefits of their work.
Athena's familia… well it was on the list, I just didn't know how to investigate it further. Because -while I had been practicing my stealth and lockpicking skills- I was loath to actually break into a God's house. I'd seen Hestia do enough funky shit to be more than a little wary of just breaking into a God's domain even if she was apparently out of town most of the time.
Especially when she had higher levels on tap.
An errant part of me thought that perhaps this was some renegade bunch and that approaching her directly would actually work, but caution stayed my hand. The obvious outcome if it wasn't a renegade bunch made approaching them terribly unappealing, though I suppose I could bring Tsubaki?
A level five would certainly put a stop to them just disappearing me, but they could also just play dumb at that point and then arrange an accident for me later. Tsubaki might make the connection afterwards, but I'd still be dead.
No, what I needed was another vector, a thought which led me to one of my earlier less than kosher ideas, namely child labour.
See, there's actually quite a few street kids who live in the area where Hestia and I live. Apparently the ruined district was considered cursed for some reason or another and because of that adults generally avoided the area, making it a prime hangout spot for reckless kids with nowhere better to go. They got some measure of shelter and it generally kept people from chasing them down, or gathering them up to go into what were probably vastly overcrowded orphanages.
Hestia I don't think even knows they're there -they are pretty decent at hiding- but adventurer senses being what they were I could pretty easily spot them whenever they tried to watch me. Naturally they looked so wary that I just had to wave at them every chance I got.
They even stopped freaking out about it after a while.
Now, my original child labour idea was to pay them to gather herbs and flowers for me, as an extra way to hide my meager alchemy supply line. But I eventually scrapped the idea because I figured one of them would touch or eat something they shouldn't and wind up poisoning themselves.
Also child labour is wrong, so don't do what I do alright?
My new, much better plan was to pay them to ask around about the whole altar of knowledge thing and the Athena familia. Namely by dropping a letter into the middle of their little lord of the flies-esque campsite, with instructions on what to do, where to drop off the information and how much they'd be paid for a successful drop as well as some incentive money.
My reasoning was that if you're an organised gang going around kidnapping people, the people you're probably going to start with would be the homeless and the orphans. And while the general population won't notice a thing, the homeless certainly will. Homeless who will warn others until the information -hopefully- makes it down the line to the gaggle of children I paid.
It was a flawless plan if I do say so myself.
That is apart from all the flaws I either carefully ignored or didn't think of, like the kids getting too eager and asking someone about it that they shouldn't… or what ultimately ended up happening. See I'd mayhaps forgotten that the little squirts probably either couldn't write or had anything to write with. So egg on my face there when I went to check on the drop location and found two kids waiting around bored out of their minds.
Fortunately I was a paranoid son of a bitch and I'd taken to checking the drop site from stealth, so the kids didn't notice me until I got out a proper cloak and dagger disguise.
Unfortunately my child labour force had gone above and beyond the mission criteria and had found something that forced me to do away with all the cool subterfuge elements I had going on, earn their trust and actually promise to help. Namely, they'd found an injured little girl who'd apparently escaped from 'bad men who rambled about knowledge' and let her into their camp.
Which led to my current situation.
"Hestia, that's a child… you can't just take her, that's kidnapping." I informed my Goddess, trying to keep my voice calm even as I felt a profound sense of tension between my eyebrows. The eyes of four wary street kids continued to bore holes into the back of my head.
"Like I care! Look at her Elric!" Hestia shouted indignantly, gesturing angrily at the girl as she lay on our couch. Her wounds had been healed by my potions but her exhaustion and malnourishment were still very evident. "I'm not letting her go back out on the streets!"
The kids who'd come back with me to ensure that I wasn't going to do anything funny to one of their own shifted at those words,
"And these kids!" She shouted, rounding on the munchkins who looked like they were ready to bolt. "You didn't tell me that there were kids living on the streets right next to us!?"
"Of course I didn't, look at them Hestia; they don't trust you or me as far as they could throw us." I pointed out. "To them adults are the enemy, I don't think they even ate any of the food I left for them." At that both Hestia and the kids blinked.
"That was you!?" One of them called, before another answered. "We didn't!"
"...I think Miki did."
"He did!?" The second said incredulously. "Of course he did that fatzo…"
"That doesn't- It doesn't matter!" Hestia retorted angrily. "You should've told me!"
"And what would you have done if I told you?" I asked.
"Helped them!"
"And if they didn't accept your help?" I asked again.
"We wouldn't have!" One of the kids helpfully chimed in, cheeky brats.
Hestia puffed up like she was going to argue with the kids -I certainly expected her to- but something seemed to overcome her and she seemed to almost deflate at their words, instead simply staring at them with sad eyes. Hopefully she'd come to the same conclusion as I had; that if we forced help onto them, the kids would run away and likely wind up somewhere worse.
"Fine." She stated, before turning towards me with a commanding air. "But we're going to at least try to help them, buy up a building for them and get it renovated before winter; I'm not going to sit here and let them freeze on the streets without at least doing that much. And you kids!"
Unexpectedly, the group of four snapped to attention at the turn in my Goddess' mood, staring at her with wide eyes as the barest traces of her divinity leaked into the air around us.
"I'm going to be making you homemade meals from now on and I'll be really upset if it goes to waste, got it?" She demanded.
""Yes Goddess!"" The group chorused, before blinking at each other in surprise.
"Is there any problem with that Elric-kun?" Hestia asked, a dangerous look in her eyes.
I considered it; as long as we weren't forcing them into the building or to eat her meals then they'd likely be unable to resist either for long, if they were even inclined to do so after this. The kids did seem to be coming around to her after all, slowly lowering their guard despite all the yelling. Or maybe it was because of it.
"No problem at all my lady." She scoffed at my tone and joking bow, but ultimately went back to fussing over the little rabbit girl, Humebunny I think they were called? Yet another psyop from the Gods.
There wasn't really anything to be done aside from waiting for her to wake up and hopefully give me a clue about Glasses' organisation. But damn if that didn't stop Hestia from fluttering around, stroking her cheek or just doing her best to make the girl comfortable. She'd even managed to bring out a grand 'godly invention', that turned out to actually just be a hot water bottle.
Despite the over exaggeration, it did seem to help the shivering girl.
For myself I just kept to the side and tried to resist the temptation to run off to the dungeon and have some fun in the Middle Floors. I'd finally gotten good enough at my own form of Welf's anti-magic that I probably didn't even need the Salamander cloak anymore. My form was called 'throwing rocks really fast down the throats of things trying to breathe fire at me', it was surprisingly effective at making them explode and cheaper too!
But while that was tempting, I sadly had to stick around to find out if this girl knew anything. Genuinely an arduous task.
It was as Hestia was trying to glare the group of street kids into accepting her offering of jagamarukuns, that she seemed to have a sudden thought.
"Umu… so what's actually going on here Elric-kun?" She asked sheepishly, seemingly only just now realising that she never asked what was going on before demanding that we take in the girl.
I opened my mouth to answer before realising that every explanation ended in 'child labour', and promptly closed my mouth to think of a better answer.
Unfortunately the kids weren't quite so reticent.
"Armour dude paid us to look into something, though he was all secretive about it!" The leader proclaimed, a bit of excitement entering his speech at the end.
"It was kinda cool… being all secrety like that. It was kinda like those stories." The second took up, doing his best to hide his excitement.
"We got to the bottom of it really fast! Even rescued that girl; it was awesome!" A third chirped up, his raw enthusiasm bringing a smile to the rest of the group.
Clashing with the bubbling enthusiasm of the kids was Hestia's face as she slowly creaked towards me, gimlet eyes staring daggers at me.
"Really Elric!?" She hissed.
Ah yes, the woman who in another timeline sanctioned a fourteen year old child soldier wants to lecture me on the ethics of using children for labour. Brilliant.
After a lot of arguing that seemed to amuse the kids, things eventually settled down and the brats told their tale in full.
They told us how they'd asked other street kids around the area and eventually got pointed towards the girl. She'd had a festering wound that had eventually laid her out with fever, but before that she'd tried to get someone, anyone to help against the 'bad knowledge men'. The leader kid had an almost dismissive tone when he spoke of that, like it should have been obvious to the girl that no one would help.
I don't think I've ever seen Hestia look that upset.
The other street kids had apparently written her off once the infection set in, so no one made a fuss when our lot had offered to try and get her help.
Despite how tragic the story was on its face and the double tragedy that was the kids' almost flippant recounting of the whole thing, it was about what I would expect from a city founded on a giant murder blender with only a medieval administration to see it through.
People from all over came to Orario seeking fortune, many likely with kids or would go on to have kids. A percentage of those same parents would either die in the dungeon, or in the case of the ones seeking fortune through commerce, some incident on the surface. From that a number of kids would be left behind, some of which would be caught in safety nets like the familias doing the honourable thing and taking care of them, or orphanages taking them in.
But a percentage wouldn't, the overworked systems would fail and you would be left with this mess; a bunch of kids who believed the world didn't care about them, and to a degree they'd be right. I myself had just left the local kids to it, only half heartedly trying to help. Hestia -for all her indignant rage- was only recently a Goddess in heaven, she must have had some idea about the homelessness in Orario and had likewise done little.
She'd spent months lazing around Hephaestus' place after all.
Did that make us bad people? Not anymore than it made anyone else in Orario or hell, the average person in the world I'd come from. There was always going to be inconvenient truths and suffering abound; most prefer to just put it out of their mind and honestly fair enough, they have their own lives and likely children to worry about.
As for myself? Well charity is a great way to get on everyone's good side, so I was already planning on forking over a good chunk of my wealth to try and make problems go away. I didn't exactly have much overhead after all. It was just a matter of reaching that point and finding good ways to direct that wealth… and make sure it didn't get swindled into some fucker's pocket.
But that was a matter for the future, as things were I couldn't really do much outside of funding Hestia's inevitable attempts to help these kids and sorting out this whole mess with the 'bad men'. They might not even be Glasses' group, but I certainly wasn't opposed to hunting down people who tried to abduct a little girl, both morally and for my plans, that was just a grade A lateral move.
So I provided a comforting presence to Hestia as best I could -easily ignoring her glares and grumbles about my usage of child labour- as we waited for the girl to wake, and after a time, she did.
My potions are quite amazing after all.
The girl's eyes blinked open slowly, like dragging the eyelids from her hazy red eyes was a monumental task. Her face screwed up as if expecting to be in pain only for that expression to collapse into confusion as a hand jerked towards where her wound was. Finding nothing but a blanket, she snapped awake and jerked up to stare around herself in confusion, only for a hacking cough to overcome her.
Hestia was off like a shot, busily hovering over the girl and trying to coax her to drink something, which the girl didn't exactly react well to.
Sighing, I grabbed my Goddess by the collar and yoinked her off her feet.
"Wha- Elric! Put me down!" She demanded, whirling her little arms around.
"No." I denied instantly. "Give her some space."
"I- f-fine!" She uttered, crossing her arms and turning away as I set her back on her feet, all the while the rabbit girl stared at us blankly.
"You alright?" I asked the girl as calmly as I could.
She tried to speak, but her voice almost immediately broke and just the effort seemed to pain her, something that almost set Hestia off again.
"I'll take that as a no." I said with a self-deprecating smile, as I stole my Goddess' bedside chair.
"No shit!" One of the brats behind me sarcastically chorused, though even they looked concerned.
So I gave them the stink eye before turning back and smiling like nothing happened.
"Can you nod or shake your head if you understand me right now?" The girl nodded hesitantly, eyes wary but the haziness in them was fading.
"Do you remember what happened to you?" Fear shot through her eyes and her grip tightened on the blanket around her. She tried to speak, but her voice failed her again.
"Just nod, it's okay." She nodded, though self frustration seemed to almost radiate from her. "You were found by the kids behind me, do you remember that?" A half nod turned into a shake of her head as she took the time to actually look them over.
"You don't remember them, but other kids?" She nodded. "Do you remember trying to get their help with something?" Hesitation, bitterness, frustration and then a shaky nod. "Then do you know the phrase 'the altar of knowledge'?" Her eyes shot up at that, recognition and fear dilating her pupils as a fit of coughs overcame her in her surprise.
"Elric!" Hestia spoke up warningly, but backed down as we shared a look.
"It's alright." I spoke calmingly. "My name is Elric Carne, Captain of the Hestia familia." I prefaced my title to lend my words a sense of authority. "It seems like you ran into the same group I'm trying to bring to justice. So do you mind helping me bring down the ones who did this to you?"
For a second she seemed almost suspicious, but that quickly broke in the face of the sheer earnestness I was capable of expressing, and her eyes filled with tears as she nodded almost frantically. Before -despite the pain it seemed to cause her- she managed to croak out a few words. "Pl-Please… help my fri…ends."
"I will, don't worry." I swore.
-
"Is it here?" I asked, looking at the girl wrapped up in my arms as we stood upon a roof in the shadow of a large chimney.
"Y-Yeah." Her voice was still weak and raspy, betraying the sheer effort it was taking for her to stay awake and speak at all. As it was she was still shivering from the lingering effects of her fever, all in spite of the magically warmed Salamander cloak around her, or the good my potions and warm soup had done for her.
Honestly if I had been listening to my common sense, and especially Hestia, we wouldn't be up here right now. But the girl had been incredibly insistent, pleading with us with gestures even as voice kept failing, begging me to take her here when she realised that she didn't know the street names.
"Please…" Her words fell into a series of wet coughs that racked her tiny frame, but despite that her red eyes continued to plead with me between winces.
"I already agreed, so save your breath alright?" I cut off any further attempts to speak, given just how raspy her voice was I was starting to get concerned that she'd damage her throat at this rate. She nodded, settling into my arms as I let out a relieved breath and wrapped the cloak around her a little tighter.
The warehouse she'd pointed out to me looked like any other on the street, and yet it filled me with an odd sense of… not quite worry, but not quite caution either. It was either my instincts kicking in and giving me a warning that I wasn't quite ready for this, or it was my mind playing tricks on me.
I wasn't quite sure what was worse, not being ready for a fight I'd been looking forward to for a while, or the idea that I was just scared.
Fortunately I had a solution to both problems, namely to take Tsubaki up on her offer and ask her to watch my back. It'd probably cost me more sake, or tickets to that hot springs she'd been talking about, but that was pretty cheap compared to my life or the lives of these kids.
First though I needed to get this girl back to Hestia and perform a little recon.
-
Yo, for anyone that wants to support me, I now have a Patreon up with the next chapter already up on there. I'm aiming to get around a three chapter frontlog on there.
Hit it up if you feel like it, I really do appreciate everything you guys do to support the fic: https://www.patreon.com/c/OneFallLeaf Also sorry that the chapter was a bit late, I didn't want to publish my patreon until I had the chapter ready which left me waiting on page verification.
Have a good one everyone.
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Glossary
Orphans
The city of Orario's economy and entire focus is centered on the dungeon and the Adventurers who war with it day in and day out. This naturally attracts the reckless who in turn die and leave behind families by the droves. With the bulk of the wealth of the city concentrated in the largest Familias and those who cater to them, the city itself often does not care for those left behind, making street kids an inevitability.
Child Labour
The concept is a bit of a double standard in the Danmachi world, where orphanages (that do not require labour) exist side by side with Familias that will happily send actual children into the murder blender that is the Dungeon. The main character of Danmachi Bell Cranel is a fourteen year old who Hestia herself allowed to enter the dungeon. The double standard seems to crop up mostly around Familias, with a sense that once you become an Adventurer all bets are off.
In regards to Hestia in particular in this chapter, being subjected to Elric's experiences has made her far more reluctant to subject others to the dangers of this world and protective in general.