"I suppose I'll just tell the truth then." And I would, if a slightly polished version of it, to the approving look of Tsubaki. "...The simpler reason is that I'm a bit of a battle junkie." I laughed sheepishly, playing it up a little.
My drinking partner snorted at that, not hiding her amusement.
"The greater reason is that I need to start building up the reputation of my familia." I explained. "I don't know what the Hephaestus familia was like when you joined, but right now mine is just me and Hestia in a destroyed church." Granted, given the money I was making from selling weapons, I could probably afford to get us out of there.
But the bigger issue was the lack of -as Tsubaki called them- minions. People I could use to deflect Hestia's attention away from me and occasionally order about if I needed something. Hell the lack of manpower was such an issue that I'd occasionally considered some options that were probably not kosher.
"Getting people willing to entrust us with their very lives… well that all begins with a reputation right?" I wasn't really asking, I was already confident in my answer.
My fellow captain hummed. "Alright, alright! I can't say no to the big blue eyes of yours." I blinked, I hadn't even been giving her puppy eyes. "Arenas huh? Well there's the big one but I'm sure you already know about that, so-"
"Wait, big one?" I blinked, and Tsubaki blinked back at me.
"Big colosseum on the east side? Ran by the Ganesha familia? Damn you really are new!" She laughed, meanwhile my mind was reeling from the sheer… possibilities.
I knew the colosseum, how could I not? It was in the first season of the anime for some weird monster taming event that apparently got the entire city up and about. Of course it was ultimately just set dressing for Bell to have a fight with a Silverback, and the reveal of that stupidly expensive knife that Hestia bankrupted them for.
But now that I actually thought about it beyond the context of the anime, it was kind of obvious; a stadium of that size would not sit empty year round waiting for the next event. There were maintenance costs to such a thing and who in their right mind would just leave a money printing property like that to sit, much less a God of the Masses who seemed to love every moment of attention he got.
Of course there would be more events and of course those events would include live combat in a city like Orario. It was a city of superhuman soldiers, that was prime entertainment; hence why I'd thought there would be some kind of organised fighting, but my thoughts had obviously been too shallow.
"Yeah, yeah I am…" I uttered, my mind captured by the idea of fighting before that many people, raising a blade to a crowd cheering my name and basking in all those sweet, sweet narrative buffs.
"Right well, they do a lot of fights, some bigger, some smaller." The tanned woman explained in good humour, not even commenting on my starry eyes. "Only issue is that you're not really applicable; too many rookies entered it back in the day only to trip over their swords and die, so the paper pushers had to step in."
I nearly choked and in my mind's eye I could see Eina laughing at me as she pushed her glasses up. My greatest enemy, reemerged to torment me once more; fucking bureaucrats.
"By rule you have to be an adventurer for half a year before you can join." And then Tsubaki twisted the knife with a foxy smile. "According to them you don't know what end of the sword is pointy gaki."
"Any way I can skip the wait?" I tried, holding on to hope.
"Nah." She laughed as my heart broke. "Only way I can see them changing their minds is if you rocked up as a level two, and that ain't happening…" She trailed off, realisation dawning in her eye as she turned to me and the shit eating grin spreading across my face.
Because damn if it wasn't on like donkey kong, level two? Literally, just give me three weeks. Hell the wait actually made things better; if I had to wait for my level up then I could strike just as my reputation was starting to form.
Bell was absolutely hated by adventurers who'd been stuck at their levels for years, so much so that some were willing to kidnap a Goddess and slowly beat him to death over it. Given that I planned to be even faster, I obviously had to do something about that and this was that something. It was a lot harder for people to argue that you cheated the system somehow if you could give them a real, tangible example of your strength.
I'd have to look through what kind of matches they had on offer, but if they had anything king of the hill style then that would be perfect.
Tsubaki looked at me and I smiled.
"...I still don't want to know." She claimed, though I could see how strained that resolution was, how curious she was.
So I just asked her about the other arenas and then everything going on in her life as I enjoyed my time with a friend, just getting drunk together beneath a sea of stars.
-
A week and a half had passed since I set myself on the illusive trail of the 'altar of knowledge' with not much in the way of luck.
As a side note, if they actually turn out to be called that then I'm going back to where I dumped Glasses' body to laugh at him one last time. Imagine being such a scrub that you give away your entire secret organisation just because you couldn't keep your mouth shut. Evilus and their ridiculous name might be a thing in this world, but that doesn't mean you don't deserve to be mocked as well.
During that time I'd investigated the Athena familia and found that they were actually pretty much what Tsubaki said they were. A slightly 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.
During my stealth grinding I hadn't seen anything out of place, though I 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, and… standing around waiting without a monster to play with was really fucking annoying.
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 in media 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 some funky shit enough times to be more than a little wary of just breaking into what was effectively Athena's domain.
Especially when she had level twos 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, 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 was probably vastly overcrowded orphanages.
Hestia I don't think knows they're even 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. They looked so wary that I naturally 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 altar of knowledge and the Athena familia. Namely by sneaking a letter to 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!
…Apart from all the flaws I thought of afterwards, 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 couldn't write or had anything to write with. So egg on my face 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 talked 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, their tension spiking.
"And these kids!" She shouted, rounding on the munchkins who looked like they were ready to bolt or fucking fight. "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 tried 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. She'd likely 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.
"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 us 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 my only mildly 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 was actually just 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 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. Truly 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 uh, 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, eyes glowing with wrath and her pigtails starting to writhe into the air around her.
"Child labour…? Elric? REALLY!?" She roared.
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 shouting that seemed to amuse the kids, things eventually settled down and the brats told their tale in full.
They spoke of 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.
So I provided a comforting presence to Hestia as best I could -easily ignoring her glares and grumbles about my not-so-amazing plan- and continued to wait for the girl to wake.
-
"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. I didn't really need to ask, I could feel the children in danger in there, but certain appearances needed to be kept.
"Y-Yeah." Her voice was 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 to help her friends who hadn't escaped the men, before then begging me to take her there 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 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 isekai powers 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 -as the kids would say- being a pussy ass bitch.
Fortunately I had a solution to both problems, namely to take Tsubaki up on her offer and ask her to watch my back. I suppose I'll have to buy her more sake, or tickets to that hot springs she was talking about.
Something to look forward to after I get to the bottom of what's going on in that building I suppose, though first I need to get this rabbit girl back to Hestia.