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(D r a k e's P O V)
Once we arrived at the orphanage, Benladann dropped the bombshell to the nuns, and they were so shocked they almost dropped into the floor. I had to quickly catch them with some of my Winds so they wouldn't hit the floor hard. The old lady was a dwarf, and her name was Elise. Meanwhile the pretty blue haired mermaid was named Aylen. They were the only two nuns of this orphanage, seemingly.
"I'm sorry for surprising you two…" Sighed Benladann.
"Yeah, we're sorry for being so abrupt." I apologized in her behalf.
"Ahahaha! Don't worry about it! We were just very surprised!" Elise said.
"I-Indeed… you don't see such generous people very often… In fact, never." Sighed Aylen.
We were already sitting around a small table while drinking some tea, which was a tea the two nuns had saved for incredibly special occasions. It was a tea made from an endemic tea leaf which had a very soft and aromatic flavor, with a slight tone of mint in it.
"Well, anyways. Answering your previous question, we founded this small orphanage only five years ago." Sighed Aylen.
"We've been living in a nearby church since then, but the church didn't accepted children inside, and we could only feed them outside of the church, the pope was very strict, and he always said that if we wanted to help the children and bring them a place where they could sleep, that we had to build it ourselves…" Elise angrily said. "And so we did that! Hah! On his stupid fish face!"
"I-It was very hard… we had to spend every penny we've saved through our lives… But it was mostly all thanks to Lady Elise here. She had always have a soft spot for children, and she spent all her hard-earned savings to build this place…" Sighed Aylen. "My savings barely helped…"
"In a whim, my retirement savings were all gone and I had spent them all to build a place for the kids, from beds to a kitchen, everything poof out of thin air." Sighed the old dwarf lady. "But every time I see those kids smile a bit, it makes it all worth it! …Though our food shortage makes it hard for the kids to smile at all, but it's still better than letting them sleep in the streets, ain't it?"
"Though what we did was somewhat… illegal? I think… And, well, anyways… It was a bit dangerous, and people got slightly angry too." Sighed Aylen. "A-And we got expelled from the church…"
"Wait, what?!" Benladann angrily asked. "Why would any church do that?"
"Yeah? Fucking dimwits!" Said Miranda angrily.
"Hahaha… Well, the church of our country is… err, rather special." Said Aylen.
"Special? More like corrupt!" Elise said. "They gather tons of money by asking for donations all the time, convincing dumb people that the "Sea God" will somehow save them or give them miracles, all lies! That pope and the rest of the nuns harnessed a ton of money, and only a tiny percentage, around one percent went to the kids and other poor people we feed sometimes! The other eighty percent went to the government, and the rest to their pockets."
"I see, so this is that type of country… The one that got their foundation out of exploiting the working and poor social classes, I get it." I sighed. "Well, we've experienced all sorts of other societies but this one… Yeah, never thought we would see such an oppressive and archaic model in an archipelago, where people should be more aligned with nature… or so said Charlotte that it was."
"Oh well, yeah, it was! Before the current Queen took over, that is!" Elise said angrily. "About forty years ago, this place was way, WAY different! Although the difference between social classes was still obvious, there wasn't so many limitation to what we could do, and above all, there weren't taxes for everything, in fact, there were none at all! This government does just fine as they were, but they got greedier and squeeze ever damn penny out of us!"
The old dwarf lady began to rant angrily, but I could tell she was telling the truth. It seemed that this country went through a drastic change since the new Queen showed up. This country was in fact a Queendom, the Aquaias Family governed it, they were an ancient Family of power Mermen Magicians that harbored the power of the "Ocean God" to bring prosperity to the country.
"It was all nice and peaceful for a while until… well, forty years ago, when the previous Queen was assassinated and the new one, her eldest daughter, took over… That damned Patricia! She's been ruining our country more and more, how long will her greed go to squeeze money out of every single poor person of this country?" Sighed Elise. "We can barely get by as we are!"
"Mother Elise, please calm down, you're not in the age to be raging so much, think about your health and your heart pressure!" Sighed Aylen.
"Yeah, yeah… I just said what I knew, this young man here needs to know the entire situation here to learn the truth." Said Elise. "I don't know why but… I can sense something on his big eyes. Something big. Are you really just a passing merchant?"
"Hahaha, well, you caught me! I am kind of… something else. Let's say I am a Sect Leader." I said with a smile.
"Sect Leader? Wait, the sects of the continents?!" Asked Aylen.
"I knew it! He's an important dude!" Elise said. "You… are you going to change our country?! I know you can! I can see it! I can- ungh!"
Elise suddenly began struggling, grabbing her chest as her heart started to beat slower and then stopped beating all together! She was having a seizure!
"A a g g g h ! U n n n g g h….!"
"Mother Elise!"
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This content is taken from fr(e)ewebn(o)vel.𝓬𝓸𝓶