The silence in the grove lasted for a moment, then continued on. It seemed that Elijah had no idea what to do in this situation, they were all tired from running and the fact that Shaun appeared looking no worse for wear clearly showed that they had no hope of escaping him.

“Listen, I am going to sit down on the ground. If you want you can run or if you ask me to I will leave. I am being honest though, I really just want to ask you all some questions.” He did exactly what he said he was going to do. With his hand in the air he sat down on the ground with his legs out trying to look as non-threatening as possible. They still didn’t say anything for a moment, still staring him down.

“Eli, identify him.” This was said as a whisper by the girl standing right next to Elijah. Shaun knew the moment the girl had identified him as she lost all colour in her face and looked more scared than she had before.

Elijah did as the girl said, and Shaun saw the look on his face change the moment he did. First to fear, then disgust.

“What do you want from us, Your Majesty?” The amount of hate in the boys voice was unmistakeable, why though, he wasn’t sure. Shaun was unable to hold back a groan when he was called Your Majesty. It confirmed that the title of King was in front of his name when identified.

“Please don’t call me that. Just call me Shaun.”

Elijah snorted at him. “You didn’t answer the question, Your Majesty.”

“Okay. Honestly? I haven’t been to one of the cities in a while, I wanted to see what was happening in them, get a better idea of the quality of life, how people were living. When I saw you all I figured I would ask you all, kids have a way of saying what they mean and not holding back. Not to mention I didn’t want to end up in a situation where people would just say what I wanted to hear. I followed you because you ran, you were scared when you had no reason to be, not with me at least.”

They all processed what he said for a moment, the results were mixed. Some of the younger ones now looked at him with curiosity, as well as a bit of fear. The older ones looked at him like he was insane, or an idiot. Maybe a bit of both.

“So, what your saying is that you chased after a group of kids that were clearly scared of you because you wanted to know why they were scared of you in the first place?” Elijah was looking at him like he was a lunatic.

“Fine, when you say it like that it sounds crazy.”

“I am pretty sure you are crazy. Who’s first name is King, anyway.” The girl spoke this time, and after identifying her found her name to be Grace.

“King is not my name, Shaun is. The King bit is just the system being annoying.”

“Fine, whatever, Shaun then. What do we get from answering your questions? If you want something from us, you have to give us something in return.” Smart kid.

“What do you want?” They way they answered this would give him information anyway, besides unless they asked for something ridiculous, he could probably give them what they wanted.

“Food!” One of the younger ones yelled it before Elijah had the chance to respond.

“And water! You made us run!”

“Okay…..” Taking out a decent amount of food that he had saved up he put it on the ground in front of him along with one of his bags of water. “Anything else?”

“Where did you get all of that?” Elijah cautiously moved closer to the stack of food, some of it was raw monster meat but he made sure to take out some of the nicer stuff that he had bought in the tutorial as well.

“Its mostly E grade monster meat, but I threw in something special as well. Food cooked by D grades probably, got it from the tutorial.”

There were exclamations of excitement from most of the kids present, a number of them looking like they wanted to rush the still fresh meals he had just pulled out of his inventory. Elijah though held up a hand, holding them back. He came closer and took all of the raw meat from the pile into his inventory. Then looking over the nicer meals he put half of that into his own inventory and told Grace to divvy it all up for everyone.

“Must have been a pretty nice tutorial, for you to be given food like that.” Elijah probed him for information.

“You had to pay for the food, for the most part anyway.”

“How do you expect us to cook the meat though, we would need to give it someone else before we could eat it. Chances are they would steal it from us before giving it back. We are in a food shortage you know.”

Shaun assumed that there was an issue with food, but having it confirmed for him was nice to know. He would need to figure out a solution to that sooner rather than later. Instead of replying he took out the heating stone that he rarely ever used now, with his ability to use fire he really had no need for it.

“You can direct mana at the stone and it will heat up. You can cook on it. Works pretty well.” As he spoke, he placed it on the ground and Elijah immediately went to pick it up. He inspected it and tested it before he nodded at everyone else and then put it in his inventory as well.

“Thanks. But something like this is expensive, why give it to us?” Elijah was becoming suspicious again, closing off and eyeing him like Shaun had an agenda.

“Because you said you would answer my questions. Besides, you will get more use out of it than I will.”

Most of the kids were now eating the food that Grace had handed out to them, saving some for Elijah and herself for last. The mood had changed over the last few minutes and now, for the most part, they were no longer scared of him.

“Okay, you can ask us questions, but we wont answer if we don’t want to.” Elijah had finally caved and he sat on the ground opposite him while he ate, keeping an eye on him the entire time.

“I didn’t realise that kids got the system, not fully. You have levels though, did you go through a tutorial?”

“Seriously? That’s your first question? Doesn’t everyone already know that?” Shaun just shook his head which made the boy roll his eyes. “You get access to the system when you, you know, hit puberty.” He whispered the last bit at him like it wasn’t something to say loudly. “When you hit 16 years old you get to pick a Class, until then we don’t get skills automatically. We were told in our tutorials that it is possible to get a Class and skills before that, but it is rare and you have to really train hard to get them. We still get all the other benefits of the system though.”

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Shaun nodded along while he spoke until it seemed that Elijah wasn’t going to say anything more. “So how did you get to level 2?”

“I don’t want to talk about. Ask another question.” Although he was curious, he wouldn’t push the boy. Clearly it was something he didn’t like to think about, and he got that. He hated being pushed into things as well.

“Okay, I won’t ask again. Why did you run when I approached?”

Elijah looked at Grace for a moment and got a small, hesitant nod in return. “We have had some run in’s with people that haven’t exactly been good people. Everyone knows that we don’t have parents here, the only family we have is each other. We have had people think that they can take us and do anything they want with us. People that have lost their own kids have tried to take some of us as replacements and a few times people have tried to take one of us to do worse things.” When he finished speaking Grace grabbed hold of his hand and squeezed tight.

As Elijah had spoken Shaun had to control his aura from slipping, he had gone form being calm to murderous in seconds. “Did you report this to anyone?”

“Yeah, at first. But the people who are supposed to help just blew us off, said that there were more pressing things they needed to handle. After that we gave up on trying to get help. Even Astrid, our caretaker, didn’t even care. She hates us, always finds a way to punish us when she can.”

Shaun held is breath for a full minute, closing his eyes and trying to control his anger. When he figured he had control of himself he let out his breath and opened his eyes. “Let me get this straight. The people that are supposed to protect you aren’t. This woman, Astrid, who is meant to be looking after you is more of a sadistic jailer more than anything. And finally, there are people here who would do fuck knows what to you and no one would care?”

“You said a bad word!” One of the younger girls pointed at him when she shouted at him and then burst into giggles.

“Yeah, that’s pretty much it. But we have each other, always.” Elijah said the last bit with complete determination. He was shouldering the responsibility for this group when he shouldn’t have to be. He had left this place in the care of Viv. And this is what is happening here?

“That all changes, starting now, you also have me.” Shaun stood up way too quickly for the kids to see, his rage at what was happening here was boiling over and he needed to do something now. “Elijah, show me to Astrid.”

Eli jumped up in shock at how quickly he had moved but quickly composed himself. “Why? I won’t take everyone back for you to cause issues with her. She will take it out on us as soon as you leave.”

“You aren’t going back to go back to her, never. I have been in enough group homes to know that the people who are supposed to look after us always end up failing.” Elijah’s eyes widened as he listened to him.

“You’re like us.” It was barely a whisper but he heard it, giving him a nod to confirm what Eli was thinking. “Okay I will take you. But I will go with you alone. You can’t bring the others into this.”

“Thank you, Elijah. I promise you won’t regret it.”

“You have to swear on it though. No mater what happens you have to do right by us, all of us.” He said waving at the entire group. “If anything goes wrong you have to fix it. I know you can, E grades get anything they want around here. So swear it.” The look Elijah was giving him was fierce, if he didn’t swear to look out for them, like he was one of them, then he would break any trust he just formed with them all right here and now.

“I swear, to not just you Elijah, but to all of you. I will look after you and always do right by you. Even when I leave Earth, I will make sure that you have someone that will care for you like you are their own. I swear it.” It was a promise he fully intended to keep.

Shaun, you there? Good, its connecting. Are you done with the dungeons? Viv seems to think you claimed the last one. Where are you? Are you on your way back? The moment he heard Eric’s voice in his head he barely kept himself from yelling at him through the stone. He played a part in the failings of this settlement.

Taking the stone into his hand he replied to Eric in as calm a way as he could manage. I am busy, fixing problems that should NEVER have occurred in the first place.

“Elijah, is it okay if I have someone come here and bring everyone back to somewhere safe? I promise, Eric will do nothing to hurt anyone. He is a good guy, even if he is partially at fault for everything that has happened.”

“If you trust this Eric, then I guess we have to too. Your one of us now.” It seemed like it almost pained Elijah to say it, giving up control like this was never easy but somehow, he had formed a bond with the boy, enough that he would offer him this small bit of trust anyway.

Eric, come to where I am now. And be quick about it. After he got confirmation that he was on his way he put the stone away.

“Thanks Elijah, he is on his way.” Elijah gave him a small nod but had a questioning look on his face.

While they waited they spoke more about the living situation within the cities. From what Elijah knew there was a survey sort of thing that went out asking for everyone’s Professions, including a questions asking if they wanted to move and have a place to work. There was also a call for coin and TE, anyone that could provide any was asked to do so for the benefit of everyone and improving the settlement. There was also talk about establishing an economy, all Elijah really knew about that was their would be taxes at some point.

Overall people were generally happy and thankful around being able to live here, the food shortage was worrying people but an announcement was made a week ago by the leader of the settlement, Vivienne, that a plan was in place to solve this and to just hold on.

Only half an hour or so later he felt Eric appear within his echo, he knew it was him as they had spent enough time together for Shaun to be able to identify his signature. He was moving quickly and expected Eric to arrive in a minute or two.

“Eric is nearly here. I will have a quick chat with him and then we can go, okay?” Elijah just gave him a short nod and they waited the rest of the time in silence.

When Eric did appear within the grove the kids started whispering excitedly, only the older ones gave him a hard look. Interesting, they seem to know who he is.

Eric looked first at Shuan and then took in all of the kids that he was there with. “Shaun its good to see you back.” Eric started to walk up to him looking to give him a hug but he put up his hand to stop him before he could get close. “Okay…..Has something happened? And why are you in the woods with all these guys?” Eric looked more confused by the second which just added to how annoyed Shaun was.

“Eric, all these ‘guys’ as you call them are from one of the homes that are apparently used to house kids that have lost their families.”

The confusion left Eric as soon as Shaun had spoken, now he just looked sad, as if he felt just as pained at the kids having lost their families as Shaun was.

Eric stopped looking at Shaun and instead looked over all of the kids again. “I’m sorry, for what you are all going through. I have 2 kids out there, somewhere. I hope they are with my wife, or errrr, ex-wife anyway. One of the first things I did when I found out that kids were coming here and didn’t have any family with them was to make sure they had homes with someone to look after them, to help them. It what I hope someone would do for my kids. Truly, I am sorry that this has happened to you.”

Shaun was still angry, still wanted to punch Eric in the face, but after hearing him speak it took the edge of his rage, if only a little. “Eric, can you take all of the kids back to our house, or wherever I will be staying while I am here.” Eric looked like he was going to interrupt but he just held up his hand for him to stop. Turning around he looked at Grace. “Grace, while Eric takes you all can you please inform him of everything that has happened to you all since you got here, please?”

Grace nodded looked to Elijah who gave her a quick nod in return. Eric looked like he wanted to ask more questions but the look Shaun gave him shut him down quickly. It was better for him to hear this directly from one of the kids, it wouldn’t be easy to hear but if Eric was going to feel what he did when he heard exactly what was going on he needed to hear it as a first hand account.

“Come on Elijah, lets go deal with this Astrid, then we will meet up with everyone after.” For the first time since he had found the kids Elijah actually smiled at him. Seeing it just reinforced the idea that what he was doing was the right thing to do, not just for him, but the kids.