Chapter 190: Chapter 181 – Learning at School

It's been a few days since my talk with Iaso and her party members.

I couldn't get what they said out of my head, even while I played with Alicia and Fate as I had promised.

Those kids...

All this time, I've been developing this great nation of ours in ways which I had imagined would be best. The technologies, the industries, the various social systems and regulations.

I've been quite hands-off in various ways, or rather on most everything once I finished my core contributions to the projects. The main reason was because it felt like that was how most of the other leaders did things, so that was why it was fine to leave it like that.

Maybe...maybe that wasn't true for me though.

There were quite a few differences when it came to my situation compared to the others, with the greatest being that the people who fell under my care were those who came from a wide variety of backgrounds, only united by a single incidence and what came from that.

And roughly half of those who were currently under my care either were too young to remember or were born after that event.

One half worships their saviour, and the other feels like the ones they care about most has practically been taken away from them because of that same saviour.

(The world's greatest homewrecker huh?)

If things continued along the same course, it was possible that this small schism between mother and child will increase until one day it was irreparable.

Maybe I was thinking about this too much and things would resolve itself nicely.

It was possible that the kids were simply in an independence streak or something. They were all the same age and it seemed like their lives before arriving in the Commonwealth was quite tough. It's no wonder that they strive to be self-sufficient rather than simply enjoy their childhood like normal kids.

There was also the fact that there were few kids of their age as well, reducing their potential playmates by a large margin.

The dark people couldn't afford to bring kids into the world while they were struggling so much just to survive their exodus and create a new home for themselves. Most of the kids that escaped with them were already close to adults and most of the newer kids were still completely attached to their parents.

The fairies on the other hand, while they had no issues when it came to expanding their families, fairy kids often weren't much different from adult fairies. Mostly only being smaller and thought even less about responsibilities.

Or rather, I couldn't help but feel that they were allergic to even the word.

Either way, I couldn't even imagine these serious and responsible dhampires staying in the same room as fairy kids.

Though, if that really was true, maybe I really should do something about it. It would be great if things simply resolved itself on its own, but if they didn't, the results could be much worse than simply a few broken households.

It felt like things were going pretty well, but to think that there was such a big problem involving so many people just under the surface.

Give a man a fish and he'll eat for a day, but teach a man to fish and he'll eat for a lifetime.

I tried both, but to think they both would fail so spectacularly.

(Maybe, maybe I've just been thinking about it too naively?)

But before anything, I needed more information. I needed to know if this really was an issue that needed me to move in a significant way.

And so, after fulfilling my promise to Alicia and Fate, instead of entering the dungeon the next day, I went to one of the facilities I had organized and created: the school.

Technically there were actually several school, each managed by the subordinates of a different elder or chieftain. Each school also operated differently with differing priorities that fit within the philosophy that they fell under.

For example, the one under Elder Alvaldi was closer akin to a college, specializing in the crafts. While Chieftain Harja's was closer to a military boot camp than an actual school.

With that taken into consideration, we imposed various restrictions and requirements to the schools and who they teach. Some restrictions were things like age. Alvaldi and Harja's schools were only available to those of older ages and were optional for registration and would otherwise accept anybody. Though those under Harja were required to spend time in her school as an exception, it did still allow people under any leader to attend.

The schools themselves were required to teach certain things to their students. A set of basics required for elementary level school, as well as a set of subjects for more advanced schools to round them out a little.

As for what I needed to do, I stood at the entrance of the school that operated under my own rule. An elementary level school that all kids were required to attend between the ages of six and ten.

It wasn't the only elementary school, and the kids could enter any of them, but it was still a compulsory education that we leaders of the nation had decided on. Though it took a lot of convincing to get it accepted as a universal thing.

Surprisingly, or maybe less so, it was the fairy elders that pushed back the hardest. They were against forcing group education on their young. It seemed like they preferred to let their parents and peers to do any necessary education, and anything beyond that was up to the individual to take the initiative if they wanted to learn anything specific.

In the end they agreed and set up a specialized school for fairy kids.

While most schools were lecture and textbook based along with hands-on practical elements, the fairies' elementary school were entirely hands-on. Using some examples I remembered from Earth, their lessons revolved around using physical elements to drive interest and turn all the lessons into games.

And while I did want to use those ideas to encourage learning for all the kids, the problem was something that could only be solved by the fairies with this world's level of technology. The issue was that this sort of lesson strategy only worked if you could keep the class sizes down and employ a large number of teachers.

In theory, if tablet PCs were ubiquitous like on Earth, then you could use that as a way to gamify the lessons and mostly only require teachers to watch over and answer the occasional question.

No, without the technology, only a more conventional lesson format would work considering the number of teachers we were able to employ.

It really was sad. Even though money in itself wasn't a big issue, the problem was the fact that we'd be taking away too much from the adult work force if we hired more teachers. The root of the issue was the huge number of dhampire children all of the same age appearing at once.

I felt bad about it, but essentially their education quality was being sacrificed for the sake of reducing the issue of the number of teachers that'll have to find a new job once this huge wave of students pass through the education system.

(Though, maybe I can kill two birds with one stone with this?)

In the end, it did depend on if there really was a need for me to do anything.

Taking a step forward, I entered the large building dedicated to teaching the next generation.

I quietly passed through the halls. The overall design of the building was based on a typical school from Earth, though as the structure was almost entirely created using [earth magic], there were a bunch of expensive looking flourishes all over the place. Yet despite that, there was a serious lack of amenities not made from stone.

For example, the floors were simply single slabs of stone covered in carving-like decorations and the training yard was nothing but stone walls surrounding a bed of soft sand.

While I was thankful for the extra flourishes that the mages we contracted added, there was still a serious lack of things that they couldn't easily provide. The students didn't have desks, but narrow tables that would seat four on one side. Instead of chairs, they sat on simple, unvarnished stools that were crudely glued together. Even the textbooks were only bound together with a few pieces of string despite using quality paper from Edgeworth Village and printed using our nation's industrial paper press.

The need to get so many kids into school was greater than our ability to properly furnish the school despite this one being the first to be constructed.

I peeked into one of the classrooms.

There, roughly thirty dhampires were sitting in several rows listening intently on the teacher's lecture as she kept glancing at her copy of the text book. While we didn't have a shortage of volunteers, none of the people who did had any experience giving lectures like this, so it was a given that things would be rough, even a few years later. Even these textbooks were only barely made right before they were being used so were full of all sorts of holes. The worst part was the fact that a lot of subjects I really wanted weren't possible to implement at this time due to the teachers' lack of knowledge on the subjects.

Sociology, geography, history, chemistry, and many more were far beyond what we could teach.

Instead, we concentrated on the subjects we could teach, while only touching on the subjects that I thought were important enough despite everyone's lack of knowledge on them. In particular, the sciences. Physics, biology, and chemistry. All three could only be considered extremely rudimentary and only physics could be considered to be on a level higher than an introductory course, as it was the only one I could confirm applied similarly enough to Earth that I could just import the lessons directly.

The students on the other hand looked like they were simply devouring the lesson. They'd look up at points the teacher's scribbled on the crude blackboard we set up before copying it on the rough pulp paper we've started producing specifically for the schools. Finally, they'd check the text book before jotting additional notes down.

It was good that we managed to mass produce both ink and simple dip pens. Fountain pens were too difficult to produce in the quantity we needed, so we settled on dip pens as it was mostly just flattening steel thinly, cutting out the rough shape by using a steel stamp, and finally adding the finishing touches by hand.

The blacksmiths considered the technique bordering on blasphemy it seemed, but they couldn't deny the advantages of this forging method. That said, it wasn't like you could use such a crude form of the steel stamping method to make anything that blacksmiths traditionally made, so maybe that contributed to their acceptance and cooperation.

The paper the students used, though, was on such a crude level that I felt a bit sorry that we couldn't provide anything better.

Pulp paper, even once we managed to get it to barely meet the requisite thickness and flatness, still suffered from the cost of bleaching. We didn't have nearly enough time to get the Kraft process figured out, so despite all of our efforts, it wasn't possible to produce white paper cheaply.

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Or rather, the paper was completely brown and I worried that the kids might suffer from eye strain due to it.

But the difference of having cheap, disposable paper and not having it was so vast that this half-baked product was still provided to all the students.

(Well, I've given all the information I remembered about the Kraft process, so all that was left for the people I contracted to figure the rest out.)

Satisfied with what I saw in the classroom, I headed up the stairs and knocked on one of the doors.

"Come in."

I opened the door to the office and looked on the person sitting at the large table that was being used as a desk. Despite that fact, the top was covered in brown paper.

"Elder Scarlet! I, I apologize! I was not aware that you would be gracing us with your presence!"

The moment the person working in this office looked up as I was closing the door, she quickly dashed around the large desk and fell onto her knees as she held her hands in prayer.

"Don't, stop that. I keep telling you I'm not some god. I don't need you to pray at me. Get off of your knees and sit down."

"Ah, how generous you are to this lowly one! Ah! But I don't have a second seat in this room! Please, this is your school, and we are all your lowly sheep, Elder Scarlet. Take my seat. The floor you grace is more than sufficient for this lowly one!"

Her hands tightened as her interwoven fingers grew even whiter than my own skin and her hands shook from the pressure. Along with that, her eyes were filled with fervent worship that bordered on insanity. No, maybe it had gone far past that point and I simply wasn't capable of recognizing it.

"No, just...no. Sit down. I've got something to discuss with you, Ilithyia."

Ilithyia. She was one of the prisoners that I had rescued a few years back. Unlike most of the others, this woman had been imprisoned for a long time, long enough that it had broken her mind and made her an invalid. But despite that, somehow she had managed to recover while I helped care for her, and she had returned to some semblance of awareness before I returned home.

Not only her, but all the invalids managed to recover in the end, but perhaps due to their psyche having been broken from such a prolonged and harsh experience, you couldn't really say that any of them had returned to any semblance of normalcy.

These women were unified by their shared experiences, though in a sense they clung to their unity desperately. They were all the hardest working and most dedicated to ensuring the survival of their fellow victims.

They were also all the most fervent of worshippers, practically forming the core of a cult that used me as their idol.

Frankly, it was disgusting and I hated it.

While Iaso mentioned that their mothers practically worshipped the ground I walked, these few former invalids literally worshipped the ground I walked. The fact that I had once had to actually convince them not to preserve my footsteps as some sort of sacred relic was really telling.

I wouldn't be surprised if Ilithyia would scour every corner of this office once I leave for any fallen hairs, but I did my best to push such terrifying thoughts from my mind.

No matter how much I tried to talk them out of such actions, they'd always find some way to twist it towards strengthening their worship of me. I had long since given up thinking that there might be some cure for their condition. It was definitely terminal. I could only hope that the conditions for it to spread were hard enough that it wouldn't.

In the end, Ilithyia and her fellow cultists were the most dedicated workers that followed me, so as long as they kept the feverish worshipping private, I would employ them where I felt they were most needed.

Though, if I had realized at the time how bad their idolization of me had become, I'd definitely have more strongly considered someone else for the position of the school's principal.

"I want to talk about the dhampire kids."

*Bang!*

"I'm terribly sorry about that! I have no excuse!"

Ilithyia slammed her forehead onto the tabletop she sat at, one of the piles of paper on top collapsed. She held her hands in prayer again shaking from such pressure that I was worried she might snap her own arm.

"I've tried my best to make them see reason, but they refuse to see the light that is your existence! I don't know where, but someone must have driven corrupting thoughts into their minds and turned them against your benevolence!"

"No! No, it's okay. Raise your head. I'm not blaming you for that."

Or rather, I kinda wanted to give whoever started that idea a hug and give them my heartfelt thanks. I didn't need more worshippers, and if it meant that they would simply mildly hate me, it was a price I was more than willing to pay.

Though, at the same time, this could cause issues with their households, so maybe it was better if they would be less overt about their resistance.

"Anyways. There's a few things I want to know regarding the dhampire kids."

From there, we had a back and forth for a little while, though for the sake of my sanity, I ignored about 80% of what Ilithyia said.

But the 20% that I paid attention to, was quite enlightening.

According to Ilithyia, the dhampire kids started off pretty normal aside from the obvious differences in their appearances. At least as far as they could tell. At most, they spent more time awake than a normal baby, according to those who had previous experience with babies.

Of course, the new immigrants to the village the former prisoners were living in, didn't take kindly to an entire group of kids with unusual appearances and mysterious origins. And that alone was enough for the entire group, both mothers and kids, to be ostracized.

Because of all of this, the group had to become comparatively self-sufficient. They farmed, they hunted, they gathered in their own groups. Only a few of the mothers were able to get jobs at places desperate enough to hire them, but they rarely lasted as they always eventually found someone to replace them.

Less and less work came to them, and by the time the dhampires had grown big enough to help around with minor chores, the group had been forced entirely into self-sufficiency.

Normally that wouldn't be that big of a deal, considering their numbers were great enough to occupy a small village, but they were sharing the village walls with others who showed only disdain for them. And so, despite their numbers, they were at the bottom of the village's hierarchy.

At least, unlike most others at a similar social position, they weren't abused by the others. Directly at least.

But feeding such large numbers when half of them couldn't be counted as a proper labour force in addition to the increasing demands of food to feed their growing bodies meant that even the kids had to work in whatever ways they could to survive day to day.

They helped tend fields, carry water in small jugs, and even went together with their mothers to gather fruit and vegetables or help carry their day's hunts. And through those hunts, they learned a few interesting details regarding the dhampires.

As I had expected, the dhampires could sustain themselves with blood. Though unlike us pure blooded vampires, normal food worked just as well for sustenance. On the other hand, they did retain the ability to gain skills and XP from the blood they consumed.

This knowledge made me want to try some experiments with the dhampires, but considering how they felt about me, it was probably not very advisable.

But with all the work the kids were doing at such a young age, it did make them start specializing much earlier than normal. Those who preferred to work the fields or do other chores, and those who preferred to help with the hunts. They were properly finding the things they liked to do.

But in particular, the ones who preferred to help hunt also preferred to drink blood. At least at first.

Their growth in helping with the hunts was so quick that they were able to help in more direct ways when other kids would still be learning how to play with others. The other dhampires encouraged this, giving them priority on the gathered monster blood until all of them gained the noticeable spike in strength. It was only after that, did the others who preferred to stay behind start drinking blood on a regular basis.

Of course, while the mothers at this time didn't know it, the reason was obvious to me. The dhampires had figured out what sorts of skills they gained from drinking monster blood, and almost all of them were the sort that would benefit hunters far more over people who raised crops or spun threads.

But it was at this time, when the dhampires kids were finally starting to get big and strong enough that they could become a reliable force to ease the burdens of their mothers, that those same mothers had reached their breaking point. Instead of relying on their children and their unusually great strength, they opted to rely on me and the whole group made their desperate gamble to contact me.

Ilithyia didn't know or understand exactly why the dhampire kids were acting with such hostility, but she viewed it as nothing but ingratitude.

As for me, I couldn't help but wonder. Maybe those kids thought of it as some great betrayal? That half their family, that they loved more than anything else to the point that they forced themselves to grow up faster than anyone else, had chosen to rely on someone outside of their family, someone none of the kids had ever even seen but would hear all the time?

I was starting to understand how it had all started, but there was still too much I didn't know.

"When school is finished, can you call for a meeting with all the teachers?"

I gave the principal my request.

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