On the 7th of April, Year 591 of the Sacred Light Calendar, Bloweyk returned to Weyblon Manor in Lanu.
What gave Claude a headache was that Bloweyk didn't return with his original entourage. Instead, he brought more than 60 young boys and girls with him.
Calling them boys and girls sounded nicer, but in fact, these sixty or so underage children were all street children. The oldest was sixteen, and the youngest was only seven. There were even five or six handicapped children among them …
Claude's mother and Kefnie were dumbfounded. They didn't know what to do as they looked at the large group of vagrants.
Alek and his two servants could only smile bitterly. What was supposed to be a trip back to the kingdom to settle the family's assets was forcefully turned into a trip for the vagrants.
As a servant, he couldn't object and could only do his best to help the vagrants return to the manor.
Bloweyk, on the other hand, didn't seem to care about what others thought of him. After he brought the group of vagrants back to the manor, he ordered the servants to boil water for them to bathe, buy clothes for them to wear, have the kitchen prepare food, and prepare bedrooms for the vagrants to rest in. All the servants in the manor were extremely busy.
By the time Claude returned to the manor, the vagrants had already had their dinner, bathed, and changed into new clothes.
Many of them were playing in the empty grounds of the manor. Those who didn't know better might even think that they had entered a school.
Even Gum was taken aback for a good while. He looked around carefully and confirmed that they were in Weyblon Manor before escorting the carriage in.
Soon, the two brothers met in the study. Beside Bloweyk was a girl around 15 or 16 years old.
"Bro, she's Old Softer's daughter, Adele," Bloweyk said as he introduced the girl to Claude.
Claude knew of Old Softer. He was a rather famous sergeant major of Thundercrash who had been transferred from Ranger to Thundercrash.
He had been in the army for more than 20 years. If he could read, he wouldn't have been a sergeant major. Perhaps he would have already been a lieutenant.
But in the third colonial war, Old Soft died in battle to protect Bloweyk after infiltrating the enemy's camp. Bloweyk returned to Whitestag this time partly to settle his family business and also to search for Old Soft's wife and child.
Soon, he found out why Bloweyk brought back so many homeless children.
It turned out that when Bloweyk went to Old Softer's hometown, he realized that things had changed.
Six years ago, when old Softer followed Ranger to the colonies of Nubissia, he left behind a wife and three children, one daughter and two sons. The wealth he left behind was enough for his wife and children to live a decent life.
But something unexpected happened. In the third year, Old Softer's youngest child fell seriously ill. His wife went to seek treatment for her son's illness but unfortunately, she found a conman herbalist. She spent quite a lot of money but her illness only worsened. In the end, her youngest son died and the conman ran away.
His wife couldn't take the blow and passed away. Without a pillar of support in the family, the thirteen-year-old Adele was the only one left in charge.
But then one of old Softer's relations took interest in their house, and, on the pretext of helping them to cure his wife's illness, began to lend them money at high interest, and at last, when the debt was sufficiently high, tore off his mask of hypocrisy, and drove them out on the house as security.
Old Softer's wife was filled with anger and regret and died before she could even catch her breath.
Adele, who was only 14, became a homeless child just like that. She and her only brother depended on each other for survival and fought with other homeless children for food in the garbage dump.
By the time Bloweyk went to find them, Adele had already become the big sister of nearly twenty homeless children in their hometown.
Bloweyk told Adele about her father's death, but she was unmoved and didn't shed a single tear. She said that if Old Softer hadn't passed away and hadn't been heard from for so many years, she thought he was already dead. She didn't have a father for a long time and her life was good now.
Bloweyk couldn't take it anymore. Old Softer had died to protect him. He wanted to give Adele and her brother a new life. They wouldn't have to wander around the city looking for food in the garbage dump.
But Adele refused. She didn't want to go back to Nubissia with Bloweyk.
In the end, Bloweyk pestered her for a few days and finally convinced her by promising her brother a happy tomorrow.
But Adele requested that Bloweyk take in the twenty or so homeless children with her as well. That was the only reason she and her brother left with Bloweyk.
Bloweyk didn't even frown as he agreed.
However, Adele wasn't that easy to deal with. Perhaps because she was testing Bloweyk, she took in any homeless children she saw on the way back.
By the time they reached Whitestag and were about to board the ship, Bloweyk already had more than sixty homeless children.
Since when were there so many homeless children in the kingdom?
Bloweyk explained. He had already investigated them when he was on the ship. Most of these homeless children were the orphans of soldiers who had died in the war in the Eastern Region five years ago. A few of them were disabled because they were abandoned by their families. The rest were either because their fathers died in battle, their mothers remarried, or died of illness. In the end, they either ran away from home or became homeless.
Bloweyk decided to take in the homeless children. Most of them were around 12 or 13 years old. He wanted them to go to school and find a way out in the future.
As for the cost, he felt that the money he got from the Shiksan military fund would be enough to nurture the children until they reached adulthood.
Based on that, even though Bloweyk was hot-tempered and unreasonable at times, he had a good heart. That made Claude feel comforted.
Claude waved for Bloweyk to take Adele out first while he thought about how to deal with the homeless children.
Adele and her brother didn't have much of a problem. Her father was Old Soft, the chief sergeant of the Thundercrash Legion. Not to mention anything else, just the immigration status and personal property land exchange would allow the siblings to obtain fifty acres of fertile land, enough to build a small farm.
Claude could also repay Soft for saving Bloweyk's life, so it wouldn't be a problem to build a 100-acre farm.
However, the other sixty or so homeless children would be a problem. First of all, they weren't orphans of Monolith or Thundercrash, so the immigration rights wouldn't cover them.
Second, Claude wouldn't allow Bloweyk to adopt them. Bloweyk hadn't married yet and he was still single.
If he were to take in so many homeless children, it would affect his future marriage greatly. It wasn't a matter of whether he had the money to nurture them, but rather, no unmarried young mistress would be willing to be the godmother of so many homeless children.
Claude rang the bell to summon Alek to the study. He wanted to know why Alek didn't stop Bloweyk from taking in so many homeless children.
However, he didn't expect Alek to give him an unexpected answer. Alek said that Bloweyk seemed to have special feelings for Adele and allowed her to do whatever she wanted. Even when she was pranked, he didn't mind it at all. It was like a big brother indulging his little sister. That was why he allowed her to take in so many homeless children.
As the butler of House Ferd, Alek was supposed to stop Adele's misdeeds.
However, he considered the fact that House Ferd lacked manpower and decided to approve of Bloweyk's decision to take in the homeless children.
Many old noble families had sufficient manpower in all aspects. They mainly chose their children from the family's servants to be trained for their own children and grandchildren in the future.
House Ferd only prospered in Claude's generation. The family lacked competent manpower and trusted aides. The current servants were all hired from outside, so it was difficult to guarantee their loyalty.
So, Alek felt that Bloweyk's adoption of the homeless children was an opportunity. If they could be nurtured into talents, it would naturally be more suitable than hiring outside servants.
The homeless children were already suffering from lack of food and clothing at such a young age. If Claude was willing to spend money to nurture them, he believed they would be filled with gratitude towards Claude and House Ferd.
In that case, it would only take five to six years to have a group of people loyal to House Ferd. Even if they weren't talented, they would be able to serve as servants and attendants for the family.
Claude nodded. Alek's words were truly wise. Perhaps he was just trying to persuade him based on the methods of the old noble families, but it was also a good way to strengthen House Ferd.
It was funny that Claude had never thought of doing such a thing before. It was just like how he had risked his life in the army to get where he was now.
Although he was a lieutenant-general of Thundercrash, his trusted aides in the army were Myjack, Gum, Bloweyk, Berklin, Moriad, Dyavid, and a few others.
Even though his position was getting higher and higher, he sometimes felt like he didn't have anyone he could use. The main reason for that was a lack of trust.
He got Alek to call Bloweyk over and told him of his decision. The family would adopt the homeless children, but they wouldn't stay in Weyblon Manor. Instead, they would be sent to Angelina's ranch and teachers would be hired to teach them how to read and write, just like how his family ran a national primary and secondary school.
Apart from that, Claude told Bloweyk to bring the children to Anna's Ranch the next day to secretly test their talent in magic. If they had any, they would be picked to be groomed as magi.
House Ferd needed a force of magic. Even if they couldn't be groomed into battle magi, it wouldn't be a bad idea to find a few magic assistants for Angelina and Sonia.
Apart from that, in view of what had happened to the siblings, Claude ordered Bloweyk to settle the stray children at the ranch and gather with Myjack to pay a return visit to the families of all the soldiers of Thundercrash who had died in the colonial war. If they found any orphans, they were to be brought to the ranch and raised by the Ferd family.
Bloweyk happily accepted Claude's task and went to settle the children down. They would head to the ranch after breakfast the next morning.
Claude's agreement to adopt the children in the family's name was a relief to him. Otherwise, having to discipline so many children every day would be quite a headache for him.
The next day, Claude, Bloweyk, and Alek brought the children to Anna's Ranch, where they would live from now on.
Their studies and living conditions were naturally taken care of by Alek. What he said the night before convinced Claude to put him on his trusted list. That was good news for Alek and he finally gained Claude's trust.
Myjack and Bloweyk were sent to complete the family visit of the fallen soldiers. They only had to go to the logistics department to look up the list of those who died.
They would then arrange for people to visit the addresses and inform their immediate family members that they could migrate to the colonies to receive the immigration rights and land swaps.
If there were no immediate family members, they would have to find a way to bring the orphans back to Claude. House Ferd would raise them.
Originally, General Skri had proposed to give all the families of the soldiers who died in the colonial war the same immigration status and personal property land exchange, which was approved by all the generals in the war zone command.
However, the logistics department only sent a letter to the families of the fallen soldiers to inform them of the matter.
However, he suddenly realized that it wasn't a good idea to do so.
If a tragedy had happened to the family of a fallen soldier like the Adele siblings, not only would they not have received a letter, but perhaps someone would have pretended to be the family of a fallen soldier to claim the immigration status and personal property land swap.
Only then did Claude arrange for Myjack and Bloweyk to deal with the fallen soldiers of Thundercrash. It just so happened that the lower-level officers were on home leave, so he could let the lower-level officers personally visit the families of the fallen soldiers.
He also had to inform Skri and Bolonik about it. Claude could make his own decisions about Thundercrash, but he couldn't interfere with Monolith's affairs.
Additionally, he had to make sure that Skri strictly followed the final checkpoint to prevent people from impersonating the families of the fallen soldiers and taking advantage of them.
After that was done, Claude went to discuss the development of the rifles with Angelina and Sonia.
Thanks to the standardized production of copper-cased bullets, Sonia was able to experiment with all sorts of barrel configurations and the development of the rifles had made great progress.
Currently, the rifles that were closest to the ones Claude described had already been formed. However, the body of the rifles was still rather bulky and heavy, so it would take some time to be fixed.
What pained Claude the most was that Liboyd didn't care about the development of the rifles at all. The old man was completely infatuated with the steam engine and spent all his time playing with it in the iron workshop.
Claude once told him about the difference between steam engines that relied on hot air to move the rods and steam engines that relied on steam to move the rods. Ever since then, the old man had been thinking about how to make a steam engine.
Because the thermal efficiency of the engine made by the iron mine workshop was very low, it took a long time to get the engine to work ….
When he returned to Weyblon Manor that night, he found that Weyblon had come with the latest news from the royal capital. Naturally, the latest news referred to what happened 20 days ago.
Stellin X had already been buried in the royal mausoleum. All that was left was Prince Wedrick's coronation ceremony. However, it had been delayed several times. The main reason was that the bigwigs in the royal capital were worried that Prince Hansbach would declare himself king and start a rebellion the moment Wedrick ascended the throne.
What was worth noting was that the two new standing corps stationed in the three southern prefectures of Askilin and Rimodra had mutinies at the same time. Just like Bluefeather, the soldiers and officers expelled the high-ranking officers of the two corps and announced that they would obey Hansbach's orders.
That way, the first prince had three corps of 200,000 soldiers under his control.