Chapter 583: Are You Sure This Is The Right Place?
No small amount of credit also belonged to Eris in this regard, as she was the one who insisted most strongly on going all out and sparing no expense to help those affected by the terrorism incident.
She may not have understood all the specifics of what Lucas had done while handling the explosion crisis’ fallout, but she at least understood that rapidly delivering resources and aid were essential to containing the damage from such an event.
This wasn’t Eris looking to save face or to endear herself and her guild to the general populous, she simply thought it was the right thing to do.
The Guild was flush with cash and material, and the people needed those things, so it just made sense in her mind to distribute as much to everyone as possible.
Of course, Sasha, Teagan, Lucas, Mayor Gavin, the city administration, and the bureaucrats running the Balfour Manor in Misty City handled most of the details of this distribution, while Eris’ job was mostly in the public relations area.
That wasn’t to say Eris wasn’t involved in the decision making, just that, unlike an anomaly like Lucas, she wasn’t yet capable of heading-up such a complex relief-aid and social-support program.
The net result of all these efforts, however, was a further increase in the number of people and businesses patronizing the Rising Phoenix Guild, which in turn increased the amount of work it had to do and the amount of paperwork that needed to be filed.
Understanding, at least on an instinctual level, that this was partially her fault, Eris didn’t even try to skip out of the boring record keeping and filing work that piled up high every day in the Guild Master’s office.
For an entire month, whenever she wasn’t cultivating, training, or sleeping, Eris was basically helping out at the Rising Phoenix Guild in one way or another.
It was exhausting, no doubt, but Eris was like a never-ending fountain of positive energy, so with grit and determination, she pushed through until things finally began settling down, which just so happened to be around the time when Christina was setting out for her next deployment with the Raging River Legion.
Things were still hectic at the Rising Phoenix Guild even after Tina sailed up the Lorren towards the Roth Dukedom, but the workload had at least come down somewhat from its peak.
This allowed everyone, including Eris, to catch their breath, which was a good thing too as she, Lucas, and Sasha were about to get a big surprise.
.....
"Are... are you sure this is the right place?" A woman who looked somewhere between middle-aged and old asked somewhat nervously as she stared at the massive gates up ahead.
"It should be," the old man, who was most likely her husband, nodded absentmindedly.
"It must be," a tall young man, probably no older than 20, muttered, though even he wasn’t really sure.
The trio made for an interesting picture as they stood about 100 metres away from the main entrance to the Misty City Balfour Family Manor.
Although they were clearly tired and travel worn, with their clothes a bit tattered and dust covering their cloaks, more than anything else, they were feeling nervous right now.
They weren’t questioning whether this was the home of the Balfour Family, that would be foolish considering the giant signboard which said precisely that, they were questioning whether this was really where they could find the people they were looking for.
The story of how they reached this conclusion goes back nearly a year.
Each of these three was a noble, but the ’noble blood’ running through their veins was hardly very thick.
The old man and woman were a retired Baron-rank couple, while the young man, their grandson, was the son of a current Baron. In other words, while they were indeed official aristocrats of the Rockwell Kingdom, they belonged to the very lowest stratum possible, making them not much better than slightly stronger commoners.
A year ago, they had all been living their own lives quite far from the South-West Province. The old couple were staying in the Royal Province, while the young man lived in the Northern Province, so it had taken quite a long time before word of what had transpired in the Great Western Forest had reached them.
In fact, the first one to receive news of what had happened was the young man’s mother, the old couple’s only daughter.
When she heard from a traveling merchant she often did business with that a terrible disaster had struck the far south-west region of the kingdom, the young man’s mother began frantically looking into the situation, using every available channel at her disposal to try to understand what was happening.
Try as she might, however, her resources were quite limited and the duties she had as the Lady of a barony made it impossible for her to take much action personally.
Out of desperation, she had sent her eldest son, who at 17-years-old was barely an adult in her eyes, to look for her parents who she knew were staying in a small retreat in the north of the Royal Province to focus on their cultivation.
Her hope was that the old couple would exit their seclusion and then try to find some clue as to what had happened to her younger brother, sister-in-law, and little niece, then send word back to her so that she could stop constantly worrying about whether they were even alive.
Receiving this mission from his mother, the young man immediately set out together with the best horse his family owned. Even using this beast, however, it still took him over a month to arrive at the secluded retreat and inform his grandparents what had happened.
Sure enough, in this isolated community designed specifically to remove oneself from worldly matters to allow complete concentration on cultivation, the old couple had remained totally unaware of the tragic events happening around their old hometown.
Needless to say, once their grandson had filled them in, the old couple swiftly headed to the royal capital, hoping more information would be available there.