Once inside the building, it was a whirlwind of activity as they got Elise fully cared for. They fed her, bathed her, changed her clothes (something she insisted on doing herself in private so as not to lose the custom changeling clothes), and showed her to her room, which she was apparently going to share with 3 other girls. None of them were there at the time, but Elise had done some very convincing yawns and managed to convince her caretakers that she needed a nap, so she was left alone and undisturbed.

Once she was sure they wouldn’t be coming back immediately, she switched back to her changeling form. It was a little bit risky, but it had only been an hour since she switched to her human form, so she thought she could afford 2 hours of privacy to maximize the time she would be able to stay in the facility. Still, she hid fully under the sheets, so if anyone peeked inside, all they would see was an occupied bed. Her changeling form wasn’t much smaller than her current disguise, so hopefully, anyone who wasn’t looking too closely wouldn’t notice anything off.

With that (mostly) settled, she returned to contemplating her situation. Nothing had really changed about her internal state. She was still very confused. From everything she had seen in this orphanage, it was completely normal, if not above average. She had only seen a couple other kids, but they looked happy and healthy, the facilities were clean, the food was good, and the employees were competent and friendly. There were really only three points of suspicion

First was the security around the place. It didn’t make sense to have wards and guards like they did, just to keep an orphanage safe.

Second was what she had heard the two guards saying about “the Boss” and how they didn’t need any more kids. Of course, that could have just meant that they were running with a tight budget and couldn’t afford more, but something about the way they said it made it sound like there was something else going on.

Third was the building itself. It had magical circuits running all throughout it, similar to the defensive wards she had sensed on the Grays’ old cabin, but different. Elise was no expert on magical formations, but she was pretty sure that at least some of the ones in this building were not just for protection. However, they didn’t seem to be for monitoring either, or else she wouldn’t have dared transform.

There was also the fact that she wasn’t allowed in the basement, and that she had been explicitly told that she wasn’t allowed in the basement. That would have been less strange if all the magical formations in the building didn’t lead toward the basement.

Unfortunately, although she tried to listen in on whatever secrets might have existed within the facility, no one aboveground was saying anything strange, and there was no sound from below. She did hear a few people entering and leaving the basement, but other than their footsteps, that was it.

I need to see what’s in that basement.

It was a tense two hours before her cooldown was up, and at one point, the other girls living in her room entered, but some clever use of {Suggest} kept them from looking too closely, and Elise was undisturbed until she was able to turn back into her human form. There was no one else in the room, but she still went through a brief charade of yawning and stretching before rolling out of bed.

Outside the door, one of the employees, a [Nanny], was using the excuse of sweeping the floor to keep an eye on the hallway. Elise was certain it was mostly to help her out when she woke up, but while she was in bed, she also heard the same nanny scolding some of the other children for running too quickly near the stairs, so it was also likely that the hallway was just a normal place for the nannies to be stationed.

“Oh, Little Ella,” called the nanny when Elise poked her head out of her room.

Elise retreated half a step into her room while still peeking out at the nanny. She was a timid child in an unfamiliar place right now, so being too confident or outgoing would be suspicious.

“It’s alright,” said the maid, setting the broom aside and approaching. “No one is going to hurt you. Why don’t we head downstairs to meet the other children?”

Elise hid further back and didn’t respond yet. The nanny approached closer and crouched in front of the door to put her eye level below Elise’s, then reached into her pocket and pulled out a wrapped candy.

“Want a sweet?” she asked.

Strange adults luring kids out of their rooms with candy… thought Elise with amusement as she tentatively reached for it.

It was a hard candy, and it tasted mostly like just sugar, with a hint of strawberry. It was still pretty good. Elise had always had a bit of a sweet tooth, so she savored it in her mouth as the nanny continued speaking.

“Do you want to come downstairs with me?” she asked. “The other children are eager to meet you. You can make some friends!”

Elise drew back again, but after a few seconds, she nodded, and soon was descending the stairs while holding the nanny’s hand. She felt a little bad about tricking what so far seemed to be genuinely good people, but she was also proud of how far her roleplaying ability had come in such a short time. She suspected it had something to do with her Charisma, as a lot of the time, she seemed to just instinctively know what to do to sell her role better.

Downstairs, she was brought through a short hallway into a large playroom. It was full of various toys like dolls and figurines, wooden swords, and building blocks, and shelves packed with picture books. There were about twenty children in the room, ages ranging from around four to one boy who looked to be around eleven, and as soon as Elise entered, they all paused what they were doing to look her direction. Half of them started gathering around her, observing her curiously.

“Not too close!” said the nanny, her words keeping them from swarming Elise too much. “Everyone, this is Ella. Ella, would you like to introduce yourself?”

“Ummm,” said Elise. “I’m Ella…” She glanced up at the nanny, who nodded and smiled encouragingly.

“Your age,” she whispered.

“I’m ten,” said Elise.

“And something you like.”

“Ummm… I like candy.”

“And there you have it!” said the Nanny. “Now, don’t crowd her too closely, and make sure you all get along. Have fun!”

She let go of Elise’s hand and took a step back, but didn’t leave the room. There were three other nannies already in the room playing with some of the other children. Without the nanny right next to her, the other children immediately moved much closer and started speaking.

“Where are you from?”

“Why are your eyes red? Are you sick?”

“Do you want to play castle with us?”

“What kind of candy is your favorite?”

The barrage of questions seemed endless, and Elise almost felt overwhelmed before she managed to start navigating the conversation. She answered as many questions as she could, sating the curiosity of most of the children before agreeing to play castle with a couple of them. They wanted her to play the queen, which she was fine with doing. Even if she was actually ten, she would have been the oldest in that group, so her role in the game was a motherly one, but it was interesting enough.

Soon though, she excused herself, saying she wanted to go look at the books. She felt bad about how disappointed they looked, but she was on a time limit, and she needed to gather information before her transformation wore off and she was forced to leave. She suspected that once “Ella” disappeared, it probably wouldn’t be so easy to get back in. Not with the same tactics, at least.

She browsed the bookshelf while keeping an eye on the people around. The nannies had stopped paying special attention to her once she started playing with the other children, but there were still four of them in the room, meaning there was no easy way for her to sneak out. She could probably use {Suggest} to slip by without them paying attention, but that wouldn’t work in the long-term, and if she did that, it would be a move she would need to fully commit to.

{Fey Bargaining} was likely her best bet if she wanted a long-term solution, given its versatility, but she was struggling to think of a way to use it that would allow her to avoid the eyes of the nannies and the children. She had the advantage of looking like an innocent child, so she could probably trick them into agreeing to seemingly innocent deals, but as for what kind of deal would be best, she couldn’t decide.

She pulled out an illustrated copy of The Dragon and the Princess and started pretending to read it as she kept an eye on the room. Separating from the other children had earned her a few curious glances, but most dismissed it when they saw her reading.

There were four groups of children in the room. There were the ones playing castle, mostly girls in the middle of the age range, between six and eight. Most of the boys were playing with toy swords on the far side of the room, including the oldest ones. Three of the children were silently playing with building blocks in the corner of the room, and the rest, which included the youngest children and a few of the older girls, were playing with two of the nannies relatively close.

As she watched them, Elise once again noted how completely ordinary everything appeared. The children were all clearly well-fed with no signs of abuse, they were playing with each other happily, and the nannies seemed genuinely committed to caring for the children. At one point, one of the youngest girls started crying, and she was quickly comforted by not only the nearest nanny, but also all of the older girls nearby.

Am I just being paranoid? Elise wondered.

She was well aware that none of what she had seen meant this place wasn’t

doing something sinister, but seeing how the staff interacted with the children, it was difficult to picture them being complicit in any of the various worst case scenarios Elise was envisioning. If this place was trafficking the children, or something worse, she hoped that the nannies weren’t in on it.

“You know how to read?”

A voice cut through Elise’s contemplation, and she looked up to see one of the boys who had been playing with the sword standing over her. He wasn’t the oldest of the group, but he looked like he might have been the second oldest, and he had an air of maturity that the rest of the children didn’t have.

“Yes,” she replied.

“Are you smart?”

“I don’t know?”

“Nanny Agnes says all the smart kids know how to read.”

“...Okay?”

Nevermind about that maturity.

“My name is Sam,” he said. “You’re Ella, right?”

“Nice to meet you.”

“Wanna see something cool?”

“What is it?”

“It’s out there,” said Sam, pointing to the door leading out of the room. “Tom is gonna start a game of hide ‘n’ seek soon. If you wanna play, I can show you when we’re hiding.”

Elise thought for a second, then nodded.

“Okay.”

“Okay. We’ll start in a few minutes. Bye.”

And with that, Sam walked away and started telling the group playing castle about the upcoming hide and seek game.

Elise was curious about what the thing Sam wanted to show her was, but more than that, she was looking forward to the game. It sounded like the perfect opportunity to slip away from the others and head toward the basement. If she was just with Sam, she could manage to make some kind of deal to make him forget about her, and she would be free. It would be easier than escaping the watch of an entire room of people, at least.

A few minutes later, all but the youngest of the children were gathered in the center of the room for the game. The nannies watched over the gathering with smiles, but the oldest of them made sure to remind the children they weren’t to go into the basement. Tom, who was the oldest boy, said that he would be the seeker, and that he would count to 100, and then as soon as he started, there was a small stampede as everyone else rushed for the door.

Elise felt someone grab her arm as she was rushed out the door with everyone else, and then when most of the kids turned and ran for the stairs, probably to hide in closets and under beds, Sam led her down the hall on this first floor to a relatively quiet part of the manor. For a few seconds, Elise thought he might have been bringing her to the basement, since that’s where they were headed initially, but then they took a hard right into a small room full of books. He let go of her arm and jogged to the opposite side of the room and pulled a fairly thick tome off the shelf.

“What’s that?” asked Elise.

“This,” he said, setting the book down a low table. “Is the future.”

Elise walked up next to him and looked down at the title on the cover, which was “Complete Guide to Tier 1 Classes.”

“We’re both ten,” Sam explained. “That means that we get to unlock the System in two years. Except that if we just play here at the orphanage, our starting Class options are gonna be super lame. This book tells you what you need to do to get all the cool classes.”

He opened the book and flipped to page about halfway through, which described an Epic Class called Lesser Shocker. It looked to be a mage-adjacent class focused on Lightning magic.

“I’m gonna be an archmage when I grow up,” explained Sam. “And this is the Class that Archmage Lahan started with. I have a Lightning Magic Affinity just like him, so this is what I’m gonna pick.”

Elise nodded along as she read through the entry. It was a fairly comprehensive entry, detailing not only the class description, but also multiple methods to unlock it, the skills that it granted, and possible Class evolution paths that one could take upon reaching Tier 2. She was surprised that such a book existed. As far as she was aware, class rarities were literally determined by rarity. If the method to unlock a Legendary Class became widely known, it would cease to be a Legendary Class, and the stat points granted per level for it would also go down. For this reason, unlock methods for such classes were usually closely-guarded secrets, or were dependent on apprenticeship, but here, there was a book detailing the unlock requirements of countless classes.

The requirements for Lesser Shocker weren’t exactly easy, since one needed to have both a {Lightning Magic Affinity} and “a reasonable understanding of electricity,” but that seemed simple enough that having information like this out in public might devalue the class down to Rare at the very least. Unless affinities were rarer than she thought they were. She hadn’t actually learned much about those.

“What do you wanna be when you grow up?” asked Sam as Elise was browsing.

“...A knight,” said Elise, figuring that was a safe answer.

“Then you should look at this,” he said, taking the book and flipping to the Lesser Warrior page. “Being a knight is really hard without working under a knight, but if you don’t have a knight to work under to give you the Page Class, you gotta start with Lesser Warrior.”

“You know a lot about this stuff,” said Elise.

“I’m the expert!” said Sam proudly. “I read the best of all the kids, so I help ‘em figure out what Classes to pick.”

“What happens when they get a Class?” asked Elise, recalling how there didn’t seem to be anyone over 12 at the orphanage.

“They graduate,” said Sam. “They go to a buncha different places. Some of them even go to Jelor Academy! The Boss sends ‘em wherever they can do best.”

“Do they ever come back and visit?”

“Sometimes. Billy was here last week, actually. He’s goin’ to Jelor Academy and learnin’ magic. He says it’s fun, but it’s a lot of work, so I’m doin’ a lot of work here so I can be ready.”

“I see,” said Elise.

Sam started talking more about the things he was doing to prepare for the academy, but Elise just frowned as she thought more about the orphanage. The lack of kids over age 12 was strange, but the way Sam explained it, it didn’t sound like anything sinister was happening. Nothing obviously sinister, at least. She would have been worried if he said the graduates never came back, but clearly they did, and Sam seemed to think they were normal.

Still, she now felt even more strongly about needing to find out what was in the basement. It wasn’t due to increased suspicion, but if this “Boss” person was doing anything strange, she didn’t want kids with bright futures like Sam to be affected by it.

“What’s in the basement?” she asked, interrupting Sam’s monologue.

“Huh?” he asked. “Oh, the basement? I dunno. Basement stuff.”

“Basement stuff?”

“Tom snuck down there once and he said it was just a buncha food and sheets and stuff.”

“Why is it off limits then?”

“I dunno. Tom got a big spanking after he went down there though, so I haven’t gone. Why you askin’? Wanna go check it out? You might be able to get away without a spanking ‘cause you’re new.”

“No, I’m fine,” she lied. “But Sam, can you do me a favor?”

“What kinda favor?”

“I just need help with something. Can you help me?”

“I guess, yeah. What is it?”

“Forget I was here.”

Sam’s eyes glazed over and Elise quickly slipped out of the room before he could fully recover. There was no one else in the hallway, so she quickly walked over to the door she knew led into the basement. After one final glance to make sure there was no one watching, she opened the door and entered.