Fang Zheng took Mein away from the temple and back to the inn. Then he gathered Priestess and the others and told them about the temple orphanage. After hearing his account, Priestess was quite shocked.
"The conditions there are that bad?"
"I remember you came from an orphanage too, didn't you? What were things like there?"
"Well..."
Faced with Fang Zheng's question, Priestess looked somewhat embarrassed.
"Life was very poor, but everyone could accept it... Still, no matter what, something like this would never happen..."
"Then what are we waiting for!?"
Megumi had long since been unable to sit still. Now she sprang to her feet and rushed for the door.
"Let's go save those children, then blow up that temple that treats human lives so cheaply! I haven't used my Explosion Magic today yet. Just give me one shot..."
"Settle down for a minute."
Fang Zheng reacted quickly, grabbing Megumi by the collar and pressing her back into her chair. He was not particularly surprised by this situation. As he had said before, the temples Priestess and the others belonged to had higher-ups supporting them. In other words, those temples received donations from believers, so naturally they could keep operating.
But Mein's temple was merely a political institution. There was no god above them to truly believe in, so naturally there were no donations from believers either. In fact, Fang Zheng had used Ratziel to investigate on his way back. This temple's funding relied entirely on allocations from the lord and donations from nobles. Put simply, it had no independent income and depended completely on government funding.
And the Temple Master had embezzled a huge amount of that funding... Under those circumstances, it was practically a miracle that the children in the orphanage were still alive.
Thinking of this,