System Mission

"Sir, could you help us with something?"

Su Wu raised his drooping eyelids, which had sagged from boredom, and regarded the children asking him for help with the same lackluster expression as before.

They looked decent enough and kept themselves reasonably clean. They could pass for the kind of children people outside would call cute.

At that moment, the "cute" children looked at him expectantly with their different-colored eyes.

But if he remembered correctly, he wasn't close to these kids. They weren't even friends, were they? If they needed help, why not ask one of the other priests? There were plenty of priests here.

"Tara went missing, so we wanted to ask you for help..." One of the children seemed a little awkward, as if being the one asking for help had somehow put him in a submissive position.

Or perhaps it was simply a common occurrence. All the children in District 12 were very obedient around the Church's members.

Maybe that was true throughout Meteor City?

"Why not ask someone else?" Su Wu propped his chin on one hand, his voice still lazy and devoid of energy.

"Because Lord Sid and the others are all busy. We shouldn't waste their time with something like this..." the children said hesitantly.

The priests in District 12 already went to a lot of trouble taking care of them. If they asked everyone to help search for a friend who'd gone to District 13, they'd surely be turned down.

"Do I look like I'm free?" Su Wu retorted.

He reflected for a moment on why the other children thought he had so much free time.

Was it because the other priests either trained the children or picked up trash, while he never did either, and spent every day "playing" with Sid?

How could training be called playing?

Su Wu ended his reflection and decided he had absolutely nothing to reflect on.

"...No, it's just... Lord Hill, you're about our age, but you've already joined the Church. You must be strong, so... so..." The child seemed to feel that his request would surely be rejected, and his voice grew increasingly anxious.

Just then, Su Wu spotted Pampas and Sid coming out of the church. He promptly raised a hand. "Hey, Sid! Pampas!"

He waved for them to come over.

Sid had taken Pampas's words to heart. After all, he knew he wasn't as smart as Pampas, and most of the time, Pampas had the right answer.

The two of them stepped out of the church. As soon as they were outside, they heard the boy calling their names from nearby.

Sid and Pampas both turned toward the person waving at them and walked over.

"What is it?" Sid looked rather stern when he wasn't smiling.

"What's wrong?" Pampas asked, raising a kind, patient smile.

"They have something to say." Su Wu casually pointed at the children beside him.

Sid and Pampas followed the direction of his finger, their gazes settling on the children.

"Is there something you wanted to tell us?" Pampas asked first.

Even with his easygoing manner, the children still looked a little nervous.

"It's... it's Tara. Tara's missing. We were supposed to play together today, and she said she'd wait for us at the entrance to District 13..." a little boy said nervously.

"Tara?" Sid was startled. "She's missing?"

Pampas said nothing, watching as Sid questioned the children.

"And... Anger, Isaac, Gremmy... they're all missing too." A little girl's voice turned tearful.

"Isaac?" At the familiar name, Pampas's gentle expression finally shifted a little.

Su Wu stood nearby and yawned indifferently.

A few children going missing in Meteor City was perfectly normal. There was a Vulture Gang that treated people like prey, after all. Maybe they'd targeted the children and taken them.

Though District 12 housed roughly ten or twenty thousand children under the age of eight, there were still plenty of children over eight in District 13.

Even in the outside world, there were kidnappers. In Meteor City, this sort of thing was surely even more common.

He hadn't planned to help at all, so he'd called Sid and Pampas over and pushed the matter onto them.

"I understand. We'll look for them." After reassuring the children, Pampas watched them leave.

When he saw them rejoin the group and return to training under the watchful eyes of the priests in charge of them, Pampas's smile lost some of its warmth.

He dropped the act he'd put on for the children. His smile now made it seem as if he were plotting something.

"The number of children going missing in District 13 has been rising lately. More than two hundred have disappeared in the past six months."

"And no matter how we investigate, we can't find out why. The gatekeepers haven't seen the children leave on their own. It's as if they vanished into thin air. Strange, isn't it?"

"Sid, do you remember how many children went missing in District 13 the year District 12 was founded?" The blond man oddly began reminiscing about the past.

"I don't," Sid replied with a shake of his head.

"Twenty-nine. Twenty-nine children went missing that year." Pampas, on the other hand, recalled the number with ease.

"Thirty-two went missing the next year, five the year after that, three the year after that, and none the year after..."

"Of course, those figures don't include children who died of illness or other causes when their bodies were found."

"They only count children who disappeared without a trace."

"One hundred and eighty-two children went missing last year."

"And 357 have gone missing this year." Beneath Pampas's calm voice seemed to lie something much deeper.

In those early years, when the numbers were still in the single digits, a group in Meteor City had only just formed, and they had already done a lot of terrible things.

The year-by-year increase showed how the people behind it had grown more brazen over time.

"This number..." Su Wu propped up his chin and openly eavesdropped from the side.

It didn't sound like much. Compared with certain places in the real world, it was even relatively low.

By comparison, Meteor City's environment didn't seem all that dangerous. It was almost as if public order had improved.

"Isaac always did well in training. After leaving District 12, wasn't he sorting trash for the Church in District 13? I think he was even the leader of one of the cleaning teams..." Pampas seemed to know Isaac well. He even knew what the boy had been doing after leaving District 12.

"You know District 13 isn't under our jurisdiction." Sid scratched his hair and spoke in a low voice.

District 12 was responsible for patrolling, picking up children, and taking care of them. Of course, they occasionally sent people out to clear trash, too.

But most of the time, District 13 was managed by someone else.

Faruk Zapata, one of the elders of the Meteor City Elder Council.

"Hill, want to play a game?" Pampas's thoughts shifted, and he looked at the boy beside him, who seemed to have been bored out of his mind for a while.

[Daily Side Quest—Investigate the Missing Children. Complete the quest to receive a reward.]

The system prompt made Su Wu open his half-lidded, listless eyes.

This was the first side quest he'd received. Now it felt even more like a character-building adventure game.

Su Wu blinked, a mischievous, eager smile spreading across his face.

"Sure," he replied cheerfully.

It would be a good chance to test the results of his training.