Chapter 119 - The Votes Are In

'To my son'. Those words on the envelope could have been meant for any man but why was it in English? Gren knew that the chance of it being meant for him was next to nothing but he couldn't shake the feeling that he should open it. Even if it wasn't for him, the only way of finding out who it was meant for was opening it since there was no name on the envelope.

"Gren, did you find a book yet?" The voice of Estella coming from the other side of the locked door helped him remember what his initial goal was. After failing to open up the door, Estella seemed a bit worried. "Why is the door locked? Is everything okay in there?"

"Everything's fine, I just had to look through my private library." Gren trusted Estella not to take his spell books so he let her in and locked the door after closing it again. "I haven't found a book to read to them yet. I came across some things that I didn't know that I had so I was just checking them out."

"Jessica should be getting close to the end of the story now. Just find something that will put them to sleep so that we can go to bed." It was getting late and Gren seemed to be dilly-dallying so Estella was a little annoyed at him. "If you can't find something to read to them then just find another way to get them to sleep."

Gren stored away everything that was originally in the pocket dimension, leaving the books he bought behind. Most of the books were related to magic or were historical books that he never got around to reading yet so he stored those away next. There were only a few books left that he could pick from and two of them were from the same series. Telling them the story of a Dark Lord's rise to power would probably give them nightmares and the bestiary--despite having drawings in it--was going to be too boring to read them. "I guess that this is the only one that I can read to them. I haven't gotten a chance to read it yet so I don't know if they'd like it but it's not like I have any other options. What even caused them to need several books to fall asleep, anyways?"

"A bunch of people wearing armor decided to come downstairs when they were almost asleep. This made them become alert and they begged to hear another story." Gren didn't have to be a genius to figure out who she was talking about. Although it was necessary to bring the people downstairs to help create the illusion that the armor and money were actually stored away somewhere, perhaps he should have kept them further away from the playroom.

"Ah. That would be my fault, then. Hopefully they end up falling asleep with this one then." Gren headed to the playroom with the book in hand. It was something that he meant to read long ago but didn't have enough time to actually get to it before now. With two out of the three known books in his possession, the first Rumba the Sloth book seemed like the perfect candidate to read to the kids.

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Gren woke up the next day, not knowing what happened. He was sure that he started reading the book to his kids but they were all gone from the playroom without him realizing it before he had opened his eyes. The blanket that was placed on top of him and the closed book by his side showed that one of his wives likely moved them so he wasn't worried but that didn't help his confusion. "You're finally awake." The voice of one of those wives--even if she was only his wife in name only--got his attention.

It was hard to tell if Tahloh was the person that covered him up. She did seem like she cared about him so it wouldn't be surprising if that ended up being the case but it could have been any of his wives so he wasn't going to make any assumptions. "How long was I asleep for?"

"You've been asleep for about half a day now. I was getting worried about you and kept checking to make sure you were breathing." It was an odd thing for Gren to hear but he didn't if it was common for someone to randomly die in their sleep. Due to his constant self-healing, he could be considered the picture of health. "Not that long ago, people from the Church came to talk with you but you were asleep. It seemed important."

"The Church? Did they say what it was about?" Gren figured that it was probably about the run-in with Ophelia. She did end up leaving shortly after seeing his mother so that seemed like the most likely possibility.

"They left a message with Jessica but I don't know what it was about. I never got to speak with them but Jessica's at the cafeteria right now." The Church only put trust into Jessica because she had met with the High Priestess. Tahloh would be left in the dark by them until Gren told them that she was aware of his circumstances. "The Church people did seem a bit worried about something when I saw them. I overheard the priestess saying something about needing a miracle while she was leaving."

It they needed a miracle then the chances of them requesting his mother were slim. Instead, it was more likely that they would be requiring him to do something. The Church was aware of him being able to store things away but it wasn't something they'd need in an emergency. His physical combat skills were amateurish so that was out of the window as well. Gren came to the conclusion that they probably needed him to perform magic. Regardless of what type of magic it was, he could continually use it for hours while others could only last minutes.

On his way to the cafeteria, Gren noticed people looking at him strangely and whispering in circles. However, he didn't notice anything odd about what he was wearing and didn't have time to find out what they were whispering about. Inside the cafeteria itself was Jessica, just like Tahloh said she would be. Usually she would get her meal over quickly and go back to work but she was playing with her noodles while thinking about something.

"What's the matter, Jess? Something got you down?" Gren tried, unsuccessfully, to get Jessica to open up about her problems. Instead, she only opened up her mouth to let out a sigh. "Is it that bad? What did the Church say that has you like this?"

"It's not the Church that's the problem. Their request won't be difficult for you." That was good to hear but that just made him wonder what her problem was. "You know, it has been a week since you made the decision to have a vote. That vote happened this morning."

"Oh." Gren didn't need to hear how the vote ended with the way that Jessica was acting. "So, they ended up voting against it?" Although he didn't need to hear it, Gren was still hoping that he was wrong."

"Yeah." Gren felt more hurt by that single word than he had expected. "The most common complaints were about how they felt like prisoners. Some others complained about how you offered others a home while they have to live here. A few women even said that they couldn't trust their lives to the hands of someone that's barely an adult."

Gren had already thought about the consequences of the vote failing. Even though it didn't feel nice, he would continue on. "If that's how they feel then there's nothing I can do about it. I'll still do my best to contribute to the guild even if they don't really like me."

"I don't think that they dislike you as a person, Gren. You've been trying to help everybody and I'm not the only person that noticed." Although Jessica was trying to comfort Gren, he knew better. The whispering behind his back was only the beginning of the storm. If he didn't improve their opinion of him then it was only a matter of time before they completely turned on him.

The solution was simple; Gren just needed to fulfill all of the promises he made and start pushing himself harder than before. "Didn't the Church have a request for me?" Although Gren wanted to start fulfilling those promises to the guild straight away, the Church seemed to require immediate help.

"Don't change the subject. We should talk about what happened before you go out there." Jessica wasn't going to let Gren go without trying to help him. "It's clear that you're not happy with the results. You need to stop keeping everything to yourself and actually talk to someone about your feelings."

"It's not that big of a deal. They gave good reasons. I'm not exactly the best leader, after all." Gren was trying his best to not let it bother him. "For now I'll focus on doing the things that I'm good at while trying to improve myself in other ways. That's why I want to help the Church. If you think that it'll be easy for me then I should do it." Gren didn't like the way that the vote went but he managed to convince himself that everything would be fine if he just worked harder.