It looks like they were more starved than I had anticipated.
Since I made a new batch, it didn't become a problem, though the orphans looked at me curiously after they finished eating the meal.
They leaned their head to one side as if they wanted to say, “Why did you give us such a delicious meal?"
I didn't answer the question though, and proceeded to put all of them in the bath.
As expected of a mansion that was built by a person that was rich amongst the nobles, the bathroom was big enough to house dozens of people all at once.
Even though the number of maids who still remain has decreased, I gave them instructions to wash the orphans’ bodies.
Since they used soap that was created from raw materials gathered in the Kuuderun Great Forest, the dirt that they scraped off of the orphans began to accumulate in the bathroom.
Although the bathroom had become quite dirty, I deemed it acceptable since the orphans were now clean and smelled normal again.
It was only the bathroom that needed to be cleaned again.
After that was done, I cured the children that were suffering from illnesses.
Even if their wounds had festered, they were on the verge of getting tetanus, they had parasitic worms, or one of their arms or legs was hard to move because they had severe burns, it was easy to cure them if I combined my healing skills with 【Blood Elixir】.
Although it’s not yet possible to completely heal an orphan who lost an eyeball or finger, I can at least reduce the pain so that they can endure it.
After the meal, the bath, and the treatment had been completed, I lined the orphans up before me again and they seemed to have changed their state of mind.
Their wariness had faded considerably and they looked at me with a friendly gaze.
Although the wariness of the boys and girls that had lived in this severe world for some time wasn't reduced, they were still at a loss as to why I was taking such good care of them without answering their questions.
Seeing that, and because all of the preparations had been completed, I told the orphans why I abducted them.
There’s no way I would feed the orphans, bathe them and treat their illnesses for a charitable cause.
I told them my goal plain and simple: I wanted to raise them as war potential for the future.
Well, including the goblins that have very high fertility, there are also many other beings that can become important war potential depending on how they're managed. When it comes to non-humans that are more powerful than humans with 【Jobs】, there are too many to count.
However, since humans have potential that monsters don't have, people that achieve interesting growth are likely to appear.
They're excellent in terms of diversity.
After taking these things into consideration, it's necessary for me to have human group members that I have trained from an early age. However, normal humans grow slowly. If you want to raise them from the time they're a baby, it’ll take many years.
Although humans are being born amongst the members of my group as well, it’s too slow.
For that reason, I concluded that a quicker way to do this is to abduct children that have already reached a certain age.
This isn't a bad situation for either side.
I picked up orphans that won't really cause problems if they suddenly disappear, because I can train them so that they can at least be useful on their own, while giving them the minimum amount of food so they don't die.
Well, you could say that that's the reason that I picked up 50 orphans that would have died in the near future and had them become new members of our group today.
Now then, I had the group's leader remain in the top position for now, and decided to treat them as a military unit in order to experiment with new methods of training and the handling of new weapons.
With that, the new experimental youth corps ≪Solitude≫ was established.