Genshin Impact: Reborn Engineer

It was the day of Clervie's birthday. Despite it normally being a happy occasion, there wasn't any trace of a smile on Clervie's face as she was led out of her room by Mother.

The day started with Mother taking Clervie out to go shopping and see an opera performance, though it was very tempting to make break for it in the open streets and cry for help, Clervie remembered what had happened to the last people who had helped her. Crucabena was powerful, not only in the militant sense, but also financially and politically, she had favors and blackmail material on most of the nobles of Fontaine. By calling in a few favors, she could make certain people "disappear" if they knew too much or got in her way. However, unbeknownst to Clervie, this cost Crucabena a lot, even with how powerful she was, so she only had people "disappeared" when she had to, namely whenever she had to cover a massive mistake made by one of her agents, or when a certain child managed to run off and get the protection from a band of adventurers who were about to get the justice system involved.

After the Opera, Clervie was escorted back to the mansion on the outskirts of the main city. Given the nature of the house, it would be a bad idea for it to be located in the heart of the country, but being too far cut into the efficiency of the children completing assignments made by mother, so the mansion and a couple buildings used by adults who worked under Mother were built in the hills immediately surrounding the outer wall of the city.

The final preparations for the activities and food had all been done while Clervie and Crucabena were out. The children not on missions were rounded up and waiting in the ballroom. Some of the children, mostly the new arrivals, had excited expressions on their faces, Clervie looked at all of them, trying to commit their faces to her memory, in all likelihood, at least a few of them would not be seeing the next sunrise.

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Crucabena lead the children of the hearth to the banquette hall, the first game of the day would soon commence. 

Looking around, Clervie recognized the game Mother had set up, fond as ever of pitting the children against each other, they were going to play Murmures dans le Jardin, a game where the children were blindfolded and confined with weapons available to use. They were meant to cut down the competition until only one participant remained, thankfully, none of the weapons had sharp edges, but adults would be overseeing and enforcing the hypothetical deaths. Sure some of the children could gather for mutual protection, but in this house, was it really wise to trust your back to anyone?

Though there were many older and more experienced children, Peruere managed to scrape a narrow victory, being given the title of "La Jardinière" from Mother.

They then moved on to eat lunch, it being a party under Crucabena's leadership, some portions of the food were tainted with a minor paralytic agent. Nothing deadly on its own, but given the next activity it wpuld escalate a threatening challenge to a lethal one. Thankfully, despite seeing them as competition, the older kids helped the newer ones avoid most of the poisoned items. This batch at least had a subtle smell that gave away the tainted food from the clean.

-One game of Marelle later-

Other than a few children losing their footing and getting sliced up to varying degrees and one child ending up with a blade run through their hand from almost falling face first from a bad landing, there were luckily no deaths from the game.

Now that Marelle had concluded, it was time for cake. Similar to the other food, some slices were tainted with poison, while still not lethal, given some of the children had assignments to attend to after the party, it would be a deeply unpleasant experience none the less. This time though as slices of cake were passed out, the children were given the option to pass the slice they were given along to another child, unless you had finalized your decision on which slice to eat, you could not refuse a slice passed on to you.

Clervie and Peruere managed to settle on slices which were untainted, with Peruere being the one to identify which ones were pure of poison and having to threaten Clervie to stop giving the slices she was given to younger children.

Soon 20% of the kids fell to the floor, vomiting, their bodies violently attempting to purge the poison they had ingested. After the collapsed children were taken away the remaining children were escorted to a series of cleared dark corridors with a group of candles on one end. It was now time for the game of "La Chasse aux Flammes."

-To be continued