You have to kill off six of the surviving named kids introduced during the Goldy Pond arc. Who do you axe?
Can be for any reason (e.g., I feel they should have died based on their injuries, I feel these characters can be nixed with the least amount of impact to the story, I don't really care much about this character, their design doesn't do much for me, I can't bear to sacrifice any of the others, etc.), but six of these kids have to go:
(Chapter 69 & Chapter 70 Bonus Pages)
Ranked from 1 being the easiest choice to 6 being the hardest.
My list:
1.) Sonya
Feel like she's the least noteworthy/gets the least to do, and while not appearing the most gravely injured during the attack, she still took a beating.
(Chapter 85)
Lamentable in that I would have liked to see her bond more with Lucas as a fellow cane user after those events.
(Chapter 111)
2.) Paula
When I first read the story, I thought both she and Sandy died based on the amount of attention paid to how severe their injuries while receiving less spotlight than Oliver, who was also badly injured but seemed like he would be saved by virtue of his more prominent connection with Lucas.
(Chapter 85)
Reading through it quickly it looked like she'd been speared almost dead center through the neck instead of in her shoulder, but still very plausible to be a fatal blow left unattended for so long.
And then she and Sandy are both sleeping it off in chapter 96, so it's like, okay lol
(I've talked about this before here but this isn't actively wishing for the death or brutalization of children who are already victims of the farm system but wanting to see lasting consequences that have weight to them and seeing how characters cope. Sandy loses an eye, but much like Emma losing her ear, we never see him note his long-term struggles with that loss, such as having a larger blind spot, the anxiety and anger that would understandably result in, or even minor annoyances that when stacked together weigh on him. Compare to Lucas who, while still a very capable character, does reflect on how the loss of his arm impedes him. tl;dr was just hoping for a bit more from this, you feel me?)
3.) Sandy
Pretty much covered this in my reasoning for Paula.
(Chapter 85)
Like my guy not looking good.
Bit of a difficult placement though because he's my favorite out of my six choices due to this moment:
Touched on this before here, but one of the reasons the bonus scene from chapter 75 is among my favorites is because it's such a rare moment of insecurity that Emma lets slip about something concerning only herself. She tries to lightly laugh it off, but Sandy immediately recognizes how much it bothers her. After that initial moment of realization, he swaps to being upbeat without a hint of pity or tutting coloring his response. In this act, not only is some of Emma's inner turmoil over her missing ear alleviated, but it's another instance of her regaining that kind of elder sibling relationship she lost when all the older kids at Grace Field were shipped out.
I also like how he steps in to help soothe the younger children after Gillian and Ray argue in chapter 110 about whether to go after Lucas and Yuugo.
So this is what puts him above Paula for me, even though with all the blunt force trauma Nous was dishing out, he probably would be the first to die between the two of them.
4.) Theo
Honestly right after losing Jake and Monica he shouldn't be here, but this is a case of "I didn't want to sacrifice anyone else," so sorry Theo. 😞 Feels like you just vanish after the arc though.
5.) Pepe
He has more grounds to die than Theo due to being injured in the attack, but I like him being chef buddies with Ray and Mark. 🥺
(Chapter 84 Side Story | Chapter 98 | Chapter 110 Title Art)
6.) Nigel
He's on equal playing field with Gillian based on vibes and aesthetics for me so it just came down to a toss up.
I wonder how much Sisters are in the HQ. Because even if the selection is hard, a lot much sucess.
Isabella's orphenage ship 6 children by year, so 6 new kids must be given to her.
There are 5/6 orphenages for Grace Field. So 30/36 children shipped by year and 30/36 new given to the orphenage. EVERY YEAR. So even if it's sure that the Sisters gave birth of more than one child (only the Mother can have only on).
Because if 30/36 children must be given by year to orphenages, 30/36 must waiting their turn in the nursery and as much sister must be pregnant. I think that every sister has the right to take a break after a pregnacy.
For Exemple if Sienna is the mother of both Emma and Carol, seen there are more or less 10 years between them, it probably mean that there had at least one kid between them. Maybe more.
So i think that, even if the selection is rude, a lot of girls survives. Because if they need 30/36 new babies by years...
And it's just Grace Field. It must be worse at Great Vallley (especially that Barton must have took a lot of children for his huting ground)
[Response to this ask]
I'm not sure where you're getting all moms having only one child being common from?
From your previous ask:
Isabella is an anomaly when it comes to moms in that she's the youngest one to ever be selected in the history of at least the current incarnation of Grace Field that's been around for roughly 400 years.
(Mystic Code Book Chapter 1 | Chapter 6 | Chapter 181.2 | Chapter 181.3)
Her excellent test scores at the farm and later at headquarters combined with favoritism from Sarah led to her placement being expedited. With there being an extremely limited number of mom positions, most sisters (because they're all sisters first, Isabella being the exception and not the rule) are left waiting for years, and this is what results in them having multiple children if they don't retrain for another path, not that moms are limited to having a single child. If anything, you'd think they'd want more children bred from those who reach that position, so the time spent waiting for spots to open up would be beneficial for the demons. Sarah had enough sway to persuade those in charge to get a recent graduate of the sister training in there, though, so Isabella was able to skip to the front of the wait list.
And it's confirmed there's five plants plus headquarters for Grace Field.
(Chapter 29 | Chapter 100 | S1 Episode 4)
So assuming there are no oddities, they're averaging 30 kids per year between the five, and if each plant maintains the same number of children plant no.3 normally does, there's around 190 kids at a given time outside of Grace Field headquarters prior to Isabella taking over as grandma when she reduces the number of shipments beginning in mid-January 2046, which is kind of wild given how low it is already.
(Chapter 181.3)
So I think that, even if the selection is rude, a lot of girls survives. Because if they need 30/36 new babies by years...
The second light novel does say this, yes.
Even if it's hard to calculate exactly how that math works out with how gleeful Sarah seems about eliminating Cecile and Krone's entire class, along with not having any information about how often the moms are recommending girls for sister candidacy.
(Chapter 181.2)
Chapter 166's bonus sketch gives us headquarters' layout, but no listing of how many people it accommodates, though it does look massive between this and the amount of running around the kids do in the Return to Grace Field arc.
It must be worse at Grand Valley (especially that Bayon must have took a lot of children for his hunting ground)
To be fair, those children were going to be eaten regardless, so Bayon Sr. taking some for his hunting grounds isn't altering the general death count, just where it's being distributed.
(Chapter 84 | Mystic Code Book Chapter 7 Series Timeline)
Sometime between 1801–1900, Bayon is looking so miserable some of the staff of the farms he's in charge of start shipping children to him alive.
I'm defaulting to this being at Yverk's or Leuvis' behest—Yverk as a means of keeping Bayon comfortable in order to maintain the status quo of Legravalima's regime, Leuvis as a means of satisfying the hunger he knows still resides in his friend—but maybe they just decided to do it on their own because of how bad he looked, who can say.
Regardless, he's approached by another party to begin his hunts, and it isn't until he's given this push that he gives into his impulses again when he told Leuvis centuries ago he was committed to upholding the promise, in a similar manner to how we see Bayon Jr. adhere to upholding decorum and duty during the gathering for Tifari in 2047.
Bayon Sr. starts off with one human every three months, but after that it's hard to gauge exactly how the numbers ramped up. Over two hundred years, it was in the hundreds to potentially thousands.
I'm assuming it maxed out between five and ten at a time, though. Enough of a significant gap where Bayon accepts Peter's offer to use Goldy Pond, originally meant to be a village of refuge for escaped cattle children in James' plan, as his new hunting ground starting in late 2031 with more humans and supplies being available to him.
(Chapter 98)
63 - 17 (15 Grace Field escapees and 2 adults not counted among the Goldy Pond population by Bayon) = 46 children who escaped from Goldy Pond on January 29, 2046 after a hunt had taken place the previous day. We don't know how many children are killed during regular hunts, but I'm guessing they would keep the population between 50 and 60 at any given time. Enough of a thrill to entice Bayon to take Peter's offer, not enough between the 18 farms he supervised or was in charge of to give unaware staff pause to want to stick their noses into noble business because the yield between them was vast enough to make it negligible.
(Mystic Code Book Chapter 3)
Grand Valley, Glory Bell, and Goodwill Ranch are large enough that the demons don't invest in implanting trackers in the children like at Grace Field because it's too costly, though once the mass production farms begin during Peter's tenure as the 36th head of the Ratri Clan, the minuscule dent Bayon's hunts put on Grand Valley's output is even less conspicuous.
#another fave: James Smee and their stupidity building a shelter for cattle children right next to Bayon's house #like what? (via @officersnickers on this poll)
Are we sure that's the main Bayon clan property and not a vacation home he built after Peter approached him about using Goldy Pond as a hunting ground in September 2031? Or that James had control over where the path to the human world was located?
I'm not contesting the first one too hard because from what we can see of it in chapters 76 and 94 during the present, the architecture of the columns lines up with what's shown in Bayon's flashbacks in chapter 84:
It's not impossible with both his funds and his luxuriating in decadence in nearly every facet of his life for over a millennia that he had identical manors built, though for the convenience of avoiding confusion and because he never says anything indicating this, it's most likely the same one.
For the second question, we're not entirely sure how paths between the worlds are created.
(Chapter 72)
We know there were at least five of them (I'd guess there was one under Lambda 7214 too for Peter's convenience), but not whether the farms were constructed around the portals or if they were constructed and then the portals were put in later. My guess is the former, whether they're the result of the demon god purposely choosing their locations or if they were randomly scattered about with how the magic of separating the two worlds ended up playing out.
(Mystic Code Book Chapter 3)
We also only have confirmation of where Goldy Pond's elevator went since Emma's group doesn't physically walk down the stairs in Grace Field, the implementation of a new promise is involved, and visiting the Seven Walls was not required in James' plan to bring small groups of children over.
(Chapter 72 | 178)
It's still probably located somewhere in former New York City to explain why they end up there and how Mike Ratri reaches them so quickly, but for security and the transportation of goods, I doubt the Ratri clan would leave one unguarded on the beach they end up on.
This proximity also provides an explanation for why the children from all the other farms end up in different locations.
(Chapter 178 | 179)
So it's possible James didn't have complete control over the location of the path and just had to work with what was available.
