Chapter 125: CH 119

When the four of us (without Frenssen) entered the conference room, all the geezers in the room turned their gazes at us.

Most of them seemed to be evaluating me but some of them clearly looked down on me, who was a youngster. Geezers, you think your gazes were scary? I had even faced the Crown Prince and military commanders because of my arbitrary leave in Finnoi. This much was nothing.

“Greeting. I’m Welner von Zeavert, the new governor of Anheim. Pleased to see you all, Sirs.”

“Congratulations on your appointment, Viscount-sama.”

The old man who was sitting in the highest seat at the table bowed to me first and the rest followed suit. That guy was probably the Pledgers’ leader. After all of us finished our introduction, I immediately jumped to the job. I gave a signal to the officials and they started to pass around the portrait I had prepared.

“This is…?”

“This guy is Mangold. Some of you might have seen this guy before.”

The Pledgers’ reaction to my words was all different. Some of them took a second look at the portrait while some of them looked in my direction. Everyone here must have remembered the face of Marquis Knap, their former lord, but they might have never seen or have seen but have forgotten, the face of their lord’s eldest son. After all, this world didn’t have any television. For the time being, I would ignore their reaction and continue.

By the way, this portrait was made by this country’s legal officials.

“As Sirs probably have heard, Mangold has caused many disturbances in the capital.”

“By giving us this portrait, are you saying that Mangold… is in this town?”

“No, that’s not my meaning, but he has indeed disappeared, and the most likely place for him to flee is to the former Marquisate Knap.”

That guy hesitated while saying Mangold, probably because he wasn’t used to calling Mangold with no honorifics. After all, Mangold was still the son of the family who had been the lord of this land for generations. Although, objectively speaking, there was no reason or benefit for anyone to be respectful to Mangold, breaking a habit that had been passed from generation to generation was still hard.

“I would like all of you to help me ensure Mangold isn’t hidden anywhere in the Anheim region, including town. Anyone who is found to be hiding Mangold will be punished according to the kingdom’s law.”

I purposely emphasized the kingdom’s law in order to leave an impression that the kingdom was standing behind me, exactly like the idiom ‘the fox borrows the tiger’s awe’. 

I reviewed the current situation inside of my head while watching everyone whisper to each other.

Because the kingdom ordered me to fight Gezarius and protect this border from the demon army, I have no other choice but to deal with the region’s internal politics first.

Although I still had questions about the truth of this world, the answer wasn’t something I could get by only looking through the record in Zeavert’s mansion. I needed to do more deep research to find my answers, but I couldn’t just throw away my job in Anheim to do that. Serving the royal court was a hard job.

I also had suspicions about Gezarius. I think he might have roamed freely in the capital since after I had fought with the demon outbreak, yet what he did in that long time was only to lure Mangold to work together with him. That made no sense.

Because of that suspicion, I had asked Father to investigate what Puckler did while he was still in the capital. I had a bad feeling that if I didn’t take care of Gezarius soon, something terrible would happen. That was why, for now, I had put aside all of my questions about this world and focused my attention on dealing with Gezarius and his army. The road was still long until Mazell would defeat the demon king. My stomach hurt…

By the way, the town governance in this world was done through a group of representatives called ‘the Pledgers Council’. The Pledgers Council was an organization where the heads of the various guilds in a town gathered.

To put it in simpler terms, the Pledgers Council was like an economic organization where the CEOs of various companies gathered in my previous life, with the leader of various guilds as members instead of CEOs. The name ‘Pledgers Council’ came from the fact that its members had pledged allegiance to the King despite the fact that all of its members belong to their own organization.

For example, if the citizens requested a bridge repair, that request would be first brought up to the Pledgers Council, and after that, the governor and the Pledgers Council would discuss whether that repair was truly necessary. If it was necessary, they would discuss how much of the town’s budget should be used for that repair and how much temporary tax should be collected to cover the cost of repair. In this kind of situation, the temporary tax was often in the form of labor forces, not money.

The Pledgers Council would also form several committees with the members of the council as the committees’ members and each of these committees would be responsible for managing the taxes revenue, financial accounting, and judicial affairs of the town. In case someone committed an assault crime in the town, two members of the Pledgers Council and four government officials would work together to form a committee that would be responsible for the trial of the assault crime.

As for the town officials, their position was below the committee formed by the Pledgers Council. Their job was similar to corporate middle management in my previous world. In addition, the captain of the town’s guard was usually also a member of the Pledgers Council, and the guard itself was made up of the town’s citizens. This was how the governance system in a town usually worked, while the capital had a more structured governance system.

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The size of the Pledgers Council was also different depending on the towns. You could also know what sort of town it was by observing its Pledgers Council. For example, the leader of the Ore Guild would become a member of the Pledgers Council if the town had a mine near it, while for the town that didn’t have any mine near it but rather got their tax revenue from farming and rearing animals, then the leader of the Ore guild wouldn’t become the member of that town’s Pledgers Council.

What was unique or should I say ‘as expected’ was the fact that the leader of the Adventurer Guild would become a member of the Pledgers Council of all towns.

After all, the Adventurer Guild played an important role in almost all the economic sectors of the town. It was important to have their representative in Pledgers Council to ensure better coordination with other guilds.

Another unique thing about the Pledgers Council of this world was to only have one religious leader as its member. In my previous world, the same area could have different churches from different religious orders, such as the church of Jesuit or the church of Dominicans, so if something like the Pledgers Council existed in my previous world, there would be more than one religious leader inside of it. However, the church of this world was united. Well, an internal power struggle between the Supreme Priest faction and other factions did exist, but at least on the outside, the whole church was united. Moreover, it was common here for a town to only have one church.

Also, the church of this world worked as both a religious facility and a medical facility, so the head of the church here naturally had quite a bit of influence. I hoped at least the head of the church in this town was neutral to me.

“Incidentally, I heard that you had exterminated several bandits’ groups.”

“Yeah. It’s best to take care of what I can do now as soon as possible.”

“As the representative of the Commerce Guild, I would like to thank you for restoring the public order on the road. Also, I had heard that the bandits’ leaders would be executed.”

“Correct. As for the rest of the bandits, they would be sentenced to forced labor.”

In a town that was located in a suburb like this Anheim town, prisons did exist but it wasn’t built to be able to keep criminals for a long period, plus the town didn’t have enough personnel to guard the prisoners 24/7 for a long period. We also couldn’t afford the resources and effort that would be needed to transport all criminals here to the capital that had the facility for long-time imprisonment, so unless the criminal did a truly horrible crime, criminals caught in suburban towns like Anheim would be sentenced to forced labor.

They were treated pretty similar to the slaves in my previous world. But unlike the slaves in my previous world, the criminals facing forced labor sentences would often be released if their work was good and they had worked long enough. The treatment of the laborers that worked in the town was also better compared to the treatment of the laborers that worked in the mines since typically, laborers that worked in the mine were criminals who were punished directly by the country because of their heavier crime.

Though, I also couldn’t say that the laborers that worked in the town lived comfortably. Depending on what work they were assigned to, their life expectancy might decrease.

No law stated exactly how long a criminal must become a forced laborer. If the Pledgers Council in that town said that the criminal had done enough labor, then he would be set free. This method of sentencing a criminal to forced labor without any set deadline might be effective so the criminal could truly repent before they were once again set free. There were also cases where the governor was the one who decided that the criminal could be set free, but normally the governor couldn’t ignore the will of the Pledgers Council to set free anyone that the governor wanted.

“How will the laborers be distributed?”

“I will leave that decision to the Sirs here.”

“Well, well, that was quite generous of you, Sir.”

My answer invited some probing gazes from the Pledgers, but some of the Pledgers also sent me a grateful look. Because you didn’t need to pay any salaries to the forced laborers and you only needed to give them food, many guilds wanted them. There were even towns where the Pledgers Council would send out security forces on purpose to catch criminals to make them into forced laborers.

But when the Pledgers did this, most of the distribution of the laborers had already been decided beforehand. This time, though, I caught all the bandits without the Pledgers’ help and I didn’t use any of the town budgets, so I could distribute the laborers freely under the authority of the governor. Yet I threw that chance away.

“There are still many things that I haven’t understood about this region, so in the future, I would like to make my decision after consulting with the council according to the order of importance. Let us discuss this order of importance together later.”

My decision made some of the Pledgers click their tongues. I guess some of these guys were planning to give the ‘ignorant governor’ documents that were advantageous for them to stamp, but they wouldn’t be able to do that since anything that would require my approval would now need to be brought in front of the council first.

As expected, I couldn’t let my guard down around these guys.

“I still have to check the documents regarding this territory’s governance in the past so I want to end the meeting here, but before I leave, are there any urgent things that Sirs wishes to discuss with me?”

“There is none. Thank you for your consideration, Viscount-sama.”

The meeting ended with the old man, who seemed to be the most important person in the Pledgers Council, bowing his head to me. I guess this old man was still just observing the situation, so for now, everything worked up in my favor. I guess the ‘first round’ was my win.

Before anyone in the Pledgers Council started to say stuff like, ‘I’ll teach that young man how ignorant he is!’, I would make my next move.

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