Apocalyptic Dragonborn Lord

Chapter 23 Internal Affairs System Implementation
After a series of tossing, Stannis breathed a sigh of relief, and finally succeeded in renewing his life.

Debt has been suppressed to just 30% of its original level, eliminating the deficit for the first time in more than a dozen quarters.

Although it is still very difficult, for example, there is no army, there are almost zero public facilities in the territory, the management system is in chaos, and there are three guys in the castle who eat and drink for free, but at least there is hope. Although the future is unpredictable, it is not just a set of death chess.

Due to the cut off of the tax to be paid this time, after repaying part of the debt, he finally had a little property left in his warehouse, which piled up the grain handed in by the farmers and the output of his own field.

It seems that in this era, tax in kind is still the main thing. Stannis is well aware of the disadvantages of this tax payment method. There are a lot of losses and tricks in the middle link. It is time to implement a whip method like Zhang Gelao.

However, the premise of implementing a whip method is that there is a large amount of convertible currency. However, Stannis has traveled for so long, and he has never seen even a real coin. This is the case with the lord, let alone those peasants who are suffering all day long. , They are bound on their own land, and the exchange of commodities still adopts the most primitive barter, and there is no demand for currency at all.

Fortunately, there is still an economically viable place in his territory.

After the fat little businessman Albert was let go last time, and a series of preferential policies were advertised to him, the number of businessmen passing through his territory has increased by five times, and there is always an endless stream of people on the road. Caravan, their arrival made the open space in front of the castle very lively.

Stannis led Korodov on a tour with his hands behind his back. Since he had no money, his promise to build a barracks for his knight commander could not be fulfilled, which also made the latter follow behind him all day long. Stannis was annoyed by him.

"Good day, honorable lord!" A little fat man jumped in front of him lively, it was Albert, and he saw the lord immediately with sharp eyes.

Stannis smiled and nodded at him too, and the guy seemed to be doing well with the publicity.

"I didn't expect there to be so many merchants." Stannis thought the economy of this ghost place was stagnant.

"This is only a small part. More of my compatriots are rushing here after hearing the good news that they don't need to pay."

Stannis was beaming, as his nets caught more and more fish.

"By the way, what kind of goods are you selling all the time?" He asked curiously.

The little fat man gave him a strange look, "My lord, don't you know? Merchants in the entire eastern region are now desperately buying grain and transporting it to the north!"

"North, is there something important going on there?" Stannis still didn't know why.

"The Empire is at war with the Rhodoks Republic!"

[Republic of Rhodoks], the recently unified Northern Rhodoks is competing with the Empire for the hegemony of the Western Continent.

"No wonder, it turns out that there is a war, and that is really a good opportunity to make a fortune in war." Stannis nodded suddenly, and then he looked at the fat businessman with malicious intentions: "Then you get rich! Do you want to make a fortune?" Donate points to my territory to earn reputation?"

As soon as money was mentioned, it seemed that the lives of the Lanana people were about to be killed. Albert quickly cried and became poor, "Where do you get rich? There are robbers and robbers everywhere along the way. It's not bad to hand over half of it, even if it's shipped there, if a greedy quartermaster recruits it in the name of the empire, it will be lost."

"It's such an exaggeration, the public is more bandit than bandit." Stannis felt that he was a bit out of place as a lord, no wonder his group of people urged him to rob caravans all day long.

"By the way." He thought of another thing, "How do you and my villagers conduct transactions? I don't think you carry any coins."

Albert seemed to have been brooding over this matter for a long time, "There is nothing we can do about it! Because your farmers only accept things in exchange for their grain and materials, so we have to transport a bunch of them every time. We exchanged daily necessities with them. Sometimes the food they gave us was not enough to exchange for our goods, so they just took some green fir to make up for it, and we refused to take it back and surrounded us to prevent us from leaving.”

"Green fir? What the hell!" Stannis had heard of yew, fir, and spruce. This was the first time he had heard of green fir. Could it be the old green pine next door?
Korodov explained, "A tall tree, very hard, suitable for building houses and making bows."

"Yeah, these logs are big and worthless, what use do we have for them!"

"That's really troublesome." Stannis secretly delighted.

"No way!"

Stannis pretended to think about it, and then said what he had conceived a long time ago, "In this way, when you go down to collect grain in the future, you will only pay them."

Albert looked distressed: "We are very welcome, but the gangsters under you... The simple peasants don't accept our coins, they call them 'shiny gadgets'."

Stannis waved his hand without hesitation, "It doesn't matter, I will issue a decree today, stipulating that in the future, farmers can only use coins to pay taxes, so when they sell things to you, they can only collect coins!"

As soon as his words fell, the Grand Maester Romon came out of nowhere, and he shouted loudly as if he had already prepared, "This is absolutely impossible, Your Excellency!"

Stannis was taken aback by him. "Where did you come from? Old man!"

Bachelor Romon didn't answer him, he waved his hands and started to sound alarmist, "Your Excellency, this is the rule set by the first generation of Lord Justin. He can only accept the things his subjects planted hard with their hands, and keep them away from coins." ', your wise forefathers saw riches as a source of corruption."

Stannis curled his lips in disdain, obviously everyone is so poor to implement this system!Unexpectedly, there are also reactionary forces in this world who hold that the "law of the ancestors is immutable", represented by the old man in front of him.

Bachelor Romon was still chattering about feeling good about himself, citing scriptures, going up to the country, down to the people's livelihood, anyway, he had a reason.

Stannis yawned when he heard this, and finally said only one sentence, "If you agree to pay taxes in currency, I will restore your 'support allowance for the elderly over 70 years old'."

"I am in favor of paying taxes in currency. Taxes in kind should have been thrown into the dustbin of history long ago." The grand maester, who was accustomed to playing around with the wind, immediately changed the direction of the wind.

Satisfied, Stannis turned his head to Albert, "The biggest problem has been solved, what else do you have to worry about? If you are still not at ease, I will add another article after the decree: If the subjects under my rule do not accept currency If you pay, you will be punished. Idiot, what should be the punishment for violating the lord's law?"

Korodov calmed down and said, "Whip!"

Of course the little fat man was very happy.

"However," Stannis changed the subject, "You must buy at the market price. If I find out that you dared to fool my subjects, charging low and selling high... Humph. Idiot, what should be the punishment for cheating the lord?"

"Hanging for public display!"

The little fat man's face turned green.

"So serious?" Stannis also felt that it seemed a little too much.

Albert said cautiously again, "Sir, can I give you a suggestion? The output in your territory is too low, especially the ground wheat, almost one-third of which is adulterated wheat bran. Can't sell for a good price."

"I'm also struggling with this. I've always wanted to build a water mill, but it seems that there are no engineers around."

Let Stannis say that the working principle of the water mill is okay, but let him be a design dog to draw pictures and then become an infrastructure dog to do construction.

Albert's eyes lit up, "Since you said so, my lord, I can help you solve it. A few days ago, I heard that a lord was going to sell a water mill in his territory. If you really want it, I can be a middleman, as long as you give me a hundred gold coins, I promise to dismantle all those machines for you and rebuild them as they are."

"Can this thing be sold?" Stannis was surprised, after all, that thing is a big guy.

"Of course, don't talk about this, even if you want to sell the title of the territory, I can help you find a buyer."

Stannis was very moved by the words. He pointed to the castle behind him, "Then help me exchange this ugly thing for the water mill."

Albert's face showed embarrassment, "It's probably hard to find a buyer for this one."

This rubbish ruin looks really hard to sell. In order to build the LV2-level building 'Water Mill' as soon as possible, Stannis lost everything to raise money, so he had to take out all the remaining output that was sent to the warehouse, and added that Annie gave him jewelry. The jewelry box finally gathered the down payment of 50 gold coins and handed it to Albert.

"Okay, my lord, next time I come back, I'll bring the water mill over and install it for you." Albert happily drove away from the square with a full load of goods.

(End of this chapter)