May 15th — the day Jin reached Shouro empire’s capital, Rozaito, Lishia and Pascaud had reached Sharuru city.
“Just a little longer till Kaina village. If we stay the night at Toka village and depart at dawn and hurry, we will be able to reach the Kaina village before nightfall.”
“Lishia-san, you have been there once, haven’t you?”
“Yes, in the autumn of last year, as a tax-collecting officer.”
The taxation system of Kurain kingdom is somewhat special.
Generally, the citizens pay taxes to the country. It can be wheat, minerals or money.
And the country pays the nobles’ wages with that tax.
This is because there are new nobles, knights and even nobles who do not have any land.
And the nobles who do have land get paid according to the size of their land. And as such, having lost Kaina village, count Walter’s wages have decreased.
However, looking at it from another perspective, it also means that the tax collected from the land by the country doesn’t really leave the land either.
In other words, most of the income gained from mineral or harvest from a newly cultivated land goes to the land owner.
The country buys these minerals. Because of this, count Walter’s own financial standing was quite high. At least until the salt incident.
The mining in the Inado cave was also one of his sources and that was why the incident about the forced labor of the criminals getting out was not known by the public.
“It was quite a disaster back then, getting attacked by the Unifier’s golem.”
Lishia said, patting the sword on her waist.
“Right. But you were the one who drove them away, right?”
As she had decided to say that after being requested by Jin, that is what Pascaud Rush thought of the incident.
“No, actually, Mr. Jin drove them away.”
However, there was no need to hide it anymore. The people above have known it long ago.
“I-is that true?! A magi craftsman did that? How?”
But it was hard for Pascaud to believe such contents.
“He cut through the golem with water magic that time, if I am not mistaken.”
“And how exactly would he go about doing that……”
He couldn’t understand even more now. Pascaud could also use magic. Pascaud specialized in wind magic and he was especially good with ‘wind cutter’ among them as well.
He didn’t even hear of that wind magic cutting such a metal golem.
/p>
“If I remember right, Mr. Jin called it ‘water jet’.”
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“Water jet, eh? ……… Haven’t heard of it.”
Pascaud was slowly starting to realize that Jin wasn’t just one of your usual magi craftsman.
There was some time left before it got dark so Lishia decided on doing a little sightseeing on her own. And she found a crowd in front of a certain shop.
Curious as to what it was about, she listened in for a while and found out that it was a quarrel about the salt price being too high.
“……That’s weird, there should be more than enough salt stored from what I have heard.”
As a member of the relief knight squad, there are times when she needs to do health management of the soldiers. At such a time, she got to know of the seriousness of deficiency of salt in soldiers and had checked with the inventory control about the reserve.
This year, Kurain kingdom should have more than enough salt in reserve.
“I wonder if someone is buying the goods unreasonably.”
However, no matter how much she thought about it, there was no reason to buy up all the salt around this area. Salt was circulating normally around here and even if one were to buy all of it at once, they wouldn’t make much of a profit either.
It would rather make the citizens suffer. And it would only increase their complaints to the landlords and the country.
“Don’t tell me, that is their reason?”
Lishia thought but if she didn’t know the meaning behind it, it would be meaningless to keep wondering about it and so she cleared her head and went back to the inn.
The following day, the two departed early, hurried with the horses and reached Toka village just before sunset.
There was a lodging house for soldiers there. Lishia and Pascaud stayed there.
Before it got dark, Lishia gave the carrier pigeon some fodder and water.
“Ah, cute.”
Lishia said. It was because that day the two pigeons had gotten chubby.
“I wonder if it’s cold to them now.”
During winter, the birds expand their feathers and store air between them to keep them warm. The two pigeons had their feathers expanded just like that.
“I guess I will give them a bit more food.”
/p>
Muttering that, Lishia gave the birds more than usual.
She then washed her hands and went for her food. Simple food for the soldier. To be honest, they weren’t delicious at all but as Lishia and Pascaud experienced the battlefield, they didn’t complain.
At that time, she heard something troubling from a soldier stationed nearby.
It seems this village was running short on salt, as well. Mysterious men and soldiers are buying all of it.
“Now that I think about it, I heard something similar in Doppa and Rakuno too,” said Pascaud.
Lishia didn’t hear anything like that but she could tell that Pascaud wasn’t lying.
“That’s weird…… I shall send a pigeon as soon as we get into Kaina village.”