Chapter 333: Chapter 221: Coping with Calamity
This is it?
That was David’s impression after arriving at the storage room of the Governor’s Mansion in Port Wallens.
Utterly shabby!
The governor of a major port, in office for at least twenty years, possessed paltry assets equivalent to less than two thousand pounds of gold.
Yes, that was about equivalent to the sum his father Attilicia’s childhood friend, Shalaina, had lent to his father—roughly one-third of the treasure he himself had squeezed out of Spider Nest City back then.
There were some Magical Items inside, but most were low-level, useless trinkets. After glancing at a few of the more presentable pieces, David lost all interest in identifying them individually.
He even instinctively suspected that Lady Freymia might have hidden some away.
But seeing the Countess’s somber, composed expression and Drow Alianna’s silence, David dismissed the thought, which had caused Wrath to stir within him.
The former wouldn’t have the nerve, and with the latter’s Drow expertise, it would be nearly impossible for her to hide anything.
Freymia, shrewd as she was, clearly saw the disdain in David’s eyes. Anxious for her own safety, she quickly explained, "Prince David Uthos, please calm your anger. The agricultural tax and port commerce tax for this quarter will be remitted at the end of the month. At that time... things will be somewhat more ample."
When David heard the Countess explain that an additional three hundred and twenty pounds of gold—roughly seventeen thousand six hundred Luwalden Gold Coins—would arrive at the end of the month, he was rendered utterly speechless regarding the economy of human city-states.
This only served to demonstrate that this Governor of Wallens was truly poor. Hmm, or perhaps, not too poor by the standards of human nobility?
At least Port of Wallens had commerce taxes to collect, and that constituted the bulk of its revenue!
As he continued to converse with the former Countess, David came to understand that this was indeed the reality of the situation.
The primary limitations were human technology and productivity, which inherently restricted overall wealth creation. Simultaneously, the tax system was underdeveloped. Nobles often relied on income from agricultural production by peasants on their lands, a source that was typically unstable and limited.
Mage Lords were generally quite wealthy, but then again, they were the elite. Many mid to high-level Mages established their own Mage Towers, operating outside the conventional economic system. If Nobles wanted a Mage to serve them, not only were Spellcasters generally exempt from taxes, but the Nobles also had to spend considerable sums to maintain such patronage.
Under the feudal system, Nobles had a duty to protect their lands and peasants. As the saying goes, "The vassal of my vassal is not my vassal." Taxes were passed up through layers of lordship, and Nobles also bore the responsibility of equipping their Vassal knights and maintaining castles. These duties required substantial financial investment, but due to limited income, they were often strapped for cash. A suit of enchanted plate armor was considered a family heirloom, and anyone possessing a few Magical Items would eagerly display them.
Furthermore, since the political upheaval forty-five years ago, the fragmented realm of Luwalden had been in constant turmoil. These wars consumed vast resources and wealth. Nobles had to pay exorbitant costs for warfare, including recruiting and equipping armies, and constructing fortifications. Such expenses sometimes even exceeded their financial capabilities. Consequently, it was common for some Nobles to live in debt.
Gods! David thought. In his previous life, he had only regarded jokes about the Middle Ages as memes. Now that he was personally involved, he was shocked at how truly miserable these people’s lives were.
This wasn’t Ferren, after all. Human civilization in Central Earth was rather backward. If the Drow hadn’t been so tenaciously holding back the High Elves, once those Elves had recovered and swept across the New Continent, Granyel would have undoubtedly become its hegemon.
Suddenly, David felt a pang of sympathy for the Elf King Ailiando. He clearly had the potential to be a great restorer of Elven glory but was instead forced by circumstances into becoming a mad king whose power and sanity seemingly seeped away in silence.
At the same time, David finally understood. It wasn’t that the Governor of Port Wallens was too poor; rather, it was that Dragons—and the Elves he had frequently dealt with—were simply too wealthy!
But on reflection, it made sense. The Drow were notorious for their lawless smuggling of Magical Items and even Hallucinatory Potions across the world. Meanwhile, the High Elves, with their more advanced magical workshops compared to humans, effectively monopolized luxury goods, Magical Items, and Alchemy Potions in Elariya.
And the final, most crucial point: compared to humans, they were all Long-lived Races.
Longevity meant a greater accumulation and stability of wealth, unlike human inheritance, where each succession often led to re-division and even turmoil.
Ultimately, it was a matter of perspective. He, a Dragon who had browsed the Chromatic Dragon Queen’s Dragon’s Treasury—a hoard rivaling the divine realm of the Sin of Lust—found looking at the collections of human Nobles to be a profound letdown, utterly failing to stir the slightest ripple of excitement within him.
After piecing all this together, David suddenly realized he might have overestimated the humans of Elariya’s Central Earth.
Given how impoverished they were, did he even need to employ the old strategy of ’build high walls, stockpile grain, and bide my time before claiming the throne’?
As long as there wasn’t a gathering of legendary figures like among the High Elves, it seemed he could just steamroll his way through with over a hundred Dragons under his command!
Arrogance.
This gave David the peculiar sensation of having just cleared a high-difficulty dungeon, only to suddenly return to the novice village armed with Divine Artifacts and leading an army of tier-three soldiers.