433 Corrupt Nobles
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Within the castle of Eastgrain, many aristocrats gathered for an emergency meeting between them all, called by nobody else than the Lord of this Fiefdom, the son of the former lord who was overthrown through a coup d’état his son settled on him. This enormous country has been brought through countless political fights and problems, most of the time, regarding the large population of demons.
The previous Lord desired the demons to live in peace with humans and tried to use the funds of the country towards that. however, due to the distaste of his son towards his father’s ideologies, he gathered many that thought like him and overthrow the current government, going as far as killing his own father to take over the throne.
Since that day, many of the laws put to protect demons were taken away and the demons were brought back to their former non-citizen status, treated lesser than dogs, enslaved, mistreated, and used as objects. Since that day, the new Lord had thought that things would finally go his way, and that this fiefdom would finally become his ideal country.
But that wasn’t the case, year after year, there were disputes between the selfish aristocrats he put below his command. The only ones that ended accepting such a thing as a coup d’état were old and conservational men that only cared about their own pockets, sharing, and caring for the rest of the population was never part of their plans, and he had a very hard time trying to make them donate to the country so things could be improved regarding the enormous percentage of the population which was in poverty.
Despite his wicked ways, the Lord still cared about his own people, the humans, and wanted them to flourish and live happily after the war that shook the entire continent years ago. However, his ideal world was far from his reach, the people he had given the titles to command this fiefdom were terrible at their job...
At the end, expansion plans were always held on halt as the other aristocrats didn’t wanted nor agreed to them and wanted to earn money in the cheapest and easiest ways possible. Some of them included making of this fiefdom’s greatest source of income the illegal sale of slaves, alongside colluding with criminal organizations to exploit the citizens with drugs and other things, generating money without having to waste any in exchange. Instead of being worried about the production of food and more, the only thing they wanted is to become richer and richer in the easiest of methods possible.
This clearly frustrated the Lord, who had attempted to force them to cooperate with him, but time and time again, he had been stopped by his own supporters who threatened him with the power they had accumulated... And now, from all things, a thing as big as a Dungeon Break occurred, killing dozens of innocents in the process. However, although this was a catastrophe provoked by a mysterious demon cult, the nobles present here were all worried because of another matter, which was much more important to them than dealing with this mysterious cult capable of summoning a True Demon and provoking Dungeon Breaks.
“There are no slaves!”
.....
BAAAM!
A fat man wearing golden clothes hit the table furiously, the other men, mostly all fat as well, also agreed with his rage.
“Slaves?” The young lord asked intrigued.
“Haven’t you learned, my lord? All the organizations that carry the handle of slaves had begun to sell all their products to a single and small organization! Without them available, how can we even continue living?” Wondered a second fat noble.
“Don’t you think they might be planning to resell them later?” Sighed the young Lord.
“Wha...?! Of course we thought that beforehand!” One of them said. “We attempted to contact them, but time and time again, they only offered their other products and nothing else... they want to sell the slaves to another country or something! those slaves are our property! They should give them over!”
“Are slaves that important?” Sighed the Lord. “Shouldn’t we use this opportunity that you’re not focused on them so we can improve the daily life of our people? Also, the investigation of the cult, has it given any fruits?”
“Hm? Ah... the investigation? Well, if you were not so unwilling to help us get our slaves back, we would... be more willing to help you in that as well, milord.” Said the man that had previous slammed the table with his big and fat arms.
“What?! So you’ve not done a single thing this entire time while I have employed almost all my knights into this investigation?!” Asked the Lord. “I have also tried employing adventurers but we have completely lost their trust after we allowed that dungeon break to happen out of nowhere, and those S Ranked Adventurers have completely ignored all my attempts at communicating with them...” The young lord sighed, as if tired of everything.
“Milord, with all due respect, if you aid us at assessing the slaves-”
“ENOUGH WITH THAT!”
BAAAM!
The young lord slammed the table now, shattering it with his innate strength. Although he wasn’t the strongest out there, he was a man who had reached Tier 3 of his Physique through intensive physical training since he was four years of age, he was strong enough that he could easily kill single-handedly every pig sitting around this table... but he knew that their connections could easily put too much trouble on his life, especially to his family.
However, right now, he was growing desperate, the threat of the Demon Cult was a real thing, and he simply couldn’t let that keep going on for too long.
“T-Then we should simply apprehend all the demons in the city, no? There are still a few that are living normally...”
“Yeah! That big orphanage over there, specially...”
“Most of the free demons are living on the slums, we should go pick them up then.”
“Tch...” The young lord sighed, he felt like the only thing these twisted men only thought about was having slaves, collecting slaves, raping slaves, torturing slaves, and getting even more.
However, what they said made some sense to him, if they could simply capture as many demons as they could, they could easily find out more about this demon-exclusive cult by interrogating them all.
Children or not... they were all demons after all.
“Go on then... Do that.” He sighed.
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