Chapter 38: Sponsored (1)
The club Burning Suspension has closed its doors.
Not just closed, but burned to the ground.
Vikir burned down the entire hotel building that housed Burning Suspension.
...Roar!
The club's Burning Suspension, an enormous pyre of firewood.
The great den of devils, where the second and third generations of Sedoga gathered for the ultimate in luxury and pleasure, was burned to the ground in front of all the citizens.
Despite the fact that it was night, the city was as bright as day from the light emitted by the burning suspension.
A few slacker youths milled about in front of the club, their eyes full of regret.
"What's the matter, pigs?"
They fled with their tails between their legs as the pit bull knights lined up in front of the burning building.
Bikir hadn't just burned down the club.
The VVIPs who came in and out of the place, the seven children of the seven families who spent the most money and played the most extravagantly, were laid out in front of the burning club.
Only their heads remained.
Their severed heads bore the marks of torture.
Underneath, a long list of accusations of misdeeds they had committed in their lifetimes.
At dawn the next day, Bikir announced the executioner's position.
Without a spokesperson, he stepped out into the square.
"Before the law, caste is meaningless. Everyone is subject to the law."
The tone was nonchalant, but the impact was enormous.
Public opinion of Bikir was either favorable or extremely favorable.
The unfavorable were few and far between.
Everyone in the city of Underdog, in groups of three or more, hailed Vikir as a great ruler.
Of course, the native families who lost their pampered offspring would not stand idly by.
The House of Montblanc, the House of Pierre, the House of Louis Vuitton, the House of Channel, the House of Ferragamo, the House of Hermès, and the House of Prada each sent a letter of protest to the Court.
But Bikir was adamant.
"Not only were they involved in all sorts of crimes, but they were directly involved in the most taboo of imperial crimes, the 'illegal slave trade'. There can be no other consequence but death."
The imperial emperor treated the illegal slave trade as a felony of the highest quality.
This was because most of the slaves traded illegally were barbarians from outside the Empire.
Of course, this is not because the Emperor is concerned about the human rights of barbarians outside the Empire.
He is wary of the phenomenon of privateering, where another war is fought to capture them.
In order for local nobles to engage in privateering, they would have to recruit private soldiers, which could be done by treasonous conspiracy.
There was a risk that a slave hunt, conducted secretly and out of sight of the imperial court, could turn into a rebellion or coup.
Indeed, the fact that several large-scale rebellions of a few years earlier had their roots in troops organized for slave hunting was evidence of this.
So the emperor nominally said
"It is inevitable that war will create slaves, but it is not permissible to wage war to create slaves.
From then on, illegal slave trade was treated with the same weight as treason, a first-degree felony in the Empire.
Bikir cut to the chase.
"I have obtained all the notes issued by the seven executed prisoners, all the books they kept, all the cash they spent. These events are being duly investigated by the Baskervilles and will be reported to the Imperial Court."
To summarize: "Yes, if you refute, you are a traitor.
After this conversation, the seven families stopped protesting.
Now was not the time to sulk with Bikir over their anger and grief at the loss of their son.
He couldn't afford to do that when his family was about to be disgraced.
In the end, the heads of the seven haughty families came to the ruler's office in person, an unprecedented occurrence, kneeling and begging for forgiveness.
They were forced to bow down to the man who killed their sons and beg for their family's survival.
This is the price they pay for mis-educating their children.
They crouched, foreheads on the marble floor, but... Bikir was relentless.
"I have already examined all the black ledgers in the Burning Suspension. Those guilty will be summoned soon and their treatment will be determined according to their crimes."
The results, if written down, would fill countless pages.
But here are the key findings.
Paragraph 1. All property of the Montblanc, Pierre, Louis Vuitton, Channel, Ferragamo, Hermes, and Prada families shall be confiscated and placed in the treasury.
*Only those properties that have been earned through illegal activities should be confiscated, but at this point it is virtually impossible to distinguish between legal and illegal properties, so they are confiscated in full.
Section 2. The House of Montblanc, the House of Pierre, the House of Louis Vuitton, the House of Channel, the House of Ferragamo, the House of Hermes, and the House of Prada shall be destroyed for treason.
The reference point is the seven people executed on January 0.
Section 3. The members of the House of Montblanc, the House of Pierre, the House of Louis Vuitton, the House of Channel, the House of Ferragamo, the House of Hermes, and the House of Prada who are involved in this case shall be punished by double the sentence under the special provisions of the Noblesse Oblige.
Paragraphs 1 and 2 do not overlap.
It can also be summarized in three short lines.
-You.
-That's it.
-Fucked.
The blood hasn't dried on the floor of the execution chamber in a while, thanks to the arrival of a new deputy magistrate.
The foul blood of the vermin that had been feeding on the city.
"The flower beds will be richer for it."
Vikir muttered to himself as he looked at the flowerbeds at the foot of the death chamber and the flowers that bloomed there.
The white lilies that the Chihuahua had so carefully tended had turned into red lilies.
...Whatever.
The ruling circles in the provincial capitol, who had been dictating policy decisions at every turn, dropped their heads in silence, and the provincial tribesmen, who had been farting around, now shuddered at the mere shadow of a government official.
The seven indigenous families who might have been able to play a power game with Bikir were uprooted and effectively exterminated.
Moreover, rumors that Vikir held some of the Baskervilles' military authority had gained traction in other cities.
Who in the world wouldn't hold their breath in the presence of a Baskerville military commander?
There were no longer any underdog cities that stood in Vikir's way.
On the contrary, a new group of people was emerging to give him wings.
"Indeed, the viciousness of the Seven Native Houses has crossed the line."
"If you're going to accuse the new Deputy of cruelty at the hands of the old, you might as well accuse me first."
"New flesh does not come from begging and pleading. Rotten flesh must be cut out. You deserved it."
One after another, clean signers who had been penalized for their honesty, or nobles who had been dismissed for being too clean, or who had been forced to live in foster homes, declared their support for Bikir.
They had no power or wealth, but they were honored and trusted by the common people, known as "intellectuals," "teachers," and "mentors.
Their support for Bikir's bold reforms grew as more and more Confucian intellectuals followed suit.
As a watershed moment, Bikir reinterpreted all past precedents and freed all wrongfully convicted prisoners and prisoners of conscience.
As a result of this process, the massive manpower required to uncover the truth of the past led to a massive hiring spree of additional government employees and contractors, which significantly reduced the unemployment rate in the underdog city.
The shortfall in the payroll budget was covered by the tax revenues generated by the crackdown on the illegal underground economy.
This has prompted the citizens of Underdog City to organize daily mass protests in front of the city hall.
<Deputy Mayor Bikir to stay in office permanently!
<We strongly urge! Deputy Vikir to stay in the city of Underdog forever!
<I love you, Bikir>.
It was a protest for the love of it.
* * *
Mr. Chihuahua's secretary is single-minded.
The distrust and disdain that had greeted Bikir's arrival had been washed away.
"Are you at work, sir? Here's your coffee."
"If you're the head of the office, mind your own business. You don't need to bring me coffee."
"This is a personal thank you. Didn't you save me from being stabbed by a clown the other day?"
"Then a cup of coffee is too salty for a lifesaver."
"It's not too salty, it's two primes of sugar and ten thousand of water."
The two have gotten to know each other well enough that they now joke around like this.
Bikir is currently teaching the Chihuahua how to write.
More precisely, how to mimic different typefaces.
With that handwriting, Bikir is creating new laws and updating old ones.
Vikir was making new laws and updating old ones: developing the ruby mines with Morg, stabilizing the price of agricultural products, rewarding those who did good work for the fief, giving slaves immunity from taxes when they did good work, developing backward areas equally, institutionally guaranteeing the benefits of following laws with penalties for breaking them, taxing merchants outside the fief, raising taxes on the wealthy, lowering taxes on the poor, dispelling superstitions, nationalizing land, and more....
Of the laws that would be enacted in the future, Bikir cherry-picked the ones that had worked well and refined them to fit the current social climate.
Naturally, the legislators were impressed with Bikir's knowledge of the law, and scratched their heads even more.
The city of Underdog was going from strength to strength.
"...are you really 15 years old?"
Bikir chewed on the Chihuahua's question in awe.
With that, Bikir began the most important task of the day.
"Secretary."
"Yes."
The Chihuahua trotted over and stood beside him.
Bikir continued in his nonchalant tone.
"Is there any Tio left in the dungeon right now?"
Updated from fr𝒆ewebnov𝒆l.(c)om