The dragon's harem

Chapter 1774: The Four Times

“That is the problem.” Arad leaned back and looked at Ross. “I don’t know how to make those rules. Baltos knows a bit, but he doesn’t have the required knowledge to achieve what I want.” He then leaned back on the table, and Ross took a deep breath.

“So, what is it that your Majesty wants?” Ross asked, even though he somewhat knew the answer. Arad here wasn’t taking taxes from the people, it was difficult to expect he could maintain dungeons and keep criminals in check, so he wanted another way to deal with an influx of prisoners, the dangerous ones.

“Efficiency, if someone’s sentence is a lifetime in jail or execution, I would much rather send them away to work and earn the state and the victims a penny instead of just wasting precious gold on them.”

Arad’s empire had a lot of money, but he would rather spend it on something good, like building schools for children, than paying for the food and heating for criminals in jail. If all thieves worked for the guild and followed its rules, then he wouldn’t have to throw them in jail, the same for Eris’s assassins and Abel’s workers. A few weeks ago, Arad had seen the budget Baltos spent on jails, and he was appalled.

From security, food, firewood, or magic stones for heating, and constant desk jobs that go into maintaining the order of the dungeons, Baltos could’ve used that money to build ten schools, five healing churches, and a park for the kids!

“I won’t be paying a single copper to maintain the life of a weird called Vilo that kills kids and women for fun, and no, I’m not executing him either, because I don’t want his family to keep getting paid from the castle’s treasury for the rest of their lives. I’ll have him work to the bones for his food and shelter, and work even more to pay for the victim’s insurance.” Arad glared at Ross.

“That is where you come into play. Selling them as slaves allows us to get a one-time large payment that reduces the work, and I can even be the one to buy and send them to work whenever I want.” He looked at everyone around, and then set another example.

“Let’s get back to Vilo. He is now being sold as a slave to the castle, and was now sent to work in the coal mines.” Arad smiled. “That’s a harsh job, so we don’t want regular people to get hurt, so we send criminals there. A normal worker would earn five gold coins a month working eight hours a day, but Vilo would earn seven gold coins for working twelve hours a day. Then, five gold coins of those are sent to the victim’s family, one gold coin is taxes to the castle, and one gold coin would cover his food and shelter for the month.”

Ross stared at Arad, “If eight hours is five golds, then twelve hours should be seven and a half.”

Arad smiled. “By design, I won’t be giving a criminal a better work deal than a regular person.” He then pointed at him. “You’re a crucial part of this system. The justice system.”

Eris looked at Ross. “Of course, any crime that won’t earn the criminal life in jail or the death penalty won’t get them enslaved.” And then Jack, who was asleep, lifted a finger, “Unless they want to. I don’t think Arad should pass up the chance of getting someone’s money for a bastard or two.” He turned his head and looked at Arad.

“Allow people to bail people out of jail with money, and make the slave contract mandatory as assurance. Basically, Guy A bails a criminal from jail and becomes his master by the slave contract. If a year later that criminal committed another crime, Guy A would be held accountable for getting him out, and because he is his master and could control him.”

Arad smiled, “So, added accountability for bailing people out, the slave contract is just to make sure they have no excuse.”

Ross lifted his hand, “Your Majesty, I understand what you want to achieve, but… this might sound weird coming from a slaver. Slavery isn’t all that good; that is why the late King Baltos put a book of laws to make sure the slaves aren’t abused or harmed. We can’t just ignore all of that. Besides, justice is a complicated thing; we can’t make someone suffer for a lifetime for a ruling that might later be proven wrong.”

Arad looked at him, “You’re right, if I was Baltos.” He looked to his side at Eris. “But I seem to have a goddess of murder here… My Love, Eris. Care to remind me what that Guy Vilo did? From what you saw as the goddess of murder.”

Eris stared at Arad for a second, “Vilo assaulted, violated, and killed five kids, nine women, two guys, and burned a house.”

“See? If I can make sure they did that crime and deserve their fate, then everything is set.” He leaned back. “I’ll worry about the legal side, you just do your job, buy, sell, and make a profit.”

The meeting went on for a few more minutes as they discussed some details, argued about a few things, and finally decided to make changes to their plan in real time based on how things would go.

Arad still had so much to deal with, and so they all went their separate ways. Eris headed to her church, Jack to his house, Abel to his job, and Ross returned to his shop, exhausted and shaken.

Jack barely made it back to his house, which was a large mansion right beside the castle, meaning he was able to just go down the stairs, walk through the castle’s garden, get out of the back door, and enter his mansion through a secret tunnel.

Jack had this mansion built from scratch, and he even went as far as to ask Meryem, one of Arad’s wives, to get her daughters to dig him a cave beneath it. That cave was now his base of operation, a hideout where he has all of his tools, makes all of his traps, and concocts all of his poisons.

From that cave, he could head up through a few secret passages and finally emerge inside his basement. He was tired and felt as if he could pass out at any moment. Each step felt heavier than the one before, and his vision quickly blurred.

“Jack?” A voice called him as he leaned on the wall, and when he looked, a ten-foot-tall naked woman with dark skin, long black hair, black eyes, and an angry face glared at him as if he were a bug that crawled out of the sewers.

Immediately after, a second woman, as if the twin of the first, appeared from behind her, but this was pure white, her skin so pale that her veins were almost visible, her hair blindingly white, and so were her cold eyes.

“He is tired, leave him alone.” The white one growled, and the black one glared at, “You speak as if we aren’t the same.”

As they were about to argue, another woman appeared, just like the first two, but she looked normal, like the Lydia Jack knew and loved. And right behind her was a red one who blushed the moment she saw him.

Those four women were all Lydia, her true archon form. Dusk, Dawn, Noon, and Midnight. Each one of them held an aspect of Amaterasu’s power, and reached her peak at their specific times. As the four of them stood together, they all threw a hungry glance at Jack for a moment before quickly giving up.

“I’ve got the bed ready; you can go to sleep. You deserve some rest, and sorry about earlier.” They all spoke at simultaneously and with the same voice.

“You just greeted me, that’s all.” He looked at Midnight, but the four shook their heads, “No, I was talking about after we fought Nyar and returned here…” The four looked at each other, “Then back at Jack… I might’ve gone overboard.”

Jack smiled, approached, and tried to wrap his arms around them. Sadly, his arms were too small to engulf four, ten-foot-tall giants. At that moment, the four merged back into one Lydia, and she knelt down to look Jack in the face and then kissed him.

Jack smiled, “Who said I hated it? Let’s go upstairs.” As he tapped her on the back, she relaxed and turned back to her true form, splitting into the four versions as she followed him.