''Hmmm, it's almost like soy sauce, but slightly different from soy sauce... well, there's that...''

　I dipped the sashimi in fish sauce and brought it to my mouth.
　Fish sauce is a seasoning made from fermented fish.

　It tastes similar to soy sauce, but it's definitely different in some ways.
　Well, if you eat it as fish sauce, or garm, rather than as a substitute for soy sauce, it's delicious enough.

　However....I've often eaten raw fish, but I've never heard of eating an octopus raw. At first I thought it would be unpleasant, but it's actually quite good.

　Alexios dipped the sucker part of the octopus in the fish sauce Garum and brought it to his mouth.
　From now on, this guy only eats the best parts of the suckers.

　But I prefer the carpaccio to the fish sauce.
　Really?　Well, to each his own in that area, I suppose...

　They're both good for me.
　If you ask me if I want soy sauce or carpaccio, I'll say soy sauce, but if you ask me if I want garum or carpaccio, I'll be torn.




　Currently, I'm in Rezad.
　I've come here to take orders from the administration, which has been throwing things at Alexios and only receiving reports.

　Now I am in a meeting with Alexios.
　The story of how he ate the sashimi is that the guy from Alexios said, "Your Majesty, would you like to try the fish raw? The reason for this is that he suggested that we should eat sea fish.
　In the southern part of the Adelian peninsula, sea fish is very common.
　There is also a culture of eating raw fish.

　Alexios was not an Adelian, but a Pophenian.
　The Pofenians are a marine people.

　It is not strange for them to have a culture of eating raw fish.

　However, their culture of eating raw fish is limited to the coastal areas.
　Fish is perishable and cannot be transported inland.
　A considerable amount of dried fish is available, but no raw fish is traded.

　Therefore, the people of King Rosais' country........Julia and Tetra don't eat raw fish.
　I'm sure those two will frown.

　By the way, both of them are very fond of fish.
　As I mentioned earlier, dried fish is in circulation, and they often eat river fish as well.

　It's not that the fish is bad, it's that it's not cooked.

　Adelnians have few cultural food preferences.

　I guess Alexios wanted to surprise me, being from the interior.
　But the Japanese spirit is alive and well in my heart.
　Raw fish, I welcome it.

　We were eating carpaccio, and I mentioned soy sauce.
　Alexios took a bite out of it and said there was something similar.
　...I sincerely hoped it was soy sauce.

　Well, there was no way I was going to see soy sauce when I had never even seen soybeans.

　So, let's hear it again about the reform process.

　I finished chewing on the last slice and then said to Alexios.






　'The first task ... legal and tax equality between first and second class citizens has been achieved.

　Rezad divided them into two categories, first class citizens and second class citizens, based on whether they paid a high capitation tax or not.
　This is because of the thoroughgoing politics of property.

　Nevertheless, in our country, all commoners, great families and royalty are equal under the law.
　There are some privileges of tax exemption, or "manor", for the big family and the royal family, but these privileges are very few and far between.

　The taxes they pay are the same.
　That is why it is necessary to impose a similar tax system on Lesad.

　However, there were two obstacles to this.

　One, registration of a certificate of residence.
　Because until now, second-class citizens were not subject to taxation and their population had not been accurately identified.

　Occasionally, a rough survey was conducted to determine the population for the national survey.
　But if you are going to collect taxes, you have to make sure you know the numbers.

　Two, the resistance of residents.
　From the point of view of the first class citizens, their previous political privileges would be removed and they would be equal to the second class citizens.
　The tax system in King Rosais's country is not a flat rate system, but a fixed rate system.
　So the richer you are, the more taxes you will pay.

　If you want your rights, pay for them.

　The residents of Rezad must be annoyed by this, as it is the national custom to pay if you want your rights.

　And it is not an interesting story even for second-class citizens.
　In Rezad, second-class citizens had no rights and were not obligated to pay taxes.　
　However, the tax system in King Rosais' country is imposed equally on all citizens.

　You have to pay taxes that you didn't have to pay before.

　So for me, I thought it would take a reasonable amount of time.
　Apparently they succeeded easily.

　'Because the big merchants who were an obstacle to reform in the last war either fled the country or became Rosyth's nobles. The only ones left are the small and medium merchants. ...For them, a flat tax was a heavy tax in its own right. So it was readily accepted.
　What about second class citizens?
　They're not ... how shall I put it, they're not subject to tax in the first place.

　According to Alexios, all second-class citizens are peasants, laborers, or beggars.
　If you don't own land in the first place, you're not subject to land tax, and if you don't do business, you're not subject to sales tax.

　It seems that I've thought of things in the sense of King Rosais' country.
　In our country, the majority of commoners are self-made farmers.

　That's why I thought that a percentage of the second class citizens also have at least a small piece of land.
　It seems that there is a big gap between the rich and the poor in Rezad.

　There is only one problem. It's the military service.

　There are three major taxes in King Rosais' country.　

　One is a sales tax. The state collects five percent of sales.
　The other is a land rent a substantial land tax. This is 10% of the earnings from the land.
　And finally, military service.


　But the first two, however, are difficult to do military service in Rezad.
　The reason is that the conquered people of Rezad have no interest in serving in my war.

　It's a good thing that the security and safety of Rezad is maintained and the merchants are able to do business safely because of me.
　It is because of me that Rezad has not been sacked by Pofenia and has survived to this day.
　And it was I who rescued many Rezadians from slave hunting.

　The people of Rezad understand that.
　But that doesn't mean they want me to die for the king.

　Even if you are convinced in theory, you can't be convinced emotionally.
　And there's no point in hunting unwilling soldiers out to war.


　If this were Adelnians, there would be no problem.

　For Adelnians, military service is considered the most honorable tax.
　Paying and exempting people from military service is a cowardly thing to do.

　This is a common belief.
　In fact, all Adelnians in the country, rich and poor, regardless of their equipment, are willing to do military service.

　The great families also send their sons and daughters off to war, albeit with the treatment of a centurion or more.

　The only time they refuse to serve is when they protest to their country about their rights and the safety of their lives and property.

　There is a widespread belief among Adelnians that they are serving against the country and the powers that be who protect their lives and property and protect their land from warfare.

　So the Adelnians, whose lands I had ceded or conquered, were also willing to serve, whether or not they were loyal to me.

　For the Adelnians, who grew up in the Adelnian peninsula, a land where half-farmers and half-soldiers, where monarchical military states were established in many places, and where wars were fought all year round, war was something to be challenged and confronted, not something to be run away from.

　Well, if the war is repeated year after year, with no time to plow, and the war is filled with deaths, that is a different story.

　Adelnians are a people with a totalitarian ethnicity.


　In comparison, the inhabitants of Rezad........or rather the Cilician people are individualistic.
　To be precise, it is correct to call it world citizenship, or "cosmopolitanism".

　In spite of their pride in their own nationality, Cilician people are a people who easily break up (diaspora) when their country is in crisis.
　Since the Cilician people have never been united into a nation, they may think that the nation is not related to the Cilician people.

　The Cilician people are not bound to a country or a land, but rather they board a ship, impregnate the wind with their sails, and set out on the open sea.
　That is the charm and the drawback of the Cilician people.

　Well, I suppose it's debatable as to which race is more wonderful or not, but at least from my point of view as a politician, there is no race that is more troublesome than the Cilician.

　Well.........
　There is no way that such an individualistic people and Cilician people would agree to military service.

　'But we can't afford not to carry out military service.......since we've made them directly under our control. We can't even introduce a tax on exemption from military service...''

　The strength of King Rosais' country lies in its conscription.
　The ability to organize a large army in time of war instantly and cheaply. That is our country's strength.

　If a tax on exemptions from military service is introduced, it could destroy that.

　But it can't just be Rezad that gets special treatment.

　''I've thought about it a lot too, but even if the residents of Rezad don't have any loyalty to King Rosais' country or His Majesty, they do have a love for the city of Rezad and an aggravation of the Pofenians. Even if they are useless as heavy infantry, they are still useful enough as riders of three- and five-star paddleboats. Couldn't we take a form of making Rezad a naval specialist and exempting him as far as land conscripts are concerned...?

　.........Hmm, there is.
　The sea is always full of pirates, so it's never less frequent than on land.

　Besides, the residents of Rezad must be more motivated by 'defending Rezad's territorial waters and commercial sphere, and fighting the hated Pofenia' than 'war for the expansion of King Almus' territory'.

　Or rather, contrary to the Cilician, the Adelnians are probably useless at sea.
　Most of the Adelnians are probably the ones who say, "People don't float.

　Besides, if you're a rower on a triple-oared boat, you have the advantage of not needing any special weapons or skills.
　As a rule, you have to bring your own weapons for use in war.
　Not to mention second-class citizens who don't have or can't afford to buy weapons, the residents of Lesad who have never fought in the first place should be able to fight in their own way.

　Besides, naval battles are probably more familiar than land battles.
　Okay, let's go with that.

　''Thank you, Your Majesty. Now we can complete our tax reform.''

　So what's going on with the political reforms?

　It's been a mess...