NOVEL NEXT Chapter 206: Establish Dominance.
I felt my face turn bright red, having to stop time for a moment to deal with my own embarrassment and calm down. ‘Why on earth would I say that… I can’t remember ever hearing anyone in this world saying y’all like that… I’ve never even said it… Well, at least I got everyone’s attention… So… let’s just pretend like it didn’t happen...’
I knew my face wasn’t going to magically go back to normal when I unpaused, but I was going to try and pretend I wasn’t blushing as well as I could. ‘Ok, here we go.’
I cleared my throat. “First things first, double the price of all lumber in the territory, and that includes all products made from it. This goes for normal lumbar too, at least if we are exporting it. At the same time, we will lower the tax on it to make it more readily available for the housing boom we are probably going to have over the next few years…”
Everyone stared at me in dead silence. ‘Well, at least they aren't–’
“That’s ridiculous! What will we do if people stop buying it? We’ll make less off what we sell, and we will sell less!”
“Don’t you think you should let her explain before you start yelling at her!”
‘There it is… Well, I figured this would happen.’ “WOULD YOU CALM DOWN!” I grabbed their attention again. ‘I’ll probably have to explain everything in detail for them to understand. “First off, even if we double the price, we will most likely still sell the same amount to foreign nations, and if we don’t that’s fine because honestly, we’ll probably end up at war with the ones buying it pretty soon anyway. Giving our soon-to-be enemies valuable resources isn’t ideal.”
“YOU CAN’T JUST–”
I grabbed Airsidh’s sword out of its sheath and slammed it into the table wedging it halfway through. It was more impressive than it sounded, considering the wood was harder than iron. “I’m not done talking yet…” I growled. And just like that they all went quiet. Well, everyone but my brother, who was trying to muffle his laughter.
Taking a deep breath to make sure no one else would interrupt me, I continued. “As for lord Elianara, he will probably purchase the same amount of wood as well, because he would still be able to turn a good profit from it, more importantly, he doesn’t have any operations capable of harvesting much, meaning we have a monopoly on it. He would try to start harvesting the wood on his own eventually, but I imagine there would be a learning curve associated with deep-sea diving in a monster-infested bay. In other words, by doubling the price of wood, we double the money we make from it… At least in the short term…”
“And if no one buys it?” The man asked more politely.
“I find that highly unlikely, but if that does happen for some reason then we start to monopolize the entire bay because we become the only ones capable of making and repairing ships. Which also means a monopoly on seafood, and monster hunting in the sea, as well as the federal navy having to pay us whatever we ask when they want something for the navy…” I felt the corners of my mouth start to rise. ‘Maybe I was wrong, no, accounting really is boring, but playing with money is fun…’ “This would include the ability to not sell or repair ships from certain people, like lord Elianara… For instance, unless he of course agrees to specific terms like I don't know, not harvesting lumbar from the bay.”
“This plan is horrible! Airsidh, control your knight, why did you even bother giving such a little girl a chance to be even a junior knight!”
‘Is he serious? He can’t… Oh, no one can see my dress, they can barely see my face…’ I let out a low growl at how annoying it all was. At the sound of it, my brother glanced down at me with a smirk, tousling my hair. “How will you react I wonder?”
First I shooed his hand away, then I pulled the sword out and put it back in his sheath as I let out a sigh. ‘I guess this is the only thing anyone here understands after all...’ “Right, come on then, I’ll fight you.”
The large man chuckled. “I’d be too afraid of hurting you, that doesn’t seem like such a good idea.”
I glanced over to Airsidh, now unable to control his laughter as he placed a hand on my shoulder. “Oh, I knew things would get interesting if I let you come along, this is great.”
I just let out another sigh. “We can just arm wrestle then, and if you’re still worried you can just go easy on me, then I can win and this will be settled right?”
Eventually, he agreed and we sat down over a barrel… ‘Let's just settle this quickly. I’ll enhance my body's toughness to withstand his grip and put as much as I can into strength. If I go all out here then hopefully I won’t have to fight anyone for real. Arm wrestling is about two things. Who reacts faster, and who is stronger… If I can get the jump on him, then even if there is a difference in strength it might not matter much… This will only work once though, when he has his guard down.’ I slowed time and out of the corner of my eye focused on the judge, the moment his jaw started to move, forming the syllables, I started flooding my body with an intense surge of mana and neuron signals to fire all muscles.
“GO!”
adrenaline shot through me like lightning and my left hand gripped the barrel so tightly that it cracked the wood around the metal frame. My right arm moved so fast a rush of wind blasted through the air. When his hand hit the barrel the entire thing burst apart like a popped balloon. ‘My manna is reacting faster than it used to, is this also a part of the dragon's blood?’
Everyone was dead silent, staring at the broken barrel, and baffled old man. I was grateful too, it made it easier to pretend like I hadn’t lost all feeling in my right arm… Although, at least I could still move it… But that only made it weirder. ‘Maybe I overdid it… But, on the bright side, my plan worked. I reacted so fast I won before he could even fully tense his arm to fight back.’
I calmly stood up and walked back over to the large table in the center of the room, climbing up on top of it to better see the documents laid out in the center.
“Ok, see here…” I looked up, only to realize my audience was still over by the barrel, too confused to move. “HEY! I won right? So get over here and listen to me already!” ‘I’m starting to see why people hate politics. It’s so annoying.’
They all came back over and sat down, calmly listening. The one man carrying his arm a bit differently than before. ‘I’d feel bad if I actually hurt him… I should check when we're done here.’ I slowly watched as I bent my fingers into a fist, extending them back out. ‘I wonder when I’ll get feeling back in my arm… It still kinda burns from all the manna.’
“Ok, so that’s step one. Step two is to remove all taxes on food.”
“But that’s–” His voice went silent and cold the moment I looked at him.
‘Geez, if it’s this effective no wonder my father turned into such a brute and never felt the need to explain anything…’ I looked back down at the papers, grabbing one that talked about the grown and imported grain ‘I don’t want to be like that though… I’ll explain everything properly.’
“For starters… I’ll go ahead and just say it. Giving the same percentage tax on everything is about the dumbest thing I’ve ever heard, and probably one of the lazy ways of handling taxation as well. You’re telling me there is a 40% tax on food, and we are sitting around wondering why the people are starving and how to fix it? What are we even getting from this tax rate? Our farmers are either paying their tax in harvest, or keeping the food rather than selling, so we aren’t getting a tax from them selling it, and we aren’t importing any food either, because anyone who is reasonable, would go out to a different city, buy the food in bulk, pay that lord taxes, and then come back with it without resale.”
Looking at their faces I couldn’t help but feel like I lost them and looking back at Airsidh, I couldn’t help but cringe thinking about how much he looked like a doting father attending a middle school play. ‘This is going to take awhile…’