Chapter 13: Medieval Taxation
“How dare you, you lowly tradesman, blaspheme the divine!”
Leon’s thunderous tirade was no mere rebuke.
This was the most exalted being in the mortal realm and words spoken by a living saint and demigod are magical in their own right.
The fury he unleashed in his rage was not something a normal human could withstand.
“Huh…!”
Her eardrums are shaking and her mind is foggy. Her heart raced as she felt the wrath of an unimaginable divine agent but despite his incomprehensible rage, she understood one thing.
The life and death of the Doojeong Group and its managing director… Park Jong-chan, depended on the otherworldly man in front of her.
“Your Majesty!”
At that moment, Ha-ri, sensing the danger, stood in front of Leon, her legs trembling as she forced herself to not fall.
“Your Majesty, if you kill him, we’ll be in…trouble!”
Being a survivor is not a license to get away with anything. Understanding Leon’s culture and class is one thing, but committing a crime is another.
Of course, Leon’s value is not comparable to that of a managing director of a major national company, but even so, this was not it.
“Hmm. Don’t be mistaken, this king is not a fool that runs around.”
With that, Ha-ri, Park, and the rest of the staff breathed a sigh of relief. Director Park broke out in a cold sweat.
“Foolish one, you’ve made your sins known.”
“Yes, yes? No, I…….”
What the hell had he done wrong? He’d tried to slap a price on it. But how could a savage who had been on Earth for less than a week know that?
Feeling wronged, Mr. Park cautiously pleaded.
“I, I really don’t know what’s wrong.”
“Heh… How can you be so ignorant and clueless?”
At this point, Leon’s eyes held pity, not contempt.
“The crops come from the land blessed by Demera. It is a gift bestowed by the goddess upon the farmers who toil and cultivate the fields.”
Humans cannot survive alone. When there is a bad harvest they would starve and when they are hungry they must go to work in the fields.
They dig up the soil and steal the seeds from the earth.
“Therefore, those who are farmers should be grateful for the blessings of the land and thankful to the Divine for its creation.”
Faith, divinity, and divine grace is not something that can be bought with gold, but is bestowed upon a grateful heart and faith.
“Thou art a lowly thing, deceiving others for the sake of petty profit. How dost thou seek to profit from the product of a divinity thou hast no faith in?”
“Profit…!”
Director Park Jong-chan gritted his teeth and backed away. As he walked away, apparently in a wait-and-see manner, Ha-ri expressed concern.
“Is it…going to be okay? He may be a lowly trader in Your Majesty’s eyes, but… he’s quite influential.”
“Hmph. Not even worth bothering with.”
Leon is not dismissive of the influence of businessmen.
Businesses play a huge role in modern civilization and they have spread their influence far and wide in the soil of capitalism.
“Ten thousand temples carry a burden, but it’s not a burden that can shake this king.”
There was an overwhelming confidence in him. No, it was beyond confidence.
He was the chosen one, the king recognized by the heavens, a living proof of the Divine Right of Kings. The Emperor of the Empire, the Steel Dwarves of the Underground City, and the Guardians of the Forest recognize the demigod’s authority.
Only the self-indulgent take the agents of the gods lightly.
In the world of divinity to come, they will be excluded and relegated so it is not worth dealing with the ignorant and unintelligible.
“By the way, have you done what I said to prepare?”
“Uhm…You mean…the issue of the faith?”
“Yes. It wouldn’t hurt the country, of course.”
Ha-ri remembered Leon’s request not long ago, and of course, the Hunter’s Association flipped.
“Actually, Director Park Jong-chan contacted me before his visit, saying he had some suitable land…….”
If Leon could solve this problem, there was no reason why the Hunter’s Association couldn’t help, especially since the President was happy to see it.
* * * *
Since the gate crisis, humanity has lost tons of arable land.
Countries have been overwhelmed with responding to gates in urban centers and have failed to discover gates in rural and remote areas.
As a result, many gates have caused dungeon breaks, and much land has been contaminated.
The only reason humanity hasn’t had a severe food crisis in recent years is purely because of the amount of people dying. And some of the plains that failed to be dealt with have been permanently contaminated, creating countless displaced people.
The Naju Plain, where Choi had spent his entire life plowing fields, was one of them.
“Dad, do you see nothing but fields again from the morning breeze?”
“…….”
Despite his son’s question, Choi remained silent and looked at his land contaminated by miasma.
Today, Choi is a government-subsidized assistant at a supermarket in town, but until five years ago, he was a farmer in Naju.
He had spent his entire life herding cows and driving tractors but five years ago, a failed red gate triggered a dungeon break, and the entire Naju plain was contaminated with miasma.
The contamination was so intense that many farmers, including Choi, lost their land.
“Haa…….”
Nothing can be done on land contaminated with miasma and ordinary people were contaminated just by stepping on it, and only hunters could survive.
No one wants to buy land that doesn’t grow crops and although there were government subsidies based on the size of the land, they were pennies on the dollar.
They’ve been buying reagents to clean up the miasma from the Tower, but even that has its limits. The reagents were unable to cleanse the land of excessive contamination.
The next new reagent will work, and the next one will be better…
Choi spent his fortune to buy the reagents from the Tower, even though he was now the only one who kept trying.
“Give up now. It’s a land that even the leaders can’t do anything about.”
“Shut up! I fed you and your brothers with rice grown on that land, I sent you to college, what kind of land is that, it’s the land I worked my whole life!”
Since his birth, there has been a great war that has divided the country and he grew up in a war-torn country, receiving handouts from the military.
He had big dreams and wanted to buy his own land and farm it. He wanted to raise his children to be Southerners.
In the end bought the land with the money he had earned by risking his life fighting the Viet Cong in Vietnam.
The land and the fields were everything to him.
All he had to do was farm the last of it and leave it all to his children, and he would reap the rewards of his life’s work……..
“Fucking bastards. Bastards!”
They appeared and polluted his land.
He had spent twenty-five years worrying that miasma would contaminate his land and hoped that it would never appear on his land but in the end it happened.
Now he has only one wish. Just once, just once, he wanted to plant a seedling on his land and see that golden color again.
He wanted to see it just once before he died.
“Uncle, did you hear what Mr. Lee said? The Hunter’s Association is introducing something.”
“Another unhealthy and expensive drug.”
The reagents sold by the Tower were expensive. Even though they were subsidized by the government, they were still expensive.
The purifying probability of the reagents was not high, and it would take two years if they were unlucky. Besides, they didn’t work at all in a highly polluted land like the Naju Plain.
“Let me tell you what I heard.”
He was always the one who cursed the Association and the Tower, but always listened to the news while holding a glimmer of hope.
“My name is Leon Dragonia Lionheart, and I have come to preach my faith to you.”
The blond nobleman, accompanied by the Association’s staff, spouted more nonsense than the usual visiting wizards of the Tower.
And then── A golden light bloomed in the land contaminated by miasma.
“Ah…….”
It was a land that could not be purified by expensive reagents or priests, a cursed land where not a single pest could grow, let alone crops.
But…
“Alas…!”
Choi fell to his knees before the blond man and thanked the man for the miracle he had performed.
“Who are you?!”
The boisterous shamans and the priests said this was a trial from God…….But to Choi, the man in front of him was a god, a savior.
“Farmer with noble hands I am the Lion King, a representative of the Temple of the Ten Thousand Gods, and I have come to bring you the divinity of life and abundance.”
On this day, the first worshiper of Demera on Earth offered his faith, and the farmers of the polluted lands followed suit.
* * * *
It was real.
Ha-ri marveled at the cleaned-up plains of Naju.
The Hunan Plains were still in the first stages of contamination and even with the reagents from the Tower, it could still be cleaned up.
To Ha-ri and the rest of the association, it seemed like Leon’s special power was the only thing that could have cleaned up the Hunan Plains. But Leon insisted that it was a miracle of the gods, and he demanded a place to prove it.
That was when the cleansing of the Naju Plains was decided.
Five years ago, after the Dungeon Break at the Red Gate, the land was completely polluted and even the newest reagents from the wizards of the Magic Tower were ineffective.
Leon is willing to cleanse the barren lands on one condition.
“First, tell the President. It would be nice to meet him in person.”
“We’ll have to see about that.”
With the proposal delivered over the phone, the president gave the Hunter Association discretion over the matter.
“As per the agreement, 8,735 hectares of the farmers of the Naju Plains will be transferred to the patronage of His Majesty’s ‘Guild’. Of course… subject to the consent of the residents and the sale of ‘blessed rice’ to the government.”
“No problem.”
With the help of the Association, Leon established a guild in the country, which he named the Ten Thousand Gods. It was the name he chose to spread the faith of the Ten Thousand Gods across the world.
The guild was given a special autonomous region where its members could live and train and be provided with help.
Businesses could even move in and pay taxes.
It was a law that had been forced through by the Ten Guilds, but it gave Leon a legitimate estate.
Of course, the government has put in place minimal safeguards, so it’s not permanent.
“Don’t worry. I would never covet the lawful lands of another nation. This is only to spread the faith, and I will return them to the President when the time is right.”
“Uhm…technically, to the people.”
Leon had no interest in the land since this county was too small for him to be greedy and it would take more than that to restore the Lionheart Kingdom to its former glory.
However, after obtaining a suitable foothold and building up his power he would make his move.
“First, we’ll need to get the residents’ consent to join Your Majesty’s Guild, since they have the right to reside in the Special Territory.”
“No problem.”
Leon approached the waiting farmers. Some were middle-aged, some were elderly.
“Uh, uh, uh… welcome, Leon de… de… de…….”
Choi bowed and greeted Leon, but couldn’t quite memorize his long name.
‘Ah… He’s going to be in trouble.’
The Lionheart Emperor didn’t even allow Ha-ri to call him by his first name but contrary to her expectations, Leon smiled gently and his voice trailed off.
“Your Majesty is sufficient, old man.”
“Aigoo… I’m sorry.”
‘What, are you discriminating against people?!’
Ha-ri made a sour face, but Leon continued.
“Did you say you’re Choi Chul-jin?”
“Yes, I did.”
“You have sworn to serve the Goddess Demera, the goddess of life and fertility. What about the others?”
At that, a middle-aged man stepped forward.
“…Are you going to cleanse our land as well?”
Leon frowned at the middle-aged man’s words.
“Do not attempt to bargain with the divine, for I promise you nothing in return.”
He despised shallow beliefs that promised to grant wishes in exchange for offerings, faith, or devotion.
You can’t trade with God. Only sincere worship will be granted by the gods.
To ask for a favor in exchange for faith is to doubt the divine and try to trade.
“I will give you the proper teaching. Will you listen to the divine teachings?”
“Yes, I will listen.”
“I am not forcing you to believe. It is your choice.”
Just then, a young man approached, a rarity in this part of the country… a son, to be exact, who had inherited his late father’s land and was invited to this meeting.
“I, I… I go to church…….”
“It doesn’t matter. You can believe in both gods.”
“Is that okay?”
“Divinity is not a singular existence. There are many great gods in the world, so why should we believe in only one?”
There are many faiths in the pantheon and its polytheistic nature does not limit beliefs.
“It is only up to you to follow the teachings and practice them. I will not impose my beliefs on you.”
Of course, if someone worships an evil deity, he will mercilessly decapitate them and tear their souls apart.
“Join this king’s Guild. Follow the due process to enter the enclosure the King will erect and receive the teachings of the Goddess.”
“I’ll do it, please let me do it!”
Choi eagerly embraced the faith. It was a miracle that no king, no shaman and no priest could have performed. He had come face to face with a real God, and He had purified his land.
How could he not believe then?
How could he not be grateful to the One who had given his old body a chance to plow the fields once more?
Choi rejoiced with tears of gratitude that he could reap the beauty of his life’s work.
“Yes, I will follow you.”
“Me, too…!”
One by one, the hesitant ones stepped forward.
The land was contaminated with miasma and could not be sold, so what was there to lose receiving help to cleanse it?
“Do you swear to follow the Divinity of Life and Fertility and to practice its teachings?”
“I swear!”
“I swear!”
With that, they were officially inducted into Leon’s Guild, The Ten Thousand Gods.
Leon knew they had their eyes set on the purification of the land, but he was confident that one day they would find their true faith.
“Very well, if you believe and follow, you are children of the Goddess. I, on behalf of the gods, will bless you as you deserve.”
Leon lifted the chalice and poured the holy water within it upon his new followers. The holy water flowed through the crowns of their heads, energizing them.
“Oh, my God… My head is clear and my body is full of energy!”
“I feel like I can see the world differently!”
“Is that straw doll really a goddess?”
“Yes. Goddess Demera…!”
The faith of those who already believed in the goddess filled the Lionheart and Goddess Demera would turn that faith into divine power.
“Build a temple. It doesn’t have to be anything fancy, just a place where everyone gathers weekly to pray.”
Leon preached the teachings of life and abundance, which shouldn’t be too hard to follow.
Then came the most important moment.
“What about the offerings…how do we pay?”
The congregation embraced this new faith, but was uneasy about it. After all, religion is all about collecting periodic offerings under all sorts of pretenses.
You pay to make your child study well, you pay to expand the temple…….and their living was already tight since they hadn’t been able to farm for five years.
“You only have to pay one thing.”
The congregation’s faces lit up at the words. No need to make a new offering for every holiday or season? What a blessing──
“The Ten Commandments.”
“”……?””
To the wide-eyed congregants who wondered if they had misheard but Leon declared proudly.
“You will pay by contributing to the salvation of the world.”
Ha-ri, who heard his words thought ‘isn’t this evil?!’
