Chapter 327

Chapter 327 Strongest Sage, Infects the Lack of Common Sense

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" . . . The principal's room's gotten really extravagant in the past few days huh . . . "

Principal Edward together with Grevil were already waiting for us at his room when we arrived at Second Academy .

The room has been furnished full of anti-bug equipment that weren't present before .

To the point of being excessive for an educational institution .

"Second Academy is not just your average school anymore . . . We have made the improvements with the help of students . "

Grevil touches a soundproofing magic tool installed near the entrance .

"Extra care have been given to Principal Room due to the hotline connecting to the royal castle . Up until now I had to go to the castle myself whenever something cropped up . . . But now I simply need to activate a magic tool . "

A magic comm tool has been put on top of Principal Edward's desk .

It's a wired type comm tool with countermeasures against wiretapping put in place .

This place feels more and more like a military installation of the utmost importance than a school now . . .

Well, Second Academy don't fall behind the kingdom knights in term of strength, so that may not be necessarily wrong .

"So today we're here to gather intel about the place where the new demon showed up . . . "

"Yeah . We've already pinpointed the location . . . It should be around here, no?"

The principal pointed at a map unfolded on his desk .

There's an X-mark . . . on the spot where I detected Zadokilgias's mana coming from .

That's probably the place where Zadokilgias had been reincarnated .

The demon must have not gone far since there was no obvious movement afterward .

"How's the area around it are like?"

"We're currently gathering information while being careful as to not get detected by the demon . Some people had suggested we should go defeat the demon with the combined effort of knights and Second Academy considering its mana pool . . . But Grevil was opposed to the idea . We're strictly intel gathering right now . "

A wise judgment .

From what I've seen in their training, even Second Academy students themselves would manage dealing with an ordinary demon no problem .

But against Zadokilgias . . . They're only gonna get utterly destroyed .

"Well done, Grevil . . . The demon this time is an extremely dangerous one . It's probably stronger than even Zaridias in a 1-on-1 confrontation . "

"Thank you . I feel bad for always relying on Mathias-kun though . . . "

As we were talking . . . A knight opened the door behind me and entered the room .

It's the kingdom's knight commander Gayle .

"I've got all the information we have on it in the castle here with me . "

The knight commander put a bundle of documents on an empty desk .

There's about 10 documents .

It's neither too much or too little, just about right to get proper info .

"So how is it?"

"The town closest to the source of that mana . . . is Boseil, information pertaining the town has been sparse ever since a change in lord a year ago . Reports delivered to the kingdom have some suspicious parts as well . "

"Suspicious parts . . . What do you mean?"

"There were sudden bumps in harvest yield figures . . . The lord there may be trying to increase profit by overvaluing the numbers . "

" . . . An attempt to game tax huh . "

The lord of a territory decides on their own tax in this country .

Hence, the act of changing tax itself is not illegal .

That said, tax rates have their own market price as well .

If it's too high, the populace will emigrate en masse, yet if it's too low, people will congregate from other territories, causing problems in those territories .

As such, in practice, taxations are governed by the country in the form of [Correction Counsel] guidance, continuously ignoring that will eventually incite punishment .

Hence, these tax rates don't tend to change .

However . . . There's a way to get around it, like falsifying yield rates .

Say you impose a fixed percentage of tax to the populace .

Here's an extreme example, by reporting a field that only produces 100KG of product as producing [200KG], you get twice the tax .

Of course, the populace will ultimately be the one shouldering those burdens .

Normally, a change in lord doesn't normally bring improved yield numbers .

It's not impossible if the new lord has ideas to improve productions . . . But a drastic increase in yields would have created rumors in the neighboring areas .

Yet there isn't any . . . Which means there is no change in yield in reality .

" . . . Has anything been done to it?"

"We have sent out a Correction Counsel . It was brought by someone capable of Passive Detection and we confirmed that there was no demon in the area . Neither was there a demon that died from the [Lights of Heavens] . "

I see .

The [Eyes of Heavens] magic is known as [Lights of Heavens] to the people, referring to lights pouring down the sky .

If no demon fell victim to that magic there . . . It means that either there's no demon in Boseil, or there are only mid and higher class demons there .

But had such demons were making their preparations to awaken Zadokilgias there, there would have been traces of that in the Sand Graph documents .

Yet there was nothing about demons in the vicinity of Boseil in those documents .

Not even anything about lesser demons, so there's no way a mid-class demon would be there .

Which means . . . There's probably only Zadokilgias in Boseil right now .

The fight would be much harder if there were other demons .

I'm thankful that's not happening .

The lord is probably a lowlife who unjustly levied heavy taxations on his populace, but he's just that, a lowlife .

We can probably regard him unrelated to demons .

"Doesn't seem like there'll be an obstacle in our subjugation effort . . . What about the neighboring cities?"

"We haven't detected anything suspicious as of now . There were demons lurking in Borsan, an adjacent town, but they had been eliminated by the [Lights of Heavens] already . . . Those [Lights of Heavens] are really something huh . "

The truth is lost in the dark now, but those demons might have been there to prepare for Zadokilgias's awakening .

Perhaps I could have prevented the awakening had I used that magic earlier .

"I understand the situation now . . . OK then, time to go beat up some demon . "

"Un, let's go!"

Alma promptly responded to me .

She seems more enthusiastic than usual somewhat .

" . . . Alma, you look like you're having fun . . . Did something good happen?"

Ruli seemed to find it weird as well and asked her a question .

Then . . . Alma replied .

"You know, Boseil's famous for their food right? I've always wanted to give it a taste at least once ever since I heard about it when I arrived here!"

"Ooh! That's a very good news! Let's hurry up and go!"

Iris is eager to leave the principal's room as she makes a beeline for the exit .

Watching them . . . Principal Edward muttered with an incredulous look on his face .

" . . . You're talking about food huh . This isn't what a conversation before fighting a demon I imagined would sound like . . . "

"And their opponent is a demon stronger than Zaridias . . . I wouldn't blame a common soldier trying to turn away from reality in such a situation, but this is . . . "

"That's probably not it, more like this is turning into just another day to them . "