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Chapter 166: Reform

Elizabeth I was 29 when she became the queen; by 35, she had given birth to three children.

Fortunately, by this point, she held 40% control in the House of Blue Bloods.

With this influence, she managed to renegotiate with the nobles, persuading them to stop their unreasonable demands, such as asking for more than ten Royal children.

Only one child would inherit the throne, so the nobles' insistence on having more was to make her suffer.

No matter how much she wants equal laws, there is a physical difference between men and women.

Asking female kings to have as many children as male children will not work.

Elizabeth gave birth to three boys and had no plans to have more children. Already, giving birth to 3 had adverse effects on her body.

"I wish men could have gotten pregnant!" she thought.

She would have designed everyone to have a similar physical condition in a perfect world. But because of biological differences, there can never be genuinely gender-neutral laws.

...

John, the vampire, woke up from his sleep.

He had been asleep for around 30,000 years, except for short points when he had to feast on blood.

Unlike Alex III, the vampire ancestor who could live with just a drop of blood, John still had to drink blood every thousand years.

His speed was only around 45 times the speed of sound.

30,000 years ago, John established a kingdom just for fun. As a vampire, he had no way to have children of his own, but he could adopt.

After raising a child named John Johnson and helping him destroy the previous kingdom, John the vampire returned to his deep sleep, intending to periodically check on the kingdom's progress.

Fortunately, the kingdom remained stable every time he checked.

Upon standing up, John shook off the dust on his body. He had slept in a cave that wasn't isolated, so he was covered in dust when he woke up.

After dusting himself off, he dug out his clothes, which remained relatively intact, wore them, and looked outside. Fortunately, it was night; otherwise, a glimpse of the sun would have caused minor burns to his eyes.

John and all other first-generation vampires have a severe weakness to the sun and would be turned to ashes in less than 10 seconds if exposed.

As his strength increased, his weaknesses also amplified.

Despite these vulnerabilities, humans still stood no chance against him, even if they tried firing silver arrows; with his speed, he could easily dodge them.

...

The village of White Water is south of the Blue Blood City.

Run by the Foxhunter family, it is one of the five villages they control.

At this time, Patrick is busy fetching water from the well.

White Water Village's wells contained water with a white hue. Nobody knew why; some said it had medical properties, while others claimed it was poison and not good for the body.

Patrick had no idea, but he didn't care much either. He had been drinking this water since childhood, and nothing bad had happened.

This time fetching water, he ran late; the sun had already set for a few hours.

Fortunately, thanks to the noble Lord Baron Ward Foxhunter, whom Patrick admired greatly despite never having seen him, no animals or bandits were around.

It was safe even late at night—a remarkable feat not unique to the Foxhunter family. Generally, all lands around the capital and important cities were very safe.

But Patrick doesn't know this; he has heard stories of bandits and wild animals in other places and is grateful to the Foxhunter family that he is safe from those terrifying things.

After filling the container, he turned around and was stunned.

"Hello!" John said with a smile.

He disguised his looks a bit, wearing clothes of the people from 1,000 years ago, and looked ordinary.

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To begin with, he wasn't good-looking, and the vampire charm he got after Alex III made him nowhere to be seen at that moment.

Carefully looking at John, Patrick asked cautiously, "Are you a tourist?"

White Water Village has the distinction of white water. Some sick people occasionally come for a cure.

Seeing John near the well, Patrick naturally thought of John as one such man. But he didn't look sick, so he may want to take the water for a relative.

"I'm John! I have lived in a cave since my childhood! Please tell me what the real world is like."

"Lived in a cave?" Patrick thought of the stories he had heard as a child, such as a boy raised by monkeys in the jungle.

He has never thought those stories to be true!

"Mr. John! Let me guide you to our village! Follow me."

Pushing the wheeled cart, Patrick made his way to the village.

"So, who is the king now?" John asked.

"That woman called Elizabeth," Patrick said with contempt.

"Woman?" As far as John remembers, only men could become kings.

"Yeah! They say that she is worse than prostitutes and sleeps with a different man every time! Some say she ate her own child after she found his gender," Patrick said with fear.

John frowned. Is this Elizabeth a vampire agent colleague?

It is not unprecedented.

It has happened many times in history that a frustrated vampire decides to disguise as a king or queen.

Alex III has ordered them not to disrupt the human world. That means it's allowable to disguise as a king if one stays low-key.

As for eating children, it's not impossible.

Alex III only allowed them to eat people convicted by the legal system. So it's possible to eat children who are convicted, like children of traitors.

But with the new kingdom, as far as John knows, children under the age of 8 would never be convicted to death.

In any case, now, with Alex kingdom gone, some loopholes allow vampires to eat ordinary people, and after this long, John believes many vampires have discovered these loopholes.

Putting away these thoughts, John asked, "Tell me the backstory."

Patrick just said what he heard from one of the knights of the Foxhunter family.

"His Majesty King Mark VI was deceived by his daughter Elizabeth I and was forced to abdicate. The noble masters tried to stop her but failed due to her despicable actions; this is how we ended up with a woman king!" Patrick said in shame.

"Mark? This is a weird name for a king!" John said.

Kings of the Johnson family usually had names such as John and Steven.

"His Majesty Mark VI was named after his Majesty Mark I."

"What do you know about Mark I?"

"I heard him to be a great king who cares about the people," Patrick said doubtfully.

John sighed; there is a limit to how much he can find out from a country bumpkin.

With one motion, he ripped Patrick's head off!

The separated head looked confused; he didn't even notice what happened. Looking down, he saw John drinking blood from a headless human body.

"Is that my body?" It is the last thing Patrick thought.

...

John smiled.

He had found a loophole in the laws set by Alex III a long time ago!

With that loophole, he could eat and kill anyone he liked!

The loophole goes like this: Vampires can only kill people convicted by the kingdom's legal system.

In this context, the kingdom means Alex's kingdom.

But that kingdom has long been destroyed.

In that case, who are the vampires going to drink? There is no one, and they would starve to death.

But, there is another order saying they must not commit suicide or take actions that cause their death.

So, there is a conflict!

In a conflict between two orders, vampires must try to solve the conflict by harmoniously interpreting the orders.

In this case, the kingdom, in the first order, must be interpreted as any kingdom that rules the land.

After interpreting 'kingdom' in a way to solve the conflict, that 'kingdom' refers to any kingdom, including the Blue Bloods.

Who founded the Blue Bloods? John Johnson, his son.

He made sure to put it in Blue Bloods laws so that he could convict people and sentence them unilaterally.

That means John just now convicted Patrick and sentenced him to death in his mind; he didn't violate Alex III's orders.

The laws of the Blue Bloods allow him to convict people; John has been sentenced to death according to the rules, just as ordered by Alex III.

Of course, he knows he was violating the order in spirit. But who cares? Alex III is far away and would not find out.

John was always afraid of Alex III but never genuinely loyal.

He was very daring for a vampire agent and racked his brain to find loopholes in default orders given by Alex iii.

Alex III, for his part, tried to give few orders so as not to restrict the vampires too much.

...

Elizabeth I looked at the criminal laws of the kingdom that had piled on before her.

The criminal system is simply non-functional.

First of all, criminal laws are matters of the nobles. So, the House of Blue Bloods cannot pass resolutions that apply new laws to the nobles' lands.

But criminal procedure, meaning how commoners are convicted and what rights they have, is a nationwide issue.

The problem is that nobody has the resources to study these rights.

They are scattered among thousands of resolutions and decrees and are useless to ordinary people, many of whom cannot even read.

Only wealthy merchants can use them to protect their rights.

So, Elizabeth I ordered her ministers to bring all resolutions and decrees regarding criminal laws.

She read the latest one while sighing: "King John's father can at any time and in any manner convict and sentence anyone for any crime defined in section 2."

Section 2:" Anything that King John's father considers bad. Sentences range from nothing to death."

Elizabeth I laughed.

King John has been dead for tens of thousands of years; as for his father …

"These laws are archaic!" she planned on repealing all and compiling them into one decree.

But she must get approval from the House of Blue Bloods first. So, she the house.

After some debate, she reached an agreement.

Nobles weren't against it, and those that were were outnumbered by others.

After all, Elizabeth I didn't argue for any new rights; she just wanted to compile existing ones and eliminate outdated ones.

Commoners didn't have many rights, and her changes didn't alter that much.

They were basic rights such as a neutral judge, a jury of peers for conviction, and a right to consistent sentences.

Honestly, they were mostly meaningless, as nobles had the legal authority to kill their subjects, and these guarantees only applied to lower officials, not nobles themselves.

But, it was still better to have them, as nobles don't usually kill their subjects by themselves.

Soon, a new decree repealed more than 1000 previous decrees and resolutions.

It was carefully designed so as not to affect the laws in unforeseen ways.

The provision that allowed King John's father to sentence people as he liked was removed as outdated.