Shen was waiting for Alicia to bring Sai when he received a system message.

Alliance-Enforced Race-Wide Set of Laws

New laws are now in vigor for your race.

This is the first time your race is placed under Alliance-Enforced Race-Wide laws. Therefore, this time only, you can receive the set of laws, their intent, and a brief explanation for each rule directly on your mind. The process is similar to how Skills work.

Do you accept?

Regardless of your choice, you're now subjected to the new laws wherever you go.

The only exception is in Alliance-sanctioned War Zones, where a special set of battleground rules apply.

Shen didn't trust the Alliance or the system, but they already had access to his mind. There was nothing he could do to stop them. So, why not take advantage of it wherever he could?

"Accept," he said, and information instantly entered his mind.

When giving him information about a Skill, the system provided many complex theories and their application, then granted him some muscle memory. Now, it merely added "text" to his mind, and he had a high learning ability score—at least for humans.

So he blinked twice and knew everything about humankind's Alliance-Enforced rules.

They covered a whole range of things, from tax to geopolitics to production and even culture.

Taxation was simple enough: one-tenth of all AP and one-fifth of all Standard Coins any human received from now on would be taken as taxes. C-ranks would be taxed only by half, while B-ranks or higher and Titled people were exempt.

The AP would be converted into Management Points—at an abysmal conversion rate—for the race's leaders to use as they saw fit. The SC would go straight into the leaders' communal coffers.

Until someone reached B-rank, Marzia alone, as the Human Maiden, would have access to those riches and whatever possibilities the MP gave her.

Tax evasion was impossible because the same system that controlled everyone's AP and SC was the one that would deduct their income at the source. To make things worse, another section of the tax law was a one-time thing that would take one-tenth of everyone's current AP and SC, except Titled Guardians.

Shen didn't think people would like that very much, but at least it was straight to the point. He gathered that modern Earth's taxes were much more complex and shadier.

The social aspects were more intricate, but most of it was common sense. No theft, rape, kidnapping, and so on. What surprised him the most were what he guessed to be last-minute changes to Earth's political environment.

Shen hadn't been paying particular attention to the discussions about laws because of the impending battle but had glimpsed some things. He recalled reading online about Marzia agreeing to give each already existing nation a measure of power. That hadn't happened. In fact, she had done the absolute opposite.

Instead of giving people some power, she had taken it all for herself and herself only—at least until another B-rank appeared. Not only wouldn't the existing nations be recognized, but they also became forbidden.

Tiny communities were allowed to govern themselves to some extent. However, any geopolitical organizations that directly affected the lives of more than thirty people had to be approved by the human leadership within three days of their establishment. If the deadline ended without official recognition or they were outright banned—another of Marzia's power—everyone who held a leading, administrative, or managing position in the organization became a criminal.

The existing governments also had three days from now to be approved. Also, said organizations couldn't use the Guardian's System's Tax Subsystem to automatically collect from their members, as she had said she would allow. That would require special dispensation even if the organization was allowed to exist.

That was surprising enough, but she had gone even further.

All property owned by geopolitical organizations would instantly change hands to the closest person if they weren't recognized in time. The information given to Shen made it clear how the Guardian System only tracked ownership of objects for the anti-theft laws if enough Managements Points were paid. Supposedly, that function was too expensive to run for free.

Shen wasn't sure about the specifics or how much Marzia was willing to pay, but he believed she would invest at least some Management Points on that front in the first weeks. That way, the ordinary people who actually operated things would be less upset by the change—as they would get free stuff—than the bosses who would suddenly become outlaws.

At least they probably wouldn't have become too upset if Marzia wasn't also dealing a final blow to the world's fiat currencies.

If the government backing a currency was just an extensive criminal organization, how valuable was it, really? With enough time and Guardians, the government's leadership would fall. Without government, fiat currency would be no different from a cryptocurrency that only had value because people believed in it.

Unauthorized duplication: this tale has been taken without consent. Report sightings.

Shen knew that merely declaring the strongest nations unlawful wasn't enough to make their citizens decide not to trust them. But Marzia had been cunning. She had also opted-in on a temporary spread-targeted currency exchange law.

For three days—precisely the time she had to legitimate any nation—anyone would be able to access a system-run exchange subsystem.

Marzia had just gotten a lot of Standard Coins from the one-time tax law. She would set some of it aside to be exchanged for fiat currency. The catch was that when someone purchased SC, they had to pay an extra to buy more. It was intended to allow everyone to acquire at least some SC, which would become Earth's only official currency until Marzia said otherwise.

Also, as with any exchange, the more people wanted to acquire a currency, the more expensive it became. Whoever rushed to exchange their money for SC first would encounter better rates. And since the amount of available SC was limited—and unknown—it was best to get rid of fiat currency as soon as possible.

Even if not everyone did that, the simple disappearance of so much money from different currencies would create a price issue—money value was partly based on how much of it was around. Said issue would come precisely at the same time people would try to buy as many things as possible. After all, paper money might lose value, but useful stuff would retain some intrinsic value and could be sold later. The price of gold would probably skyrocket.

And that was merely what Shen could tell with his minimal understanding of the economy. Most of it was suppositions based on his learning ability.

The final nail in the coffin was that Marzia had reverted her decision about Bounty-bound Guardian Traffic.

Both the world's leaders and public opinion had been adamant about not allowing any alien Guardian to take Bounties on Earth. The best argument against it was fear. However, that meant powerful Guardians could become local tyrants who didn't need to heed the law at all.

Marzia had opted-in on the law allowing external interference, but with a caveat: she alone—or whoever she appointed, Shen guessed—would decide on which Bounties she would let outsiders take.

That made things much more political and centralized the power on her even more. It also meant she had a kind of reserve army to use against criminal elements she endured due to their power or political clout.

Marzia became Earth's de-facto empress.

She also became the world's number one assassination target.

The Maiden Title could be acquired by someone else if she died, and it was a Title with a lot more power than most people had expected. Shen predicted a lot of assassination attempts, and should any succeed, the same would happen to the successive Maidens forever.

Marzia would need a support circle as soon as possible. She had to form a defensive ring to survive while creating a political structure that could deal with an entire world of bureaucracy and practical functions. The justice system, especially, was a priority.

Only after a certain threshold would the Guardian System allow Bounties to be dead or alive. Until then, she needed people to judge offenders and keep them locked away. When the offenders were super-powerful Guardians, that task became much harder.

Marzia had opted-in on the possibility of spending Management Points to send powerful criminals to Alliance-run prisons, yet her points were limited.

In other words, she needed to create a political and military structure from the ground up or co-opt an existing structure to build upon.

Shen frowned as he looked around.

His internationally run, military-focused, highly efficient war camp looked exactly like what she needed.

Suddenly, a solid white light appeared beside him.

It started formlessly and started taking the shape of four beings. Shen guessed they would eventually turn human and reveal four people teleporting with system assistance. However, just in case, he took a smartphone from his pocket, opened the messaging APP, and sent a message to the camp leadership to warn them about it.

The light was forming really slowly. It would take at least ten minutes to finish at the pace it was going.

Shen was mildly curious but doubted someone actually powerful would arrive like that or send such a pathetic assassin after him. He had time to kill, so he elected to keep thinking about the laws.

Marzia also had opted-in on what someone on the internet had labeled the Guardian Supremacy laws—laws that supposedly had also been discarded.

It made official what everyone with any neurons news: Guardians would rule, and everyone else would obey or be dealt with. Not even the threat of alien Bounty Hunters would stop that.

Shen, personally, believed it best to be forthcoming about it. One should give explicit privileges to Guardians yet also pile some responsibilities on top of that. That would help the Guardians regulate themselves instead of focusing their resentful power on the Maiden. Marzia seemed to agree.

Basically, non-Guardians, called "commoners" on Alliance law, couldn't hold any official position in Earth's official government. That would create issues but might also push people to become Guardians and thus help protect Earth.

Speaking of which, now that Shen thought about it, he had no idea how a commoner might become a Guardian without a tutorial.

Anyway, on the other hand, Guardians were considered automatically conscripted to Earth's official Army. In case of invasion, they were obligated to help defend it even if they were somewhere else in the Alliance. Moreover, those on the planet had to answer any call to arms with a limit of one every month. B-ranks and Titled people were not exempt in either case.

Speaking of which...

Call to Arms

You're in range of a Call to Arms.

The following message was attached by the Human Government:

"Every Guardian within five hundred miles from the D-rank Rift must head there at once and help.

Non-compliers will be labeled as having deserted the Human Army in a time of war."

That felt a bit extreme, but at least whoever appeared would now be paid some SC based on participation and performance. As for whoever disobeyed, either Marzia was flexing her power for the first time to make an example—the new laws demanded deserters in time of war to be killed on sight. Then again, she might lower the penalty to have them captured and trialed instead.

Yes, she could forgive them or decrease the penalty on their Bounties.

The Immortal Emperor could forgive anyone, and Shen knew some countries gave the same power to presidents. Yet, people had been very vocal against it. No one wanted a tyrant with the ability to pardon their people for doing their dirty work. Or worse, pardon herself no matter what she did.

But that's what they had gotten.

Marzia could make charges or sentences disappear as long as a crime was committed against a human and didn't go against some core Alliance rules—like sacrificing people to the Void.

Marzia had really set herself above everyone else.

Shen wondered how long it would take for her to come to ask for his help to merely survive. A glance at the white light gave him an excellent guess about the answer to that.

But that didn't matter right now because Alicia finally left the blue tent with Sai beside her.

Shen smiled at first, but his expression quickly turned into a frown.