Character Information - Who is who?

Because I have created quite a variety of characters, I will now create little cheat sheets before a chapter for the characters who will appear in the chapter, but not for those who haven't. Please open the spoiler if you need some reminders. (Be careful, it can be a spoiler for the chapter!)

Alexander K. Leonandra (Wolf-kin)

* Transmigrated from the Earth and the MC

* The fourth child of the current Leonandra household

* Golden eyes

* Snow-white fur and hair color

Lorient M. Leonandra (Wolf-kin)

* The first child of the current Leonandra household

* A user of the wild-demon energy

* Sister of the MC

* Golden eyes

* Red fur and hair color

Narsiz K. Leonandra (Wolf-kin)

* The second child of the current Leonandra household

* Specialized in administration, economy, etc. (bureaucracy)

* Brother of the MC

* Golden eyes

* Golden-blonde fur and hair color

Sarah M. Leonandra (Wolf-kin)

* The third child of the current Leonandra household

* Spezialized in shield

* Sister of the MC

* Pinkish eyes (heart-formed pupils)

* Pastel-greenish fur and hair color

Marisia S. Leonandra (Wolf-kin)

* Lady of the Leonandra household

* A user of the wild-demon energy

* Mother of the MC

* Golden eyes

* Crimson red fur and hair color

Ocilia Leonandra (Spider-kin)

* Disciple of the MC

* Specialized in magic/alchemy-oriented threads

* Purple eyes

* Purplish-black hair color

Salyna Leonandra (Swan-kin)

* Head accountant of the Leonandra estate

* Specialized in accounting, economy, and finance

* Blue eyes

* Snow-white feather and hair color

Noriken Leonandra (Spider-kin)

* Archivar of the Leonandra estate

* Specialized in history and archives

* Purplish-pink eyes

* Bald

Aro Leonandra (Butterfly-kin)

* Head butler(servant) of the Leonandra estate

* Specialized in management, hr, and logistics

* Rainbow-colored eyes

* Black hair color

...

The next day, inside the office of the lady

All her children were sitting in front of the lady of the Leonandra estate. Alexander included, who felt great after the rough day he went through to get his [Absolute Mental Control] skill. It was a literal cheat with which he could almost perfectly control his emotions as he usually needed much more time to recuperate mentally.

He already had a lot of ideas on how to use the skill. One of those was that he wanted to test if it was possible to increase his mental capacity with it so he could conjure contraptions more easily since he was somewhat bound to the basics as he had little resources to spare.

While conjuring fireballs and ice spears was fun, he wanted to explore more complex phenomena like electricity, magnetism, radioactive decay, gravity, etc. He already tried at some point to let a feather float up through reversing gravitation. It didn't go well.

Since he was so young, his underdeveloped mental capacity, without the additional energy and attributes, couldn't handle the load he needed to compute for it to work. The missing information was replaced about the phenomena he wanted to achieve with his mana, and thus, he drained himself to zero and became instantly unconscious from the shock. Luckily nothing else happened except an intense headache after a few hours of sleep.

The new skill could open new doors without waiting for his tenth birthday, but this had to wait since a critical meeting was about to start. Nonetheless, he was giddy to try it again.

Beside Alexander was Ocilia, who he took with him as she was his disciple and, with it, a retainer of his. He wanted her to experience what a meeting could look like so she could also learn more administrative aspects, which he couldn't teach since his experience was too far off from what this world's SOPs were. Furthermore, he could, later on, if he had a job involving such meetings, send her out to those since he hated it deeply.

His personal guard Maurice wasn't here since he was training like a crazy madman. He was highly motivated to improve himself, but increasing his skills and experience without realistic fights took a lot of work. However, if he became active on the battlefield, the level increase would come quickly, like injuries and death. It was a double-edged sword, either surviving and thriving or dying.

Alexander looked around some more and also saw some new faces. Salyna brought some young swan-kin boy with her, who would be between fourteen and sixteen, and probably her son, 'Huh, he looks like the epitome of a noble.'

This swan-kin boy stood beside Salyna and looked like an arrogant prick in Alexander's eyes. His whole demeanor screamed pride and condescension, but he ignored him, not like he cared about everyone in the estate.

Alexander's eyes traced around the room to Lorient calmly sitting and talking with Sarah while Narsiz spoke about something with Aro. Noriken was also there on the side, and like always, he was emotionless and still like a statue.

Alexander was brought out of his lazy observations as his mother coughed once. Everyone in the room got silent, and she started talking about yesterday. Everyone looked worried when she spoke about Alexander and how much of her power she needed to use to crack his bloodline.

Only Lorient looked at him like she was jealous, 'Yeah, sure you are. Try getting your mental state tortured inwardly and outwardly, then talk to me again.'

Lorient knew that this wasn't anything like a privilege as Alexander needed to go through this ordeal and not something he decided on just for fun. She also knew that her feeling of jealousy wouldn't do anything for her as this was too late for her to go through the demonic baptism.

But even if she could, she doubted she could come out as someone sane as she already had problems resisting her own corrosive energy. She was, for some reason, irritated to no end the last days, 'Given an option, at least would be nice, tsk.'

When Marisia told about how much damage was done and the costs, Noriken, Aro, and Cross gasped.

Almost all the youth looked confused, and Alexander was first to ask, "How much is 50% of our current treasury?"

Salyna looked at him like he was the child of a devil and answered him, "Right now, it should be around 700,000 average gold coins, Mr. Alexander."

Alexander found it insane but could understand it. The damage was genuinely immense, as the energy corroded the fundament of the main mansion and seeped into the deepest parts. It needed to be repaired quickly.

While it was possible to pay over time, it wouldn't make that much of a difference, especially not in a world where [Mystic Skills], racial traits, and normal skills existed, making work much easier and a lot faster.

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

Alexander tried to find some resemblance to Earth for apparent reasons. In his opinion, it would be construction machines, but even then, bringing them over was a whole ordeal in itself, like finding the right ones for the right work and so on, while bringing over some workers would make the entire process much more flexible. However, his comparison ended here as he needed to gain more knowledge of civil engineering.

Alexander couldn't even imagine how the beast-kin builder would do it since he was basically imprisoned inside a golden cage and had no contact with commoners except for the servants, who were more than happy to forget their old life and rarely talked about it. He would love to watch other professions at work and ask them about it.

While Marisia spoke up again, she pointed at her retainers, "You are here to help me find a solution..." Then she looked at the youth, "...and you are here for educational purposes."

Only Janina was left out as she couldn't understand anything since she was so young. Alexander would generally be, too, but in this case, he was an exception for obvious reasons.

Marisia clapped once, "So, who wants to begin? Any ideas? Please feel free to speak up. I want to have as many ideas as possible and encourage the young to contribute."

The young swan-kin was the first to speak, "How about raising the taxes?"

Aro disagreed, "Young Aurum, we could, but the economy is growing immensely, and we receive more and more subjects daily. Raising taxes would slow our economic growth as the companies would hire less or start to pay less, then the subjects would have less coin to spend, which would also affect our numbers, and the long-term effect would be disastrous."

Alexander spoke up, "How about a progressive tax? Could we tax the smaller companies less while concentrating on the bigger ones?"

Narsiz shook his head, "No way. With this, the investments from wealthy merchants and businesses would slow down, and our administration would need a lot of re-work since we have a flat tax in the first place."

Lorient proposed, "How about thinning out the forests and scratching every possible monster we can find for parts? With this, we can make trade routes more secure and profit from the monster parts?"

This time, Ocilia said, "The lord was already on a campaign. There are not many valuable monsters left. Also, the body parts are usually only a little offset for all the campaigns while hunting down monsters and their breeding grounds in the West. We do this mostly because of the long-term taxes gained by merchants, but we need a short-term solution right now."

Alexander raised an eyebrow as he was impressed by those girls since he thought they were very disinterested in such topics, 'Oh, who knew Lorient could have ideas.'

However, he was more surprised by his disciple since he barely taught anything outside of STEM, 'Not bad, you will surely make a good replacement in all those boring future meetings!'

For some reason, Ocilia shuddered slightly, not knowing why.

Sarah frowned, "Don't we pay very well? Why not have cut the wages and pay them back the difference later?"

Noriken spoke in his deep and neutral voice, "The wage is written down in mana contracts. We would need a new mana contract for everyone to change every one of the hundreds of soldiers, guards, and servants. It would cost too much in the short term."

Marisia explained further, "We buy silence and safety with this amount. Nobody would be insane enough to compromise our estate for a couple of gold coins if they could make the same over a few months without compromising their safety."

Aurum asked, "How much is our revenue actually?"

His mother, Salyna, answered him, "We are barely making a surplus right now. Our radical policies with the debtors we got working in easing our effort in the east burned a good hole."

Lorient spoke again, "Apropo debtors, I read somewhere that we have a ton of coin owed by other estates? Why not collect them?"

Narsiz answered her, "Rather not, for multiple reasons. We accepted their delayed payments or defaults from credits we issued them, as they gave us resources and favorable policies, generating a nice revenue stream. By getting a chunk now, we would lose out later on, and let's not talk about what we actually would take? Most of them have no notable treasury."

Salyna complimented him, "Well spoken, Mr. Narsiz. I propose a multi-pronged approach and will raise taxes only so slightly that it would make almost no difference with the excuse of the demon run while making cuts in cities where we have more than enough staff without mana contracts. We will also work more closely with the red-light district, and don't ignore their minimal tax avoidance anymore and..."

She listed a lot of micro policies out, which would only target specific groups and bring barely any coin in. Still, if everything went as planned, it would generate enough to barely make around 200 - 300k.

Sarah was confused, "Why didn't we do it earlier if there was this much coin we could get?"

Salyna raised an eyebrow as she liked the question and didn't expect it from her, "Ms. Sarah, it is too much of a headache to fight for every single coin swept away by corruption and tax avoidance. It is fine to let smaller businesses go away with this as the coin, in the end, comes back into our coffers."

As Alexander listened to their discussions, he started to feel bad since he thought it was all his fault. He knew all the policies would damage their fief's economy in the long term as they would try to squeeze out everything they could. This would bring a lot of problems since they would go out of their way to suddenly press every small vendor and business owner for pennies.

Afterward, small businesses, which tried to secure away some coins, would try to do it in another way, and the cycle would repeat itself till one party would give up, usually the tax collectors, or the other would leave after they sold everything off, which would be the businesses. There was an unwritten agreement between those parties that it was acceptable to avoid some taxes for various reasons.

However, Alexander had an idea that he held back and wanted to present later on, but this moment was perfect. He said, "I actually wanted to wait with this, but I think I can create an item and make money for the estate..." He scratched his head, embarrassed, "...it was kind of my fault in the end, too, hehe."

A vein popped on Salyna's head. She wanted nothing more than to smack him as losing such a massive capital was a catastrophe, and anyone else would be beheaded for it. Still, this puppy was only embarrassed, but to her luck, Narsiz questioned him as she would probably lose it, "What do you want to create? Don't forget, Alex, we can't really invest much now."

Alexander had many ideas he could make money with, but he wanted to wait till he was older since he was more than just a little busy, and no businessman would take him seriously. But right now, he needed to make an exception, as this whole debacle was his fault.

Alexander drew a rectangle in the air, "Paper and no, it costs barely anything, hehe... free coin!"

He chose this product as the parchments in this world were terrible to write on, and the target group would be nobles or merchants. They could afford it since he wanted to sell it at a massive price margin. Merchants, business owners, and nobles would kill to have paper documents instead of brittle parchments that had barely any longevity relative to actual paper.

Also, he knew that his estate bought parchments from merchants for a not-so-small price. Even if nobody bought them for some inexplicable reason, he could create them for the estate and save costs.

Everyone looked confused, and Noriken said, "Not everyone knows what paper is. It is fundamentally a better parchment and very expensive to make. As much as I know, only the royalty of high demons is using them for their family archives. Mr. Alexander, it is too expensive."

Alexander argued back, "No, it is not? I know how to make it, and it is very cheap..." He held his hands at the front and tried to get at least a chance, "... ok, how about this? I will make it and present it in... how about in three to four weeks? I only need some pots, barrels, containers, etc."

Marisia looked at Noriken, "Is it dangerous to make?"

Noriken frowned, "It is a secret, and honestly, I rather doubt Mr. Alexander's abilities to make it."

Alexander protested, almost standing up and staring at his mother, "Three weeks!..." then he looked at Noriken, "...and it is not dangerous!" It was a little dangerous, Alexander added in his mind.

Sarah looked at Alexander and shrugged, "Why not? No one of us knows much about alchemy, and I trust him when it comes to such things..." She looked at Ocilia and pointed with a thumb at her, "...well, she knows a bit, but I would guess not to the same extent as Alex."

Ocilia's face flushed a little. Even saying someone could do Alchemy at her age would be fantastical, and they would be regarded as a prodigy.

Alchemists were highly respected since they would need to have either exceptional [Mystic Skills] or be sufficiently skilled in their mana skills while also being very knowledgeable. Of course, there existed many who were unskilled and could barely create a subpar small healing potion and thus considered hacks. Still, if the public thought about alchemists, such were not considered part of the caste.

Narsiz stroked through his blonde hair, "Well if it only cost us at most four weeks of waiting? Why not, honestly?"

Lorient yawned as this meeting bored her, "Huaaam, It's not like we go bankrupt in four weeks. I am for it."

Salyna looked at Alexander and asked, "Let's say you can actually create a piece of paper..." She looked at Noriken, "...how much do they go for?"

Noriken thought momentarily and answered very confidently, "Around two to ten average gold pieces per sheet of paper, depending on the quality."

Salyna went into thought again, mumbling something under her breath, and then looked at Alexander again and sighed heavily, "Ok, Mr. Alexander, if you can create one sheet of paper in four weeks, you will have at least a lot of pocket money."

Marisia clapped again, "Ok, this works well since we need either way to get an estimate from some builder companies. Everyone, please think about other methods for the next four weeks, and this also applies to the young ones as this is a perfect exercise, and don't forget, nobody outside this room is privy to this information!"

Everyone nodded, and she clapped once again, "Dismissed!"