“Increasing taxes so far in the future is not feasible. You are asking the cities to help foot the bill for the portal building, while only The Abyss will benefit,” one of my governors said. They had been arguing for quite a while about the rapid changes that were taking place.

Everyone liked the idea of an expansion, but no one wanted to be on the hook for the cost. While I wasn’t required to be here at this emergency meeting, it was highly encouraged by Clarissa that I attend. It was less about them not getting their way, but vent frustrations and having an outlet.

That was why I was listening to this discussion go back and forth, trying not to feel bored in the meeting room, while thinking how my time could be better spent grinding. Still, the changes were contentious enough that Clarissa had asked me to show my face to make it clear she had my support with the changes in how the tax would be divided up.

Half of the city and half of national tax revenue would go to pay for the portal buildings and our push into new territory. That would be 5% from each area of government, totaling 60 million points a day. That wasn’t even counting the additional Clarissa had to invest or the concessions, The Abyss had to give to have the portal building built in their city.

One of those concessions was that the travel had to be subsidized by the city at cost, with a separate budget. Since they would be getting a lot of traffic, subsidizing any imposed costs would be a huge part of the city expenses at the start. Specifically for the airship travel and for the portal travel if there was a cost later on after the initial building was constructed.

I could see several of the governors giving me the occasional glance. I was curious if they would propose I give up a portion of my tax revenue as well. No one had proposed such a thing yet. If they did, I planned to agree, but then bill them for my services of dealing with the population issue. I wasn’t going to ask for more, but I wasn’t going to get my wealth taken from me. I would be investing my time into upgrading the cities as well for free.

“The tax level is already crippling since we are looking to invest into upgrading our teams. In addition, this new tax free Western area, will take the best and the brightest from us, creating more revenue pressure,” the governor continued saying.

That was a valid concern, but I would rather have a drain on trouble makers and complainers than excess population that would create trouble. While reported crime was incredibly rare along with high level teams going missing, there was a lot of low level crime.

This included fights outside the city, robberies, thefts, murders, and a couple of protection rackets had tried to spring up. Clarissa’s auditors had been keeping track of the crime levels in various cities, and ensuring they were recorded in a standardized manner. Low level crime was ticking up. While it was incredibly low compared to major cities on Earth, it was growing.

The lack of resources and grinding spots was creating more and more pressure. Eventually that would cause things to boil over. I had paid quite a bit attention to two metrics that showed the poverty level and general desperation of the population. The first metric was the number of slavery cases. They were rare, but some people tried to force others into indentured servitude.

Right now, there was a small but growing segment of the market, where people were willingly selling themselves into virtual slavery in order to have a place to live and food to eat. Like a maid or a butler, but in many cases these people went beyond servants.

It wasn’t the kind of social problem, which had its fault with any singular person. It was just human nature and inequality rearing its ugly head. At least no one messed with children after examples had been made. Incredibly brutal examples. There was also a reward for people reporting on attempts to traffic children in any way. Thankfully the number of those types of cases were incredibly low.

The second metric was prostitution, which tied into the first metric. It was on the rise and prices were decreasing for prostitutes. While it might not seem like an actual indicator of the health of a society, it was one of the things that had been brought up as a standard way to measure the economy. People would pay based on availability and perceived worth. As the number of people in need to crystals increased, so did the number of prostitutes, which in turn decreased their prices.

We didn’t have a set of standard goods and products to measure against the economy, and while polling data was useful, it didn’t provide a clear picture across all of society. The Prostitute Standard Price, or PSP, was the official benchmark of our economy and it was on a downward trend. It had been gradual but had slowly been picking up speed, as the GDP had begun to level off.

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There needed to be an outlet and a way to manage population density in a controllable manner. Hence the expansion plan. Everyone had agreed on that, but it was the details and who would be paying what. Clarissa had been quite fair in my opinion, but everyone had to have their opinion heard.

I didn’t know if they were trying to impress me, or just wanted to annoy me. I mentally sighed, wishing for the simpler days when I could just melt people and tell them to do what I wanted, or they would die. I could still do that, and my presence indicated as much, but then I would be on the path of the Divine Empress.

“Enough,” I finally said after having to endure this back and forth for an hour. The person speaking immediately shut up and sat down. “I like Clarissa’s plan. Unless anyone has a problem with the plan itself?” I asked. No one spoke up. “I know you are losing a percentage of your income, but we need to take the territory while we can. We are on a time crunch. If we wait too long, other nations will become entrenched. While I could force them out, it would be a nightmare. Unless people want to fund a full-scale war in the future?” I asked.

That got a lot of head shakes. No one wanted an actual war. “Then we move forward. Divide the tax revenue and plan for the increase in 450 days. Each city will get an allotment of tickets for the airships. Can we have the cities offer to sell them?” I looked at Clarissa.

“It would be moving points from The Abyss, since they have to subsidize travel,” Clarissa explained.

“Give them four times the allotment of other cities, and each city can price the tickets or give them out however they want to. By allowing the governors to distribute them instead of a lottery based system, people can get batches of tickets to travel togeather. And if the cities still want to run lotteries on a portion of their tickets they can. Have we worked out the exact amount?” I asked Clarissa.

“Not until we build an extra-large airship and total up the operating costs. That should be finished by tomorrow. Then we can decide on the number of people we will be moving,” she answered.

“Regardless, that is how we will do things. Does anyone have any objections?” I asked. No one spoke up. I had to give it to Clarissa. She was incredibly clever. After talking things over with her, this was all a show set up by her.

Having the governors handle the ticket distribution, would allow them to calm things down in their cities if there were people they wanted to leave, but couldn’t kill. This would be the short-term fix. Long term it had a good chance to some of these troublemakers returning and creating issues. But that was unlikely, since most of them would die.

Letting the governors feel like they had more control, would make them feel I was listening to their concerns. Clarissa had informed me that there was too much support in my corner. If I didn’t throw them a bone publicly, then that would lead to unrest. It made sense in a roundabout way, and it made look better, so I had agreed to the charade.

This was the kind of subtle maneuvering and politicking that I needed Clarissa for. If I had done things my way, I would have put togeather a plan, ask how they could make it better, but tell them to suck it up and get it done. Less carrot and a lot more stick, since I didn’t have patience for any of this.

There was a unanimous vote approving of the changes I suggested and implementing the new tax distribution policy. Once the vote was done and the council meeting finished, I immediately left. Clarissa could shake hands and manage egos, but I did my part in making sure the governors felt heard and listened to. Even though they were just managers under Clarissa’s corporate aegis.

I really disliked problems I couldn’t fight to death. It was much simpler. I would take 10 monsters any day over trying to wrangle people with politics. I also wanted to be better than the Divine Empress. While it was almost impossible to be worse, I didn’t want to murder my way through people. Then I would get yes-men and not capable individuals.

That was what made the city system work, each governor was trying to differentiate their cities in a variety of ways. It was a struggle, with how limited the options were, but the economy was taking shape. Even after ten years, it was still a massive struggle, since the vast majority of all wealth depended on grinding and getting points from monsters. Food production was a big aspect of this. Everyone was trying to recreate their local food products from back on Earth and export them.

Apparently, there was organized crime in regards to the food industry. While the market was open inside my Empire and there were no trade restrictions, that didn’t mean people wouldn’t try and intercept shipments, sabotage other individuals’ places of production. It hadn’t gotten out of hand, but such things were occurring.

All problems that couldn’t be punched. Actual societal problems and people misbehaving. And while there were executions, as I had found out early on in this place, life was cheap. It was easy to hire new people as disposable assets. The only thing keeping a lid on the chaos that had fermented was me.

That was apparently a big reason, why no one messed with the Imperial Soldiers or messed with anything in Purgatory. While a lot of credit went to how well patrolled the city was, the other factor was that people did not want to poke the sleeping dragon and get its attention, me. While I would have liked to have an ordered and controlled nation with no crime, it just wasn’t possible with the diversity and prejudices people brought from Earth, combined with desperation to make money.

It was also a symptom of population crisis that was slowly taking root. While Clarissa had not announced it, there would be a massive crackdown on crime once the new taxes took effect in 450 days. The number of guards and soldiers would be increased along with a new punishment, exile. Instead of death or fees, we could just exile people into the wilderness. It would be a lot more palatable to do such a thing in large numbers. There would need to be some checks, but we could deport people we didn’t want, but hadn’t risen up to the level of being executed.