In the study room in Sedona City's castle.
With a small wooden stick in her mouth, Annie was sitting in front of a table and reviewing the affairs in the city. She suddenly put down her pen and scratched her ears in frustration.
"Annie? What's wrong?" Nicole asked worriedly, putting down her notebook. "Is it because of those merchants again?"
"Mhmm." Annie nodded. "Those merchants are crazy. Every single day, they come to the City Lord's Mansion with their money bags and ask when we would lift our purchase restrictions."
"Isn't that good? There being merchants that buy our stuff means that we will get profits. Weren't you previously agonizing over the drops in sales?" Nicole asked, confused.
Annie frowned and explained to Nicole, "That's what I thought too, but I later realized that something was wrong."
"Ah? What happened?" Nicole was worried. "We can't let problems arise when the Young Master isn't around."
"Those merchants emptied the Shopping Mall the day after Young Master left." Annie said, flipping through her notebook. "The merchants are hoarding goods; they also emptied the Shopping Mall the day after that."
"Is… Is there a problem with that?" Nicole asked, confused. 'Isn't it good that the goods are emptied? The stores also paid their rent, and the City Lord's Mansion has made a lot of money in the past few days.'
Annie sighed weakly. "Of course there's a problem. A big problem. The items in our Shopping Mall are cheap, so if the merchants keep buying them without any restrictions and then ship those goods out to sell to other places, it would weaken the attractiveness of our Shopping Mall. We would also become what Young Master called a 'sweat factory'." Annie explained.
Nicole finally understood. The merchants were the ones who would benefit the most, while the City Lord's Mansion would only get a little bit of income from labor.
"Then what should we do? Increase the prices?" Nicole shook her head and dismissed her own idea. Raising the prices would harm the residents of Sedona City.
"I was thinking about whether or not to make those merchants also pay taxes. This would give additional income to the City Lord's Mansion, and more importantly, limit their ability to hoard goods." Annie said, grabbing her ears. The Shopping Mall cannot run out of goods. Otherwise, we won't be able to keep the merchants that come to visit us later.
"But will they pay the taxes?" Nicole asked worriedly. "They are still buyers, so it'll probably be hard to get them to pay taxes."
"Sigh. Yeah," Annie said, lowering her head in defeat. "If someone made me pay taxes when I'm buying something, I'd probably call Mina to beat them up."
"…" Nicole rolled her eyes. "Isn't there any other way?"
"I haven't thought of a solution yet and can only restrict their purchases." Annie said, lying on the table. She finally realized how difficult it was to be a noble after working for the past few days. Or rather, it was difficult to be a noble in Sedona City. The only thing that the nobles in other cities did was play around, eat, and sleep.
"Don't worry. Young Master is coming back today. I'm sure he'll have a solution." Nicole comforted Annie. She knew that Annie had been under too much pressure recently, so much so that she even ate one of the lollipops that she normally was reluctant to eat.
"Right. Young Master is coming back today." Annie got up from the table as soon as she heard that. She closed her notebook, shook off her shoes, sat cross-legged on her chair, and let out a long sigh. "Uncle Ben has already arranged for someone to pick up Young Master, so I'll just leave these things for Young Master to worry about."
Nicole shook her head and smiled. Her eyes were filled with longing, and because their "backbone" wasn't there with them, they were usually quite nervous. After all, they had to run such a large "family business", and they were afraid of making mistakes.
"Young Master went out for many days, so he must be tired. I'll go and prepare something for him to eat." As soon as she finished saying that, Nicole walked away with light steps. She had recently been experimenting with new types of pastries and was very close to being able to make the pastries that Lucas had described to her.
After just sitting there for a while, Annie picked up her notebook and flipped through it. She frowned as she looked through the notes given to her by Lucas. There were so many words that she didn't know, like dumping and anti-dumping.
"What to do when supplies can't keep up with market demands?" Annie bit the wooden stick in her mouth in half. She used to take pride in her intelligence, but now, she feels extremely stupid.
"Ugh, whatever. I'm not going to think about it anymore. I'll just wait for the Young Master to come back and ask him." Annie threw her notebook to the side and stood up on her chair, looking out the window at the scenery of Sedona City.
The streets were golden wheat laid out to be dried. Every family was assigned an area to dry their wheat, and they were taking advantage of the hot sun to evaporate all water so they could store the dried wheat.
Annie cupped her chin, and copying Lucas's tone of voice, said, "People will settle down seeing so much wheat. There's no need to panic when the family has a surplus of food."
"He he he…" Annie laughed. She put her hands on the window, and as she looked at the neatly aligned houses, she thought, this city must be one of its kind in this world, right?
It had been 5 days since the wheat had been harvested, and the wheat that had been dried first had already been put into the warehouse. The residents also happily turned in 30% of their wheat for their wheat tax.
"Young Master is still too kind." Annie muttered. She thought about how the nobles in other territories would collect 80% of the wheat as taxes and leave the commoners with 20% of their wheat. The kinder nobles would collect 60 to 70% of the wheat as taxes, leaving the commoners with just enough wheat to keep them from starving. There was no such thing as storing extra food.
In contrast, Lucas only collected 30% of the wheat as taxes and would even buy extra wheat from the commoners if they couldn't store the extra wheat. After trading their wheat for money, they could then spend their money at the Shopping Mall.
Annie remembered that Lucas had told her it was important to make the commoners wealthy and allow them to have a food surplus. It would allow the market to circulate and result in more wealth, which would allow Sedona City to develop.
"Sigh." Annie still couldn't understand and thought that Lucas was just being kind and making excuses to allow the commoners to live good lives. "I wonder when the Young Master will be back. I haven't slept well these past few days."
Annie touched the pimple on her cheek. Angered, she said, "Why do you have to grow right now? No, I have to go and take care of it, or else Young Master will think I'm ugly if he sees it. But what should I do?"
Annie was frustrated as she touched the pimple on her cheek. She was at the age where girls all wanted to look pretty, and it was especially so for her as Lucas was about to be back. But there is a bane of all pretty girls, pimples. And it had chosen Annie as its enemy.
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