The Bewilderment of the Sacrificial Second Princess

Chapter 9: Lord Balk

“Excuse me.”

“Come in.”

I had the staff open the door to the splendid office, and faced Lord Balk. His voice was that of a calm man.

He was also a man, but how should I put it…I wouldn’t call him handsome, but he was good-looking. Yes, that suits him.

He had tanned skin, smoked silver hair tied back in one. His broad shoulders and chest were knightly, but the sight of him wearing a monocle and looking at documents was very bureaucratic. He must be five years older than me.

I’m not sure if he’s a military officer or a civilian official, but he’s the person I’ll be working with from today. I’ll find out more about him later.

“From today, I’ll be in your care. My name is Claire. Nice to meet you, Lord Balk.”

“…! I apologize for not greeting you. I am Count Partnum Balk.”

Although he hadn’t lifted his face from the documents, he hurriedly turned around when I introduced myself. He looked at me in surprise and then sincerely introduced himself.

I’ll be working with him every day from now on. I smiled (in my own way) and went to see where the civil servants worked together with him.

It seems like today and tomorrow will be spent on inspections. It’s such a big country after all.

“Do you know about this country’s tax system?”

“Yes. I had reviewed the documents in my home country, and I didn’t see any particular problems, so I would like to see the work situation directly.”

Tax revenue had increased from the Baratonia Kingdom to the Faithnum Empire, and copies of the domestic accounts were also sent together. To ensure that there were no unnatural flows of money, civil servants were dispatched from the Faithnum Empire to provide guidance from scratch.

Now, there is no need to send taxes to the Faithnum Empire anymore. It is sufficient to manage domestically.

Based on this, I was shown a room and immediately thought that rapid reform was necessary.

Firstly, the departments were not separated. The responsible parties were also handling both the population registry and trade revenues. There weren’t enough people either.

As it should have been an annexed country by the previous Faithnum King a few generations ago, the letters and numbers of the Faithnum Empire are the same.

In the workroom, civil servants’ screams and shouts echoed. Due to the lack of paper, wooden tablets and parchment were mixed together, and each person’s desk was a disaster. Furthermore, the document shelves were crammed with wooden tablets…

(I can’t stand it…!)

“Please stop working right now!”

My cry stopped them in their tracks, and the civil servants looked in my direction.

This is not good. There are too many problems. Wait, I said we were inspecting all departments, but there are still departments where things are like this…?

As I calculated the departments and personnel that should be launched urgently in my head, I instructed the officials in front of me to “suspend regular operations for one month” and “organize materials by year and month and make a list of any lost materials” and ordered them to prioritize tidying up first.

The officials looked at each other and asked, “Can we really stop working for a month?” but seeing Lord Balk laughing, they became even more stunned and said, “Understood,” and started with tidying up.

At that time, in this department… which was in charge of taxes… I also instructed them to rearrange their desks into three spaces, and then I headed to the next department.