After choosing to leave, they regretted it.

Leaning against the corner of the cell, the red-haired princess huddled up with her knees hugged.

Although I remember such a long time ago, it hardly appeared in my mind in these years.

Why do I suddenly recall this now?

Is it because of what you saw today?

Responsibility and honor are two sides of the same coin, and that's how it should be.

But no matter whether they were against superiors or subordinates, these damn nobles had long been obsessed with glory and responsibility.

All that remains is disgusting calculation of interests.

How annoying.

Heidi sighed and began to look around.

As mentioned before, this is a dungeon.

Like most dungeons, it is dark, depressing, dull, and suffocating.

There are differences.

The scale of this dungeon far exceeds the normal range, and you can't even see the end at a glance. It is extremely vast and unusually crowded.

Every room was packed with prisoners, even Heidi's room. Not far away from her, on the other side, there was a "roommate" huddled in a ball wrapped in a torn quilt.

The management is also very bad, with all kinds of unpleasant smells mixed together, almost suffocating people.

This also indirectly shows how poor the governance of this city is.

"whispering sound……"

Heidi curled her lips in disdain and began to think about her next move.

First of all, although the process was ugly and the result was not good, at least I made it into the city.

And his identity was not exposed.

So, the next priority is still to meet the local lord and ask for help.

Considering the poor management of this cell, it is obviously quite unrealistic to expect the other party to take the initiative to come here for inspection or to interrogate the prisoners.

Still have to jailbreak.

The question is, how to run?

Heidi touched her waist.

The knife that was stolen before was still in its original place and had not been confiscated.

These guards kept calling themselves spies from the demon clan, but they were so careless in handling the case that they didn't even do a basic body search. It was obvious that they were abusing their power.

Of course, for Her Royal Highness the Princess, this is a good thing.

She walked to the cell door and checked the lock.

It is extremely old and lacks maintenance, and it should be easy to destroy it by your own strength.

As for the guards—around the corner where Heidi couldn't see, there came the sound of a group of people making a noisy noise.

They must be playing something together, and no one is paying attention to this place at all.

What a mob.

But in any case, there is no time to lose, it is better to leave here quickly.

Thinking of this, Heidi put her hand on the door lock.

"Uh……"

Suddenly, a muffled voice came from behind.

Heidi subconsciously turned her head and found that her "roommate" lying on the ground on the other side of the cell had lifted the quilt and sat up, perhaps because he heard her movement.

He is an old man with white hair, dark skin and a face full of wrinkles.

It’s damn timely to wake up.

Heidi cursed in her heart and had to give up the action temporarily and sit down obediently.

The old man who had just woken up was obviously still in a state of confusion. He looked at Heidi for several times with a confused look on his face before finally confirming her existence.

Then he asked:

"Little girl, are you awake? I see those soldiers beat you up pretty badly. How are you?"

His figure was unusually heavyset, and his accent was so thick that Heidi had to put in some effort to understand him.

But there was no way. Heidi couldn't escape from prison in front of him, so she could only deal with him first.

He put on a sad face and said in a crying voice:

"My...my father was killed by a demon. I wanted to go to the city to seek refuge with my relatives, but because I couldn't pay, I was arrested. They also accused me of being a demon spy..."

The idea doesn't have to be new, as long as it's useful.

Anyway, her character has been established along the way, and now Heidi, who is suffering from nervous breakdown, is too lazy to start from scratch to create a new identity, so let it be.

Sure enough, after hearing this, the old man sighed with regret and shook his head:

"Ah, these damn people are really committing a sin..."

Judging from his appearance, he should be a farmer or something like that. It would be easy to trick Heidi with her level.

Thinking of chatting with him and then getting over it quickly, Heidi asked:

"Then...Grandpa, how did you get in?"

The old man sighed again and shook his head:

"I didn't pay enough taxes on the land, so I was arrested."

Heidi blinked:

"Taxes? How much tax is too much to pay? The farmland around here should be quite fertile, right?"

The old man shook his head.

"Little girl, I can tell you're from out of town. But you might not know that since the old lord died, this young lord here has demanded that all our land be divided 30% to 70%."

"37?"

Heidi frowned.

According to her knowledge, this should be considered a normal tax rate in this world. Some greedy guys would raise the ratio to 50-50, but that was rare.

With a 37% ratio, how could you not afford it...

"Yes, three to seven. We take three, and the lord takes seven."

"……What did you say?"

Heidi was stunned.

According to Aize's previous assessment, taking into account fantasy existences such as magic, the world's comprehensive productivity is probably between the Renaissance and the Industrial Age.

But for farmers, magic is generally useless, and it is impossible to capture those powerful monsters to plow the land.

Therefore, the situation of agricultural production is not much better than that in Aize's hometown in the Middle Ages.

With 70% of the already scarce production taken away, Heidi couldn't imagine how she would survive.

And, it seems that there is more than that——

"And that's just the agricultural tax. When we collect and sell things, we have to pay commodity tax. When our children are born, we have to pay birth tax. When we buy things, we have to pay purchase tax... In the end, even 20% of what we get is pretty good."

The old man shook his head, his face full of resentment:

"Some people were falsely accused of crimes and even had to pay fines. Those who couldn't afford it had their fines deferred. Some have even been fined 100 years later. The people around here have long been destitute!"

Heidi shook her head.

"But... no, the tax law promulgated by the royal family a hundred years ago already stipulated that the final sum of various taxes on farmers cannot exceed half of their output. How... how dare they..."

The old man smiled helplessly and said:

"Silly child, what are you talking about? How can the royal law apply to our lords?"

The princess's expression was petrified when she was suddenly called out.

"……What did you say?"

"Here, in this territory, the royal family and such are probably the most useless things!"

Chapter 25: The Royal Family and Thatch

The royal family is useless.

In any case, the combination of these two words would make Heidi blush and fly into a rage, and it is not impossible that she would even rush over and strangle the other person to death.

But only now, after having just experienced a series of small aristocratic shocks, she couldn't get angry.

His lips and face turned pale, his hands and whole body were in constant struggle, and even cold sweat broke out.

Suppressing all kinds of complicated emotions, she asked in a low voice:

"Why... do you say that? What does it mean that the royal family is useless?"

The environment was dim, and the old man opposite was not a scheming person, so he did not notice Heidi's condition.

He just slapped his thigh, smiled bitterly and shook his head:

"Little girl, since you're from somewhere else, your father must be a businessman, right?"

"Ah."

Heidi nodded.

"Unlike merchants, farmers like us are not allowed to leave the land at will."

Under the existing aristocratic system, the farmlands, lands, forests, rivers, etc. within the fiefdoms are all private property of the nobles.

In order for these properties to realize their value, people, or subjects, are indispensable.

Therefore, the nobles were happy to use various means such as laws, taxes, and debts to prevent their subjects from leaving their territories, so that there would be no one to exploit their value.

In fact, this also made the people of the territory become part of the property of the lord and nobles.

"I'm 60 years old now. All my life, I've lived in a small village, farming, going to the market, and dealing with tax collectors sent by the lord. I've only been to this city three times, and this time I was arrested is the third time."

"In a village like ours, even a blade of straw is useful, but what use is the royal family? Will the royal family help us when the nobles increase our taxes? Will the royal family help us when we are forced to do forced labor?"

"No, never. Who has ever seen the royal family? Who has ever seen someone sent by the royal family? What's the point of the royal family then?"

Due to the limitations of communication and transportation, rural areas are inherently extremely closed.

A small tax collector is enough to make an entire village of farmers lose face.

If a few more guards were added, even the family might be destroyed.

In this situation, the so-called royal family, king and the like are just simple concepts and have no meaning to most civilians.

After all, it doesn't matter who the king or princess is.

It would be better to pray that the new tax collector would have more conscience - although this is usually a luxury.

In short, after what happened in the previous few days, the lethality of such words was extremely shocking.

Like thunder, it exploded in Heidi's mind and continued to echo.

As a result, her thoughts fell into a new round of shutdown.

Of course, whether it was pride, stubbornness, or just some kind of subconscious self-protection, Her Royal Highness, as a symbol of the royal family, did not intend to admit this point of view.

After hesitating for a while, he asked:

"Then... what about the Lawsayer? The royal family should send out a Lawsayer every year. Why don't you... tell the Lawsayer about these things?"

The Law-Speaker is a system established by the kingdom a hundred years ago when it was at its most powerful.

Through various political games, the royal family formulated some common laws that were openly recognized by the major nobles in order to restrict the nobles and protect the common people.

Every year, the royal family would send officials called law enforcers to inspect the territories of various nobles to determine whether they had violated the law.