My Death Flag Shows No Sign Of Ending

Episode 5

Listening to Harold's report, his parents believed that Clara and her daughter Colette, were dead. It was unlikely that they would even think of doubting their son.
Even though their son had killed a woman and her child, seeing them only praising him extravagantly by telling – 「You have talent in magic」, Kazuki felt that the gap between him and his parents would never be covered in his whole lifetime. As long as they didn't rid themselves of this kind of sense of values, there was no way he could see eye-to-eye with them.

Well, because of them blindly believing in him, they didn't doubt anything he told. So for now, that was more than enough-was what he thought.
For now, it could be said that the plan to rescue Clara and Colette was a success.

Truthfully, this was when he should've been happy, but confronted by a new problem, for Kazuki, time was precious. The most he could do was to pray that Colette would get close to Liner.
Leaving that aside, the thing that was troubling Kazuki was how to deal with the growing displeasure of the populace, due to the political pressure of the Stokes family. In short, it could be summed up as severe taxation.

Since the Stokes territory, with the exception of the towering mountain range to the northeast, was facing the plains, and the highway was laid out as though running beside the city, it was considerably blessed in the field of transportation. There were no seas in the surroundings, but there was a river formed by a stream from the mountain range, which passed nearby, and a forest stretched out from the northwest to the eastern side so, it was a land suitable for forestry too.
The circulation of people and money was good, and nature was abundant. Naturally, both primary and secondary industries were prosperous.

However, since the Stokes territory wasn't very vast, they couldn't make use of those benefits. Advanced despite being a small town – was the scope of it.
On a self governing area with that scope of economy, the Stokes family was imposing quite a heavy tax.

For the residents living in the vicinity of the town center, who had considerably high income, it wasn't as though they couldn't pay the tax, but for the agricultural community living in the suburbs, it was quite a burden.
Particularly, in the recent years, being assaulted by natural disasters as though it was an annual occurrence, the volume of crops harvested was unfavorable, and due to that, profit went down and the farmers running under deficit weren't less.

For that reason, voices rose up from the farms, appealing to reduce the tax temporarily, but there was no way that couple would lend their ears for something like that. On the contrary, the pressure was tightened by telling -「If you make any more noise, I will raise the tax rates even more」- It was dealt by threatening them like that.

There were talks about how the populace suffered from the political pressure in the game, but there were no detailed descriptions about that portion. It was likely that, without Norman's documents, even Kazuki wouldn't have noticed this.
If the present condition lasted for a long while, the displeasure accumulated due to the pressuring of the Stokes family would without a doubt, explode at some point of time. That would be the first sign of indication to the fall of the Stokes family.

Well, for Kazuki, no matter what happened to this family, it didn't have anything to do with him, but the chances of him getting involved and undergoing a disastrous experience was extraordinarily high and so, there was no way he couldn't take some measures.

「Excuse me~.........Tte, what are you doing?」

Showing his face from the opened door, without even waiting for a reply from knocking the door, was the accomplice who helped in rescuing Clara, Zen – the coachman of the horse-drawn cart.
Somehow, as of late, even though there was no work for him, it became as though he was involved with whatever Harold was doing. No matter how harsh his speech was, other than laughing dryly, it was as though he wasn't enduring at all.