Ch.222222. Gifts and Answers (6)

Camille Labourgenus. The Labourgenus family where he was born and raised was a typical court noble family.

Though they held noble titles granted by the royal family with fiefs, court nobles who delegated actual governance to the royal family were often treated as fake nobles by territorial lords. In truth, they were indeed far from what one would commonly consider nobility.

From their very origin, these nobles were artificially created to form a trusted inner circle for the royal family or royalists, so it was inevitable that they fell short when compared to genuine territorial nobles.

Due to the unique feudal structure of the Frankish Kingdom, the power of the lords remained formidable, and the king of the kingdom was merely “the strongest lord.”

Therefore, no matter how powerful the current royal authority might be, it was impossible for his mere subordinates (court nobles) to be treated well.

In social circles, though not openly, they were subtly despised. Even among royalists, being treated as inferiors was the norm.

Despite the existence of laws against “insulting nobility,” curiously, no one had ever been arrested for defaming court nobles, perhaps because society oddly refused to treat them as true nobles.

Yet regardless of this strange social status, court nobles ultimately held positions appointed by the kingdom’s bureaucracy.

Despite their peculiarly low social standing, they were, in fact, a kind of civil servant.

Considering that low-level officials weren’t recognized as court nobles, court nobles were indeed upper-class people with ancestors who had served as high-ranking officials equivalent to vice ministers or ministers.

It was simply that bureaucratic society, noble society, and general society were disconnected from each other—these people were legitimate nobles nonetheless.

In any case, among these court noble families, the Labourgenus family was one of those holding particularly high positions.

Originally merchants who practiced their hereditary alchemy trade selling potions in shops in the capital of Frank, they transformed their family when the current head’s great-grandfather was recruited as an official and became a court noble.

Thanks to this, they rose from being just another alchemist family to court nobles and royal confidants, reaching the ranks of prestigious families in just five generations…

They continued their ascent to success, eventually reaching the point where the position of Royal Tax Commissioner was essentially hereditary within their family.

From a modern perspective, the hereditary succession of official positions would seem like a mind-boggling, insane situation, but in the historical context, inheriting the family business was so common it wasn’t even worth discussing.

Naturally, the power derived from this overwhelming position far exceeded that of even the average count family—the minimum threshold for what might be called “high nobility”—meaning that simply being born with the Labourgenus name practically guaranteed a successful life.

And Camille Labourgenus, the third son and fourth child among the siblings of such a family, naturally followed the career path of an official.

Of course, it was essentially predetermined that the eldest daughter among the siblings would inherit the position of family head and Tax Commissioner, but Camille, being fourth in line and unremarkable, never even considered the possibility of taking that position and paid it no mind.

Without any particular dreams or desires for his funeral, Camille had been living an aimless life, expecting to simply die someday…

But there was a grand event that would completely overturn his life.

In the Frankish Kingdom, all gambling operations except those directly run by the kingdom or lords were illegal.

Nevertheless, certain factions, believing that gambling could bring enormous wealth, ventured into this illegal business, and the “Pleasure Cult” was no exception.

This cult, worshipping the foreign god “Sodomio Gomoria Blutas” of pleasure, was a large cult organization that spread primarily among artists and the wealthy who could afford to enjoy pleasure, in accordance with their hedonistic doctrines.

While they began with supposedly “wholesome” activities like orgies or drug use in somewhat “legal” areas, they were known for gradually corrupting their targets through “pleasure magic,” various means of body modification, and eventually abnormal methods like torture.

Of course, to mitigate the risks of such notoriety, they had long since adopted the cell structure essential for foreign god worship organizations. Their cult, offering addictive pleasures that people came to desire on their own, had long been among the major ranks of foreign god cults.

Their unique promise of maximizing the effects of certain hormones and providing otherworldly pleasure contributed greatly to the cult’s spread, much like highly addictive drugs.

But they were still an organization. With many members abandoning their livelihoods to pursue only pleasure, the cult became increasingly impoverished, eventually establishing illegal gambling dens to secure funding.

The Pleasure Cult’s gambling dens, designed to extract money over the long term, used various means to intensify the already strong addictiveness of gambling.

Using drugs and “pleasure magic”—specialties of the pleasure cult—they maximized the gap between the feelings of losing and winning money in gambling.

Thanks to this, Camille, who by sheer coincidence set foot in one of these Pleasure Cult gambling dens, became completely addicted within just a few days, turning into an ATM for the cult…

“Money, I need money…!”

It wasn’t particularly strange that he squandered his personal assets—wealthy but not limitless—in just a few months.

Fortunately, just as his money was running out, he was appointed as a royal tax collector, making it temporarily impossible for him to gamble. However, his mind had long been consumed by the thought that he needed to gather money by any means necessary.

Thus, while collecting taxes as a collector, he eventually laid hands where he shouldn’t have.

Of course, he couldn’t stoop to extorting money from territorial nobles directly, so instead he deliberately manipulated the taxes imposed on lords, slightly increasing or decreasing them.

Taxes calculated according to the details of feudal contracts varied slightly each year depending on harvests, and he cleverly manipulated these, adding the amount he wanted to embezzle to the calculated tax.

Of course, adding excessive amounts would certainly be discovered, but since the tax amounts were so enormous, even additions small enough to go unnoticed were substantial sums for an individual.

To be frank, national-level taxes and budgets involve amounts beyond our imagination.

One might wonder how such important taxes could be managed so loosely that they could be manipulated so easily.

The somewhat absurd reason was that they simply couldn’t imagine that a mere tax collector would dare to deceive the sacred tax system.

More precisely, they believed that humans as a species would make at least minimally rational judgments.

To those who know the reality, this seems like a ridiculous hope, but to those who know nothing, it seems quite credible… and to some extent, it is.

Thanks to this, Tax Collector Camille Labourgenus, who had been able to pocket money in this way, eventually became so obsessed with financial greed that he began to act openly and without concealment.

Despite having royal knights as both escorts and monitors on either side, he began demanding money beyond taxes from small manors, and now he was even trying to recruit these knights.

Seeing this abnormal behavior, the knights naturally thought he had gone mad and began gathering evidence to report to the Inspectorate upon their return, but…

‘…Has this bastard really gone insane?’

‘I’m dead…’

The tax collector, Camille Labourgenus, who had gone mad beyond what the knights imagined, finally caused a major incident.

“…”

“Is there a problem? The manor should have paid all the imposed taxes.”

“…Tsk. Such lack of awareness. Far from enough!”

“…Huh?”

After entering the territory of Gregory Alreinos, a senior druid with close ties to the current king, to collect taxes, he started picking a fight, proving his inability to gauge the level of his superior.

Anyone could predict what would happen next. A mere tax collector dared to provoke a superior, and on flimsy pretenses at that.

It wasn’t as if he had powerful backing against a superior, so when Alreinos saw the royal knight desperately blinking to signal for help, he nodded in response and…

[…Bind him.]

With those simple words, he had the arrogant tax collector tied up and began emanating killing intent without concealment.