THE GOD EATER-Chapter 70: Crime Tax.
From what Jim told him, he learned that beast tides occur frequently, about once every year. The only difference is the scale of the beast tide.
The accommodation that was prepared for him was in a large tower in the fourth ring. The environment and property value were about average. This was because there were a total of seven rings in the city.
So an area in the fourth ring is halfway between the city walls and the central market. This made the accommodation he was given not particularly valuable. But the fact that it was free also made it a welcome development.
The tower had four floors of apartments and ten apartments on each floor, so it had a total of 40 apartments. Each apartment was about the size of his lodgings in the initiation program. It had two rooms, one for sleeping, the other for meeting guests, working, etc.
As for his bath, excretion needs, and cooking needs, he will have to use the communal facilities for them. He can also do all three things in his apartment, but that is not advised.
His apartment is shabby to say the least. But he couldn’t complain about it because he had experienced worse living conditions in this world, and because this one was free.
After settling down, Jim left him to do whatever he wanted to do. What Loki wanted to do was to advance to rank 2, so he went out looking for rank 2 slaves of the Forging Pathway and gambling houses.
If he can buy a rank 2 cultivator of the Forging Pathway, he won’t mind finding a way to make more money and buying that slave rather than killing them. This is because killing cultivators is no longer free for him.
He can kill a lot of mortals, and the sect won’t bat an eye. But if he kills a single cultivator, he will have to pay the sect for it.
There is also the fact that people keep most of their wealth in their accounts, and cultivators usually detonate all of their metacs as they die, so that their murderers won’t get anything from them other than their bodies and remnant souls.
All of these reasons make the option to kill someone less appealing than it was. For sure, killing someone and paying the sect for their value is less expensive than buying a slave, as he would need to pay both the sect and the slave owner for the slave. But if he is going to pay money anyway, he would rather not risk his life by fighting.
To top things off, there is still the fact that if he kills someone, he will still need time to devour their Core Metac. After being interrupted many times during this process in his previous timelines, he has become more inclined to the option that won’t cause much stress and poses less risk of something going wrong.
Jim told him that the city is not crime-free, but is generally safe because the city lord has a police force that patrols every street and responds to any crime.
The job of the police force isn’t to prevent crime or save people, though. Their job is to capture the perpetrators of crime and fine them. As long as the culprit of a crime pays the fine, they will be free to go.
Jim had said this with envy and jealousy at the ease with which the city lord was earning money. He also said, "The city lord does this in order to get his cut out of all the crime in the city. It is why we call the fines the crime tax."
"If you don’t have your crime tax, then make sure you’re not caught for the crime. If you’re caught for the crime and can’t pay up, you will be captured and sold into slavery."
Apparently, the first city lord who established the police force was jealous that people could earn a lot of money through crime. He didn’t think that it was fair for him to build a nice city that attracts a lot of people and business, only for some people to use his city as their hunting ground.
The city lord wanted his cut of the money earned from crimes, so he established a police force. This police force means that if he dares to kill anyone in the city, he would likely be interrupted before he can finish devouring the Core Metacs.
This makes his options either going out of the city to kill and paying the sect for the value of the person he killed, buying a slave, or killing someone in the city and paying both the city lord and the sect for the value of the life of the person that he killed.
These are the reasons he decided to prioritize making money and finding a place to buy the slave he wants. For this, he took a book with him. The book is meant for recording the successful gambles that he will witness at the gambling houses.
This is a habit he picked up during the initiation program. With a record of the best gambles, he can memorize them before he reverses time.
While Loki went to gambling houses, Jim went to the first ring. This is the ring of roads around the central market.
The headquarters of the Death Claw Society is in this central market. It is a seven-story building, which is a pretty common sight for buildings in this part of the city.
The closer a building is to the center of the city, the taller it is. This is to maximize the valuable and limited space at the center of the city.
Jim didn’t go to any of the floors of this seven-story building. His destination was the third underground floor. This is where the leader of the society, Death’s Envoy, lives.
He didn’t stumble his way here by mistake. He came here intentionally and with a purpose.
