Riches and Bitches: I have a gate to an isekai and leveling-up system!

The massacre at the steps.

That was the name the capital's populace came up with the name for the brutal culling of the nobles that never happened before in the long history of the kingdom.n/ô/vel/b//in dot c//om

It was an unprecedented event that cast a shadow of fear and terror upon all the freefolk of the capital. For if Banjay dared to raise his hand against the powerful nobles, why wouldn't he raise his hand against merchants? And what would stop him from massacring mere peasants?

Taken aback by such a bloody act, people in the capital's taverns, where they would meet after work in order not to linger on the streets, came up with various ideas for how the Patriarch King would punish the unruly minister…

And so, when the Palace broke the news and announced that rather than being sentenced to execution, Banjay would receive a promotion to the minister of interior, the capital visibly grew silent and steady.

People literally stopped coming out of their houses or refused to go to work, scared that just by appearing in public, they would insult the new, great lord and bring his wrath upon their innocent heads.

But the standstill of an entire town could only last for long. Soon, the food people ran out of supplies, forcing them to make first, daring trips to the food markets.

The merchants who dared to act in that time, ended up rolling in money due to how their competition pretty much removed themselves from the equation. And as people started to earn more and more, bankrolled by the fear of their competition and the normal needs of the capital's citizens…

As this process developed, two things became apparent.

First, those who ignored the rumors about the bloodthirsty minister and kept up with their daily lives ended up settling for the best in this new reality. And as they kept going with their lives as they did before…

The effects of the culling started to show themselves to the public.

Two criminal guilds fell to the capital guards within a week. And merely three days later, thanks to the great bravery of countless guards who rushed to complete the task, four smaller but equally harmful groups became nothing more but corpses dangling down the walls of the Capital's Keep.

The definitive end to all the major crime groups within the capital, something that could never happen before due to the nobles interfering with the guards and often financing those very groups themselves, allowed the citizens to breathe a sigh of relief.

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Still, as everything started to move in the right direction and people started to overcome their fear of the new minister and tried to return to their daily lives… A new problem arose.

With only a part of the merchants, farmers, and craftsmen from all over the city returning to normalcy, the supply of all sorts of manufactured items or services quickly grew to be insufficient when facing nearly the entire population of the capital.

Contrary to the rich craftsmen, self-sufficient farmers, and merchants who knew better than anyone how to manage their finances, a common person couldn't allow themselves to just idle away for weeks at a time.

The problem of prizes rising for literally everything brought more money to those who dared to go against the flow but also put a heavy burden on all those who weren't as fortunate in life.

Some city officials started to openly protest Banjay policies upon seeing the signs of the city's decay as hints of the imminent disaster if not a total collapse. Those who refused to go back to their normal life gathered and petitioned the king to remove the newly appointed minister for his influence would only bring ruin to the capital, saving their enemies the effort of conquering it.

Then, rallied by some unknown sponsors, even some of the commoners started to protest out in the streets, criticizing the minister for the rising cost of living unwarranted by anything beyond the bloody act he committed.

Then, exactly two weeks after Banjay's promotion, the Palace brought forth two announcements to be spread by the royal heralds throughout the capital.

First, ever since his promotion, Banjay has left the city to finish up some work up north, at the Basal fortress. According to the sparse information the heralds shared with the crowd, he was there planning yet another devious trick against the empire, set on exploiting the gap in their defenses created by the victory he was the architect of.

Secondly, a massive caravan with all the things the capital lacked was merely an hour away from the gates!

As it turned out, while he was out in the north, Banjay assigned his former senior and mentor, the hero Salicious, to ransack the holdings of all the nobles whose members of the family took part in the uprising.

Leaving behind just enough supplies for the locals to properly survive until the royal officials would arrive to reorganize the lands taken over from the religious nobles, Salicious then brought most of the enormous wealth those nobles managed to gather back to the capital.

In a market where there were barely enough traders to provide the goods and less than enough farmers and craftsmen to actually provide the goods in question, the massive onslaught of carriages that Salicious commanded became the crutch that stopped the rampant rise of the prizes for everything.

According to some, on the very day, the wheat taken from the traitorous nobles allowed the prize of grain at the food market to fall down by a third within the very first day. Two days later, the prize returned to how it was before all the chaos ensued… Only to then drop just a little further, reaching levels below the average prize from during the unchallenged reign of the nobles.

It was also on the day of Salicious return that Banjay himself made his way back to the capital, before doing what the entire city feared and throwing himself at the work that had stacked up since he left for the north.

First, Banjay dealt with the officials by raising their wages by a huge margin but also imposing a total clarity act, that made their finances, in great part, accessible to anyone interested.

And with the patriarch-king endorsing new, anti-corruption laws, the act of checking the finances of random officials became the pasttime for all sorts of merchants and even officials themselves, all enticed by the rewards for reporting an actual case of corruption that greatly exceeded any amount one could gain from the corruption itself.

This and the next project would normally be way too much of a burden on the royal treasury to even happen… But as it so happened, Banjay suddenly found himself sitting atop a literal mountain of wealth robbed from the estates of the rebellious nobles and was now preparing a second mountain of gold just in case having just one wasn't enough.

It was on the third day after his return that Banjay announced yet another law, introducing the reorganization of all the lands seized from the rebellious nobles and the following auction on which not only nobles but also merchants and craftsmen would bid for parcels the seized land was split into.

That move pacified any and all protests by the middle class, for all those who either made it big in the recent two weeks of crisis or those who saved their wealth as it happened, all rushed to buy out as much of the land as they could, only introducing more money and more money into Banjay's stockpile.

"By now, it is believed that you are building a third pyramid using nothing but the gold coins. And that concludes my report," Oxxy, Banjay's secretary, read out from the scroll he held in his hand.

"Third pyramid, huh?" Banjay sighed as he weakly replied, struggling to even raise his eyes to the much younger man. "Earlier it was piles, then it was mountains and now it's pyramids. But where did the number three come from?" he asked while uttering a long whine that instantly bounced all over the naked walls of the room he was in.

Akin to prison, the place only had a single window and single, extremely solid door, with three sets of desks stacked with papers inside.

Beyond himself, Banjay only had two accountants to each of his sides and then Oxxy to help him deal with the entire thing as a whole.

"That's right, sir," Oxxy smiled lightly before glancing over at the room at sighing. "Little do they know, no locks, gates, or rules can stop you from spending every last gold coin you can get your hands on," Oxxy smiled even further only to then laugh out, "Isn't that right, boss?"