A Tale of Strategies For the Throne

Just after noon, it was the time when the sun was scorching hot, but the courtyard of the palace was much shaded because it was covered by a large dense tree canopy.

The statue of the goddess Isdar in the middle of the courtyard is bathed in the sun, holding the stars in her hands, and the water drops from her feet splash into the fountain basin.

Thin water droplets form a water curtain that dissipates the heat in the courtyard.

Heymos stood by the fountain, reaching out to catch a few drops of splashing water.

Cold drops of water fell on his hands and wet his palms.

He was in a daze for a while, and for some reason, he suddenly remembered what happened here a long time ago.

At that time, he was only a teenager and had just entered the palace not long ago.

One evening, when the sun was setting like fire, he stood just as he is now, standing in this place, before the little child sitting on the edge of the fountain basin.

At that time, he had already realized that the child occupied a very important place in his heart.

So, he said to the child that he would be with him and protect him all his life, and never let anyone hurt him.

That was the first time he had put his feelings in front of others.

That was the first time he wanted to protect a person so much, and wanted to be with that person all the time.

Thinking back now, that might have been his first confession to Garlan.

Then... he was flatly rejected by Garlan, who was still a child.

'I don't need you to protect me. '

'I hate you. '

Children are very straightforward, if you like it, you like it, if you hate it, you hate it - although I don't know why, but Garlan, who was still a child at the time, seemed to dislike him from the first time he saw him.

And this kind of straightforward rejection can almost be described as cruel to me who was still a teenager with high self-esteem and extremely sensitive and fragile.

At that time, he even felt ashamed as if he had been slapped severely in the face.

Feeling ashamed and uncomfortable, he secretly swore in his heart that he would never take a step closer to that child in the future!

Well, swearing or anything doesn't count.

It doesn't count.

Heymos, who was standing by the fountain, thought so, and then raised his lips unconsciously.

At that time, the things that made him extremely uncomfortable when he was young, now, in retrospect, turned out to be special memories that made him smile from the bottom of his heart.

All the memories with Garlan, from childhood to adulthood, are almost innumerable.

The good ones or the bad ones, no matter which one they are, now, just thinking about them can make his heart feel warm and soft.

Just as Heymos was thinking about the past, the person he had been waiting for for a long time finally came out of the room.

Heymos, who turned around after noticing the sound of footsteps, looked up and saw Garlan walking quickly.

His long jet-black hair was tied into a bunch behind him by a white headband, and the young man was wearing a sleeveless tunic, similar to the capable clothes of a ranger.

Although Garlan was not outstanding in height, his body proportions were good, and his legs were extremely slender.

This allowed the thin short cloak that was draped behind him to barely cover his thighs.

When the handsome and heroic young man walked towards him quickly, Heymos couldn't help but his heart skipped a beat.

He thought, no matter when, no matter what appearance, his heart would only beat and lose control for the person in front of him.

Just like Avdomir was begging for the mercy of that beautiful boy, he was also begging for the love of the person in front of him.

"Heymos, sorry to keep you waiting."

Walking in front of Heymos, Garlan said, "Because it took a little longer for Taputi to dye my hair."

He met Heymos who was staring at him steadily, and asked suspiciously.

"What's wrong? Am I not dressed right?"

Heymos smiled.

"Do not."

He said, "I was just thinking, since you're going to disguise yourself, why don't you just dress up as a girl like last time..."

Before Heymos finished speaking, Garlan slapped his mouth with a slap, covering his mouth.

"Shh!"

Garlan covered his mouth with one hand, and raised his index finger around his mouth to silence him.

"You promise me you won't bring that up again!"

While speaking in a low voice, the boy looked around, and after confirming that the people around him, including Taputi, were too far away to hear their conversation, he breathed a sigh of relief.

He glared at Heymos disapprovingly.

Heymos, Kaihos, and Shulos all know about their disguise as a woman. There are already a lot of three, okay?

He didn't want one more person to know his dark history.

Heymos raised his eyebrows after grabbing Garlan's hand and removing it from his mouth.

"It's okay not to mention it, but you have to answer my question."

"what?"

"Why did you hate me when you were a kid?"

"what?"

"Here." Heymos pointed to the fountain next to him, "You said at that time, you hate me and don't need me, why?"

Garlan was startled for a moment, then remembered.

When he was a child, he did say that in order to cut Heymos' affection for him and alienate him.

"That is……"

He hesitated for a moment, but did not answer right away.

It can't be said that it was because he was killed four times that he feared and disliked Heymos at that time.

"Why do you hate me?"

Heymos asked persistently.

"...I don't remember what happened when I was a child."

The golden-red eyes narrowed, looking at Garlan.

But after looking at it for a while, Heymos didn't press on, which made Garlan heave a sigh of relief.

Then, he heard Heymos' next words.

"It doesn't matter."

Heymos, who squinted and stared at him, slightly raised the corners of his lips, and said, "Even if you said you didn't need me at the beginning, you didn't say later that you needed me by your side."

The corners of Heymos' raised lips faintly leaked a bit of joy. It was obvious that he was in a very good mood at the moment, and he was also a little proud.

Garlan looked at the man in front of him who was smiling happily, and suddenly smiled along with his eyes.

"It's true that I don't mean what I say, but I also remember that someone said back then, 'I don't like men even to death', and I swore to Shamash."

He said, "Why don't you keep your word first? Don't like me anymore?"

The corners of Heymos' raised lips twitched immediately.

Garlan did not back down, and looked at him with a smile.

——Come on, hurt each other.

In the end, as always, it was the Black Knight who retreated.

As Avdomir, the goddess of love and beauty, said, in a relationship, the person you fall in love with first is always a complete loser.

Heymos sighed and said, "Speaking of which, including the one time when I was a child, I was rejected by you three times in total. Don't you think I am pitiful for being rejected so many times?"

In order to pursue his beloved, the black knight who was invincible on the battlefield like a bloodthirsty Shura shamelessly labeled himself a pitiful weakling.

"Not at all."

The boy answered firmly.

To be honest, you have killed me four times, and I have only rejected you three times.

Garlan sneered twice in his heart.

Not to mention rejection three times, but the fourth time.

Therefore, Heymos, who wanted to win a little bit of Garlan's pity and sympathy through the fact that he had been rejected many times, ruthlessly cheated himself like this.

And he himself didn't realize it at the moment.

While the two were talking, the little fat man Tal had come over.

"Are you ready to go?"

He ran in front of Garlan in a hurry, shrugged his head, and rarely showed a disturbed expression in front of Garlan.

In the more than a year since Garlan ascended the throne, Tal has rounded up again at a speed visible to the naked eye. At this moment, his whole body is like a round meat ball.

But fat is fat, he is always the fastest when he rushes to Garlan's side.

Tal's talent in numerical calculation is almost well known, but what surprised everyone was that after becoming king, Garlan did not put Tal, his confidant, in the Finance Department as everyone expected. Go to office, and thus control the finances through Tal.

Those who control the finances must be the confidantes of the reigning king.

After all, generally speaking, the new king will never rest assured that such important financial rights will continue to be controlled by the henchmen of the previous king.

However, this boy king seems to be different. He let the Finance Department continue to operate according to the original personnel, and gave them full trust.

This made the old courtiers who had already prepared to be dismissed after the new king came to the throne full of gratitude to King Garlan.

From the very beginning, Garlan had no intention of stuffing Tal into the Finance Department, he had his own plan.

In addition to the existing department, he set up a new department, directly appointed Tal as the head of this still empty department, and then directly sent Tal out to do things.

He did this, of course, for another purpose.

…………

Skillfully leaving the palace through the side door as a guard leaving the palace, Garlan stepped onto the wide stone avenue in the palace.

The three of them were all riding horses, and Tal's chubby figure was lying on the horse, walking in front, and graciously leading Garlan to the side of the royal city.

It took a long time to walk even on horseback, and it was almost in a remote corner on the edge of the king's city before arriving at the destination.

It was a huge open space surrounded by stone walls.

A vaulted tower rises right in front of the stone wall, with a total of six floors, the lowest floor is embedded in the stone wall, like the gate of the stone wall.

It took Tal half a year to build it, and it is also the office of the department under his command.

Garlan got off his horse in front of the outer door, tied it to the stone pillar outside, and then went straight in through the door.

As soon as you enter, you will see an extremely large hall, which is so wide that it can accommodate thousands of people at the same time.

At the end of the hall, in a circular shape, it was divided into dozens of separated rooms, and in each room there was a clerk who was in charge of the work and records there.

And the space leading to the back from those rooms is also separated by solid stone walls, that is to say, if you walk in from different rooms, you will reach different places.

In the middle of the hall is a huge cypress board, which looks like an erected bulletin board.

It's just that this bulletin board is a square cuboid, and there are dozens of parchment papers pasted on the boards on all sides.

As long as the merchants who come here are willing to pay a certain fee, they can write the goods and prices they own on these long strips of parchment, so that everyone who enters the hall can see them.

However, at the moment, these strips of parchment are blank.

Heymos looked around the hall, and asked Garlan, "Is this the Commerce and Trade Bureau you mentioned?"

This so-called Commerce and Trade Agency, in his view, is almost like a market, a place where commerce and trade are concentrated.

It's just that the market is usually gathered by the people in the square, but this is a large-scale market officially established by Garlan in the name of the royal court.

Although this building looks extremely large and magnificent, the hall is very empty and deserted. Except for the clerks and others working here, there are almost no outsiders.

You must know that Aaron Landis's royal city is located in an excellent location, almost exactly in the center of the entire continent. The caravans are very frequent, and the business is also very prosperous. Even if it is a day, the transaction volume is extremely large.

However, the Commerce and Exchange Agency was so deserted, Heymos couldn't help but feel strange.

Hearing Heymos's words, Taal looked at Garlan with uneasy eyes, without the vivacity of the past, and looked listless.

"I'm sorry, Your Majesty, it's all because of my incompetence..."

This Commerce and Trade Agency started operating half a month ago, and he has tried his best to publicize its existence throughout the royal city.

However, those big merchants or large caravans, as soon as they heard that they needed to pay a certain percentage of fees for transactions here, of course they shook their heads vigorously and refused to come here.

You know, when they come to the king city for business, they only need to pay a city entry tax when they enter the city, and then they can trade freely in the king city.

Aaron Landis does not have a business tax. It should be said that countries in the entire continent do not have a business tax. Most merchants need to pay customs tax, city entry tax, etc., which charge a certain percentage of tax according to the transaction volume. It's almost unheard of for them.

If it was King Garlan who forced the merchants to conduct transactions in this trade office, then in the eyes of the merchants, it was King Garlan who forcibly snatched money from the merchants in another way.

Although they didn't dare to resist, they would naturally not be happy. In the future, merchants would avoid the royal city.

As a result, the business in Wangcheng will gradually become sluggish. This kind of behavior is equivalent to killing a chicken to get its eggs.

But what reassured the merchants was that King Garlan did not force the merchants to trade in the office, but said that it was completely voluntary for the merchants to come.

In this way, the businessmen who are used to money like their lives are naturally unwilling to spend such an extra fee to pay any business tax, and of course they will not come to the so-called Trade and Trade Agency.

Therefore, it has been running for a month and still looks deserted, which has caused many people to secretly watch jokes.

They didn't dare to say anything about Garlan, so they could only secretly ridicule Taal.Of course Tal was very angry, but the reality was true. He was already anxious, but now he was being ridiculed behind his back, so he felt even more aggrieved.

He thought of many ways, but because of the need to collect business tax, the merchants were reluctant to come here to trade.Now, Tal really had no choice but to tell Garlan the situation helplessly.

At this moment, he looked at Garlan anxiously, fearing that Garlan would feel incompetent because of the failure of this matter.

Garlan, who was also looking around at the hall that was becoming more and more empty because it was too spacious, turned his head and looked at Tal's listless look. He smiled and raised his hand to pat the little fat man's shoulder.

"It's not your problem."

He reassures Tardau.

People are always afraid of new things that they are not used to.

"Don't worry, I'll find a way."

…………

After leaving the sluggish Commerce and Trade Administration, Garlan asked Tar to stay here to sort out all the information on the large-scale commodity transactions in the royal city in the recent period. Several well-known bazaars traded around.

These places are all located in the square, which is a market that has been naturally formed for a long time. There are large and small, where you can buy goods from all over the country, so it is very lively from morning to night. Those merchants who do not have many goods are directly come here.

However, some large merchants with backgrounds were scattered throughout the royal city and directly opened merchants. Many caravans for large transactions went directly to their merchants to sell or buy the goods they shipped.

After spending the whole afternoon walking around, Garlan walked back while thinking about how to open up the trade bureau.

They walked out of a market, and they were already hungry all afternoon. When a scent wafted from the stalls selling snacks at the market, Garlan couldn't help but cast his eyes over it.

Heymos on the side saw his appearance, smiled slightly, and walked towards the crowded food stall.

So Garlan stood there obediently, waiting for Heymos to help him buy some delicious food.

After waiting for a while, I heard a familiar voice.

Turning around, he was indeed an acquaintance.

Heymos' Nanna's priest, Suojia, was wearing ordinary clothes at the moment, arguing fiercely with a woman in strong clothes at the edge of the market.

The woman had a heroic face, raised sword eyebrows, and long light black hair tied into a ponytail behind her head, giving people a heroic look.

Looking at it, Garlan felt that this woman seemed familiar.

They didn't know what they were arguing about, but it actually made Suo Jia, who had always shown a calm and ruthless attitude, look a little embarrassed.

The Priest of the Night, who was able to calmly talk in front of a group of powerful ministers, was pushed back step by step in front of that heroic woman, and he felt quite overwhelmed.

Anyway, Garlan, who was hiding aside, watched with relish.

And just as Garlan was happily doing the melon-eating crowd, the woman snorted coldly.

"Suo Jia, I don't want you, as long as I like it, I can find another lover right now!"

The woman turned around and left, walking in the direction of Garlan, striding past Garlan.

Garlan subconsciously stepped aside, and when he moved, the hood that covered most of his face fell back a little.

Others might not be able to see clearly, but the woman who just passed by Garlan turned her head and saw Garlan's face clearly.

Her eyes lit up immediately.

There is no other meaning, her shining eyes are pure admiration and admiration for seeing beautiful things.

She stopped suddenly, and looked curiously at the rare black-haired handsome boy in front of her.

"Fataya!"

The lover who was left behind by her shouted her name and chased after her eagerly.

A hint of anger appeared on the face of the woman who came back to her senses.

She glanced at Garlan, and suddenly her eyes lit up again, as if she had thought of some good idea.

She turned around and looked at Suo Jia who was chasing up with bad eyes.

Then, she put her arms around Garlan's arm.

"Listen, Suo Jia, I have already decided."

she says,

"He is my new lover!"

The melon eaters Garlan: "???"