Chapter 708 - A Greedy King
Chapter 708 - A Greedy King
With the execution ceremony done, William finally took a breather and began focusing on his upcoming coronation.
But while he still had time, he and his men quickly piled up over a thousand thick books on his office floor.
'Bam!'
"Alright!
Call Brutus and the rest to come in now."
"Yes, young master!"
With that, the guard went out and did as he was told.
And 40 minutes later, the expected guests had arrived.
These men were some of Williams's most trusted accountants who had managed some of his family's secret estates for decades now.
"Master, young master... we greet you all." The men said while kneeling before Oden and William.
"You all may rise!"
Hearing that, the men quickly stood up and patiently waited for William's next orders.
"We have patiently waited for this day in the shadows.
And now that we are here, I expect each one of you to perform your duties to perfection.
To my left are all the accounting books throughout Alec Barn's reign, as well as some books from the last 2 years of my late grandfather's reign.
All books are already organized according to their years, so begin with the earliest year.
Also, by my right... you all will find several Baymardian calculators, pencils, pens, erasers, pencils and all other writing materials there too.
So I trust you all know what to do."
"Yes, young master!"
"Good!
Don't disappoint me!"
With that, everyone quickly got busy.
Wasn't this what they had been waiting for all these years?
Now they were finally here!
.
The accountants happily divided themselves up into 2 groups with one group looking at Grandpa Barns's month of reign and another looking at Alec's first month in power.
The team that dealt with Grandpa Alec's reign smiled merrily, but the other team continuously frowned as time went by.
And just like that 3 hours had gone by with them grumbling angrily.
Their discomfort was so much that William and Oden had to step forward and take a look.
"Young master, this is sacrilege!
How could such a man rule an empire?
Oh my God, throw him away!"
"Master Oden, I mean no disrespect, but if your brother was still alive, I would personally stab him myself!
Just looking at this book makes my eyes bleed.
Ahhhhh!....It's just too painful."
"Young master, if I were the accountant in charge of these books when Alec took over, I would've already committed suicide from it all.
Everything is just wrong!"
'_'
William and Oden looked at the men who were die-hard fans of accounting and mathematics with pity.
For these men who typically gathered around during their free time to discuss and come up with mathematical theories, this was quite aggravating to them.
Over these years, they had gotten the basic timetable and some basic mathematics principles like division, multiplication and even the concept of decimal points from Baymard.
So they were really into math and loved studying it from the bottom of their heart.
But seeing so many problems in these account books, they couldn't help but wonder if the royal accountants truly knew how to add or even how to subtract.
Or was everything here from embezzlement alone?
This was just too much!!!!!
Indeed, just the books for Alec's first month in power could make one faint from rage.
He had squandered 7/10 of the tax savings and other sources of income to hurriedly increase his militia.
.
That's right!
Alec the tyrant, only focused on expanding and taking care of his military's upkeep.
The people's suffering and what the land needed was never Alec's concern.
And just from his sh**y way of doing things, all the ministers and accounting officers who aided in controlling funds had embezzled a sh** load of them for decades now.
William decided to randomly pick some account books from different months within the same year and take a look at them.
He opened the middle pages of each one, took out his calculator and was shocked.
Nothing added up!
He did the same for the following years and then looked at the accountants pitifully.
Every book he randomly touched had major problems... all except those that were done within his grandfather's reign.
As for Alec's reign, the account books weren't properly balanced and the money taken for some projects were never accounted for.
The only thing that they could see was that money was that huge chunks of money constantly went into increasing Alec's army... probably because Alec who was a young king at the time, felt threatened by all the old fogies around.
But since he took care of his issues and firmly stabilized himself years after, then why didn't he properly look after his people?
William opened the account books for these past months alone and almost felt like strangling Alec to death.
The man still carried on in the same manner all these years.
What the hell was he thinking?
What about his people?
This sort of thing could only make one's blood boil even more.
.
Needless to say that over the years, Arcadina's tax kept increasing more and more because of their greedy king.
And with such a ruler, of course... his ministers would be the same too.
The ministers took advantage of Alec's constant focus on power and started sneaking money out in the name of doing new projects.
Alec didn't want to bother with other things, so he appointed some ministers to take over them instead.
Some took money out saying that they wanted to fix roads, expand trade, get more food for villages and towns in other territories and whatnot.
But for decades, those so-called projects had never been fulfilled.
Alec was too focused on getting his militia.
So provided he and his army had ample food, salaries and whatnot... he didn't look too deep into what was going on behind the scenes.
Again, everytime he went to the royal vault and saw the massive hall that was filled with gold, gems, silver and treasure... he just felt that he was too rich.
So he never bothered about anything else.
The treasure room was a massive hall which had treasures, money and all sorts of rare gems and stones that had been collected by his ancestors for thousands and thousands of years.
So everytime he walked into the hall and looked at the treasure that now belonged to him, he felt like he could never go broke!
So why should he worry about others?
And so he never bothered about the little things that the ministers did behind his back.
One should know that things in the royal treasury were kept there just in case the empire was in an emergency state.
As for the money used to actually run the empire, that was kept in another treasury and was basically from taxes, trade, donations and other sources of income.
Of course, the knights were paid off from the public money and not the royal treasury money.
So provided the ministers ensured that his army was properly fed, then he didn't care about the rest.
He was, after all, a greedy king.