Herald of Steel

Even though Alexander seriously considered tackling these illegal red light institutions, he could very well guess just how hard it would be to truly implement them.

As already described earlier, prostitution was an enormous industry in Adhania, with huge demand both among the commoners and more importantly the nobles.

It employed a huge amount of people and had too many interests connected to it.

Interests of great and powerful people.

Sure he could pass a law, but such toothless law already existed. And it did nothing. For the ones the administration relied on implementing them did not support it.

They instead supported these illegal places instead because they were direct beneficiaries of its service.

Heck, this support was so entrenched that Alexander did not even think he could stop fathers from selling their daughters- it was a major source of income for him, and many times a desperate last lifeline.

There were even debates in the capital over the ethics of such a practice, yet at the end of the day, the practice chugged along as usual.

Thus if Alexander wanted to do any meaningful, he knew he would have to change the very social fabric first.

Alexander returned home with his head filled with all these thoughts.

The hygiene of street foods, Darrus, the state of the working girls, the unfinished public works, the crime rate… when Alexander thought about it like that, his short trip to the eastern district suddenly seemed so long.

And the thought of having to solve all these complex issus made him almost feel like a small mountain was hovering just above his head, ready to crush him at any time.

"Daddy! Daddy!"

He was only snapped out of his thoughts when his two daughters Alexandria and Ophenia saw him enter the house and came running holding two colorful drawings they had just made.

One was of a tree, green and brown, while the other seemed to be a cat or dog, Alexander could not tell.

Also yes, Alexander had also invented crayons, which he made by just mixing color into melted wax and then casting them into special molds. It took him half a day.

Then he gave his girls a few pieces of paper and asked them to draw and color to their heart’s desire. And it was an instant success.

So much so that, Alexander was even in the process of making a coloring book for them, where he planned to drew various birds, animals and other still life, and then send to the printing press to have been published.

This would not be of course for commercial purposes, the common public did not yet have the ability to afford such extravagances.

But Alexander planned to also gift some of them to fellow nobles whenever they had a new child.

Spending a bit of time with his kids significantly improved Alexander’s mood, and it became even better as he sat down for dinner with them.

Because even for him, the followings items were considered luxurious- consisting of an enormous quantity of meat, bread, sea food, and vegarbles.

And perhaps even more attractively, mporantly various sweet desserts like caramel puddings and creamy, sweet and tart cakes, different types of iced sorbets, a variety of honey drizzled fresh fruits, and chilled wine.

Alexander had been out for nearly six to seven hours with very little food in between. Thus suspecting he would be famished, Mean had ordered the kitchen to make the dinner a veritable feast.

Alexander had always had a bit of a sweet tooth and loved these desserts, perhaps even more than the main courses.

As did his children.

Then following the feast, Alexander decided to whip out the old gaming table, so placing both his daughter on either lap, he decided to play Monopoly with the four. ŖáNôᛒËS̩

This elicited a peal of laughter from both the girls and boys, as they loved the colorful pieces of paper, the clink clang of metal dice, the beautifully illustrated wooden board, and the exquisitely made pieces.

All of them were too young to quite understand the rules of the game but that did not really matter. They were not really playing to win any prize. It was just their way of spending some time together and may be even learn some something in the process.

Such as Alexander asking his eldest daughter to match the rent written on the rent cards with the paper money on her hands.

…..

Over the next few days, Alexander had a few more discussions with his council and senate members regarding what he had seen around the city, and what to do about them.

And after a bit of back and forth, the consensus they all reached was…. Fixing everything would need time.

And Alexander was reluctantly forced to agree with this assessment.

So decided to shelf these matters for a much later later and instead turned to something he could do now, something he had been thinking about implementing almost as soon as he had taken Zanzan- minting his new coins!

If one would recall, Alexander had gotten the permission as well as the dyes to mint the royal ropals way back when Perseus had attacked Zanzan.

But until now his newly built still stood relatively empty, operating nowhere near capacity. This was mostly because he had so much money already in his treasury that making more simply was not necessary.

Alexander however decided now it was finally time to change that.

As for what type of coin he would mint… it would of course still be the ropal and its various denominations.

It was still the most widely used currency in the country and making his own new currency would do nothing but simply put more barriers to trade by introducing even more conversions and currency exchanges.

However Alexander also decided to modify the design just a bit, so that these coins were a bit more ’secure’.

It took his coin makers a few days to get these new die set up just right, and then as the first batches started to come out, he decided to show his ’new’ coins first to Lady Parthia and Lady Nanazin, hoping to hear their thoughts.

Alexander chose the former because he wondered if the experienced queen had any insights on how well the new ’security’ in his new coin might work, while Lady Nanazin came because he intended to place her as the head of another new institute- the bank.

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This was another huge project Alexander was thinking of starting for quite a while now, but just did not have the time. Zanzan was also suffering from labor shortages so opening new businesses did not make sense.

But now that things had settled down a bit, and Alexander learned that cities in Tibias was suffering from very high unemployment, he felt it was time to start slowly utilitzing this powerful money making tool.

Access to cheap and easy capital would hopefully create more businesses in those cities or even just in Zanzan, thus causing the disadvantaged people to migrate to this great city.

In fact, this was also why Alexander was minting new coins in the first place.

Hence buoyed by this hope, one scorching summer morning, Alexander summoned the two regal, curvy ladies into his study and after the small pleasantries, revealed the reason why he called them.

"My ladies… these are the new ’coins’ I had just minted. I wonder what you think," The pasha pleasantly chimed while bringing out a small, ivory box inlaid with jewels, then opening them to reveal a set of copper, silver, and gold coins laid out on a red velvet cloth.

It almost looked like he was showing them a set of jewelry.

The glittering set of newly minted coins naturally drew the two ladies’ attention, with Lady Nanazin being the first to eagerly pick up the ropal coin- playing with it between fingers and chiming in a melodious tone,

"Oh? I remember my lord mentioning wanting to create a new coin some time ago. Is this it?" Initially, this queen was among the most interested in seeing what kind of magnificent new type of currency the man had invented, anticipating to at least see his emblem on the currency.

However despite looking very closely at the front and back of the coin, "Hmmm… but it looks exactly like a regular ropal?" the curious lady was still unable to notice even the tiniest difference from any other regular ropal.

The queen even went as far as to focus on the individual lines and shapes on the cover to try and notice any subtle changes.

But there was none.

And this soon replaced her initial surge of curiosity with a certain tinge of disappointment.

"...." Alexander did not reply in any way to her comment, but simply waited for Lady Parthia to finish her own examination of the Intas (10 times larger than ropals).

"No. It is not the same. Look at the sides Nanazin. It is not smooth, its…. uneven" And the much more observant Tibian queen did not disappoint, as instead of focusing on the flat body like her partner, the mature queen almost immediately focused on the sides, rubbing her fair fingertips over the granulated surface.

"Hahaha, yes. As expected of you Lady Parthia. These are called ridges."

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