I Reincarnated Into An Op Villainess!?

Chapter 71

-Snow's pov-

"Aunt Bella... The state of Slade is..." I started.

She looked at me curiously with a slight sadness.

I shook my head then smiled "You seem to have another persona here,"

"Ah yes... Being Bellatrix Ascot surely helped me in the higher ranks, but being Reiko is easier when dealing with locals and the lower ranks," she smiled.

"How did you adopt such a persona?" I asked curiously.

"... A while back, when I realized I couldn't win everyone's respect, not when they didn't think of me as their own. So I decided to make up some story about a homeless girl named Reiko who I personally trained and appointed knight commander," she explained happily.

"I see then... Aunt Bella... Forgive my overbearing curiosity, what are the other districts like?" I asked as she sat on her mahogany desk, deep in thought.

"Snow... Slade in general is a bad place... The villages under Slade aren't any better," she said vaguely.

"Are there slums?" I asked bluntly as she looked at me in shock.

"Where did you hear that word?" she asked, eyes wide.

"Somewhere around here..." I averted my eyes.

She narrowed her eyes in dismay, "Never say that word again. I don't want to hear from someone as pure as you, my princess," she said with a soft smile and slight concern in her tone of voice.

"But yes... Living conditions can get... Extreme, especially since Slade is more industrial and monopolizes many of the free land, leaving no free sustainable food supply..." she said worriedly.

"You mean... Beasts can't grow their own food? Not even forage for it?" I asked shocked.

"Not unless you have money. As you know, all beasts are blessed with magic but not all are blessed with as much power as the nobles and professors you're used to," she explained.

It's true, I've never seen a beast that wasn't good at magic, everyone I know is powerful or knows how to use magic well, but there are many who struggle holding a flame for long or even grow a tree.

"How could they do that? They control land and food, making it unavailable for people who have less," I shook my head.

"To justify raising the price. Nonsense isn't it?" she said with a pained laugh.

"Can't the king do something about it? Surely the people are against this," I suggested.

"if the people of Slade wanted this to end it would've ended a long time ago... As long as the nobles have the right papers, king Minoru cannot touch their properties without proper reason," she glared at a few papers on her desk.

"And it's such a pain getting anything out of these tricky nobles... But Minoru has to take every scrap, look as desperate for monopoly as possible, because we are..." she sighed.

"You can't act properly without the monopoly?" I asked.

"No. We can't. There are too many lives at risk, greed is a self-destructive thing, if we act rashly and they explode... A lot of people could... I mean will get hurt," she said, getting up.