Ethereal Ascendance: A Journey of Transformation(Vol 5)

Vol 5/Chapter 21: Things Seen in Sifur

"Household registration card?"

What's that? It sounds so familiar. I was stunned. I'd never seen such a thing in other countries since coming to this world.

But no matter how strange it was, now wasn't the time to ask questions. I managed to hold my tongue. Adrian didn't seem worried at all. He replied very politely:

"So sorry, we're traders from Koromidos who came here specially to do big business. We don't have the household cards your country just started giving out. Can you please make an exception for us?"

Koromidos is southeast of Ilandra Dominion and directly south of Crestvale Republic. It's one of the small countries bordering the empire in the south. It's much smaller than its big neighbors, so it focuses on growing its economy. It does a lot of trade with other countries. Many traders on Eldoria Continent come from there.

To prove what he said was true, Adrian showed them a Koromidos trade license. He bought it for a lot of money a few years ago when he was an adventurer, mainly to make future travelling easier. Koromidos traders get special treatment in many places around the world. We didn't expect it to come in handy in this situation.

"Oh, you're foreigners? That's rare. No wonder you don't have household cards... But if you want to do business in this city, you must get permission from our lord in person. You can't do business in secret, okay?"

The empire is quite close to Koromidos, and this is a border area. The guards at the gate were nicer than we expected. When they heard about our "problem", they waved us through right away, letting us enter the town.

This town is called Sifur. It's a very typical small town. Unlike the poor areas in other countries, where the muddy streets are full of poop and smell terrible, this city has a stone road as the main street from the very start. It goes all the way from north to south. The place is kept very clean. We hardly smelled anything bad as our cart went down the street.

They say most towns in the empire are like this. Most houses along the street have at least two floors. In other countries, only the capital would be this nice. The empire's economy and infrastructure are clearly very good. They're way ahead of the Astralrealm Kingdom in taking care of people and building up the country.

"I heard from people on the street that if we keep going down this road, there's a tavern. Next to the tavern is the town's trade guild! If it's big business, we might get to meet the lord directly!"

Adrian was visiting here for the first time like us, but he clearly knew what to do next. After talking it over, we decided not to go to the trade guild right away. We'd stop by the tavern first to get some news.

It's common knowledge that you can hear all kinds of news in taverns. As we walked, everything else seemed normal, but we were surprised to see so many imperial soldiers in town. We saw a few almost every few steps. The magic lamp posts and walls were covered with army recruitment notices and reminders to register for household cards.

"This household system is a big policy that Emperor Reider has been pushing hard since he took power. They tested it in the capital Kyndrill a few years ago. Recently they started doing it all over the empire."

Adrian explained this to us, thinking we didn't understand. But he didn't seem to like this policy. "I think the number of people in a place isn't fixed. People are always moving in and out or disappearing. There are too many changes. This policy might not work!"

Of course, whether it works or not mainly depends on how they do it. We didn't need to pay too much attention to that. But after looking around and asking some more, we found out the army notices were mostly for a nearby military base. This confirmed some of our guesses about what was going on inside the base.