After Surviving the Apocalypse, I Built a City in Another World - Chapter 1092

Chapter 1092: More on the Nightlife Street

Other than these performance-based things, there were also a lot of ‘interactive’ establishments. The most popular of which were the casinos, which had actually been a subject of debate among the elders, ultimately getting approval but with increased regulations.

The casinos here target very wealthy aborigines and locals. Some were targeted at the super rich, while some to the relatively rich.

Of course, as always, there were a lot of control measures, especially for the locals. There was a minimum amount of total wealth required to enter and a maximum amount of spending they could do.

Of course, there were creative people everywhere who’d partner with other people to go beyond this limit, but it would be too much to control even that.

If they won big through that, then it could just be considered they were too skillful. Anyway, casinos were taxed a lot.

There was something called a franchise tax which, in Terran, was imposed on various businesses—particularly the gaming industry. In Alterra, it functioned and calculated about the same way.

Not only was it a great source of revenue for the territory, it was also a way to monitor, control, and regulate the activities.

With the increasing number of population, activities, and stakeholders appearing in the territory, there naturally had to be an increase in monitoring as well.

The Lord’s system only imposed the usual taxes, including income taxes, sales taxes, and even real estate taxes (or at least their version of it) —the Lord only had the ability to change up the percentage and vary what was included in the tax calculations.

These taxes were imposed even before they arrived and were integrated with the system. They were automatically collected and went straight to the Lord’s wallet.

Interestingly, there was even a small existence tax everyone —including visitors—paid annually, though they only found out about that after landing a year, because that didn’t go to the Lord’s wallet but somewhere else.

Where? Who knows.

Fortunately, it was a flat rate and was negligible to the average Alterran citizen. The only ones who’d probably realize this burden were poor citizens from villages and those people didn’t know what it was.

They just assumed the Lord decided to take some money from them as if they were omnipotent beings, and very few dared to question the practice. Even if they did, the Lord didn’t know about it either so what could they do?

The new ones were foreign taxes introduced by Terrans and therefore weren’t automatically collected by the system. While she did have an option to add it, she opted not to in the end.

It was too troublesome for her to move finances from her own wallet to circulate within the economy. She did not have the energy to monitor everything and sadly there wasn’t an option where she could get someone else to manage her finances.

It seemed like, when the system was created, entrusting wealth management to others was unimaginable.

So, for things like this, she decided to go manual and get the finance department to handle it. This way, there was a steady stream of income that could be used to handle some day-to-day expenses of the territory that were paid manually.

These extra taxes could also be used to force certain businesses to undergo the compliances and regulations by virtue of the various documentation they had to go through to keep in business.

Finally, it would allow a certain amount of self-sufficiency for the territory to run smoothly even when she wasn’t there.

She wouldn’t want it too attached and dependent on her. What if she got stuck? She wanted to travel someday!

After a year in one place, it had become a concrete goal for her to travel the world at least once in her life, and she would not be able to do that worrying about the territory.

Anyway, with all these functions, Nightlife Street also became one of the best places to go for romantic trips at night.

It definitely gave its name justice and this zone was the brightest and liveliest place in the territory after dusk. Couples go on a lot of dates, and dates in the Nightlife street were definitely a welcome option.

For example, at this time, two off-duty guards were going on their first date.

Well, they didn’t call it that yet. It was a ‘friendly hang-out’, though anyone with eyes could tell it was a date.

This was Luis, one of the leading soldiers of the territory, and the aborigine Yllana1, who was a former Guia slave they rescued from Baltimore’s house back then.

Thinking about it, that was also the first time the two of them met, with Althea and Luis being the ones to rescue her and the other women while they were trying to find the Lord’s token. Regardless, it was definitely not the greatest of circumstances for first impressions.

Still, they were friendly. They had known each other for many months though their relationship had only progressed recently because Luis was dating someone else, while Yllana had believed that she would never find love.

In her mind, no man would want such a tainted woman as herself. After becoming a guard, she was fully prepared to never marry—anyway, she could depend on herself now. The long-standing teaching of women depending on men had changed.

Yllana had enlisted as a guard back in Iron Valley, but she was moved with another female guard to Alterra, to give them a better chance to grow safely. After all, they were looked down on by aborigine men and had even felt subtle bullying from them.

When she arrived in Alterra, she had become free. Nobody cared if she was a woman. As long as she was sincere and hardworking, she would get the acknowledgment she deserved.

For Yllana, moving to Alterra was the best thing that had happened.

And perhaps—she couldn’t help but subtly sneak a peek at the man next to her— she could hope for something more.