Abuse of Magic

Chapter 180: Power In Numbers

There was a knock on the door, and Joseph glanced up with half a cookie hanging from his mouth. These things were addictive!

"Joseph?" called William. He was supposed to deliver the extra reports to him,

Joseph sighed, finishing his cookie, and picking up his glass of milk, before unlocking the door.

"I figured I would find you in here, hiding," said William with a grin. "I have those reports you wanted, but didn't leave them on your desk, so that they might be misplaced"

The grin on his father's face, let Joseph know that he was only teasing, but the spike of immediate anger, almost made him crush the glass in his hand. Taking a moment to finish the milk, he was able to calm down enough to return the grin to his dad.

"Thanks. I should probably stop hiding and get to work. The Mother of Dragons probably won't like having to wait for too long."

Stella stepped forward, holding the plate of still warm cookies, and handed it to William, before laying her hand in Joseph's arm.

Joseph took the forms and teleported away with Stella to his office, as his father looked down greedily at the cookies. Joseph wasn't sure if his mom would get any, but after the feast she had the other day, she would probably be fine.

Stella went over to her bench and picked up her book to go back to reading it. She wasn't a very fast reader, but she didn't give up on it, either.

Reading through the reports, he started to pace, as he thought. Of all of the different types of creatures that now called his kingdom home, there is at least one culture or species that violated every one of his laws. Even among the dwarves, should he acquire any of them, they incorporated alcohol into their marriages, making his law against buying drinks for women mean dwarves could never get married in his kingdom.

So many laws resided in his head, but they all pertained to only one race at a time. Even if there were many cultures, the laws were still only for one race, and that was often human.

He could try and made addendums, to the existing laws, but he didn't want them to become so complicated, that the simpler folk couldn't understand them. Even if the educated norm in his kingdom rose, it would be several generations before that could be the case.

He wanted to blend the many cultures together, not segregate them, which is what the addendums would end up doing. Besides, if he had a law for one culture, and not another, what of the children that were mixed with both?

After pacing for several hours, his father showed back up.

"Do you have any decisions to make, yet?" he asked.

"I think so," said Joseph, moving to a chair and sitting down.

"Really? What is it?" asked Stella, putting her book down. Joseph was pretty sure she wasn't reading it, but he couldn't decide what she was doing, if not reading.

"I want a group formed to go to each group of people. I want a list drawn up of laws that they think are needed and brought to me. I will go over them all when I return and decide on the future laws."

"Wait, your solution is to let the people decide the laws?" asked William, incredulously.

"Absolutely not! I want to see what things they think are important, so I can take that into consideration. I have so many memories of women being abuse, and after Stella came from such a broken home, I wanted to make things better for women. This whole realm is so heavy handed with the men ruling everything, I thought it would help, but it only made things worse."

"That's true. If you hadn't incorporated a desire for the people to follow the law, you would have had rioting in the streets by now. The fear of not eating is driving a lot of them to work when I don't think they would have, but we still have those who fall within the loopholes of those who desire welfare help. They are still being fed and housed, while not working, because there is a shortage of work for them. We have too many people, Joseph. And the fact that most don't need to eat very often, only makes the problem worse."

Joseph sighed. There were going to be problems. He knew this when he chose to be the king, though he had to admit it was a rather nave goal when he was seven.

"I also want to propose spiritual laws," he said, watching the confused look come over his father's eyes.

"What do you mean?"

"I want rules that explain how and why someone behaves, instead of just the results of the behavior. I'm going to keep the first law, not to cause physical harm to others of the kingdom unless in personal defense. I want a happy kingdom where everyone contributes to the success and growth of the kingdom because they want to. I could have just grabbed Stella and hidden somewhere, studying magic, until I had to travel to another realm when this one was lost to the demons, but I didn't."

"Why?" asked William, not really following along well.

"Because, no matter how nice the house is, and how wonderful it would be to only have Stella to myself, it would be a lonely existence without people around to live it with."

"I guess that makes sense," said William, slowly.

"You don't get it, okay, how about if I explain it like this; if I were a unit of power equal to a million, and the mages of my school were a unit of power equal to a hundred each, and then the normal people of my kingdom were a unit of power equal to one each, and we all were to spend time trying to better ourselves, I would be able to grow to two million in the same time the mages could become two hundred and the normal people could become two. But if I slowed myself down to one and a half million, in order to boost the growth of those beneath me, I would not be at my full potential. Instead, I would have three and a half million normal people, with three power each, which would equal more than my two million."

"Wow," said William after a moment of thought. "That's amazing."

"This only works if I can rule in such a way as to limit the chaos for my people to focus on advancement. I need to make everyone involved in progressing the kingdom. Besides, if we overpopulate this world, I have plans for both moons and for making new realms, or looking for dead realms to expand to."

(JOSEPH, YOU HAVE SEVERAL GODS ALARMED AT YOUR PLANS.)

'Why? It seems obvious, based on the way I designed my Wizar template, that we would eventually overrun this realm. I'm surprised they didn't put two and two together already.'

(NOW THEY ARE STARTING TO FEAR YOU. THIS IS AWESOME! I WILL BE AWESOME! EVERYTHING IS AWESOME!)