Chapter 480 - Don’t Be Too Harsh (1/2)
Opening one’s arms and letting the other person check how many weapons they carried was a form of trust and friendship in the lair.
Many of the trades, negotiations, and discussions could also be completed secretly with this gesture hidden under the cloak.
Just as Meng Chao expected, after groping about for a while, the two laughed simultaneously, pulled open their cloaks, and hugged each other in a warm embrace.
“Sharkie, you’re not dead yet!” The handler used a force that could kill a tiger and struck Zhou Chong’s shoulder.
“Tengu, even if you died, I wouldn’t!” Zhou Chong returned it by tightening his squeeze. It could crush a spine.
This meant that they were old friends.
To hunters, the lair had a unique significance.
The most popular superhuman occupation in Dragon City was the hunter.
They could join a superhuman squad or fight alone in the wild while dancing about dangerous situations. They were not limited by anything and just used their fists, legs, weapons, passion, and smarts to earn their living. As long as they were strong and had a bit of luck, they could become famous overnight and rise to the top. It was a free and amazing life!
The Supernatural Tower had to manage a large number of carefree hunters, so they set up the Hunter’s Association. It was in charge of training, testing, categorizing hunting regions, and distributing missions. Naturally, they also regulated the different conflicts between superhuman squads. When they encountered large-scale battles or saw Apocalyptic Beasts in the city, they could even organize a few or hundreds of different superhuman squads to fight.
However, the most important task of the Hunter’s Association was still to collect money.
“Superhumans might be strong, but without the Red Dragon Army providing firepower and logistic support and without the support of tens of millions of Dragon Citizens, it’d be impossible for them to survive and fight in the wild with just their own strength. So, a large portion of the hunters’ gains should belong to all the Dragon Citizens.”
Due to this logic, whenever a hunter killed a monster, they had to hand over one-third or half of the gains as hunting tax, special resources recollection tax, Hunter’s Association management tax, Supernatural Tower construction tax, Red Dragon Army construction tax, unique national responsibility, and other taxes. The higher their cultivation realms were, the higher their tax rate was. The Deity Realm superhumans’ tax rate would easily go over 70%.
Recently, Dragon City had been organizing projects to upgrade the old residential areas and to provide three nutritional meals for the youngsters. What is meant for the superhumans was that the hunters who had been fighting at the frontlines had to pay even more taxes.
Besides that, the materials of many monsters, especially the rarer Hell Beasts and Apocalyptic Beasts, were definitely unique tactical resources, which meant that the hunters could not just sell them to whoever they liked. The Supernatural Tower would buy and use them based on the needs of the departments and the projects, along with their importance.
This sort of method that monopolized the resources usually did not provide the hunters with the market price, and the hunters, who had been risking their lives, did not feel satisfied.
For the overall development of Dragon City, having superhumans pay high taxes and monopolizing resources was logical and necessary.
Human civilization was a unit whose parts couldn’t be separated from one another. Without the large number of citizens and the Red Dragon Army being a powerful shield, the hunters could not possibly win against the monster civilization.
But the hunters had to risk their lives, be covered in wounds, perhaps even watch their comrades die tragically in the mouths of monsters. They might also get a lot of hidden injuries. Yet after they finally killed the monster, they had to give up half of the materials for nothing, so they felt that it was unfair. That was only logical.
As time progressed, some people decided to test their luck.
When it came to materials that were large, heavy, but quite cheap, like Demonic Halberd Pig and Iron-armored Rhinoceros’ flesh, they would not care about it.
But if hunters encountered valuable materials that were smaller but worth cities, like the monsters’ crystalized neurospheres, heart of blood, eyeballs, spinal bone marrow, and other parts, they would usually not report them to the Hunter’s Association.
Instead, they would sneakily bring them to the black markets in the lairs in exchange for the resources they wanted.
Sometimes, they would also exchange them for betting chips in the monster coliseums in the lairs and gamble their way into oblivion.
It did not matter whether they lost or won. The most important thing was to make sure that the betting chips all came out clean, so when the Supernatural Tower assessed the superhumans next year, they would not be troubled by the huge source of income that came out of nowhere.
This gray industry that was formed by the smuggling of monster materials was one of the important economic pillars in the lair.
The Survival Committee and the Supernatural Tower knew about this trick, of course.
But if they were too harsh and decided to be stern on punishing the act of smuggling and black market trading, it would severely weaken the hunters’ enthusiasm, so they would not work hard while they went off to hunt and do it in a carefree manner. The Supernatural Tower could not do anything to change human nature.
The other reason was that if the hunters did not come to trade in the black market, the gambling, eating, and alcohol industry in the lair, which was a prospering tertiary economic sector, would die.
It has to be known that most of the one million lair citizens relied on the tertiary economic sector to survive.
When the pressure from the zombies and monsters increased or the people got really miserable, they would run to the lair to release their pent up emotions. That was the only way they could continue struggling to survive in the brutal Other World.