Shota's Isekai NTR Adventure

Chapter 784 Filled with corruption

The first day of the trials, the stands were completely filled with people.

In order to make sure as many people could watch the trials as possible, the fourth prince had decided to hold the trials in the square of the capital.

This was the largest square in the entire kingdom and could fit over ten thousand people.

But even then, there were many who couldn't get into the square since it had been completely filled.

Of course, it wasn't as if the square was emptied so people could come in. Half of the square was occupied by things that would be necessary in the trials, so there was only half the square open to people who wanted to watch.

But five thousand wasn't a small amount either.

They were all excited to watch because this was the first time that nobles were being held responsible for their actions. So for the first time, the citizens would get to see the nobles that treated them like dirt being punished.

There wasn't a single person who wanted to miss that.

The first day was just for all of the small offenders.

There were simply too many of them that it would be impossible to take care of them after the major trials, so it was decided that they would be taken care of first. That way, there would be no need to worry about them in the future.

After all, most of them only had minor crimes to account for, so it would be simple to pass a verdict on them.

The problem was the sheer volume of people that needed to be tried.

There were just too many of them that had committed these minor crimes.

There were crimes such as embezzlement, oppressing the commoners, smuggling, and other small crimes.

Of course, these were small crimes compared to the crimes that the other criminals had committed.

These were still crimes that were big enough for us to strip away their titles and reclaim their land.

The only reason for these trials was to show the people that even those who were in power would be held responsible for their actions.

This was something that had been proposed by the fourth prince.

The king had been shocked by this, but for someone like me who came from a more modern society...it was much easier for me to accept. After all, this kind of thing was common in modern society where politicians were much more susceptible to scandals.

Though that was in an era where everything was public because of the ease of communicating with each other.

At the same time, it was much easier to find information because of digital traces on computers and the internet.

But there were still many that tried to fight against this by bringing in their relatives.

These were knights and merchants of repute that had some influence.

What they didn't know was that they were also on the list that the fourth prince had created for judging who would be brought in. They were on the list of those that didn't commit crimes that were great enough, but they had also committed crimes of corruption.

In short, this kingdom really was just too filled with corruption, but that was from my viewpoint of someone from a modern society. If one thought about it from the viewpoint of a medieval society that this game world was based on, then it was perfectly normal for these people to do this, even if there were laws in place.

So it could be said that the fourth prince's ideas really were progressive for their time.

But that stemmed mainly from his desire to protect the citizens.

This was not something that anyone else in this era would think of.

In the end, most of the nobles that went up on trial were found guilty by the judge and jury.

That was because the fourth prince had played some of his tricks.

The people that were chosen as the judge and jury might seem like normal people, but if one dug deeper, they could see that they were always related to these nobles in some way. So even if the noble somehow made themselves seem innocent, the judge and jury wouldn't care.

From the very beginning, the trials had been rigged against them so that they would never be found innocent no matter what they did. So in the end, all of them were found guilty by the judge and jury.

Though not a single person was able to make this connection and realize that the trials were rigged.

Only the fourth prince knew this and he had told me before the trials started so that I would understand what was happening. It could be said that he trusted me quite a bit to tell me this secret, but it made me more scared of him.

After all, this showed that the true fourth prince was always lurking under the surface…

Though I also had to admire the amount of work that he put into this.

It certainly wasn't easy to find these connections between these people and the nobles since these were very minor connections that no one would have figured out. It would take a lot of digging just to find these connections and then it would take a lot to gather them all.

After all, even if the judges only changed every couple of trials, the jury changed with every trial.

So that meant that the fourth prince had found all of these people just to try these people.

It must have been an incredible amount of work, but these were just for the ones that had minor crimes.

"Just what has he prepared for the bigger criminals?" That was all I could ask myself when I realized all of this.

It also made me even more terrified of the fourth prince and I made sure to never become his enemy in the future.

Just like this, all of the ones that went to trial were found guilty and they were punished.