The First and Second Generations

Busy as she was, Lux wasn't the only one.

With the interns gone, every clerk temporarily seconded to Demacia City was working at full tilt.

Everything here was different from Freljord, from the North. Many things that seemed perfectly ordinary to the clerks were extremely difficult to put into practice in Demacia City.

Take the simplest example: registering the population.

In Freljord, three or five clerks could register an entire neighborhood in a few days. They just had to knock on every door, show their credentials, ask a few questions, and fill out a form.

Then they could cross-reference the forms with data from the trade associations, the schools, and the publicly available records kept by the clerks, Hextech workers, and Northern Wanderers. Before long, they'd have a basic population database.

With that information in hand, it naturally became much easier for the Freljord government to mobilize people and resources when needed.

But in Demacia City, the people resisted population registration far more than expected. During the surveys and registration, they did everything they could to underreport their numbers, as if they were afraid the new emperor would use the opportunity to levy a poll tax.

Under the circumstances, even with Pand Patterson and his colleagues explaining the process at every turn, registration in the area he was responsible for was proceeding very slowly.

Lux had anticipated resistance when she introduced population registration, so the clerks hadn't been given a strict deadline for this part of the work. At the current pace, Pand should have no trouble finishing the registration for his district in time. Even so, he couldn't help reflecting on the situation whenever he had a moment to spare.

The people of Demacia City didn't trust the nobles.

Or rather, they didn't trust those in power.

In fact,