Count

Count (カウント) is a life system that keep people alive in Althea, it could define any number related to their life. Count could also lead them to the Abyss when it has dropped to zero.

Count can also define as a battle powers for anyone who owns a Ballot, although this does not include original Ballots which was used for voting.

True Purpose
It was later revealed the true purpose of the Count, is that the government of Althea and its creators needed a method to maintain control of the populace in order to insure that it didn't grow to a level where the floating island nation itself could no longer maintain it and to that end, during Althea's early history as revealed by Nana, it became mandatory of the first one thousand selected citizens of Althea to receive a count in order to insure that there was an automatic system that regularly reduces the populace by throwing them into the abyss if they could not maintain their Count, effectively insuring that the Althean peoples numbers never exceeded the stable ratio and made sure that there was no need further develop their cities and land beyond the small towns and cities they already had and made sure that the people had no need to develop their technology any further than the low level tools they already achieved due to the relative peace brought fourth by the small controlled populace.

Define
Count can define anything related to their life, for example like someone walked distance, or number of compliments given to them by others, or number of times someone said foods is delicious.

Authority
Anyone who have a higher counts has the authority to order anyone with lower counts to do anything they desire. People with lower counts can't betray people with higher count's order. For example, Nana Bassler (77) has a right to order Licht Bach (-999) to handstand until he dies.

Battle
Known as Startheft Bout (星奪戦せいだつせん), if anyone with a lower count doesn't want to follow an order, they can challenge other people to battle. The winner of Startheft Bout battle will have their count increased via taking the loser's counts reducing it. When the Startheft Bout has started, the hands of Althing will appears from the land and when a victor and a loser is appropriately set, the hand would then take the loser's count and add it to the winners even by force, as seen during the Startheft Bout between Hina and Davi, where the althing hand even resorted to forcibly giving Hina Davi's stars when she refused to show them her count.

Trivia

 * There's a prototype version of Count and Startheft Bout exists at 13th Special Military Forces School 300 years ago, instead of numbers it was stars and anyone who lost all their stars was expelled from the school.