I spent the rest of day 841 by bouncing off ideas with Rae and the smelters about what we should put on the coins.

And after a bit of discussion, we decided on putting humanoid imagery on the coins, aka weapons, palaces, walls, etc. Basically, anything that could be made by the Homunculi.

I wanted to have 2 swords clashing at the back of the coin, with the Roman numeral for 1, or “I” in the centre, with a small text below the clashing swords and the roman numeral that was either “10” for the smaller coins, implying it was 10 grams, and 100 for the larger coins.

And yes, the Roman Numeral changed to X in the larger coins, to show that they were made of 10 smaller coins.

But there was a problem with the sword design I wanted as the smelters had never seen a sword, so they didn’t have any idea how to make one for the coins... so we ended up on using a spear and a bow instead.

And for the front side of the coin, I had a couple of ideas, like the figure of a settler claiming new lands, or simply the face of a non-descript Homunculi or me.

Rae on the other hand wanted to... put her own face in the front of the coins... Using all 3 of my neurons, which was 4 greater than the number of neurons Rae had, I immediately remembered her talking about human empires that existed in the starts above and, looking at her clearly human-like face, decided to save future me from having that weird conversation with a few billion people, and just ignored her.

Which she was totally fine with! And I was able to get a goodnights sleep that night without any brats annoying me all night!

Totally!

Anyways, after a bit more of thinking, I decided to go with a knight’s helmet instead of any of my prior ideas, as none of the smelters were that great in the arts so the art on the coins were already going to look a bit janky, so going with something that they were... somewhat familiar with was going to help save quite a few headaches for the smelters.

And about how many coins that could be made in a day... well, a single bloomery can smelt 2 units of ore in 5 hours, so if I just assign 2 bloomeries and 4 smelters to the job of coin making, we should be able to make at least 15 kg of copper coins a day, and 21 kg of iron coins per day.

And as a kg of ore is equal to 10 big coins, we should get at least 150 Big Copper, and 210 Big Iron coins a day, or a total of 171 Big Copper Coins’ worth of coins produced.

I am only talking about the big coins, but we’ll be making both small and big coins with the ore at hand.

And no, we will not be having multiple coin designs for now. But, in the future, when there are actually good designers in the kingdom, I will of course pay them to make new designs for the coins, but for now all the small and big coins will use the same design.

Then, the next day the smelters I assigned to the job of making the coins to toiled to finalise the design for the coins, and prepared for the next day, which was the day that they’d actually start making some coin.

And about how much coin I made per year, and how much did I need to spend per year... I made about 62.415 Big Copper’s worth of coins per year, and had to spend around 6.590 Big Copper on wages... but I also needed to pay quite a few people 2-3 years’ worth of wages before the winter, or the end of it, so I am going to keep 2 Bloomeries on coin production for the next few months, and after that, I am just going to leave 1 Bloomery on coin production.

And to get the 16-17k worth of Big Copper Coins, I’d need to keep 2 bloomeries on coin production for a... total of 96 days, so just a bit over 3 months.

And as the days passed, and after I gained a hefty amount of coin, but not the full amount, I broke the news of the new coinage system to everyone and they were initially just confused, as I had just given all of them a few dozen big copper coin’s worth of coins, and they didn’t understand the need for the coins if they were going to have more than enough to buy anything they wanted.

And I couldn’t really blame them for thinking like that, but also, we really couldn’t afford to keep the communal/centralised economy we had going on right now if we wanted to have a bigger empire, and after a bit of explaining things to them, everyone just moved on.

I had, of course, told them about the economic plan I had in mind, which included the birth of middle management and me explaining them that I wouldn’t be paying everyone directly, etc., but they didn’t really mind it, even though they still continued to think it was weird.

But the news hadn’t made anyone mad, and I was pretty sure there were no guillotines being constructed, so everything was going pretty smoothly if I had to say so myself.

Though I still owed some people quite a bit of money for their past efforts, but soon, I should be able to pay them no problem!

You might be reading a stolen copy. Visit Royal Road for the authentic version.

Then my only worry would be the lack of paper at hand, but to complete Knowledge Sharing I’d need to only give 4 more people classes, and for Healers To The Rescue, I only needed to create another Healer!

And both of these quests should be completed in the next month or so, so after that I could start writing on paper!

...And yes, I am simply hoping that paper isn’t that hard to make, and a small team can easily make a few hundred sheets a week.

And the sheets of paper they make don’t get destroyed in the slightest touch.

After a few weeks, I had completed both the quests, and quickly moved onto my research tab, and researched paper making.

And as the knowledge about paper making flooded my mind, I was pleased to be surprised by the fact that paper could be made from practically any tree, and while the process of making paper by hand was... laborious. A small group of craftsmen should be able to give me a few hundred sheets every week.

And other than that, I had also learned how to make ink from charcoal, which was as simple as mixing a binder, charcoal, and water.

And as a binder I could use quite a few things, like gum, and honey—but realistically, I could only use egg yolk we got from eggs as I didn’t have access to any of the other binders the research recommended... and I wasn’t milking the cat-horses and making cheese from their milk only to get the casein from the curds the cheese making process would produce.

That was just not happening... I mean some poor sod was going to have to make it in the future, before we developed better binders that is, but the poor sob that was going to milk the cats was definitely not me!

Then, ignoring the plight of the future cat milkers, I ordered CG3 to make a simple workplace near the river for the paper makers that I’d summon in a few days, and placed orders for the tools the paper makers would need at the carpenters.

And in a few weeks, I had 5 paper makers who could make 100 sheets of paper every week.

I would’ve liked if they could make more, but they were doing everything by hand, so it was normal.

And a month or so later, we reached day 939, and I was able to fully pay back everyone their dues, and now, I needed to actually build some government quarters.

For myself, for the increasing number of soldiers, we have 9 regulars now, and the future officials and officers that were going to need housing as well.

And we needed offices, and storage areas for the treasury and government supplies.

And for this, I had 2 choices as to what I could do. I could either build everything from 0 or move the residents of the houses in the first circle into new houses.

Though, while I would’ve liked for the government related things to be all located in the first wall, I don’t know how the people would react to me telling them to move out from their homes that they’ve had for a few years now... wait... can’t I just... ask them.

... I mean, I don’t see anything that could go wrong as I will be giving them houses... Give me a moment.

...

Okay, so people are more than willing to move if its necessary as they still see me as the sole ruling body in the town, and my word as law.

Which will have to change, but for now, I am going to take it as granted and continue building houses like normal and moving people from the inner most circle of walls to the newly constructed houses, while modifying the emptied houses inside the first wall.

Though... this will mess up with the population growth as the old barracks are still fully occupied, and I’ve been just moving from them into the newly constructed houses, and re-summoning people to fill in their place.

So, if I started moving people from the already constructed houses into new ones instead of moving people from the barracks and then filling back their places, I just won’t be able to grow the population for a few months to possibly for more than a year.

...Okay, here’s the plan. We currently have 3 Construction Groups, or CG’s, with 35 workers in them, with 75 of them being full-time workers and 30 of them being temporary workers from the farms.

Meaning, a CG can make a family home for 5 in 3 weeks, and we get approximately 3 family homes a month. So, all 3 CGs continue to build houses like normal, but we move the people from inside the first wall that already own houses into the new houses built by CG3, and for renovations to the newly emptied houses, we make another CG that has no more than 10-15 people in it.

Like this, we should still be able to grow the population, and also go ahed with making proper government quarters, and offices and depots for the government workers.

And we can even save up on more space by converting a few of the family homes inside the first wall into barracks for the soldiers, as not all of them have lovers, and then only leave proper houses for important officials and officers and their families.

And of course, convert a few homes into depots for coins and other supplies too, like a proper armoury that isn’t just a wooden hut.

Though converting fully functional houses into depots feels a bit weird as, just a few meters in front of the depots, will be the basic huts we build a few years ago that still house around 135 people at all times.

And no, the family houses don’t necessarily house more people as I give them out to couples who are interested in starting families, so we only have 108 people living in proper homes, not counting the useless babies of course, which we have around 33 of.

And no, I have not yet decided on a schooling system as the oldest baby is only a year old. But I should probably get on it, and get a few dedicated teachers, and make some reading materials, as we do not want to miss the window to teach those kids reading and writing as I simply cannot be arsed with worrying about an illiteracy problem.

Everyone, legally, has to get an education from now on, and I will personally beat the shit out of the people who don’t send their kids to school.

We will have a 100% literacy rate! Tis be my first decree as the emperor of... I really need to come up with a name for the empire, don’t I?

...Maybe I can just keep calling it The Empire and no one will notice... I mean, I could always just give it my surname, but The Gastrellian Empire or The Empire Of Gastrell doesn’t have that ring to it like just The Empire... and yes, my full name is Damien Gastrell.

And yes, I seriously don’t have any cool names for the empire... eh, I’ll just come up with something on the spot if someone asks for the empire’s actual name or add dragon or draconian to the front.

I mean, I do like dragons quite a bi—

*ding*

Quest Birth Of Money completed! Rewards, 10 Exp + 1 Research Point have been granted in the Empire System!

“...I need to find a way to turn off these system notifications or I swear they’ll drive me mad.”