Two days later I lay back and look at the sky after finishing all the work with the inner world. Technically I could have kept going forever, improving the fireball turrets and shield projectors, adding redundancy, power and tweaking the runic settings. Let alone the improvements to be made training with the portals to make it not just something that I could do, but the very basis of my fighting style, but in the end, it was time for something else.
I got all the ‘low hanging fruit’ of this particular tree and other fields had ripe trees.
The next couple hours I spend doing my daily rounds around the village, with the activity that consumes most of my time, deservedly so, being the work on the smithy. Before leaving, I want to add a couple of deep steel ingots to my metal stockpile though as I move to take a few copper coins I stop myself.
From another pile I take one of Pando’s coins and ask Mr. Blackwood:
“Can I pay you with these?”
“Umm, no, I mean kinda, but if you are talking about paying me right now, then the answer is no.”
“Can you clarify that stupendous speech that deserving of the title of literary work?” I say with a smile to take the sting of my needling.
“Huhhphhh…Your coins have value and under certain circumstances, people will accept them with no problem. But they need to be ‘appraised’ which determines their actual value. But in the instance, I only know of a single way of using them and that is with the automaton at the end of each month. I don’t think he even has to autonomy to trade the coins for approved system currency, just to take them as payment.”
“Dang it. Well, it was worth a shot.” I cross my arms almost turning but another question pops into my mind. “Coins sound like a really good business.”
He looks at me squinting his eyes but then he asks: “What do you mean?”
“I would think after learning about the intricacies of how making coins work, most civilizations would dedicate their industry to it.”
He guffaws for an entire minute, though his hammer doesn’t stop for even a moment. Still, even with his superhuman levels of dexterity, I notice slight changes which he gets under control after he rubs the tears out of his eyes.
“Look it’s expensive to tell this in the eyes of the system… you know what I’m talking about., but with how much you are pushing this forward, I think it will be worth telling you.”
“I’m all ears,” I say.
“Most integrated planets don’t ever develop an independent monetary system, let alone doing it inside the instance. The initial efforts to make coins at the start are generally in forgeries, which takes centuries to get right and only a few people manage at high levels. They are always discovered and the system takes a very dim view in a personal way. After the first few people are caught and the penalties become common knowledge, most planets just stay clear of anything that remotely resembles stamping coins.”
“So I got lucky to find out how to make system recognized coins?”
“You can call it luck, but it’s more about your mentality, which aligned perfectly with the requirements. Now back to what I was saying, even when the civilizations do make their own parallel money, they often don’t follow the ‘guidelines’ you ‘stumbled’ upon.”
“But shouldn't they eventually find out the potential and start doing it?”
“The council does what it can to discourage most planets from that line of thinking. Though about a third of the planets eventually start minting their own coins, usually they are the worlds that managed to keep a modicum of their own resources instead of the planets being strip-mined by the council's organizations.”
I look at the horizon and let the anger and fear fade. We looked to be on the right track. Even if we don't manage to keep completely outside the council’s control, at least we would be able to keep a little autonomy.
But after a moment something he said keeps bothering me.
“Why does the system even allow even these other coins to come to the market? Doesn’t that bring its own problems? I mean what is to stop a planet from mass manufacturing them?”
“The total purchasing power of all independent coins across the ultiverse is only a fraction of the system’s coins value and there are limits in place to stop people from inflating the larger economy. It may look to be creating wealth from nothing, but if people in your own society aren’t willing to use the coin and attribute real value for it then the system depreciates it. It follows a complex formula that I won’t be getting it to with you.t The size of your civilization and its economic power are the two of the most important factors in deciding how high the ‘market cap’ is. The planets monitor closely and produce just enough coins to not cause the value to drop, while not leaving a single coin on the table.”
“What was that talk about authorized production I heard at the start?”
“After you are officially sanctioned by the system, then almost everyone accepts your coin as they are ‘automatically’ informed what their actual value is.”
“What about…”
He interrupts, by lifting his other hand as he puts the armor piece he is working on in the forge to get it red hot again.
“That is enough, now shoo. I already said too much, but I knew you wouldn’t rest while you didn't have at least some information to work with.”
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I follow his instructions and walk out thinking about the implications of his words. Most of it is not immediately useful and I now know that I either will have to find a way to trade for system coins, but at least the automaton accepts it as money at end of the month. Maybe not immediately useful, but if the system evaluation increases and I attract enough people, the market cap should be high enough to match any source of the system’s coins.
Trusting our entire finances to the system sounded like a bad idea and it was proving to be troublesome, but Pando’s coin is slowly coming into prominence.
As I pass in front of the book shop, I stop and look back before heading inside for a minute or so to say hey to the owner. Other people had started stopping by at my prompting, but I feel like stopping for a minute and that is exactly what I do, just to say hi.
A minute later I walk out smiling at the roots still peaking inside the shop through the cracks in the door and window along with the comm system I installed a while ago. I was still not in a position to make use of it to allow me to look at all the books inside. I pull the ‘introduction to the system’ book and try to make out the contents with the perception field.
The only thing forming in my mind is a blurred image. I can’t quite make out the different letters yet, but enough detail remains that I can tell which are upper case letters and where the spaces are.
Still a while before I can actually read the book depending on the slowly increasing perception stat means my progress is starting to slow a lot, but I’m getting closer.
I had gone more than halfway through the journey since I started working on my perception field. If I could figure out another way to improve the Perception field even faster it would be wonderful, but even this much progress still brings a smile to my face.
Now, I just need to hope that neither the librarian nor the system will ‘detect’ the use of my natural perception field. Whenever I even thought about using the skill perception field in the bookshop, a cold feeling halted me, but I had used the field that even the system sometimes didn’t seem aware in the shopowner’s presence and he didn’t even twitch.
I head back to my hut to start another round of experiments only to be interrupted by a messenger.
“Nash, Charlie is asking for you.”
“Ok, lead the way.”
“He is in the command room, gotta go find the others.”
Nodding he runs off and I head to the command center instead, just like we all seemed to be meeting whenever there is news to be had.
The relaxation from the hour and change meditating as I input waves of mana in the forge start to fade and the last couple days come to the surface.
As I get there, this time it’s not just half a dozen people. But a much larger meeting and after a couple of minutes which I don’t let go to waste by connecting to my network and getting a few things in order there. I see Alex and get closer.
“Didn’t you go to the healer today? I thought it should have healed already.” I say gesturing to a healing patch non his throat.
“Ohh, it’s healed, this is just to get heal the scar left behind.”
“I didn’t know there were scars,” I question. “Ever since the system integration, all injuries either completely heal which is most cases or not in case of amputations.”
“Apparently some type of reaction with the healing, but it fades over time. I’m just accelerating the process.”
“Still why do you care about a little mark, it adds character?” I say joking.
“I don’t know, it just feels strange, whenever I scratch my skin. Diferent them it should.” He replies fairly seriously.
“Well, at least you are ok, despite the healer taking his time in getting to you.”
“Yeah, I heard about that. I still can’t believe you just gave him a gold coin.”
“Well, it’s not like it's all my money and this way for a couple of months at least he won’t have any excuse to delay treatment.”
“Still, I should thank you, I don’t see Charlie or any of the others pinching money, but what you did probably saved a few seconds. I heard the doctors guessing my HP counter hitting zero.”
I smile in appreciation and we both move our heads forward top Charlie as he starts:
“I’m gonna recap a few things quickly for those not familiar. Every six hours a mob comes out of the HLZ. Following the current patterns and a few details we manage to scrounge together, our region is the next one to be hit. The six hours counter is just a few minutes away. We recalled almost everyone to the village except a few scouts and workers close by and within range of the comm network so they can return here or find a friendly village to bunker down.
“Now, we will be sending another group to try and battle this one.”
“Didn’t Alex almost die last time? We are sending them in the fire again?” Asks one of the merchants. Probably here because of Charlie’s recall.
“Unfortunately, that’s our only option, unless we want to wait as the beast roams for a couple of hours looking for villages. Those of you who have access to and went to the map room can testify that doing nothing is not an option.”
Everyone grumbles, each one on a side of the debate, but nobody is so opposed to sending us out again that they voice those concerns again. With the further preparations we have put in place and the fact the beasts stopped increasing in level. For now, they are fluctuating around level 140 or so, at least for the moment we don’t need to worry about the beast getting stronger faster than we are.
Charlie continues:
“Well, with the expanded detection network we should be able to keep right on the heels of the beast. At least if it’s within 6 villages of distance from our position.”
I frown slightly at that statement. I know they had expanded, but how did they manage to grow it to the villages outside the network.
Connecting to the direct feed, in my mind's eye the new network shows up, and like I suspected there are plenty of villages and paths not covered with roots that are showing me signals.
Charlies turns on the large screen to give an overview to everyone and starts talking about stuff that will be more relevant for the other people added to the meeting, not to us who are preparing to meet the beast.
But as I start to feel the changes in the network, I realize they continued to add copper lines over the hundreds of miles. As my perception field passes over the new additions I see the new technologies.
Copper wire protected by a coat of something akin to rubber with a tiny hole inside engraved is laid down in between points of network and village along with a long line a hundred miles forward of the inner ring of villages.
They didn’t even tell me. Though for the places without roots and with easy access to the network in all the connection points, I didn’t really need to be involved, but the manufacture of so much of this copper wire and this new rubber-like material are very interesting.
Not enough for transmitting mana in bulk. But for laying down communication lines it is perfect and it manages to transmit enough mana to operate the detectors.
As most of the people file out with only Charlie and the other people ready to head in danger again he starts.
“You know that you don’t have to do this. This is dangerous, even more than we had expected.”
“Don’t you worry,” says Alex. “None of us have been Idle, and we are much more well prepared for the beast this time.”
The commander says: “Except that it probably won’t be a Wolfkin again.”
“It ned to be done, and we are the only ones who have a chance to stand against it unless we want to invite a few fighters from other villages.”
“No, except for Max, I don’t think there is anyone else how can stand even close to your capabilities.”
“Either way, we will learn and make use of our training.” Says Alex with a firmness in his voice that helps me loosen the knot that had been hiding in me ever since he was injured. My pupil didn’t deserve all this shit and with a single nod, I say:
“Let’s go forth and defeat them.”