The stereotypical dwarf is a short, strong being. They’re known for having an almost unnatural talent for mining, lots of avarice and a strong sense of loyalty. This makes them great merchants; they can produce valuable goods, want to sell them, but won’t betray their company. However, it’s not perfect. If a dwarf isn’t well-liked and doesn’t have many friends, he won’t mind selling them out for some money.

And there are people who would love to get insider information on a dwarf mining company. While the deities have pretty much stopped crime, they can’t do a thing about greed. There are many people, owners of large businesses, who would love to have a monopoly on mining. Never mind the fact that they have no idea how to do it.

It’s happened before, where a dwarf tells an outsider (generally a human) about a new deposit they found. Then, before the dwarves have officially claimed the territory, they rush in and take it.

I originally wanted to sink the dwarven mountains into a lake of lava, but then I had a thought; why not beat them at their favorite game? What if I, in the body of a dwarf, told every self-centered, greedy businessman the location of every unclaimed deposit? You get chaos, that’s what.

This text was taken from Royal Road. Help the author by reading the original version there.

I figured this would mess things up, but not to this extent! Not even a week later, the mountains were swarmed by the financial idiots and their goons. They immediately started squabbling with each other, fighting over the best locations. No one died, sadly.

The dwarves weren’t happy at all. They looked for the rat, but couldn’t find him, because it’s me! Within a month, they started running out of resources. Their normal strategy would be to branch out until they found something, but the surrounding territory was already claimed. That’s when people started to worry.

You see, the hired goons were completely inexperienced with mining. As such, they were unable to extract anything. And because they now occupied the majority of the known mines, metal exportation started to decrease. That’s when people started to panic.

Metal is very important for the Coalition. It’s used in pretty much everything; from hammers to wagons! With much less being mined, the price of it skyrocketed. Small entrepreneurs like blacksmiths couldn’t afford the new prices, and went out of business. Those who had the money still lost customers, because regular citizens didn’t. To balance it out, the government inflated the economy, causing a decrease in the value of their currency. A year later, the economy crashed. That’s when people started to riot.

This is beautiful! I never realised that taking away metal would do this! Forget about OGG, this one act has done more damage than the giant attack! The disruption of metal production has caused mass starvation across the nation! I’m a genius!