Dael, Veya, and Mal'Thorn each took their coin from the air as it floated in front of them, flipping it and studying both sides.

"This is a Fortress Coin?" Mal'Thorn asked.

"I hadn't named it, but it seems the quest system has done that for me." I said. "Yes, those are Fortress Coins. The idea is that people will be able to complete quests that I assign and receive the Fortress Coins as reward. Then they will be able to turn the Fortress Coins in to me to gain resources by weight. One coin would get ten kilograms of a material."

"What sort of material?" Dael asked.

"I can do anything I have a sample of." I said. "Gold is as easy for me to make as copper, though copper is half the weight of gold by volume. I would like to restrict it to base level raw materials, though. Wood, of different densities, cotton, wool, silk, metal ingots, that sort of thing. There might be a few things outside of the weight category, mana crystals come to mind. One coin for a single large mana crystal orb, or three mediums, or nine smalls."

"Those values don't add up." Veya said. "Ten kilograms of copper isn't equivalent to ten kilograms of silk."

"It is to me." I said. "If it takes me the same amount of effort to create each, why should I artificially adjust the price. If people would like to trade the raw resources to other places where the value is seen differently then that is their business. On that track, it will cost one Fortress Coin to use the portal nexus to go between two existing destinations, and ten for a new destination to be added to the portal system."

I was quite happy with the whole system. I wanted the people under my protection to have the highest quality of life possible, but I didn't know what they most wanted. With this coin system I would be able to assign quests that gave out coins and then they could use the coins to request the things they needed.

I could use my digital presences to do the exchanges so as to not intimidate people. And with people being able to add destinations to the portal system I would be getting told where the best places to have my portals set up would be.

"What are the symbols on the coins?" Mal'Thorn asked.

"One for each of the biomes on one side, one for each of the original gods on the other." I said.

I made a new quest, a separate one for each of them this time, for them to make a report of the craftsmen in each of their groups and what raw materials they required for their crafts. I set the reward for each at five coins.

"I just got a new... Quest?" Dael said.

"Yes, they're called quests." I said.

I pulled up the new quest tab that I had gotten.

Quests Accepted Rejected Completed In Progress Total Coins 6 0 3 3 18

I could bring up more details on any of the categories, which gave details of the quests. Bringing up the 'In Progress' quests I got a screen that showed the quests that were active.

Quests In Progress Description Submit a report to Lord C.C. detailing the craftsmen within your people and the materials they require for their crafts Assigned to Dael, Veya, Mal'Thorn Quest type Single Reward Five Fortress Coins

Quest type was interesting. I made a new quest to test a different type and assigned it to the nexus guard room, and after I waited for the 'Accepted' count to go up it added to the 'In Progress' blue screen.

Quests In Progress Description Submit a report to Lord C.C. detailing the craftsmen within your people and the materials they require for their crafts Assigned to Dael, Veya, Mal'Thorn Quest type Single Reward Five Fortress Coins   Description Guard the Portal Nexus room Assigned to Portal Nexus Guards Quest type Ongoing: Per day Reward One Fortress Coin

That worked exactly as I was expecting it to. Two of my coins disappeared into the System, one for each of the guards that were guarding the portal nexus room now. They would receive their coins once they had been on guard for a full day. The System would reserve a coin for each guard when they started guarding the room, and bringing up their quest screen should give them a countdown until their day of guard duty was done. They were probably confused about the System screen. Dael was still standing on the landing with Mal'Thorn and Veya, talking amongst themselves.

This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.

"Dael." I said. "I just gave the guards that are guarding the portal nexus room an ongoing quest. They will receive a single Fortress Coin for every full day that they have guarded the room. They are probably confused as to what it is, if you could explain it to them and what I'm trying to achieve with it?"

"Yes my lord." Dael said. "You don't need to pay us to guard for you, though. It is our duty to do so, and it is what the guards contribute to the fortress, just as our farmers contribute with the food that they grow."

"I want to encourage contribution to the betterment of the fortress." I said. "I will issue a quest for the farmers as well, based upon the food that they contribute, one coin per ten kilograms of quality food. I will provide the food to the people of the fortress for free as a basic right."

I created yet another quest, this one asking the three leaders for a report on how much and what type of food they required and put a five coin reward on it too. Another one for the farmers providing food for the fortress under the terms of my treaty with the druids. I didn't know who they were, but the quest system seemed to work anyway. And just because I was going quest crazy at the moment I made another quest requesting a report from the three of them on what quests would be appropriate for their people, how they could benefit the fortress, for another five coins.

I was almost out of the coins I had stockpiled with that assigning spree, and I would need to create some more before any of the ongoing costs ticked over.

"That should do it." I said. "You can have your people spend their coins at any of my presences, the druids have one in their storytelling room. I will need to set one up in a busy area for the humans and another for the Forest Keepers."

They all turned to leave after giving me a short bow.

"Mal'Thorn, if you could stay a moment." I said. "I need to get to the Plains biome, would you happen to know where it is relative to us here?"

"The Plains biome is diagonal to the Forest." Mal'Thorn said. "The Mountain biome is to the north and south, and the Ocean biome is to the east and west. You can get to the Plains biome at the intersection of all four biomes. We are near the center of the Forest going east to west, so the four intersections are two hundred and fifteen kilometers to the northwest, two hundred and twenty kilometers to the northeast, one hundred and forty five kilometers to the southeast, and one hundred and forty kilometers to the southwest."

Right, the geography of this simulation is looped.

"Do you have a map of the plane?" I asked.

"We've never had the need of one, no." Mal'Thorn said. "We do not travel outside of our domain very often."

The head priest of summer, John, would probably be the person to ask.

"Thank you." I said to Mal'Thorn, dismissing him.

I went down the stairs after him, stopping on the third floor where John had his room.

I was about to knock on John's door when I got another ping saying I'd gotten a message from a follower. Had I been an idiot again? I liked my coin idea. I frowned, opening the message.

Message from follower: Dragonsword

Note: Messages are highly moderated so as to not affect the simulation. Are you going to develop magic bags for your people where you use a small portal linked to a space you enclose that they can store stuff in?

That... actually sounds like a good idea. And I don't think I would have thought of it any time soon. It would have to be quite expensive for my people to buy, as carving Pocket Dimension symbols takes quite some time. Thank you Dragonsword, whoever or whatever you are.

Completely distracted me from what I was doing. I shook my head and knocked on John's door. Thirty seconds later John opened it.

"Hey, lord C.C., welcome." He said, sweeping his arm back, gesturing for me to enter.

His room was well furnished, with wooden furniture and rugs on the floor. He even had an altar set up.

"You seem to have settled in well." I said.

"The villagers gave me some things." John said. "Very kind of them, especially considering they don't worship either of the gods. Did you come to check up on me?"

"I was wondering if you would be able to help me with a map." I said.

Although, now that I thought about it I could probably form a map myself just with the distances I had been given.

"Do you have any paper and pens?" John asked. "Can't very well write you a map without anything to write with. Not that it would be a great map, mind you."

"I don't, though I could likely get some easily enough." I said. "It has only occurred to me after coming here that I could make one myself, it just wouldn't have much detail."

I stared off into space, recalling distances I had travelled and compared it to the distances that Mal'Thorn had given me.

"Okay then." John said, dragging my attention back to him. "Thanks for visiting, then?"

I smiled. "Yes, thank you." I said.

I headed back up to my Pocket Dimension and started laying out the skeleton of a map on a screen I'd manifested in my local simulation. It was truly basic, but it gave me an idea of where things were in the world. Some of the distances might be off, considering I was going by my memories and distances to Chantelle in them. And it was likely that not everything was aligned so closely north-south as I had it, as I had called the direction that Chantelle had been taken to 'north'.