Fantasy Economics 101 - Chapter 16

The true power of gold

"P-Please excuse me for my previous conduct," the stubby man spoke in a low voice, his eyes glued to the table in front of him. "I… let my excitement get the better of me."

After the dwarf finally regained consciousness and ceased panicking, everyone sad down around the table. Except for the ghost, of course, since the concept hardly applied to him due to an obvious lack of legs. Or butt.

In the meantime, Raol put on his full disguise to make the guest more comfortable, but it didn't stop the dwarf from eyeing him with a mixture of suspicion and expectation. The atmosphere in the cottage wasn't great, but it didn't stop the hermitess from smiling as she placed a mug onto the table.

"Please drink this. It should help with the swelling."

She spoke with a soft voice that made, and it made the dwarf gulp audibly. Blinking in surprise, she flashed another smile, this time tinged with just a hint of awkwardness, and stood behind Raol by the other end of the table. The skeleton glanced at him, the eye-lights hidden behind his thick veil morphing into a curious expression.

"Aren't you going to sit down?"

"Oh, no, no, no," Elkayla responded in a hurry, shaking her palms. "I think it's better if I keep my distance from mister…"

She fell silent and glanced over at the dwarf, and his conflicted expression gave way to surprise, and then sudden realization, as he bowed his head.

"Let me introduce myself one more time." He cleared his throat and then tried to add some gravitas to his voice. "I'm Middy-Aodh of Clan Morend, Alchemist Second Grade of the Great Hall of Metals, and Assistant-Mason of the Lesser Hall of Stones and Minerals, at your service."

After a moment of awkward silence, the hermitess let out a soft sound and glanced around.

"Ah, right! I'm the host, so I should respond first!" She also cleared her throat, though hers sounded more strained, and flashed a wide, welcoming smile. "I'm Elkayla Rinic, and… I'm just a simple hermitess. Yes."

"For the gods' sake, apprentice! Don't sound like you're trying to convince yourself," the ghost scoffed with his arms folded, only to float back a few steps when Raol glared at him.

Mimicking a sigh, the skeleton shook his head and faced the dwarf again. He knew little of dwarven culture, as while the Empire had good relations with them, they were a rather isolationist folk living under the vast south-western mountain ranges. Since his activities in his previous life mainly concerned the East, he only knew what little he could remember about his lessons at the institute, and those were several centuries out of date at this point.

Still, the word 'alchemist' tugged at a few disjointed memories in his skull, and he was fairly sure it was a rather prestigious position. Something akin to the arch-wizards of the University of Luteanum; not quite high-nobles, but in some ways even more unfettered and influential than they were.

The question was, what did someone of that caliber doing here, in the middle of the woods, desperately looking for a fake sage?

"I'm…" Raol spoke up, startling the dwarf and making him shudder. The skeleton waited for him to gather his wits before he continued with, "… indeed known as Raoleem Solan nib Toakeem Zeraff in New Reedcourt. You can call me Raol." At this point, he used his thumb to point at the grumpy ghost on his left. "He's Werdner, ex-necromancer."

"I'm not an ex-necromancer!" the spectral old man objected loudly, but Raol dismissed him with the same hand.

"As you can see, he has a big mouth and an even bigger ego, but mostly harmless."

"How dare you, you… you fool! I'm not mostly harmless!"

"Completely harmless then?" Raol jested, causing the necromancer's ghostly face to subtly change color.

In the meantime, the nervous dwarf glanced between the two of them, and then at the sweetly giggling hermitess, who apparently found the exchange amusing, and he ultimately slouched his shoulders. Realizing that, Raol didn't engage with the fuming old ghost any longer and focused on the guest again.

"You were looking for me, right?"

"Y-Yes, but…" The short man massaged the bump on his head and exhaled a drawn-out breath. "I was not expecting that you were… Are all Barbarians undead, like you? Or, do you just have a different view on necromantic practices and liches?"

"It's… a complicated story I would rather not get into," Raol deflected, deciding to hold his cards close to his chest for the time being. After all, he had already put a lot of effort into the identity of the Barbarian Sage and didn't wish to fully discard it just yet. "So, about my original question, Sir Middy-Aodh?"

"Ah, yes. My apologies," the dwarf responded with a strained smile and took a sip from Elkayla's drink, followed by a shiver and a soft, "Ugh… bitter."

"It's not a potion, but I'm confident in its healing effect," the hermitess declared with a confident smile, so he had no choice but to continue drinking it.

"A-Anyway, just Middy will do. As for your inquiry…" he paused again, and his hand mechanically patted his elaborate beard, causing the golden rings entwined its braided mass to jingle with every move. "I was passing through the town after returning from prospecting a segment of the Batatoot Mountains when I heard rumors about a wise Eastern sage recently passing through the area, and my forge was set ablaze by what I heard."

Raol figured that last bit must've been an unfamiliar idiom, so he didn't stop him and waited for the dwarf to get to the point.

"I was told that you came from the East, where your people also practice the Art of Alchemy, and one lass even claimed you could turn gold into other metals."

"Oh," the skeleton blurted out, trying to recall where exactly did he mention such a thing. Was it during his talk with the Blood and Flour group? Or maybe one of his tall tales from later? In any case, it was certainly something he would say as Raoleem. Of course, he didn't actually have the knowledge or skill to do so, but for the time being, he decided to keep calm and try to draw more information out of the dwarf. "Is that why you came to seek me out?"

"Precisely!" Middy exclaimed, his face regaining some color as his excitement began to rise once again. "I searched through the whole town for information, and blessed be the Mountain Hearth, I made the right decision to seek out the Lady of the Woods! The rest of my fellow prospectors told me it was a wild goat chase, but I—!"

"Get to the point, you insufferable imbecile!" the ghost suddenly erupted, causing the startled dwarf to nearly drop his mug.

"Y-Yes, at once!" Middy exclaimed and downed the rest of his medical drink before placing the empty container in the middle of the table and exhaling hard. "As I was saying, I came to consult the Sage of the East about a rather… peculiar problem the Dwarven Holds are facing at the moment. I presume you've already heard of the Wish Incident during your stay here?"

When Raol nodded, Middy reached down to his waist and produced a small pouch. He carefully pulled on the string holding its lip shut, and then poured its contents onto the table. It was about a hundred or so golden coins, an amount of money that would've shocked the living Raol, but the skeleton could barely muster up a reaction to the yellow metal anymore.

"We call it by a different name: the Golden Spark, the event that ushered in the Age of Gold. As you must be aware, ever since then, the supply of gold on the continent has been completely upended by its effects. It was, without a doubt, the greatest boon to dwarfkind in the history of our race."

"Did it?" Raol asked, and Middy hastily cleared his throat in embarrassment.

"Ah, my apologies. You must not be very familiar with our culture, so please allow me to explain." He paused and picked up a coin. "Wealth is extremely important to a dwarf, be it in the form of jewels, rare stones, or precious metals. Out of them all, gold coins hold special significance to us. Each Dwarf Hold has its own treasury, where wealth is amassed over the generations. It's this wealth that allows the Lords of the Mountain Holds to ascend into becoming Grand Elders and Honored Ancestors, positions that every dwarf naturally desires from the bottom of their hearts." He placed the coin back onto the pile and entwined his stubby fingers. "Before the Age of Gold, it took an entire generation, if not more, for a Lord to amass enough wealth to ascend into Elderhood. That changed with the Golden Spark, and since then, dwarfkind has been experiencing an unprecedented age of prosperity… yet, there is a tremendous problem we face that requires more than our traditional wisdom, and far outstrips the fledging alchemical knowledge of the humans of the Monarchy."

"And this has something to do with gold," Raol prompted the chatty dwarf, and he repeatedly nodded.

"Indeed! For you see, we have made a terrible discovery: the coins in our treasuries steadily decrease over time!" Since nobody was giving the declaration the gravitas Middy expected, he planted his palms onto the table, causing a coin from the pile to slide off and roll towards Raol. The skeleton picked it up, even as the dwarf continued his explanation with even more gusto. "While those fools at the Hall of Treasures would call it a simple clerical error, we at the Great Hall of Metals have a different and altogether more alarming hypothesis that, if true, could shake the foundation of the Age of Gold itself!"

Middy fell silent and glanced at the three at the table. Elkayla was looking at him with expectant eyes, Raol was observing the coin between his fingers, while the old ghost was glaring at him with a pair of pale, glowing eyes that made him swallow nervously.

"S-So, to make a long story short, I'm… I mean, we, at the Great Hall of Metals, now think that these coins aren't real."

"Excuse me?" Raol blurted out, looking up from the coin.

"You see, since there was no need to mine or smelt gold anymore, all coins in circulation have been essentially replaced by the ones created by the Golden Spark, and that's been the case for centuries. Before that, no such mysterious disappearances occurred, and while it's impossible to differentiate between the coins minted by the Monarchy of old and the ones recovered from the carcasses of creatures, the correlation between the latter outnumbering the former and the discrepancies in our ledgers is too obvious to be a coincidence. Therefore, I developed a hypothesis I call… the Half-Life phenomenon."

"Half-life?" Werdner echoed him, sounding both annoyed and yet somewhat intrigued at the same time.

"Y-Yes! According to the hypothesis, since the coins created by the Golden Spark are not borne from a Mountain Womb, but created through the divine miracle of the Seven Gods, it's fundamentally different, but in a way our current alchemical practices can't distinguish yet. It is my opinion that these coins are unstable, and have a small chance to lose their cohesion, effectively disappearing from the world. However, this chance is so miniscule that it only ever becomes relevant when we are talking about large numbers, such as…"

"Such as a dwarven treasury," Raol completed his thought, and Middy nodded so hard he was afraid he would hit the table with his forehead.

"Excuse me, Mister Middy?" Elkayla interjected, drawing the dwarf's attention to herself.

"Y-Yes, fair lady?"

"You say this is a hypothesis, but shouldn't it be easy to test it? You just need a sufficiently large amount of coins, and regularly count them while making sure nobody could take or add any to falsify the results."

"I-Indeed, fair Lady of the Woods, your words are wise, but…" Middy sheepishly averted his gaze from her, and muttered, "It's unfortunately not so simple."

"Politics?" Raol guessed blindly, and the short man's eyes lit up with admiration.

"As expected from a great Eastern Sage! Indeed, the problem is political in nature." Seeing that everyone was looking at him expectantly, Middy let out a shallow sigh and shook his head. "I do not wish to discuss the internal matters of the Dwarven Holds, but suffice to say, if my hypothesis was proven correct, and there really was a fundamental difference between the coins of old and the coins of the Age of Gold, then it would mean that the wealth amassed since the Golden Spark is… how to say it… less real? Which then would naturally bring the worthiness of those who ascended to Elderhood using such wealth into question. As such, while at first my research into the matter received interest, internal tensions caused it to be… not so highly regarded anymore."

"That's a shame," Elkayla noted. "It's a fascinating theory."

"Thank you, beautiful maiden of the forest," Middy said, trying to come off as suave, but ending up a little silly. Not only that, but the hermitess let out a gasp and hid behind the sitting Raol, causing the dwarf to avert his eyes.

As for the skeleton, he continued to stare at the coin in his hand, his mind awash with hundreds of small realizations, like pieces of a huge puzzle he couldn't quite assemble. At least, not on his own.

"Sir Middy?" he called out, and the dwarf's eyes focused on him again.

"Yes, Sage?"

"First off, I have to disappoint you, as I'm not who you think I am." Middy looked stumped for a moment, so Raol briefly explained, "I didn't come from the East, and in fact, I was recently brought back to unlife by the man floating over there. The sage was just an identity I've made up to gather information in town."

"I-Is that so…? But that means you—"

"However," Raol interrupted him and flipped the coin in his hand before catching it again. "It doesn't mean I cannot help you. Or rather, we may be able to help each other."

"…. How?"

Oddly enough, the question came from Werdner, but for the moment, the skeleton disregarded him and focused on the dwarf alchemist.

"Due to circumstances that would take too long to explain right now, I can be fully resurrected as a human, but I require an enormous sum of gold coins to do so. However, you might hold the key to my conundrum."

"H-How so?"

"For the record," Raol began, raising a finger, "I'm a layman in terms of magic and alchemy, but I am a good listener and have a head for organizing information, and I think I've noticed a certain pattern. However, before I jump to conclusions, please answer this one question: what do you think these false coins are made of?"

"G-Gold?" Middy answered, sounding rather puzzled by the weird question.

"I don't mean that," Raol said, trying his best not to groan. "You said that these coins can randomly disappear into thin air. How do you suppose that happens?"

"I… I don't know, but if I had to make an educated guess, I'd say they dissolve into ambient magicka, like the substance created by a spell."

"That's what I wanted to hear!" Raol exclaimed, finding it hard to keep his mounting excitement out of his voice, and even causing the hermitess still behind his chair to nearly jump in surprise. Yet, the next person he turned to wasn't her, but the grumpy specter floating nearby. "Werdner?"

"What do you want, savage?"

"Just answer me this: based on your grimoire, you posited that the Miasma I can see all around is a form of magicka, right?"

"Basically, yes," the old necromancer answered tentatively.

"And you also supposed that what makes it different from regular magicka is that it's mixed with something that… how did you put it?"

"Weights it down," the hermitess chimed in, her face an image of childlike curiosity.

"Thank you, Kayla. So, it's a form of magicka mixed with something that makes it heavier."

"It's a very simple understanding, just what I expected from a brute, but… you are not fundamentally incorrect."

"Thank you," Raol spoke automatically, ignoring the barbs in the ghost's answer and the dwarf's confused glances, and he turned to the young woman behind his back. "Kayla?"

"Yes! I'm ready to answer all your questions, Mister Raol!" she declared with unbridled enthusiasm, eyes practically sparkling with excitement.

"Thanks," the skeleton said between chuckles but quickly shifted to a more solemn tone. "You told me about mana before, and how it's different from magicka." The hermitess nodded repeatedly. "Primal mana comes up from the ground and makes elementals, and divine mana comes down from the kind and it's the power of the Seven, right?"

"Yes, that's how it is," she confirmed.

"Meaning divine mana is heavier," Raol posited, and she tilted her head to the side. "Since it's coming down from above."

"You… can look at it that way, I suppose."

"Wait, you foolish… I mean… you can't possibly mean!" Werdner stammered, the first one to connect the dots Raol had been laying down.

"Why? It makes sense. Miasma started to become really thick after the Wish Incident didn't it? These coins were created through the miracle of the Seven, meaning—"

"Meaning they contained divine mana!" Elkayla exclaimed, the second to realize where Raol was going. "So when they disappeared due to the Half-Life phenomenon, they would turn into Miasma, which turns into monsters, which turn into loot, and fuel the cycle! Mister Raol! You're a genius!"

"I wouldn't go that far," Werdner scoffed. "But he is unexpectedly smart for a savage fool, I give him that."

"E-Excuse me… I don't quite understand," Middy muttered, and it was obvious he completely lost the thread of the conversation long ago.

"Let me try to sum it up," Raol spoke while absently flipping the same coin over his fingers. "Your hypothesis is most likely correct."

"I-It is?"

"If we look at the evidence, we can more-or-less guarantee it. I bet that these coins…" He grabbed said coin between his thumb and index finger and showed it to the dwarf. "… when they poof out of existence, they turn into Miasma."

"E-Excuse me, but I'm not familiar with the terminology. What's this… Miasma you speak of?"

"It's a type of magicka," Werdner responded in Raol's stead. "It's a mixture of natural magicka, and, if he's right, the divine mana of the gods."

"Which was embedded in there because these coins are created through the miracle of the Seven," the skeleton pushed on and presented the gold piece in his fingers again. "Once concentrated enough, Miasma turns into monsters. The adventurers go out and hunt them, creating more gold, which then ends up in your vaults, where it undergoes this Half-Life thing and creates more Miasma, which then turns into more monsters."

"That's… that's horrible!" the dwarf exclaimed, his expression that of undisguised horror.

"In the grand scheme of things, yes, but for us, this is the best news possible," Raol declared, his eye-lights glinting under the veil, and this time, he presented the coin to the hermitess. "What do you say? Now that we know this, can we use these things to power our summoning circles? Kind of like an investment to make more gold?"

"Don't make me reconsider my better opinion of you, fool!" the necromancer's specter scoffed and shook his head. "Didn't you hear the dwarf? These coins are functionally indistinguishable from the real deal. If not even a dwarven alchemist could do it, what makes you think we can?"

"T-That's true…" Middy noted, sounding disappointed and relieved at the same time.

"Kayla?" Raol asked the last person in the room, but even she shook her head.

"I'm afraid Mister Werdner is right. Even if the theory is solid, we would need some means to break down the coins into their original magicka to make this work, and I can't think of a way to do it." She let out a displeased noise and tapped her bare feet against the floor. "Uuuh… This sounded so good, but we lack that crucial last step. If we had it, it could potentially solve our lack of magicka to fuel the summoning circle, but as it is…"

"I-I'm sorry, but I think I lost track of the conversation again," Middy spoke up a touch hesitantly. "What was that about summoning circles?"

"I told you I need tons of gold coins to resurrect myself, right?" Raol responded wearily. "Before you arrived, we were in the middle of trying to artificially create monsters, so that we could efficiently slaughter them and build up the funds."

"Y-You can do that?"

"He did," the skeleton pointed at the specter. "We aren't quite there yet." He paused for a breath's time, and let out a disappointed sigh. "For a moment, I had my hopes up."

"Don't worry, Mister Raol!" the hermitess called out to him and patted him on the back. "Everything will work out! I'll do my best to look for a way to break these coins down! I-I mean, I don't know where to begin, but there has to be a way to dissolve them back into magicka!"

"Dissolve…" Raol repeated the word after her, his eye-lights blinking, and he glanced at the coin between his fingers again. He just had an idea. A truly stupid idea, one that the irritating Necromancer would definitely ridicule him for, but… "This is just stupid enough to work?"

"Hm?" Elkayla blinked in surprise, and then her face turned outright confused when Raol lifted the veil covering his face. "Um… Mister Raol?"

"I'm just going to test something. You might want to step back, just in case."

With that, he casually threw the coin between his open jaws, fully expecting that it would hit his neck vertebrae and fall harmlessly to the ground. However, as with many great discoveries in the history of mankind, sometimes blind luck was more decisive than meticulous theory.

The moment to piece of metal moved past where Raol's throat would've been if he was still alive, Raol could feel all of his bones shake as a veritable torrent of scalding hot power coursed through him. Without warning, the lights in his eye sockets burst into cold flames, and the skeleton shone with a bright green light as his astral body became more tangible, temporarily filling out his clothes before deflating again. Yet, the soft blue glow remained, and the light of his nonexistent eyes was more brilliant than ever.

Raol could feel an enormous stream of something unfamiliar coursing through his entire being, and when he glanced through the window, he was startled to see that his vision could now pierce right through the ever-present fog of Miasma filling the woods. And maybe most importantly, he felt good. It was like he drank water for the first time, and only just realized he had been thirsting his entire life.

"W-What just happened?" Middy cried out on the brink of panic. While he didn't fully understand what happened, the shimmering undead and his bright eye-lights, combined with the way he could feel the hairs on his arms stand on end, told him something significant just happened.

"Mister Raol…" Elkayla muttered, and when Raol glanced over at him, she let out a strange, high-pitched sound. "By the Seven! You look amazing!"

"Just what in the courts areyou…?" the ghostly necromanced muttered in turn, looking equal parts envious and disgusted by the light given off by the skeleton's bones.

"I still have no idea," Raol noted, and if he had lips, he was sure he would've been grinning ear to ear. "But I think I just solved our crucial last step…"