Liquidating the Coins
The Imperial Capital, the Kodana Exchange.
Though it had only recently opened its doors, it had metastasized at breakneck speed, riding high on the winds of the Kodana frenzy. To anyone standing on its floor, it felt as though every single coin in the Empire was funneling into this singular hall.
Today was even more chaotic than usual. Buoyed by the triumphant news that another of the Four Heavenly Kings had been vanquished, Kodana prices were skyrocketing at a manic pace.
"Buy order for two Kodana at three hundred and eighty million liras. Yes, sir, noted. But please keep in mind, my lord—there are already over a hundred unfilled buy orders stacked at three-eighty."
"Are you fucking kidding me? Does everyone in this city have gold burning holes in their pockets?!" a nobleman exploded at the counter.
Across the floor, another argument escalated into violence.
"We had an over-the-counter deal yesterday! How dare you change your tune now?!"
"Sorry, but your payment never cleared. Deal’s off."
"You son of a bitch—!"
Two aristocrats grappled by the lapels, ready to beat each other senseless right there in the trading hall. One of them was none other than the vice commander of the Capital Guard, the very man tasked with maintaining public order in the capital.
The atmosphere was fundamentally different from when Hero Kwon Hee-jin had slain the first of the Four Heavenly Kings, or even the second. Now, only a single Heavenly King remained. More than anything, the fact that a third general had fallen a mere week after the second carried staggering implications.
The subjugation of the Demon King’s army is in its final stretch.
That was the singular, intoxicating thought shared by every soul mobbing the exchange.
In reality, taking down individual Heavenly Kings was entirely different from slaying the Demon King himself. And even killing the Demon King wouldn't necessarily end the war with the demons overnight. Yet to the feverish public, the war appeared all but won. Desperate to catch the wave, people were clawing at each other just to get their hands on a single Kodana coin.
If they didn't board the train now, they would miss the final chance to make a fortune. What if the Hero made a brief, triumphant return to the capital and suddenly announced the final march on the Demon King’s Castle? Kodana might leap to four hundred, even five hundred million liras overnight. That panic—the fear of missing out—shoved investors forward.
...Yet sellers were virtually nonexistent.
Aside from a handful of cash-strapped nobles who had over-leveraged their fortunes and were forced to swallow bitter losses by parting with their holdings, most big fish only teased the market, testing the waters while jealously guarding their stash.
Of course, a few pessimistic voices pierced the hysteria. These were people who looked down on the manic mob as uncivilized primitives.
"Right now is your last chance to get out! Everyone’s waiting to sell at the absolute peak, but why can't you fools see that right now is the peak?!"
"Kodana isn't real currency! It's just a commemorative token...! No one guarantees its utility or intrinsic value! If you go bankrupt trading Kodana, do you think the Hero will reimburse you? Hell no! Why would he?!"
"Let them crash and burn. Idiots won't learn until they're ruined."
The irony was that even those sneering cynics couldn't bring themselves to leave the exchange. Perhaps they were secretly scouting for an entry point, or perhaps they were merely spewing venom out of bitter jealousy for failing to buy in earlier. Not a single soul among them genuinely cared about the financial ruin of their peers.
As the imbalance between desperate buyers and absent sellers widened, collective anxiety reached a fever pitch.
An imperial bureaucrat, who had waited fruitlessly for Kodana to dip back to two hundred million before missing the boat entirely, stared at the price board as though his homeland had just fallen to an invading army.
An aging prostitute who had dumped fifteen years of earnings from selling her body into Kodana beamed with ecstasy as she watched the ticker climb.
Meanwhile, a con artist claiming the Hero had minted a second commemorative coin was grabbed by exchange security and dragged out by his collar.
Calling the Kodana Exchange "overheated" was an understatement; it had descended into pure, unadulterated madness. Whether they held coins or had been left behind on the sidelines, everyone was pacing with frantic, bloodshot eyes.
And right at this peak of insanity, a young man strode into the hall.
He stood taller than average, with shortly cropped hair and corded, veiny forearms bared where his sleeves were rolled up. Most noticeably, a sword hung at his hip.
To openly carry a blade into an exchange crawling with aristocrats clutching heavy bags of gold was a brazen display of confidence. It also signaled that his identity was beyond reproach—a status so unimpeachable that no one dared suspect him of being a common cutpurse.
In truth, almost everyone in the capital knew his face.
Eric: a commoner-born knight of the Imperial Guard, and the man who had nearly joined the Hero’s party.
Above all, the titan holding 108 Kodana coins.
Barring the imperial royal family and a handful of colossal institutional whales, virtually no individual held more Kodana than Eric. When measured purely by percentage yield, his return on investment eclipsed even the grandest nobles, making him the living poster child of life-altering fortune.
Yet his fame did not rest on newfound wealth alone.
Having served closely at Hero Kwon Hee-jin's side immediately after his summoning—and having been involved in the initial distribution of Kodana—Eric was widely rumored to be an insider confidant of the Hero. The prevailing public belief was that the two still maintained an intimate, covert channel of communication.
Whispered by some traders as the "Hero’s Silent Partner," this enigmatic figure had just walked into the exchange at the most volatile juncture imaginable.
The floor stiffened. Every eye locked onto his every move.
The glares boring into me were anything but ordinary. The back of my neck prickled with heat, but with so many pairs of eyes glued to me, I couldn't even reach back to scratch it.
Honestly, I had originally intended to gauge the depth of the order book before deciding how many coins to dump. Selling all 108 at once seemed risky; dumping that kind of volume might crash the price mid-execution.
Looking at the rabid mob packed into the exchange, however, spreading my sales over several days seemed entirely unnecessary.
If I had any lingering reservations, it was the storm that would follow once all 108 coins cleared. If word got out that a lone knight was holding over forty billion liras in pure cash, there was no chance of walking away quietly. Outside of the imperial family, practically no private citizen in the capital sat on that much liquid wealth.
I’m essentially about to become the richest cash baron in the capital. Escaping this building in one piece won't be a walk in the park.
As I advanced toward the main counter, the crowd parted in hesitant waves.
"...It's Eric. He looks far more ordinary than I expected."
"Did he get an insider signal from the Hero? What if the rumor about sharing the Demon King's treasury is a complete lie?"
"Wait, is he abandoning ship before it sinks...?"
"Idiots. If he knew something like that, he’d be unloading quietly in batches. It makes far more sense that he's just here to take profits."
"True. Even if he cashed out right now, he'd be set for ten lifetimes."
Murmurs buzzed against my ears like swarming hornets.
It looked no different from the scullery maids gossiping over dishwater in the barracks, except the people whispering here were high-ranking oligarchs: the Minister of Justice, a former court chamberlain occasionally summoned to the palace to drink with the Emperor, the second son of Duke Arcknight—the man said to hold power second only to the crown itself.
The whole damn capital is about to flip on its head because of me.
Still, becoming the subject of vicious gossip was infinitely better than clutching onto this volatile junk. At the very least, selling it all meant I wouldn't have to deal with nobles pressuring me to hand over my Kodana for free.
Ignoring the sea of stares trained on my back, I pressed forward.
Given the astronomical sum involved, the representative of the exchange came out personally to receive me.
He was an influential noble in his own right, the head of a family that had produced a member of the Hero's party. Specifically, he was the father of Millia, the female knight who had snatched my spot in the party. In short, he came from a pedigree that had no reason to cow before anyone.
Yet right now, nervousness was written plainly across his face.
"Sir Eric. May I assume you have come for the reason I suspect?"
He even used polite honorifics. He wasn't treating me as a mere lowborn knight, but as a premier Kodana holder.
"I lack the talent to read your mind, Count—or rather, Mr. Representative. But yes, you are likely correct. I only hope it does not place too great a burden on your exchange."
"I am merely grateful for the honor of brokering such a monumental transaction. Have you already arranged an OTC deal with a private buyer? The imperial royal family, perhaps?"
"I intend to dump them directly onto the spot market."
"Good heavens... Well, given the overwhelming backlog of buy orders, it's certainly feasible. However, the moment word breaks that a whale like Sir Eric is liquidating his entire position, massive controversy will erupt. You may find yourself in an exceedingly uncomfortable position."
"I am aware. I accept the risks."
The representative proceeded to review the precautions step by step.
He strongly advised me to split the proceeds—minus brokerage commissions—across multiple credit vaults operated by the Imperial Bank and the Merchant Union. He also warned me to be on high alert, citing a recent surge in violent crimes targeting Kodana investors.
Fortunately, the latter didn't concern me in the slightest. You could count on one hand the number of swordsmen in this capital who could outfight me.
"You need not worry on that front. I am more than capable of handling cutpurses."
"...Haha, I am sure you are. However, Sir Eric, there is one critical stipulation you must bear in mind. Once a sale is finalized, it is irrevocably non-refundable."
Given how violently Kodana was climbing, plenty of sellers had suffered seller's remorse and tried to strong-arm the exchange into canceling their trades. Bloodshed had even erupted over it. That was why he reiterated several times that once sold, there was absolutely no turning back.
"Understood. You won't hear a peep of whining from me, so rest easy."
"...Pardon my caution, but a verbal pledge is insufficient."
Only after scribbling my signature onto a formal waiver of non-cancellation did the representative finally permit the sale to proceed.
Even as the ink dried, practically every person in the hall continued to burn holes into the back of my head.
The glare was so searing that I cleared my throat a few times to signal my irritation, but it proved entirely futile. Far from averting their eyes when our gazes met, they only stared back with wide, unblinking intensity.
Don't these bastards have anything better to do?
Puzzled by their fixation, I placed my entire holding onto the market.
And right at that moment, the true reason for their feverish stares became blindingly obvious. The instant my sell order hit the floor, the entire crowd charged like a pack of starving dogs.
Young scions of ducal houses shoved decrepit old barons out of the way; the vice commander of the Capital Guard threw all notions of law and order to the wind, clawing frantically toward the counter to buy.
"Why the hell are they throwing themselves off a cliff to buy at three hundred and eighty million when they wouldn't even spit on it at one million?!"
"Out of the way! Move, damn you!"
The sheer momentum of highborn nobles stampeding toward the exchange counter was nothing short of a monster wave. My hand twitched toward my hilt more than once out of pure combat reflex.
Regardless, over the course of the next several hours, I successfully liquidated every last coin in my possession.
One hundred and eight unsightly coins embossed with the Hero’s face had officially transformed into cold, hard cash.