The Viral Miracle
They call it viral, but honestly, it wasn’t all that impressive. You know how it goes, right? Have you experienced it yourself? What do you think? It’s not that amazing, is it? Please spread this miracle to others as well. You’ll be blessed if you do. The Saintess guarantees it? That sort of thing. It was basically the same as ordinary proselytizing. Or, depending on your point of view, you could argue there was no difference at all. Oh, God feels pity for you all, so behold this miracle. And believe in Him. That was the core message.
Therefore, I decided to flip the script and wrap product advertising in the guise of missionary work. Very, very, very aggressively.
“Must you really tour the entire kingdom?”
If I traveled around promoting it across the whole kingdom, word would naturally spread beyond our borders as well. Even the Pope, the cardinals, and the high-ranking clergy—who had been hesitating instead of reacting immediately like the king once they learned of my existence—would have no choice but to move. I had made every preparation to seize the initiative, yet Cardinal Rondel had been showing this attitude from the beginning. He kept giving me this look that said the Saintess was going too far.
“Why? Is it too dangerous?”
“That is not what I mean, Saintess. It already seems more than sufficient at this point…”
“Sufficient? Has something arrived?”
When I spoke with the clear implication that he should stop hesitating and help more actively unless he had a solid reason, the cardinal fidgeted but ultimately looked like he had something to say after all.
What is this? Is there really something this time?
If he had a clear basis for his concern and I had still reacted this way, I would feel genuinely sorry. So I softened the pressure in my voice for the next question.
“If there is something, please tell me, Cardinal. I haven’t achieved anything particularly impressive yet, but I would still appreciate your trust in moments like this.”
“No, that is not it. The problem is that what you have accomplished in such a short time is too impressive, Saintess. Hmm. For now, please step outside. You will understand once you see.”
Step outside? Did that mean something was happening right in front of the Grand Cathedral? If so, that was actually good news. No matter what occurred, the area just outside the Grand Cathedral was my own front yard. It was a far more advantageous position than barging directly into the royal palace like last time.
With that thought in mind, I followed the guidance Cardinal Rondel had offered and stepped out—only to immediately admit that I had underestimated the situation. I had no choice but to reflect on my error.
“Saintess! Saintess!”
“Over here! Please take my money! I beg you!”
When I had declared that the Grand Cathedral would issue new miracle-backed currency and accept only that as payment when performing miracles, it naturally also meant we would exchange it for both the currency the Church had previously issued and existing secular coins. The exchange rate was, to be honest, quite favorable to the Church. Because of that, I had assumed the crowds wouldn’t be this bad.
No matter how much one preached about miracles, life ultimately came down to making a living. I thought people wouldn’t easily trade the money in their hands for an inferior currency that had no use beyond purchasing a product that hadn’t even been properly advertised yet.
But.
“Th-this is…”
“I apologize, Saintess. We have mobilized not only the basic priests but also the deacons and even the laypeople who handle odd jobs around the Grand Cathedral. However, controlling the scene has proven… somewhat difficult.”
A bishop-level cleric came running up, spoke with forced calm, then immediately sprinted off again. The area around the Grand Cathedral was packed with a crowd easily as large as the one during my speech—perhaps even larger. I genuinely worried people might start getting crushed to death.
Money is inseparable from life. Having money doesn’t guarantee happiness, but usually you need at least some before the floor of your happiness can rise. Yet this world differed greatly from the one I had come from, and from a capitalistic perspective that placed high value on currency, I found myself unable to realistically judge this religious fervor.
Who would have thought the words “religion” and “reality” could interact in a sentence like this?
“F-for now! No, what do I even do?”
What immediately came to mind was the revaluation of the miracle-backed currency—Gold. Since its primary use was solely to purchase the product of miracles provided by the Church through Divine Power, any revaluation here would be so immediate that even if it seemed impulsive, the losses would be minimized. What was revaluation? It meant raising the absolute value of the currency itself. The Plaza Accord that triggered Japan’s Lost Decade was one such example.
But in the Church’s case, the product called miracles of Divine Power was of such high quality and so inherently monopolistic that we didn’t need to worry about anything like a lost decade. The result would likely resemble the revaluation of the West German mark instead. After the collapse of Bretton Woods, the end of dollar-gold convertibility, and the desperate attempts to maintain the dollar through devaluation, the fixed exchange rate system finally broke and shifted to a floating one.
Here, our Church’s miracle-backed currency—Gold—would take the position of the mark, while the currencies of the secular monarchs would play the role of the dollar.
“We cannot exchange for everyone here. If we did, every cleric in the Church would clearly suffer from overload.”
The core issue was that there was a clear limit to how much currency the Church could print. It wasn’t a matter of facilities or artisans; the problem was the means to recover the printed currency. Why does currency have value? Ultimately, because you can buy things with it. Even bottle caps could become currency if enough of them could purchase something of value.
However, this new currency called Gold could currently only buy miracles. To assign and maintain its value, clerics had to expend Divine Power, and since that didn’t fall from the sky like an actual miracle, there was a risk of damaging the currency’s value if we weren’t careful.
“R-revaluation! We must revalue the Gold!”
Honestly, doing this on the spot felt far too reckless. I hadn’t even drawn up a prior plan, yet the moment people swarmed in I was talking about revaluation? This was the very definition of an impulsive policy.
“How should we proceed?”
“First, raise the exchange rate immediately. Twenty percent—no, thirty. Ah, no—fifty! Raise it by fifty percent and see! Use the mages for long-distance communication so the order reaches the entire Church!”
A 150% revaluation! In modern economics this would be insane, yet seeing the tens of thousands gathered in front of the Grand Cathedral made me wonder if it would even be enough.
“That seems excessively high…”
“Do you want to see our clerics collapse from using Divine Power all day only for the demand to still overwhelm them? Do it! Now!Right now!Hurry!”
Thanks to this, the exchange rate posted at the booths shot up by an absurd 150% in an instant. The people hoping to exchange money witnessed it with their own eyes, yet the cries of “Take my money!” showed no sign of dying down. It was truly a catastrophic situation.
Not everyone in that massive crowd seemed to need a miracle right away, but if you only produced a product at exactly the expected demand level, shortages were inevitable. Especially when the item had “currency” written on it—you had to print and distribute it somewhat generously.
Yet right now demand had flooded in so intensely that even though we were practically committing extortion, people were still saying it was fine and asking for more. If we responded by overusing quantitative easing—printing as much as we could—the Gold would quickly end up like the old Korean baek-dang-jeon coins.
So with immediate revaluation proving completely ineffective, continuous revaluation attempts being difficult, and quantitative easing guaranteed to bring future ruin, what exactly could we do?
No. No, that wasn’t right.
Let’s throw out the ‘existing’ common sense. Forget for a moment what central banks in various countries have done to adjust exchange rates. That belongs to another world. The place I’m in now is this world.
Good. If demand for currency suddenly surges, I simply need to increase the places where it can be used. That way, once we recover the Gold, we’ll have more supply available at the exchange booths.
“Prioritize exchanging for those who need a miracle immediately. Make sure they can come straight to me. We must also clearly state that if someone lies about needing it when they don’t, they will never receive a miracle in the future.”
“But that alone will not be…”
“I will handle it. I will resolve all current demand personally. Then we can redistribute the collected Gold. What are you waiting for? We’re going to be busy all day, so let’s start right now.”
The traditional method for times like this was to throw people into the grinder. Even so, I couldn’t just throw them in haphazardly; I had to pursue maximum efficiency in the process. Fortunately, there was a being perfectly suited for exactly that—the Saintess.
That day, I personally proved that a saint could create economic miracles as well.