Sitting on a Pile of Money (1)
However, we couldn’t set off right away. There was something I had to deal with here first, and this particular problem had nothing to do with the Demon King or any religious nonsense. So what was the reason?
“Where are we even going to use all of this? I’ve never seen this much money even in the imperial palace.”
“You’ve seen it being used, haven’t you?”
“Still, I needed to actually feel the weight of it like this.”
What else could it be but economic reasons? Right now, stacked in front of our eyes was a sum exceeding ten thousand imperial gold coins in value. And not in gold coins, but entirely in secular ones.
In my rough mental conversion, it came to about eight billion won. Of course, that was just an approximation. Considering the prices of this era, the amount could stretch much further and be used in far more ways. Depending on how it was spent, it could feel like eighty billion back in Korea.
With this sum, I could feed every person in an average small city at the level of ordinary commoners for two full months. Once a settlement exceeded five thousand people it was reclassified as a base city, so depending on the scale, the money could sustain them for nearly half a year.
Yes. It was an absolutely enormous fortune. Releasing it all at once would obviously trigger regional inflation. If I picked one commodity and bought without limit, I could temporarily monopolize that product in the area.
That said, I had no intention of pulling a Bongi Kim Seon-dal and cornering the horsehair market. What I wanted was to make money, not to wreck the marketplace.
“Don’t worry. It’s money we can spend freely whenever we decide to use it.”
“You already have something in mind, don’t you?”
“Well, it’s simple. We should spend it where it will be most efficient.”
When people suddenly obtain this much money, the first urge is usually to splurge on everything they’ve ever wanted. How tempting that would be—eating expensive delicacies, wearing luxurious clothes, riding costly horses or carriages, throwing money around like water on every extravagance imaginable.
But the more money you earn this way, the more strictly you have to calculate efficiency. Otherwise you’ll only regret it later, thinking, I could have used it like that.
“Where? Investing with merchants? Or donating to some guild?”
That was the standard definition of spending money efficiently. Hand it to merchants and dividends would flow back; put it in a guild and you could monopolize their goods.
However, that was the efficiency of using money to make more money. Since I could generate wealth simply by minting gold coins now, it wasn’t an urgent concern.
Of course money was the classic example of “the more the better,” but I wasn’t planning to spend my life simply hoarding it. Money was a tool, not my final goal.
“We should use it for food and housing.”
“And that’s the most efficient option?”
“Of course. There is no better way to efficiently obtain devout believers.”
What is faith, really? People dress it up with sacred and majestic packaging, but ultimately everyone believes in order to live better. Most religions in the world basically promise heaven if you believe. Even cults operate on the same principle. Believe, and you will be saved.
In that case, why bother with the afterlife? What if we simply delivered that “salvation” here in the mortal world? What if we lifted the constant worry of hunger from those who struggled to eat, and the worry of leaking roofs from those living in collapsing houses?
When you thought about it, there was no better way to win favor. It was a one-time or at most several-time investment that delivered clear, immediate results while keeping maintenance costs low.
“Ah, as expected of you, Lucia……”
“No, when you put it that way it sounds like I’m buying faith with money. That kind of perspective makes it feel rather burdensome.”
“Even if you call it buying faith, in the end you’re still helping people in need.”
No, that’s what it sounds like, but that’s not my real intention, okay?
“Right? Zieg, you get what I’m saying, don’t you?”
“Is it that surprising? I never thought you’d feel embarrassed about something like this, Lucia.”
“……Embarrassed? Who? About what? Me? This?”
“If you simply say you’re helping the poor, praise will pour in from every direction. Isn’t that what feels burdensome? At least in front of close friends, you probably want to avoid anything that sounds that grandiose.”
Zieg, that’s not it at all. No, why does everyone insist on viewing my grand plan as nothing more than one-time populism? If I truly just wanted to help the poor, I would have cleared farmland and distributed it. Why would I settle for throwing them some food and building houses?
Even the houses wouldn’t be anything fancy—just better than the slums they currently lived in. In reality, they would be built to a standard slightly below what average commoners enjoyed.
“What can I even say? Ha, why can’t anyone understand?”
“Even the crown prince, who usually acts so proper, seemed to think along the same lines as me.”
“That’s because Peter is smart but his thinking is too narrow in scope. Still, I thought Zieg would be more open-minded. I’m disappointed you can’t grasp this.”
“If that’s your standard, then probably no one will ever understand.”
Ha, how depressing. Still, I couldn’t run around telling everyone until I found someone who actually got it.
“Ah, Lucia. Everything is settled. Once word spread that the saintess recognized by the Church had decided to help the needy, everyone started quoting rock-bottom prices, desperate to win the contracts.”
“From the builders and stonemason guilds?”
“Yes. Simply winning this project and completing it successfully would earn them a blessing, so they offered to work at prices that barely cover labor costs. Thanks to that, the entire slum district in the capital Endium is now scheduled for complete reconstruction.”
“And during construction?”
“The royal family, local lords, mayors, and the Church have all agreed to provide food and shelter. As a result, the relief provisions came at very low prices, and several items essentially arrived as free bonuses.”
No, what was going on? Had everyone been hypnotized? I wasn’t planning to shower them with pure white wheat bread or rich meat stew just because I was giving out food. The menu would be hard rye bread with a few visible chunks that made people think, Oh, there are actually ingredients in this.
I had expected the lords and the Church to provide support during reconstruction, but I never imagined Peter—who had stepped forward to mediate—would be this aggressively proactive.
Yet even the stonemason guild, whose eyes normally burned for every extra coin, had quoted the absolute lowest prices? The food distributors and merchants too? Who exactly cast a hypnosis spell here?
“You’re saying… the entire slums of Brien……”
“Correct. We will be able to replace every slum dwelling in the capital Brien with new housing. This is the projection assuming nothing goes wrong midway.”
As he spoke, the look in Peter’s eyes was a mixture of reverence and affection that felt far too heavy for me to bear right now.
No, tearing down those barely-standing slum shacks and building decent houses—meaning homes that might be constructed at the edge of the slums or just outside the city walls—cost roughly twenty imperial gold coins each. In other words, even pouring all ten thousand coins into it would only produce five hundred houses.
I had thought it would be fortunate if we could clear even a quarter of Endium’s slums with that budget, but they were saying we could clear everything and still manage food distribution?
This was no joke. Endium was a city of five hundred thousand people—a true metropolis by this era’s standards. I didn’t know the exact population figures for medieval European cities, but from walking its streets, it felt larger than Paris in a comparable period. Even if it didn’t reach the scale of Byzantium at the Eastern Roman Empire’s peak, it was genuinely huge.
And in cities this large, the slums tended to be proportionally massive. Unskilled labor jobs that allowed the poor to scrape by were concentrated in major urban centers. From what I had seen, the slum population exceeded one hundred thousand—possibly even two hundred thousand.
Yet with a maximum of five thousand houses—or four thousand when factoring in food supplies—they were claiming they could clear the entire area?
“Where did the extra money come from?”
No matter how unfamiliar I still was with this world’s common sense, I had at least this much financial awareness. This was not a problem solvable with the ten thousand imperial gold coins we currently had.
A slum population of one to two hundred thousand meant, even at the low estimate of one hundred thousand people, twenty-five thousand houses would be required. Simple math put the cost at fifty thousand imperial gold coins, and with material and labor shortages driving up prices, it could easily reach sixty thousand.
Had some economic Jesus appeared? Was this the capitalist version of the miracle of feeding five thousand with two fish and five loaves?
“My, Lucia’s economic intuition is more grounded than I expected.”
“If you know, then tell me. It’s a wonderful thing, but whether I express my gratitude outwardly or keep it in my heart, I still need to know where it came from.”
“Where else could it have come from? All of it is from the Brien Church. Things have been chaotic here because of the theater incident, so you probably didn’t receive the reports, but as crown prince I hear things. Taking you as their model, they began a gold coin auction.”
I was momentarily stunned. I had never given any specific orders, yet they heard what I was doing here and decided to do it themselves?
It wasn’t impossible, but honestly there wasn’t anyone in the Church proactive enough for me to take such initiative for granted. Unless there was someone who would decide to follow both the policy and its application simply because I had suggested the gold coins… but would such a person really exist…?
“Cardinal Londel?”
“Correct. Thanks to him, the nobles’ vaults were completely emptied. Not only did the Iron Alliance designate the gold coin as its standard currency, they have now begun using it in earnest. Its value has risen sharply. It is both a premium investment asset whose value will continue to climb and a currency that can actually be used in daily transactions.”
The Brien Kingdom’s Church hadn’t minted that many gold coins. Even exceeding ten thousand would count as an extremely successful run. It was now the twentieth of December, meaning the entire minting operation had lasted only five months. Even though they had mobilized the silver-coin facilities and worked desperately, there were clear limits.
On top of that, strict caps had been placed on production. So while it was called the standard currency, the majority of actual circulating money still had to be imperial gold coins or the gold coins of the various kingdoms.
Yet Cardinal Londel had not only continued my work in my absence but had also analyzed my actions and made these judgments accordingly.
“Huh. For a cardinal, he seems to hold quite a large stake.”
“He truly is a capable man. The fact that he discovered you is proof enough. Though, to be fair, it would have been difficult to overlook someone who shines as brightly as you do.”
Again, again, again. Every time I tried to think seriously about something, lines like that inevitably left me flustered.
“Ahem! Your Highness the Crown Prince, the saintess must now prepare to head for the Romano Cathedral.”
“Ah, that’s right. I wish I could accompany you, but it is the holiday period, so I must return to the palace. Still, do not worry. I have prepared the most reliable escort possible for Lucia.”
“I, the hero, am already here to serve as escort.”
“I do not doubt Sir Ziegfried’s skill, but after the theater incident, my father—His Majesty the King—has grown deeply concerned. He has decided to send none other than the Royal Knight Commander, Baron Freewind, to serve as the saintess’s escort.”
“That……”
“Since Sir Freewind has been assigned as my escort, I am truly grateful. Please convey my sincere thanks to His Majesty.”
I had no desire to watch the hero and crown prince engage in a power struggle, so I stepped in at that point to bring the conversation to a close.
No, why were they even doing this? In any case, my base of operations was still the Brien Kingdom. Having the royal knight commander of Brien as my escort was beneficial. It would also serve as a strong signal at the Romano Cathedral that I enjoyed very solid support from Brien.
“It really is pleasant speaking with you, Lucia. Our conversations flow so naturally.”
“Anyone feels comfortable with someone they can communicate with easily. Thank you for your consideration, Peter.”
Still, as the hero, I really wished he would avoid setting up a rivalry with the crown prince of the most powerful kingdom among the seven and the one that held a friendly stake in the Iron Alliance’s power structure.