Money Cushion (3)
The phrase exponential was, of course, only accurate when measured against the commoner class. An ordinary laborer or an unskilled guild member earned roughly three gold coins a year at the current official exchange rate. In other words, the amount currently loaded in the carriage’s boxes was equivalent to what one such worker would need to save for four hundred years without spending a single copper.
Things changed dramatically once you crossed into noble territory. Even the average count I had used as an example could accumulate the same sum in about fifteen years if he managed his domain’s expenses with ruthless efficiency. It was still far too much to call an arithmetic progression, yet it had dropped below the threshold of anything that could reasonably be described as exponential. Still, there was no denying it was an enormous fortune.
The one most shaken by the revelation was Ziegfried. Having spent nearly a year wandering the world after leaving the Church, his sense of money was far closer to that of the common people. Yes, it must have been quite the shock. Even if a hero lived like a mercenary, he would never have been truly destitute, yet he still wouldn’t have carried more than ten imperial gold coins on his person.
That said, his words weren’t entirely accurate.
Once the concept that only ten people in the world could accomplish such a feat sank in, Ziegfried seemed to accept that such an enormous sum could indeed be gathered in such a short time.
In truth, even I was feeling a little dazed. Although the Church in the Brien Kingdom had swept up every gold coin it could find for the Endium slum reconstruction project, it would still take more time for that influence to spread across the entire kingdom.
Yulia was the one who shot down my attempt to lighten the mood. She was right; the statement had been a bit of a stretch.
This time it was Ziegfried. If monsters truly charged in without assessing their foe’s power, they would have gone extinct long ago. Three carriages and five cargo wagons escorted by eleven royal knights of Brien—including the Knight Commander himself—plus twenty cavalrymen. Who in their right mind would attack such a force?
Yes, that was the average reality of this era. Some things simply couldn’t be helped. Unless you traveled with an outstanding escort like this, the road was always perilous. In that sense, being reborn as a Saintess who received such treatment was, at the very least, a stroke of luck.
Or… was it? If Cardinal Rondelle hadn’t summoned me, I would never have come to this world in the first place. So perhaps it wasn’t exactly fortunate.
I had been about to drift off into thought again when Baron Freewind called to me through the carriage window. He only addressed me that way when there was a decision I needed to make. We had already crossed the border, so I couldn’t imagine what it could be.
As the Saintess, I had shared miracles with the people of Tellaia before. I had visited the Romano Cathedral to meet the Pope and had given them a taste of my power again on the way to the academy. However, no Tellaian nobles had asked me for miracles during those visits. I wasn’t sure of the exact reason, but I suspected political pressure had been applied from somewhere.
What about now? My position had changed drastically since then. Back then I had been a newly recognized Saintess whose political influence only carried weight inside the Brien Kingdom. But after the rather significant events at the academy over the past few months, things were different.
What? He wasn’t usually the type to nitpick like this.
Internally, I wanted to call them potential market share rather than believers or faithful, but I still had enough social awareness not to say something like that out loud. Besides, in the end, our goals aligned on the point that the divided Church must be unified. That was enough.
From that perspective, there was no reason I couldn’t share healing miracles with the nobles of Tellaia—the kingdom where the Pope resided and which shared a western border with Brien. The pattern was similar. Though the countries differed, people’s worries and wounds were largely the same. As the Saintess, what I could do for them was also largely the same. And so was the compensation.
By the time we arrived in Romano, the boxes contained nearly 1,500 gold coins from Brien and slightly more than 1,500 imperial gold coins. To be precise, they filled two separate boxes.
Hmm. At this rate, wasn’t this already a success? I had set out to build the Church’s influence, but if even my slightest movement gathered money like a magnet, didn’t that mean my influence had already grown tremendously?
If, at this point, I began a full tour of the remaining kingdoms and started collecting gold coins in earnest, the resulting wealth alone would be enough to completely eradicate the existence of slums from every capital city in the world. At that stage, it could no longer be called an economic miracle—it would have to be called a divine authority.
I had become a living central bank, a welfare foundation, a general hospital, and a political sponsorship organization all in one.
That said, deciding how to use what had been gathered was an entirely separate matter. The economic authority to reclaim scattered gold was impressive, but the ability to redistribute it properly was equally crucial.
Starting by safely clearing the slums in each kingdom’s capital wouldn’t be a bad idea. Since construction had already begun in earnest in Endium, the capital of Brien, it was necessary to do something similar in the capitals of the other kingdoms. Doing it in only one place and neglecting the others could create its own set of problems. Human hearts tended to accumulate resentment over questions like “Why did you help them but not us?”
There was no need to pour money into every corner of the slums. If I drew a clear line here, others would fill in the rest. In short, it was similar to crowd psychology. “The Saintess donated first, so the rest of the Church cooperated and cleared the entire slum.” Once that narrative took hold, money would flow naturally. Then I could collect it again, redistribute it where needed, and repeat the cycle.
Simply by issuing our own currency and putting it into full use, we could already achieve a great deal. But with this method, we could circulate money almost infinitely without needing to print more. That meant we could spend money endlessly with virtually no additional resources, all while purchasing faith and influence. A truly happy world for everyone.
Of course, it would still require a considerable amount of my own labor. That part couldn’t be helped.
Yulia’s presence alone was incredibly helpful. As the imperial princess who had manifested powerful divine power because of me, her mere existence generated influence of every kind. Not to mention the individual miracles her divine power could perform—there was no need to list them all. If I was unquestionably within the top ten in divine power in this world, she was certainly within the top twenty-seven.
Even so, she was still an imperial princess of the Empire. Simply meeting the orthodox Pope in Romano was already more than enough. I had thought it would be greedy to ask her to continue traveling with me after that.
Even if Yulia returned to the Empire, it wouldn’t mean she would stop being useful. Therefore, I hadn’t felt any desperate need for her to remain. Above all, she had a home called the imperial palace and a family called the imperial household. There was no need to demand that my so-called Apostle stay by my side at all costs.
But if she herself chose to remain at my side…
While she had no personal combat ability, that could be solved by requesting paladins from the Church or, at worst, hiring mercenaries. However, it was impossible to obtain a cleric with divine power at the Patriarch level or higher through such means. No matter how much of a Cardinal-level Saintess I was, having one more such person around was always better.
When Ziegfried pointed out something I had also been vaguely concerned about, I asked again with half-joking intent. The serious tone and straightforward gaze in his reply left me momentarily speechless. I had only been teasing, but when he looked at me like that and answered so earnestly, it felt embarrassingly sincere.
In an instant, the atmosphere inside the carriage grew awkward. Yulia glanced back and forth between Ziegfried and me with narrowed eyes. Ziegfried and I stole quick glances at each other, only for our eyes to meet again, prompting us both to look away immediately.
See? Even though my mind is that of a man, being stuck in a woman’s body is affecting me far too much. I really need to overcome this somehow.
The silver lining was that the Romano Cathedral was now right before our eyes, so we wouldn’t have to endure this awkward atmosphere for much longer.