Chapter 57 - Elves, Coins, and Irrigation (1/2)

As soon as Amber’s voice fell, Gawain turned his head and stared at her fixedly, giving her the creeps. “What… what’s the meaning of that look of yours…”

Gawain looked as if he was staring at an alien. “Why would you know a druid?”

“Why can’t I know a druid!” Amber had her arms akimbo. “At the very least, I’m a half-elf, okay? All the druid factions in the world originated from elves, don’t you know?”

If it was anyone else with pointed ears who said that it would have been convincing, but not when this elven disgrace said it. Gawain looked up and down for awhile at the bandit girl still looking bold and confident in justifying herself, then he finally came out and said, “You mean you know him in the sense that you stole something from this guy, and he tried to chase and kill you?”

“That’s an insult!” Amber jumped up instantly. “How could anyone catch me stealing!”

Gawain: “…”

Why did it seem like there was something off about her rebuttal?

However, although he verbally doubted her, from the look of her, she seemed like she really did know a druid, and she even introduced him like she was a salesperson, “Lemme tell you, this guy I know is not just a druid, but a scholarly druid. He knows a bit of everything. His druid faction is the proper ‘Forest Heart’. He is particularly good at dealing with plants and animals. He is absolutely reliable…”

Gawain could finally believe her words, but he did not probe about how Amber and the mysterious druid came to know each other or his name and origin. Obviously, it would not be polite to ask these questions now. After listening to Amber’s sales pitch, he asked only two questions, “Can you still reach him now? If so, how long will it take you to bring him here?”

“It’s easy to reach him even though people say that druids are hard to find, but this guy that I know of has a rather fixed area where he operates. He’s just in the area along the southern borders. As for how long it will take to bring him here…”

As Amber continued talking, she kept giving Gawain the meaningful look. “I could use shadow walk when getting to him, but to get back, I’m afraid I would have to come back using the normal way and hurry the pace. How fast we come back will depend on the means of transportation, you know?”

Gawain immediately understood what she was meaning to say. With a wave of his large hand, he placed a few coins in her hand. “Go and buy new shoes.”

Amber stared at him. “… I won’t take this! And you should at least give me some money to give the guy a down payment, right? Even if we are acquaintances, you still have to pay to employ him, okay!”

“Why didn’t you say that earlier?” Gawain was only joking with Amber. After all, it was fun to see the girl jumping up and down, but putting jokes aside, he grabbed some more gold and silver strips that were compressed into uniform sizes from his other pocket. “Take it. Get it done, and whatever remains is all yours.”

Amber immediately took the glistening treasures.

Because the mint required to make coins was not yet ready, “Cecil currency” was still merely a concept. Thus for the time being, Gawain asked the craftsmen to get some gold and silver from the treasury and turn them into smaller pieces for trading with the rest of the world.

Using precious metals directly for trading was not uncommon in this world. Moreover, trading was still very primitive. Gold and silver with a certain degree of purity were considered as currencies. Usually, gold and silver were made into coins just because it was easier to carry, inspect, and count. But merchants also accepted using gold and silver directly for transactions. It was just that this type of transaction would include the additional process of inspection of purity and calculation. Thus when buying goods directly with gold and silver, the price would be increased slightly.

Of course, this was all based on the premise of the currency’s credibility. If there came a day when the impurities in the nobles’ coinage reached a level that could hurt the merchants, then the unofficial gold and silver bullion would in turn prevail over the currencies issued by the royal family and the grand dukes and become the main form of currency, and if you used gold and silver coins to buy things, it would instead be more expensive.

This was why the emblem of the god of trade was a pair of scales. On the two sides of the scales were placed a pair of scissors and an eye. The scissors and the scales were both things that the merchants carried with them. The former was used to cut gold and silver strips while the latter was used for weighing. As for the eye, merchants needed good eyesight in order to tell the purity of the metals.

Actually, if not for Gawain’s obsessive-compulsive disorder, that he wanted to cast the metals into refined and unique coins, he could totally use a simpler and cruder method to make the coins. He just needed to cast the metals into round rods, then cut them into thin slices. Then use a steel seal to apply Cecil’s emblem. In Anzu’s year 536, the Grand Duke of the West used this method in order to save time and labor and reduce the cost. The coins in that year were thusly nicknamed “the miser’s extortion toll money”. It was because at that time, the western law required that all merchants entering the western region must exchange one-third of their coins for the western coins. And whenever crossing any checkpoints, they had to use these inferior coins to pay the tolls.

This world’s currency and economy were just so perplexing.

Amber left happily, and the half-elf girl almost ran away floating as everyone watched. Herti could not help but worry. “She’s not going to run away with those pieces of gold and silver, is she…”

“Embezzling funds?” Gawain muttered. In his brooding, he wondered if that elven disgrace might actually be capable of such a thing…

Never mind. At this juncture, he should just have some trust in her. He had nothing else to count on anyways.

There was no one else who claimed to know druids, was there?