[D'sP] An Aside About Coins - Chapter 485

Doyle looks over floor 14 and feels quite accomplished. The floor isn’t complex in layout or rather the complexity is completely out in the open. It is all one big room with the trick being that halfway up, gravity reverses, allowing both the floor and ceiling to be used.

And they are, with kobolds occupying one side and myconids the other. Then, between the two sides, are pillars and fungal nets. Which allows those not willing or unable to make the jump, a way to get from one side to the other. Though these paths between the sides also play host to a few assassin vines and troop guards.

Overall, the floor design is fun, and Doyle particularly liked that if you try to focus on one side completely, all the monsters above you will end up gathered together, following you. Though being honest with himself, Doyle is surprised someone hasn’t tried to abuse that yet.

Doyle nods to himself and moves onto floor 15, which is one big mountain valley. And once again, kobolds and goats are the stars of the show. With the goats in particular being at the top of his mind, as this was the floor where he had first evolved the cyclone goats. Though of course, it is the kobolds who are in charge.

In fact, the entire floor has a number of kobold “communities”. At least, that is how Doyle remembers referring to them as. The entire floor has nine of these groups spread out through it.

Doyle actually felt the concept behind grouping them was a decent strategy. In theory, doing so would provide the kobolds with a framework to alert one another and react together in a progressive fashion. So like, the entire floor doesn’t instantly come charging at the delvers, but if they aren’t quick enough or stealthy enough? Well, more and more kobolds will keep showing up.

Except this is a mountain valley. Oh sure, it zigs and it zags so you can’t see the entire floor. However, you definitely aren’t hiding yourself, at least not easily, so the kobolds tend to react more in sight than other kobolds passing on a warning.

Oh, and can’t forget, there are trees on this floor. The three of them sit at the bottom of the valley, each spread out and with their own challenges and rewards. Well, they all have the same challenge and reward, if of varying amounts.

Each tree has a bunch of hexcu nesting in their branches and these aren’t shy about all attacking someone at once. Though if you can battle your way through or simply sneak to the base of the tree unnoticed, there’s money to be had! A chest comfortably packed with coins.

The only question is what kind of coin. Because as they absorb power, the coins slowly upgrade themselves. Which means someone might loot the chest right after someone else and get only a handful of copper coins. Or if it has been a long time, there’s the possibility of the chest being filled entirely with gold coins.

Quite a windfall for whoever manages to find them at that point.

Not that anyone will have the chance at that anytime soon. Ace is having the Barrais raid the chests on the regular. While Ace would appreciate the gold coins to buy stuff from the system. At the moment, the community needs more copper pieces. There just isn’t enough system-backed coinage yet, with every coin extracted quickly flowing through the local economy and out into the greater community.

Gold can come after everyone has a few coppers to their name. Besides, the only thing gold is good for at the moment is getting stuff from the system. The most expensive thing at the moment is selling for a silver or two. Which, admittedly, will likely stay the case. Though the lack of a top-end market for quality goods and large items are only a matter of time.

In fact, Jim and Ace had a friendly disagreement over what would be the first thing to sell for multiple gold. Jim, befitting his job, was of the opinion it would be gear for adventuring. You know, enchanted armor and weapons.

Ace, on the other hand, figure the first big-ticket item will be property and soon. Right now, people are just grabbing a place to live and work as they can. And yes, Ace has people keeping track of who owns what plot of land within the city limits. They just aren’t charging for the land. Which, with the system handling taxes, means most people probably don’t even realize how property in town works.

And of course this is just for Wolf’s Rest. Other places are more restrictive on who owns what property. Some are even trying to set up what sound like literal serfdoms. Which Ace considers crazy. Though in the other side of the spectrum, there are settlements without a central authority to begin with and so people are literally living where they want without any eye towards ownership. About the only rule being that of mob rule to make sure those doing particularly foul-smelling tasks or things that make a lot of noise, are away from where a bunch of people are living.

Though even the most organized and greedy of places aren’t charging actual gold coins yet. Even if that is mostly because of a lack of coins in the first place. From how Ace understood things, gold coins were still a part of “normal” coinage.

If he was to compare it to pre-system money, then the gold coin was worth somewhere between five hundred and a thousand. The variance having more to do with how the main currency he was familiar with before the system came was a bit in flux. In theory, a copper coin acted as pre-system coinage would. Except it also almost seems to act as a bill.

This leads to the silver coin being seen as anywhere between ten and a hundred. What with you needing 100 copper to make a single silver. Then it was 100 silver to a gold!

Ace honestly hadn’t even tried to pin system coinage to any of the pre-system currencies. Though it best matched the one eastern currency, he knew best in the fact that it didn’t use decimals. A copper was the smallest and so worth one and things counted up from there. You wouldn’t ever pay 1.50 for something, but rather 150.

Though that very example is that the values don’t line up quite right. The copper is more like how money was in the past. It had a decent amount of value behind it, so instead of something cheap being 150, it would instead be more like 5 to 10, which honestly felt to Ace like what some of the older generations used to talk about. How you could buy a piece of candy for a single cent or maybe five.

In the end, Ace was just happy that while it would still exist to some degree, inflation wasn’t going to be a big thing in this new world. And this wasn’t even because outwardly, the coins were made of valuable metals. In fact, the coins would be even more stable than old school gold backed currencies.

After all, the coins have an intrinsic value, which from what Ace can understand, is based on the power they contain. Well, that and more obviously the fact that the system buys and sells at a set amount. Anyway, the important part is the fact that the coins won’t be devalued the first time someone finds a literal gold mine.

Though in Ace’s opinion, while the intrinsic value is nice. It was more likely to be the system that truly balances things. After all, if coins become worth too much, people will sell their stuff to the system and flood the local market with even more coins until things stabilize. Then on the other end, if coins lose too much value, people will buy directly from the system.

On top of that, just like other inherently magical things, the coins can be used for enchanting and powering stuff. Which right now, wasn’t exactly a thing people could do. However, there will certainly come a time when this money sink will help keep the amount of currency in check even better than being able to buy stuff from the system.

Of course, ignorant of all that has gone into why the Barrais are raiding the chests like they are, Doyle is considering whether he should change how they work. After all, he set the chests up to slowly convert copper into silver and then gold. Which was clever, but basically never happens!

Though in the end he consoles himself. While at the moment, this is how things are panning out, that might not be the case in the future. After all, the more delvers on the floor, the quicker the coins will build up and convert. In fact, just having people delving on the adjacent floors will help to a lesser degree.

After all, world energy doesn’t instantly spread through the entire dungeon. Rather, it spreads out over time, which was exactly the problem he had been having with the sixth floor. It was like how you can have a desert on one side of a mountain range and a rainforest on the other because the mountains create a condition for the rain to all fall in the same place. Though not quite that literally, because the world energy still ends up spreading to the entire dungeon. The floors after or before six didn’t become energy deserts.

Doyle shakes his core, no need to get distracted. Onto the 16th floor!

This was the first of what Doyle considered his new floors, and so he didn’t feel the need to go too in-depth on them.

16 was the island chain floor. The “ocean” was freshwater. It didn’t have to be, Doyle had salt. What he lacked was saltwater monsters. Maybe later he can make an actual ocean.

Anyway, there are five islands. The smallest and first being more of a sandbar that got lucky enough to not be swept away by the waves. Well, that’s what it looks like. Obviously, it was exactly where Doyle wanted it.

After that, there are a couple of classic-looking islands. The first with the sand beach going right up to the first edge and the next has the trees reaching out to the waters edge. Admittedly, it would look more natural if he had made the trees mangroves or some such, but the water was fresh and until now the trees weren’t actually living so it didn’t matter. Still wouldn’t of course as the water was still fresh, but the trees would be real now.

Then, there is a giant tree trunk connecting that third island to the fourth. The story being that the third island was actually all just this tree until it was whacked by a volcanic rock and then the tree fell over after it died a bit from that.

Which leads to the fourth island itself, which is another sandbar, except this time in the shape of a crescent with a lagoon in the center. There are of course monsters around the crescent with the idea of maybe tempting people to swim across from one tip to the other. Except there are udoroots in the water to take advantage of anyone not prepared for them.

And finally, the fifth and biggest island, which is shaped like a volcano with one of the sides burst off. That opening being through which people are expected to travel to get into the hot zone with Ashen cattle to fight and the exit portal to get out of there.

If Doyle was honest, this floor was a tiny bit overdeveloped. Another dungeon likely would have had each of the islands as their own floor and the volcano as a boss arena of sorts. Then again, Doyle already has a habit of putting floors within floors. It was just back on eight where he had literally put a replica of his first floor as the last room of the new floor.

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