My eyes flew open at the news Viten had brought. A Lava Elemental was a monster one Grade above a Salamander. According to the compendium, Salamanders were ranked Grade 4, while Lava Elementals were Grade 3.
Not only was it powerful material that I needed immediately, but it even possessed a fire attribute. There was no reason to pass up such an opportunity.
“We have money, right?”
I asked with vague hope.
“Of course—”
“We do not.”
Thalia cut Viten off sharply.
“The Duchy is covering wartime costs. We cannot afford to purchase a monster worth hundreds of thousands of baht.”
“What are you talking about? The Guild Master said it only cost one thousand baht. He said it was a special-price item, and that first come, first served.”
“One thousand baht is merely the opening bid.”
“That was an auction?”
“It was never anything but an auction. Did you think that man was showing goodwill because he liked you, Senior? He merely wanted to increase the number of participants and make a profit. For reference, the winning bid for a Grade 3 monster at the last auction was one hundred and fifty thousand baht.”
“What? One hundred and fifty thousand? How are we supposed to buy that?”
I merely listened to their conversation.
Thinking about it, I had never taken the concept of money seriously even once.
In my previous life, I had wandered with Master, eating in the wind and sleeping in the open, so I had never concerned myself with money. In this life, conversely, I had been so well provided for that I had never needed to consider it.
I thought I should at least learn how money worked, so I summoned Lily, the head maid and manager of the household.
“I am sorry, but the palace does not have that much to spare.”
Lily agreed with Thalia.
“Young Master lives on an annual upkeep allowance of twenty thousand baht. Once we pay the servants, maintain the palace, deduct the essential expenses, and deposit money into savings, almost nothing remains.”
“If there are savings, can’t we just withdraw them?”
A dark cloud passed over Lily’s face.
“Yes, until recently, Young Master did have savings. Before the outer wall of the palace collapsed and the garden was split in half.”
I really was a man who deserved to be killed.
“I’m sorry, Lily.”
“It is all right. We must think of it as an investment in Young Master’s future.”
Lily let out a long sigh.
“I can arrange up to ten thousand baht. I will give you that first, and I will search for other sources of money as well.”
After Lily left, I put my heads together with the knights again.
“Ten thousand will not be enough, right?”
“Not even close.”
Thalia spoke in an even tone.
“It is exceedingly rare for a Grade 3 monster to come onto the market. Lava Elementals are especially valuable because their central cores are sought after as a source of mana. You may assume they are worth whatever price people name.”
“What do people use a source of mana for?”
“They eat it, just as Young Master Iden did.”
Right... The people here were not idiots either. If their bodies could withstand absorbing such an energy source, they would gain an enormous fortuitous opportunity.
“If we estimate the winning bid at two hundred thousand, we must obtain one hundred and ninety thousand baht elsewhere. That is nearly ten times the palace’s annual budget.”
“Is there no way?”
Thalia’s gaze turned toward the invitations piled high on the desk.
“The first method that comes to mind is asking Houses favorable to Young Master Iden for assistance. However, if we become entangled in a debt relationship with nobles, another problem may arise in the future.”
I would rather not do that either. I wanted to avoid borrowing money I could not repay and getting a hook through my nose.
“When is the auction?”
“On the first day of every month. There are still twenty days left.”
It was an ambiguous amount of time—neither long nor short. I wracked my brain further with the two knights, but they were merely employees who lived off the wages the palace paid them. They had never handled or earned such a large sum of money.
We could not find a clever solution, but one thing was clear: I could not let this opportunity slip away.
But what did I know about economics? The subjects I was learning were history, liberal arts, etiquette, Martial Arts, and Sovereign Studies. None of them had anything to do with money.
...Wait. Perhaps Sovereign Studies would be different.
***
“What do you mean?”
Karoi heard my concern while training by himself in the practice ground.
“You want me to teach you only the ways to make money in Sovereign Studies?”
“Yes.”
Smoke drifted from the bastard’s mouth. It was a sign that he was about to boast or mock me.
“What do you think Sovereign Studies are? A Sovereign rules others. Someone who grovels to earn a few coins is no Sovereign.”
“But a king has many people depending on him. Does the territory not need to prosper to feed all those people?”
“Then simply make someone who knows how to earn money your subordinate.”
He was right. I could entrust work I found difficult to someone more capable. However, considering my precarious position as the Duke’s third son, I doubted someone talented enough to invest capital and build a business would become my subordinate.
“What if it is difficult to find subordinates?”
“Then you will find an answer even in difficult circumstances. That is, if you are truly fit to become a Sovereign.”
Karoi’s advice began with people and ended with people. If there had not been a twenty-day time limit, I might have followed his advice. However, what I needed now was not long-term foresight but a temporary solution.
“Oh, right. Karoi, do not do that.”
“What do you mean?”
I pointed at the training dummy he had smashed to pieces.
“Do not damage property. We do not have money.”
“What? Hey... What are you talking about all of a sudden? You are the Duke’s son.”
I returned to the study and paced around the room in circles like a hamster on a wheel.
If Karoi, Viten, Thalia, and Lily could not help me, I had no choice but to find the answer myself. After tearing at my hair for a while, I recalled a fragment of my memories from my previous life.
Master and I had wandered the world perfectly well without a single coin. When night grew deep, we slept with rocks for pillows. When the day broke, we gathered wild herbs to eat.
Still, it was not as though we never needed money. Whenever we entered a large city, Master engaged in what he called economic activity so he could buy me tasty sweets.
It was nothing grand. He would hang a sheet of cloth bearing the words Immortal Master Jaheo from a bamboo pole and sell medicine he had made himself.
“You old bastard! Where do you get off doing business without even paying the stall fee?”
“If you have made a profit, you should show some kindness to your unfortunate neighbors!”
Lowly scum from the Hao Sect and the Black Slaughter Sect would gather around us. Yet Master never accepted the quarrels they picked. Even after paying them every coin they demanded, he would simply laugh heartily. The money left over was still more than enough to buy sweets and clothing.
The only reason we could share the profits with such unfortunate neighbors was that the business had done well. How could medicine made by a Daoist who had reached the Incarnation Realm fail to sell?
“Viten!”
“Yes!”
Viten came running in with his red beard flying behind him.
“What if I use my Awakened Ability to make something useful? Wouldn’t people pay money to buy it?”
“Uh... Would that not depend on what you make? Considering Young Master Iden’s Awakened Ability, it would involve fire or water...”
He folded his arms and deeply furrowed his brow.
“What about making and selling ice? The weather is hot, after all.”
“To earn one hundred and ninety thousand baht by selling ice, we would need to freeze the ocean.”
“Or we could cut down trees and make charcoal...”
“That would work if we burned down the entire Northern Forest.”
Every suggestion Viten made was dismissed by Thalia. Unable to bear it any longer, I intervened.
“Think separately from fire and water. Assume I have an ability that lets me make anything.”
“Hmm... An ability that makes anything?”
“Yes.”
“Then I would simply print baht out of thin air. There would be no need to go through the trouble of doing business.”
“Something that makes a little more sense.”
“Uh... What about making a Lava Elemental’s core directly?”
“Under the premise that we need a product to buy it.”
“Then Oradium. We could produce limitless amounts of a metal more expensive than gold.”
“Something used more commonly in everyday life.”
“Then... There is nothing.”
As his ideas were rejected one after another, Viten quickly became dejected. This time, Thalia offered an opinion.
“If I had such an ability, I believe I would sell potions.”
“Potions?”
“They are medicines that heal wounds when drunk or applied. Commoners who cannot afford Divine Magic use them most often, but the market is flooded with fakes. I have seen people who fought with their lives at stake drink fake potions and ruin their lives more than once or twice.”
“How much does Divine Magic cost?”
“It depends on the patient’s condition, but one treatment costs approximately one hundred baht.”
“Isn’t that extremely expensive?”
“It is effective because it is expensive. No matter how tragic someone’s circumstances are, they never lower the price, so commoners joke that if you have no money, you should die.”
Divine Magic was an absurdly expensive service. To other people, Grandfather Colin showering me with Divine Magic just for my amusement must have looked like a lavish money-burning spree.
“Then how much do potions cost?”
“They vary greatly depending on the ingredients. Cheap ones cost one baht, while expensive ones cost more than ten. However, no one knows whether proper ingredients were truly used.”
When Master did business in the castle town, his competitors were not other Daoists but quacks selling panaceas.
They claimed to grind tiger claws into powder, sold stamina tonics mixed with virgin blood, and said the dead had returned from their graves after drinking their medicines. None of it made sense, and their effects were riddled with doubt, yet people were easily deceived by such nonsense.
Listening to them, this world did not seem much different. If anything, the existence of Awakened Abilities would make swindlers even more rampant here.
“Are there potions that cure diseases?”
“Disease potions have the highest demand and the most swindlers. People who use swords are sturdy, so they endure most wounds through sheer grit. But diseases cannot be solved through grit, so they languish alone, buy suspicious potions, or empty out their emergency savings and run to a temple.”
Viten scratched his cheek.
“Actually, the castle town was recently thrown into chaos over disease potions. Various epidemics have been spreading because of the war, and someone deceived people by selling monster shit as medicine.”
“Good.”
I made up my mind.
“Let’s sell medicine too.”
“Do you know how to make potions as well?”
“Of course not. What I intend to make is something else.”
I raised my head and looked at the talismans attached to the wall.