Reincarnated as the fourth son of a noble and tamed an SS-rank dragon-Chapter 58: Print Money

Darius’s plan was to offer very cheap products and thus make a high profit from the number of sales. His idea made a lot of sense, but he had a very bad idea. He spent a lot of money on the prizes and on organizing the event, so all the effort he put into sales seemed to have been in vain.

At no point was he writing down what he was spending and what he was selling. Nyme took care of that part with the others.

One day Darius went into the vault room and asked for 30,000 gold coins, Nyme put them in a coin purse and handed it to him.

Now, considering all the money in the vault, he wouldn’t be able to pay the entire prize pool, nor the village officials, nor Baron Bali.

Darius sat thinking about what he could do, he didn’t have any money left.

What was left was to try to increase sales, but even if he did, he would still be in the black. All he had to do was create more money, even though he wanted to avoid it.

"What about the money you took from the Baron?"

Darius gave the jewels, weapons, and paintings as gifts. He kept the money, but he spent it on the beds for the inn, as well as the whole structure to create the rooms, he was spending far more than he could afford. At no point did he worry about cutting back. In fact, he’s been spending for a while now, Kaly never said anything because he didn’t see any need, Nyme didn’t want to bother Darius.

But it’s all his fault.

"I don’t have that money anymore, what I need to do is create more money."

"Didn’t you say that this could harm the economy?"

"Yes, I did, but it’s either go bankrupt or take out a loan."

What he was referring to was inflation: if there’s too much money circulating, prices can go up and everything becomes more expensive - in short, money is worth less.

But there are many ways to combat inflation.

The first idea to alleviate the situation was to increase the prices of food and soft drinks, while potions were the products he didn’t plan to change the price of. That’s why he preferred to only increase the price of food.

"Can’t that go wrong?" Nyme asked.

She was right, Darius had already talked to her about it. Raising the price of a product doesn’t mean more profit, because people can choose not to continue buying because of the increase. Just as lowering the price doesn’t mean more sales. Economics is a mixture of mathematics and the personalities of the people involved.

"You’re absolutely right, all that’s left is for me to produce more money."

Kaly was watching Darius, she didn’t want to interfere, so she let him make all the decisions.

He started creating some coins until he reached a point where the sum of the coins and the loss equaled zero.

Officially, the factory had no money. But that was temporary, soon they would have more money, at least once they started making some sales.

He created lower coins and some gold ones, creating coins with high values could unbalance the whole economy.

He didn’t think so before, but at one point he realized that it was better to hold back, he literally had a money printing press, and in the wrong hands it would be a danger.

He hired some employees and paid them a considerably high amount, so his monthly expenses were high, and depending on how much he spent he would end up in this state.

"I’ll start to rein in my spending."

Nyme didn’t believe that, she believed that he would at least try, but at the same time, she knew that he would have some other idea and end up spending on it.

Just like six months ago, when he bought armor for his father’s army. Or when he bought presents for his mother.

Little by little, Darius became a consumerist, but it made sense when he was just accumulating money, but little by little this accumulation diminished with his spending.

Lilian overheard part of the conversation, she was going in to clean the safe, it smelled of dust, and as there were no coins on the shelves, it would be much easier to clean it herself.

Slaves have no wages, although there are ways for them to earn money and one day gain their freedom if they are debt slaves. Or slaves who were sold by their parents.

Darius thought that this was absurd and so he paid a much higher salary than any servant earned, in fact, not even the Castle servants were as well paid as the slaves. But they didn’t want their freedom, the idea of earning what they earned and being able to spend it on what they wanted was enough, even if they were forced to follow orders, it was the best they thought they could get.

The Guild had several missions to slaughter orcs, and Darius went there and accepted as many as he could.

The price of producing the food increased with the deal he made with the Guild, he had to buy the meat from the in-house butcher, so the cost more than doubled. Like the bread he bought, it went up a little, but he couldn’t do anything about it, since demand was high and he couldn’t afford to stop buying from those who wanted to sell.

For this reason, profits were plummeting, he didn’t know how long he could hold out, and while he was accepting the missions he also decided that he would raise the price of food by 1 coin for food and 1 coin for drink anyway, because the sugar he bought wasn’t that cheap.

Even though he delivered the king’s fruit, the price was still high due to the production.

In short, Darius was getting deeper and deeper into trouble. At first, it was fun, but when he realized what he was doing, he realized that the situation was very serious and he was just an amateur who was playing at being a merchant.

His amateurism wasn’t so bad, he never really wanted to be a great merchant, he just jumped at the idea when Kaly wanted to create the factory and as they had money they ended up doing it.

The very factory they used cost more than 30,000 gold coins to complete all the furniture and the magic crystals for the barrier and the golems.

The forest was calm, no monsters were appearing, which was too bad, since he needed to shoot down more than twenty orcs.

Orcs always walk in packs, which usually consist of four orcs. But the forest seemed to have been cleared, nor did the slimes appear.

Slimes were the most common monsters in forests, they were found almost everywhere. As they were weak and posed no threat, adventurers used to pass them by without killing them, but sometimes they would multiply a lot and the Guild would create missions to slaughter them.

The money came from some villages and from the government itself, which knew the dangers of letting slimes reproduce unchecked.

Darius continued deeper into the forest and no sign of any monster, he had to go back and report this to the Guild, other adventurers were also reporting the same, it was as if the whole forest had been abandoned.

Even insects were missing, one adventurer was worried about the mission, so he agreed to finish off some locusts. Another agreed to hunt a type of blue butterfly for a nobleman.

Elara sent word that she would send a group to investigate and that all the missions would not expire and no fees would be charged for failing to meet the deadline.

This was good, but at the same time, it was bad for Darius, who needed the money.

One question kept coming up: how could monsters disappear overnight without anyone noticing?

In the past, Darius and Kaly had cleaned up the forest, but they hadn’t wiped them all out, only the ones that had appeared with the coming of the Demon Lord, due to the concentration of mana and their departure from the dungeons.

Monsters are born just like animals, but the cycle is shorter compared to animals and humans, so they end up multiplying faster.

Another way they are born is inside dungeons, the mana makes them appear out of nowhere, this is a fact that nobody can explain, but they have accepted it because it is routine.

That’s why the accumulation of mana makes them appear out of nowhere.

But if the mana runs out, they won’t disappear, they’ll still be there and they’ll just emerge from natural reproduction.

The forest was too big for all the monsters to disappear, if they migrated someone would surely notice and ask for help.

But that didn’t mean that they had actually disappeared, they could just have gone deeper into the forest or gone to a part where no adventurers were going.

Darius just accepted that it was an unlucky day and decided to go back to the mansion.