Chapter 328: Goddess of Wealth
Translator: imperfectluck Editor: Pranav
Gnomes could be found wherever there was money to be earned… or a Goddess of Wealth merchant association. Fine, there actually wasn’t much difference between the two. At any rate, these two existences would almost always be present as long as there were gold coins to be had.
The Goddess of Wealth, Beyana, was a Goddess who ruled over Wealth and Business. However, unlike most other churches, many of her priests were also merchants on the side. In fact, most of them had been merchants even before entering the church.
Beyana favored successful merchants who were able to make a lot of money. She particularly favored brand-new business models and markets and made that into the most important requirement for obtaining her divine favor. Any successful business transactions would help expand her church’s power and influence. Let’s not mention the most common services like selling Holy Water or curative potions—every Wealth priest would have a bag filled with all sorts of general items for sale. In fact, Beyana even created a dimensional storage spell just for her believers’ convenience so that they could carry around lots of items to sell to anyone at any time.
However, unlike gnomes that always caused trouble for everyone, Wealth priests were widely welcomed. They weren’t like the gnomes who only cared about their personal wealth. They often helped create wealth for others as well. More than anything, Beyana favored successful new business markets and products, so the best Wealth priests didn’t even care about how much material wealth they possessed. They would spend all of their wealth in order to ensure their businesses flourished.
You’re saying that this is a bit difficult to understand? Let me give you a classic example. There was this incredibly remote area called the Icewind Valley, which was so cold that it would be frozen over for more than three hundred days per year. Only home to powerful ice beasts, such a frigid location meant that no crops would possibly survive. However, there was an incredibly delicious fish that was endemic to the frozen lakes. Nobody would ever go traipsing to such a distant, frosty location which might take more than half a year just for eating some delicious fish.
Yet, a Wealth priest just happened to discover that this particular fish had crystal-clear bones, just like real crystals. The few locals that lived in this remote location had the custom of crafting these fish bones into artisanal crafts, such as fishbone combs, which had their own unique smile. So this priest advertised the beautiful fishbone combs as having excellent effects on one’s hair and spine if you used it to comb every day, and did advertisements like inviting famous domain lords and so on to wear these crystal fishbone accessories while attending important parties. Then, he increased the price even further by only selling the accessories at auctions and forcefully succeeded in making these fishbone accessories that were originally considered dirt cheap and worthless by the locals into an incredibly rare and valuable product that was difficult to purchase with money alone.
Merchant groups started sending their people to this remote location every year in order to obtain the fish’s crystal bone products, which helped bring wealth and flourishment to the locals. Thus, a new business market was born. This originally ordinary Wealth priest named Fen also received Beyana’s divine favor and became the head priest of Beyana’s largest territory of loyal followers, the Oris District.
Perhaps Wealth priests might not necessarily be rich themselves, but they would never lack money. Looking at it from another standpoint, the more people made transactions with each other and spent money, the more powerful Beyana’s Divine Concept would become.
To be honest, Beyana was also famous for loathing war. To her, a safe and uninterrupted market was quintessential. This was why all of Beyana’s priests would actively work to prevent any wars from occurring, unlike the priests working for the Gods with the Divine Concepts of War, Plague, Violence, or Slaughter. Those Gods’ priests would only go around everywhere and fan the flames.
If war broke out everywhere, Gods with more “literary” Divine Concepts such as Literature, Music, and so on would also become weakened. In fact, it was even possible for them to become so weak as to lose their Godhood. But, these Gods and their followers all lacked the ability to take action, making Beyana one of the biggest advocates against war.
However, during the previous Gods’ proclamations, Beyana had actually joined Ayer’s faction and ended up declaring war together with the other Ayer Faction Gods. This astonished countless people.
Yet the Goddess of Wealth stood to benefit more than almost any other God.
Her Divine Concept of Business included the concept of “Money.” Any currency guaranteed by some government or organization that could be used to exchange for goods or services counted under Money. And only after there was Money would additional Concepts such as “Finance,” “Futures Trading,” and “Stock Market” be born. Only all this would further increase the power of her overall Concept of Wealth. To put it another way, if Gods really existed in my home world of Earth, where so many people cared about material wealth more than anything and businesses and economies were flourishing so well, the Goddess of Wealth would likely be the Main God who ruled over Earth, much like the God of Holy Light here in Eich. However, in this world, business transactions were only at the level of the most basic buying and selling or products and services. Beyana was merely a mid-ranked second-rate Goddess here.
“A currency that everyone used” was something super important to the Goddess of Wealth. This would only be possible after businesses expanded to a certain extent. However, it would almost be impossible to use only one unified currency in this world. After all, there was no such a thing as a country that would be eternal—countries were constantly warring against each other, destroying old countries and creating new countries and currencies. Rather than a currency, precious metals were what people trusted in the most to trade for whatever they wanted. However, precious metals were obviously inconvenient to carry. While some countries had indeed tried using paper money before, nobody ever dared to keep it. There were a few kingdoms that forcefully tried pushing their citizens to use paper money, but either only a small minority actually used paper money or the kingdom would eventually lose all its credit and go bankrupt, ending in disaster.
Yet, ever since the Gods’ proclamations, there was now an additional, brand-new currency in the world that was “trustworthy and obtained purely as a result of your own hard work:” Justice Points. This seemed like just another ordinary currency, but Justice Points would actually be the very beginning of a creditable and universal currency. They were guaranteed by the True Gods, after all, and not any country’s government. Without the True Gods’ guarantee, Justice Points would be just as worthless as any paper money in this world, simply another “currency with imaginary value.”
The natural way things worked in this world would gradually change. Beyana, who had obtained additional power thanks to Justice Points, even invented several Justice Point-related Divine Arts, helping her high-ranked Wealth priests become walking Justice Point exchange stores. This type of Divine Miracle in turn helped her to obtain even more believers as well as gratitude and fame. Of course, all of this helped her steadily increase in divine power.
In fact, just the invention of the “Justice Points exchange system” helped her concept of Wealth expand in influence and power.
Of course, providing this type of service required the Wealth priest in question to directly communicate with Beyana. This would be impossible unless the Wealth priest had enough divine favor and power so only her high-ranked Wealth priests were capable of acting as living Justice Point exchange stores.
The moment I returned to the campground, I saw that a long line was waiting outside my team’s tent. And the reason for the long line was that Betty was working as a Wealth priest, serving as a Justice Point exchange store for all these adventurers.
A silver light glowed in his eyes, while his typical smile was replaced with an emotionless iciness. There was a pitch-black void-like dimensional storage portal right next to him, continually distorting the surrounding light.
He merely listened to whatever it was that an adventurer wished to purchase using Justice Points before extracting the required Justice Points from the adventurer’s Hero Armlet. He would then give the desired item to the adventurer by taking it from the dimensional storage portal. His speed was very quick, and he made zero mistakes.
After seeing this situation, I knew that all my worries had been for nothing. Just Betty alone provided absolutely necessary services for all the adventurers here, so as long as he was present, the adventurers would never treat his team too badly.
And so, I directly turned around and left, walking outside the campground by myself.
From a certain standpoint, this was a bad habit of mine. Even if I had expert scouters with me, I still liked to personally see the situation for myself. Indeed, this was partly because I didn’t completely trust in others. Yet, this so-called bad habit of mine had already saved my life on numerous occasions.
But before I even left the campground, I met someone who looked a little familiar. His name was… was… what was it again?
“K… Kait?”
“My name is Kaise, Kaise Elowen.”
At least it seemed like he was quite well mannered. His smile didn’t even flicker when I wrongly called his name.
“Do you have any business with me?”
“I would like to chat with you if you’re currently free.”
It was obvious that Kaise wanted to find out more about me. However, I felt too lazy to be playing such little games with him.
“I’m busy. I’m just about to go out on an investigation.”
“Perfect, I was intending to do the same thing as well. Why don’t we go together? Come, Black Whirlwind!”
Kaise activated the enchantment on his black gloves as he said so. A sudden plume of dark smoke arose and a jet-black gallant horse walked out from the smoke. With red eyes and a bloodthirsty expression, it would tower over any normal warhorse by at least a head. The light that illuminated him would become strangely distorted.
“A Nightmare warhorse?”
Nightmare warhorses were incredibly rare. They had bloodlines partly passed down from hell’s Nightmare beasts and were far more durable and faster than any ordinary warhorse. They even had several magical racial talents. When they were galloping at high speed, their ability to distort light could even create several illusions, making enemies not know the real target. Their bloodthirsty natures helped them remain fearless in front of any enemy. The most convenient part of all was that they were part of the Nightmare bloodline, which meant they could be contracted and easily summoned at any time.
“Yes, my mercenary group coincidentally obtained ones during a previous task in Teresier. Wouldn’t you agree that it’s beautiful?”
Kaise gently patted his Nightmare horse’s head and intimately scratched its neck as he smiled at me. For some mysterious reason, I suddenly recalled a certain Saint-ranked Beast Tamer who had been forgotten who knows where but would probably jump out by himself sooner or later. At the very least, if only Beifeng was here, I wouldn’t have to go out personally investigating.
However, I had to reassess Kaise’s power level upon seeing him summon his steed.
For people in knight-type job classes, more than half of their combat potential depended on the steed they possessed. Nightmare horses were excellent warhorses, and although they don’t possess any overwhelmingly powerful abilities, their ability to create illusions was quite practical as it would cause most enemies to miss many attacks. This would improve Kaise’s combat strength by more than thirty percent. The fact that Kaise, a magic knight, was able to obtain such a priceless steed also indicated at his power level.
I almost wanted to laugh out loud. Kaise was obviously trying to show off his power level in order to impress me, but he was also trying to do it in a matter that wouldn’t make him seem too condescending.
“Sure. You can come together with me if you’re capable of keeping up. Erebella!”
However, the strange part was that I waved my hand and nothing appeared. Nothing appeared when I attempted to summon her.
“Haha!”
The magic knight Kaise was trying his best to conceal his laughter, which made me feel rather awkward. Still, I was rather confused. Although Erebella had recently been sleeping in my Frigidwinter Earth and saving her energy to continue evolving, she should have still been able to hear my summons.
“Hmph, you haven’t let me out to play in such a long time. I bet you forgot about me.”
Alright then, I had recently been staying in cities for the most part. There were indeed no good opportunities to let her out. No wonder she was complaining.
“I apologize. I’ll remember in the future to take you out on regular walks…”
For some mysterious reason, I recalled how Ah Bao would throw little tantrums whenever I forgot to walk him for a long time. This felt really similar.
“Your promises are completely unbelievable.”
Isn’t she forcing me to use my trump card against her now? Did she really think that I didn’t know what she really wanted?
“Strawberry sherbet, banana sherbet, ten orders of each…”
“I want my fill every day for an entire month.”
From a certain standpoint, ever since the “invention” of fruit-flavored sherbets, Frigid Nightmares now had a new fun hobby. Apart from enjoying the flavor of fruit sherbets, what they really loved the most was how the fruit juice would dye their ice bodies. The feces-colored yellow or green Frigid Nightmares were truly hard on the eyes. And the most difficult thing to accept was that they even enjoyed changing their physical shapes to go along with their new colors, which would commonly result in a feces-colored Frigid Nightmare who was now also shaped like a gigantic pile of feces even taller than a house… Fine then, this was a truly uncomfortable topic. Let’s not discuss it any longer.
“Alright, it’s a deal. Hurry up and come out already. Just look at that young brat snickering at me over there. I’m losing so much face.”
The moment I finished speaking, I was flying up in the sky. Rather than being on a saddle, I was being clutched by a tremendous claw.
Above me was currently a tremendous creature that blocked out all the clouds, a crystal clear gigantic ice dragon. Although her physical appearance was somewhat similar to bone dragons, she appeared far more powerful and holier.
“An ice dragon transformation? Erebella, you’ve evolved?”
“No, I’ve merely recovered. Your Frigidwinter Earth is basically just like an Ice Elemental Plane. I feel as comfortable as if I’m at home there.”
“Like your home? Like an Ice Elemental Plane?”
I faintly felt like I was perceiving something important, but now wasn’t the time to think too deeply about this. Judging by the look of astonishment on the magic knight who was on the ground, staring at me as I left him behind, I probably needed to first work on the explanation I’d have to give him upon returning.