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130. Glimpses of a Plan

Five days had passed since we witnessed Vritra’s hatching.

That was when I received a report from one of the Werewolves investigating the strange drug in Kinui. Wanting to hear the full details, I brought Koe-san with me and leapt to Kinui, where we were now being guided to a discreet house by the Werewolves who contacted us.

「My king, he is waiting inside.」

Thanks to Angelina’s clever scheme, they had successfully identified a suspicious individual and requested he accompany them for questioning.

When we entered the house where Shizuku was said to be detaining the man, several other Werewolves were already waiting, tension thick in the air.

「Is Shizuku here?」

「Y-Yes, in the back room.」

And so, who was the true culprit behind selling the dangerous drug for profit?

Tied up and blindfolded in the room was—well, just about who I expected.

「W-What do you intend to do with me!? You said there was a business opportunity!!」

「Guran… so it was you.」

「Hm? That voice—Marge-san!? You’ve come at just the right time! You can prove my innocence, can’t you!?」

「…Alright, take off the blindfold and untie him.」

The man was Guran, the grain merchant. The most trustworthy man in town when it came to money—and completely untrustworthy in every other respect. Shizuku shot him a sharp, skeptical glance as he called out to me for help.

「If you’re truly innocent, that is.」

「W-What are you talking about!? Are you referring to the time I paid with bad coin in that one deal…? No, no, that’s a common practice, surely!?」

「You’ve been rather meticulous, haven’t you.」

There’s a concept known as good money and bad money.

Coins may carry the same face value, but their quality varies slightly depending on where and when they were minted. Naturally, people want to keep the purer, higher-quality coins and spend the ones with more impurities—the bad money. It’s technically illegal, but enforcement is difficult since people can just claim, ‘Oops, it was an accident’.

I wouldn’t have guessed Guran was separating coins so meticulously given the scale of his business, but now that I think back, when I first met him, he was counting coins—maybe he was sorting them even then.

「Can you blame me!? Especially lately, with the fluctuations in the gold market and all this counterfeit money circulating, I’ve been in danger of losing a lot of money here!」

「Counterfeit, huh. If you’re saying it’s a lot, then there must be quite a bit in circulation.」

「Quite a bit, indeed… Damn those forgers, making counterfeits that are too well made…」

Generally speaking, gold and silver coins aren’t made of pure gold or silver. Those precious metals are too soft and easily damaged, so alloys are used—mixing in tin, copper, and such—to increase durability.

…Or so they say. In reality, it’s mostly to reduce production costs. Otherwise, they couldn’t mint enough coins, and it might even cause gold and silver to flow out of the country. But add too much filler, and the coin’s credibility—and by extension, its value—plummets. So purity is a delicate balancing act.

Things get even trickier when counterfeiting comes into play. Flooding a rival nation or territory with low-quality fake coins to undermine their currency is a time-honored form of economic warfare—an ancient trick dating back to the earliest use of metal coins.

「So the counterfeit quality has improved… Because of what happened in Vita Tama?」

「Exactly. The common folk and even clueless nobles were giddy over the gold windfall, but when it’s scattered around like that, cleaning it up is a nightmare.」

「Marge, what’s the problem with that exactly?」

「Plenty, as you can see from Guran’s state.」

Guran was clawing at his bald head, cursing both the counterfeiters and whoever backed them. He must’ve been through hell.

During the S-Rank Dungeon Golden Land of Crimson Luxury’s dungeon break in Vita Tama, a flood of gold burst forth. Most of it was recovered by Duke Abik, but as with all things, some slipped through the cracks. It’s said that part of it even ended up being used for counterfeit coins.

「Normally, counterfeit coins contain very little actual gold or silver. It’s a game of how convincingly you can fake the appearance and weight without using real gold—and how well you can spot the fakes. That’s how it’s always been.」

「And this time was different?」

「When word got out that a ton of gold had surfaced, nobles—fearing the price would drop—rushed to sell their gold and buy up other metals like silver, copper, anything they could get…!!」

「…Yeah, that’d wreak havoc on the market.」

「For a brief moment, gold was actually cheaper than copper. Absolute madness… If Duke Abik hadn’t intervened in the market, who knows what might’ve happened.」

So, for a while, gold flooded the market, and other metals like silver, copper, tin, and lead became scarce. As a result, counterfeiters couldn’t get enough base metals and ended up using purer gold instead—ironically creating fakes that were better than the real thing.

It’s absurd, but counterfeiters have some strings attached, too. Mainly deadlines. Always deadlines.

The market has stabilized since then, but that doesn’t mean the fake coins have vanished. Guran let out a heavy sigh at the thought.

「So here’s the issue. Right now, there are genuine gold coins, bad-quality fake gold coins, and fake gold coins that are better than the real ones all circulating together. Even if it’s higher quality, a fake is still a fake. If you don’t know when it’ll be declared unusable, you can’t trust it.」

「That is complicated… but can they really spread that far? The volume must be nowhere near what the state mints.」

「They’ve been spreading fast lately… especially in recent days. If I don’t sort them carefully, I can’t do business. Still, in a way, the mix of good and bad counterfeits has balanced things out.」

「So good counterfeit coins can revitalize the economy, huh? That’s a twist. Anyway, let me just ask—」

「Hmm?」

「Back when you were employing Shizuku… you didn’t pay her with some cheap counterfeits, did you?」

「…………O-of course not. I would never do that.」