Five days since the dungeon’s discovery.
Kobold Village was being developed at a rapid pace to serve as a base for dungeon exploration.
Work golems and supplies were being sent through the newly opened road one after another, and the once-rustic village was transforming at a startling speed.
The roads were being laid with cobblestone, and the houses were being rebuilt one by one.
On top of that, factories for processing materials harvested from the dungeon and the mountain on-site were also under construction.
“The village is changing so fast……!!”
Mumul couldn’t hide his amazement as the village remade itself before his eyes.
Come to think of it, Mumul had never actually visited the base.
He absolutely refused to leave the village, village-chief duties apparently demanding it.
So this was his first time seeing golems doing construction work.
“This is what it’s like at the base most of the time.”
“Extraordinary……! Is this how human towns are built?”
“I believe this is a rather exceptional case.”
Makina said it with a faintly exasperated expression.
Golem-assisted construction wasn’t that unusual in cities, was it?
I hadn’t been to the capital recently, but……
Talos-type golems or something similar probably had some general use there.
Nothing on the level of Makina, I’d assume.
“At this rate, there won’t be anything left for us to do.”
“On that subject — I talked it over with Makina yesterday. I was thinking Mumul and the others could get into various kinds of commerce.”
“Commerce……?”
“Right. The golems can handle the basics, so for everything else — running shops, for instance.”
“Running……?”
Mumul stared blankly at me.
Was that really so hard to follow?
I tilted my head, puzzled, and Makina immediately asked:
“Perhaps the Kobolds don’t have a concept of currency, even before we get to commerce?”
“Oh — come to think of it, they did say something about barter. Mumul, do you know what money is?”
“Is that not the metal humans eat?”
“Nobody eats it! We might need to start from the very beginning here.”
I drew a simple picture on the ground with my finger.
Then I used it to explain money to Mumul.
“Money is a tool invented for exchange. Say Mumul goes hunting and comes back with some meat. And say you want to trade it for something. But meat spoils quickly, so you have to trade it fast, right?”
“Yes, meat doesn’t keep long.”
“That’s where money comes in. Money doesn’t rot, so if you convert your meat into money, you can hold onto it as long as you like. And money can be exchanged for anything.”
At that, Mumul’s eyes immediately lit up.
For someone who’d led a village this long, he was clearly a quick thinker.
“How convenient! But how do you guarantee that money can be exchanged for anything?”
“Lord Viktor, as the domain lord, provides that guarantee. The money itself will also be made from metal with real value.”
“Ohhh……!! I see!”
“And working hard to accumulate that money — that’s commerce.”
That should have covered it more or less.
Mumul folded his arms and began to think.
At which point Makina said:
“Your trade with the Elves was originally conducted in magic stones and ore, wasn’t it? Exchanges like that are fundamentally commerce as well.”
“Ohh — yes, of course!”
“Eventually I’d like to bring adventurers to this village too, so for a first business, something like a restaurant — food in exchange for money — might be a good starting point. Or an inn, taking money to house guests.”
That would be the natural fit for a village where adventurers gathered.
And it was also an area where golems were hard to substitute.
Cooking or handling the fine-detail work of an inn wasn’t really what they were suited for.
Makina just bulldozed through those limitations with sheer capability — but that was beside the point.
“I see, I see — I’ll give it some thought!”
“If you need shop premises or anything of the sort, we’ll provide them to start. Eventually we’d like to charge money for those things too, but since everyone’s just starting out with no money yet.”
“Thank you so much!”
Mumul bowed deeply.
For now, we’d try introducing a monetary economy here as a test and expand it to the whole domain if it went well.
At the moment, the Kobolds in my domain were essentially being supported by my golems.
They needed to work toward self-sufficiency.
And for that, economic activity was indispensable.
“Once we have some breathing room, we should build an educational institution too. I was actually surprised that the Kobolds, given their cultural level, had no concept of commerce.”
“They’re fundamentally good-natured. I imagine everything has always run on mutual aid and barter.”
“Given that, the negotiations with the Elves concern me. It would be very helpful to have at least one person with some talent for that kind of thing.”
……True — we had absolutely nobody like that at the moment.
Alicia and the others were good in a fight but probably not great at talking their way through things, and Makina was still learning about matters like that.
I had a bit of an aversion to negotiations myself, given the whole being-expelled-from-my-family situation.
Now that it was clear the Kobolds were no help in that department, having a skilled merchant join our ranks would be a genuine lifesaver.
“Perhaps we could recruit a merchant from the kingdom eventually.”
“But who’d actually want to come out to a domain like this?”
Right as I said that, voices came from the direction of the mountain.
I turned to see Alicia and the others, Lancelot-types in tow, making their way back.
“Ah — the eccentrics have returned.”
“Well I mean, I did just say it but……”
“Hmm? What were you talking about?”
“Nothing at all!”
I scrambled to cover it up, and Alicia tilted her head with a puzzled look.
But she immediately smiled and held out a leather bag.
“Take a look at this. The fruits of our dungeon exploration!”
“Hmm? ……Whoa!?“
Packed densely inside the leather bag — magic stones of all shapes and sizes.
The sight of them put an immediate grin on my face.