章 103: Cash Injection
Dom stood outside the Doctors Clinic in the Merchant District, looking at the chaos as the Hittites were checked over by Hua Tou, Phoebe, Hua Xiu and Lady Wu. They would register at the School, then be escorted in groups by some of the Hoplite's who didn't have their spears with them so as to not seem intimidating. Once escorted one of the Doctors or support team would escort them in and question them individually on any health history, before giving them a check over. Hua Tou was the busiest as they had tried to have the women treat the women and the men treat the men, Hua Tou was the only male Doctor in Riverside.
Dom walked in, escorted by Gregorios and Hector, Phoebe noticed him straight away and waved at him with a tired expression.
"Hey Lord Lazarus." Phoebe said tiredly, "Are you well, is there anything you need?"
Dom looked and saw that she had another queue growing and he didn't want to interrupt her. However on her saying Lord Lazarus, all those inside turned and looked at him in awe, as the experience they had received so far had been otherworldly.
"I'm fine Phoebe." Dom replied, "I'm just here to check on Ophelia!"
"She'd appreciate that." Phoebe replied, before pointing at a door down the corridor. "She's in there, she should be fine to go home today."
Dom nodded his head in thanks as he headed down in the direction she pointed, away from the staring eyes of the new Villagers of Riverside. As he reached the door he knocked loudly to announce his presence.
"Come in!" He heard a sweet voice say from the inside. He opened the door in response and walked in to the very clean room, with a simple bed in the centre and several bunches of flowers that were on a bedside table. Ophelia was sat up in the bed, reading some large pieces of parchment, beside her was her mother Helena who was sat on a small chair.
"What are you reading?" Dom asked as he headed in.
"Oh hey, Lord Lazarus!" Ophelia said, passing the parchment to Helena, "It is some numbers that we have been tracking at the Docks on numbers of fish caught, mother has just told me that you have upgraded them."
"We have!" Dom replied with a smile, "I think the Docks are one of the most important parts of our potential growth."
"I'm happy you agree." Ophelia said, before giving Dom a cheeky smile. "So why have you come to visit poor little me?"
Dom rolled his eyes before responding, "I just wanted to check that you hadn't decided to try and drown yourself again."
"Not yet." She replied seriously, "But I will make sure if I try it again, I'll only do so if you are nearby."
Dom turned to Helena, who was pretending to read the parchment and ignore the two of them as they spoke.
"We are holding a feast tonight Helena." Dom stated, "You are obviously invited and you can bring a plus one."
"Is Himilco invited?" She asked in response, putting the parchment down.
"He will be, Advisor Shang Yang is dealing with it." Dom replied.
"Great, I'll bring Ophelia then." She said with a grin, "It's time to get her out of here and back to some normality."
"Then I shall see you both later then." Dom replied, before turning and taking his leave.
"Is that all the time we get?" Ophelia asked as he was leaving.
"I'm a very busy man." Dom laughed in response as he left the room and headed back outside.
He walked around and Riverside for a while with Gregorios and Hector as he watched the many people moving around. He thought of some of the Kingdom Building games he had tried in the past and just couldn't compare the realism to anything else. Even down to the excitement on people's faces, or the tears of joy when they discovered something new, the emotions of the characters were well created and lifelike.
After a while Dom headed back towards the Town Centre, where he planned to arrange the feast for the evening. He suspected that the other Heroes would be back from their tours or tasks soon and he wanted to have a chat with them all before hand. The first place Dom headed to however was the Finance Office.
Dom sat with Shang Yang, Lucius and Crassus in the Finance Office. Hours had passed since Crassus had arrived in Riverside. Lucius and Shang Yang had updated him on the current situation and he had been impressed with their ample amount of wealth that had been gathered. They had taken him to the Financial Office, where he had grabbed the Abacus and some parchment, before he decided to head straight to the Bank and inspect the vault.
From the moment Crassus had arrived in the vault, he had sat there and counted and weighed every single item that was inside, counting the gold from the simple jewellery to the larger golden bars. He had then placed values beside the weight based on his current understanding of the situation. He then brought in Cassius, Makali and some of the other merchants and started assigning a value based on their understanding of the continent and the amounts in the vault.
Aristarchus has also joined him and was currently working as an assistant, making sure to take notes and write down the same amounts that Crassus called out so that they could cross check the paperwork later. Shang Yang had sat in and watched the whole situation and had advised and supported where he was needed. After they had finished this, Crassus, with visible excitement had called the meeting they were all currently sat in.
"As you are already aware, there is a lot of gold in Riverside's vault." Crassus started, "But I'm not sure if you understand just how much."
As he said this, he pulled out a small gold coin from his toga that he had hidden and placed it on the table. The coin had the image of a crowned creature, with human like features and tusk like teeth. The image wasn't clear, but it was obvious from the engraving that it wasn't human.
"This coin is one of many that was brought back from the vault." Crassus commented, "This is probably the smallest one that I could find. I have based this on the measurements that Lord Lazarus has given us and shall say that it weight 20 grammes. I would say that 100 copper coins make a silver coin, and 100 silver coins make a gold coin. 10 copper coins should be enough to buy enough basic food for a family of four to survive a day."
Everyone leant forwards and looked at the small coin, being well aware that this was but a drop in the ocean of gold in the vault that was now full of gold from the Ancient Underground City.
"Now, a town of this size I would expect to have maybe 500 kilograms of gold, or 25,000 gold coins." Crassus continued, "And that would be a rich town at that! A small kingdom possibly 1,000,000 gold coins, but these would be in constant influx. This would be around twenty tonnes of Gold. Now we have around thirty tonnes of gold, so around 1,500,000 gold coins, which I must say is a fantastic number. I think that is about 10% of my personal wealth back in Rome"
"So we are as rich as a medium sized kingdom?" Lucius asked, his mouth agape.
"No, we are as rich as a rich small kingdom or a rich large Province." Crassus replied with a laugh, "however, there is currently no currency that has been injected in to Riverside to be in circulation, once this happens the number will drop massively, even though the money is still there, we can't use it."
"Does that value include the value of the jewels?" Dom asked.
"It does, I have valued them based on my experiences compared to gold, and feedback from the Merchants. I haven't however included the crown in that, as Shang Yang said that we were to keep hold of that. There is no way that your men could have carried thirty tonnes of gold and stored in the bank vault, most of the value is in the jewels." Crassus replied with a smile. "Now of course, all of this wealth is pointless if it isn't spent. You need to invest your money to grow your economy."
"And how should we do that?" Shang Yang asked, already knowing the answer as he had spoken with Crassus about this earlier.
"Start supplying things that can be purchased, and then give salaries to your villagers. Even better, give a small amount of money to everyone that arrives in Riverside, give a larger cash injection to the business owners, as a loan that they can pay back. We can also work on supplying salaries to those that work for Riverside direct, or pay per project." Crassus continued, "There are plenty of way, but what I am saying is, we should start to distribute this and we will see rewards in the future."
"How much are we looking to do this with?" Dom asked, more than happy to get a head start.
"Realistically, currently we need to use less than the 25,000 gold coins a town of this size would have. We put most of it away for trade with external partners and these auctions that Advisor Shang Yang has mentioned to me. We also need to keep a large amount back for emergencies and also for the future growth of Riverside, if we have possibly sixty civilians and nearly thirty warriors arriving a day, that is ninety people we need to give a cash sum to daily. Plus on top of that you will need to give a salary to your army which is also important." Crassus replied with a huge smile on his face, "But I wouldn't worry, you are very rich for now, and by the time you have got close to spending all of that money, I would have increased it exponentially."
"Thank you Crassus." Dom said seriously, slowly getting up from his seat, "I am grateful for your knowledge and expertise, I'll leave this with you to rollout."
"Fantastic, I'll speak with your Blacksmiths tomorrow and have them create a mould for the coins, we can then melt down some of the gold coins with these horrendous faces on them and start to circulate them." Crassus replied, also getting up and stretching his back after having been leant over counting for hours, "However, It may be more prudent to use less gold content in first instance, but leave it with me, you'll have a currency in circulation by the end of the week. I just expect a high wage for my talents, as I expect so to will your other leaders."
"Well, now that we have discussed this, let's go and get ready for the feast." Lucius said with a smile as he headed towards the door and held it open for everyone.
"Yes, let's." Dom replied, "I want all of the heroes to meet me an hour before in my lounge on the second floor. We will then proceed to the feast afterwards."
"Very well my Lord." Crassus said with a gentle bow, "I may head via the Legionary Warriors Hall on the way if you all don't mind."
"No, that's a great idea, I'll come with you." Lucius said.
"As will I." Shang Yang agreed, "I'd like to insect how Centurion Pullo is getting on with his training regimes."
"See you all shortly then." Dom said as they all left the Office Block and headed towards their destinations.
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