A piercing, high-frequency shriek erupted from Lyn. She threw her entire weight onto the pile of gold and silver treasures freshly unloaded from the heavy trucks, acting like a territorial hen protecting a nest from a predator. Her twin fox-tails lashed with a violent anxiety, nearly striking the frame of the humming electric arc furnace behind her.
“These are antiques! These are masterpieces! Look at this golden candelabra—it’s two-hundred-year-old Elven craftsmanship; the inscriptions are still perfectly legible! And this diamond-encrusted crown? It’s a Pago family heirloom from RustWater Port!”
Lyn clutched a solid gold chalice inlaid with rubies, her tail trembling so hard it blurred. Tears welled in her eyes as she stared at me with a look of profound betrayal. “Alex, you’re really going to hurl them... all of them into that pit? This is a crime against Liquidity! It’s a massacre of wealth!”
Positioned beside the roaring maw of the furnace, I adjusted the heavy asbestos-lined insulation on my gloves. Before me sat a literal mountain of wealth—loot siphoned from the veins of RustWater Port. Hundreds of kilograms of gold, silver, jewelry, and a chaotic variety of low-purity coinage. It was enough to purchase ten of our original refugee camps.
In the eyes of an engineer, however, this wasn't wealth. It was non-standardized feedstock.
“Lyn.” I walked over, ignoring her protests. With a steady, mechanical pressure, I pried the golden chalice from her fingers as if disarming a child. “Tell me the exact weight of this vessel.”
“Roughly... half a pound? Maybe 200 grams?” Lyn blinked, her voice wavering.
“And the purity?”
“It... it looks like gold. Maybe they added copper for the Yield Strength? Or lead for the Ballast?”
“Precisely.” I tossed the priceless artifact over my shoulder without a second glance.
The chalice hit the high-temperature conveyor belt with a dull, final thud, gliding toward the open, sparking mouth of the furnace.
Under Lyn’s horrified gaze, the two-hundred-year-old masterpiece softened in a microsecond, its structure collapsing into a puddle of undignified liquid before merging with the white-hot molten current.
“No standard weight, no certified purity, and zero anti-counterfeit measures.” I turned to Lyn, my voice flat, holding the cold resonance of industrial logic. “This isn't currency. It’s metal trash. Remember this, Lyn: in a collapsing world, value belongs to the one who controls the Standard.”
One hour later. The Minting Floor.
The air carried the acrid bite of ozone and the heavy scent of vaporized lipids. Those crowns, scepters, and rings—the symbols of old-world glory—had been reduced to a uniform state of matter. They were poured into standardized graphite molds, cooling into heavy, cold, and aesthetically sterile blocks of Sky Bullion. These were the Anchor Assets, destined for the deepest reinforced vaults to serve as the ballast for our credit system.
The true operation was occurring on the secondary line.
A 50-ton hydraulic high-speed press, meticulously calibrated by Sarak, slammed into silver-white metal sheets at a frequency of one strike per second. Each impact felt like a mechanical heartbeat vibrating through the floorboards. New coins, featuring precision-milled anti-tamper serrations on the edges, were spat out like a metallic waterfall into iron bins. The resulting sound was a musical, high-decibel staccato of Industrial Output.
I retrieved a single coin. It radiated a lingering thermal heat. Under the overhead LED lights, this metal—dirt-cheap on Earth—emitted a luster brighter than silver and colder than platinum. Thanks to our electrolytic refining and high-pressure stamping, the Dimensional Deviation of each coin was held within 0.01 grams. The relief of the Gear-Tower on the obverse was so sharp that the windows were visible under a magnifying loupe. The reverse was engraved with the definitive unit of the new era: [1 KW·h].
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“Stunning...” Sarak muttered through her loupe, her ears twitching in rhythm with the press. “Boss, this metal is a dream. Light, rust-proof, incredible Ductility, and the Electrical Conductivity is top-tier. Are you certain people outside value this more than gold?”
“Outside these walls, only a god can refine this metal,” I said, flipping the coin into the air and catching it with a sharp clack. “But here, as long as the turbines are turning, this is an infinite well of wealth.”
I looked at Lyn. The Finance Minister was staring blankly at the bins of aluminum coins. Her merchant instincts were finally overriding her grief for the antiques. She realized these unassuming discs were the equivalent of a Tactical Economic Strike.
“Lyn, prepare the ledger.” I handed her a high-denomination 100-Credit disc—a heavier aluminum alloy embedded with a microgram of Aether-dust for holographic verification. “Skyreach Bank is officially open for business. I want you to buy every scrap of raw material coming out of RustWater Port with these. Ore, leather, and slaves—whom we will immediately convert into a salaried labor force.”
“Tell the merchants: in Skyreach, we only recognize the Kilowatt-Hour.”
Lyn gripped the coin, feeling the cold, industrial texture of a true sovereign currency. “You’re going to... suck in all their gold, lock it in the cellar, and give them this... ‘Electrolytic Mud’ in exchange?” her voice trembled, her eyes igniting with a manic brilliance.
“It’s called Seigniorage, Lyn,” I said, a dark smirk tugging at my lips. “And it’s the first step in our total economic annexation of this continent.”
Days later. Skyreach Central Plaza.
The dawn had barely broken, yet a line of thousands snaked from the entrance of the newly established Skyreach Bank. Workers clutched a month’s worth of labor slips, their eyes filled with a mix of anxiety and desperate hope. When Bjorn used his massive mechanical hand to receive the first heavy bag of clinking aluminum coins, the plaza erupted.
“Look at the shine!” Bjorn roared, hoisting a coin toward the rising sun. The silver-white radiance was blindingly pure. “This is ‘Mithril,’ boys! I heard only the Dwarf Kings could afford silver that doesn't tarnish!”
“And it buys power!” a goblin apprentice shouted, pointing to the reverse. “It’s written right here! This disc charges my pneumatic wrench for an hour! Or buys two hours of central heating in the baths!”
To these wasteland survivors, gold was a pretty lie—it couldn't be eaten, worn, or used to warm frozen fingers. But these discs represented Energy. They represented the Purchasing Power of an invincible industrial system. They were a tangible form of security.
I watched the fervor from the administrative balcony, looking down at the crowd. “Do you see it?” I asked Zayla, who stood beside me.
“That is Credit. Before, they trusted gold because it was rare. Now, they trust aluminum because it represents our Collective Industrial Capacity.”
Zayla’s gaze was heavy with awe. “You turned stones into gold, Alex. Sometimes I think you’re more of a sorcerer than the men who wave staves.”
“Science is just a form of magic with a foundation in Mathematics, Zayla.” I pushed my glasses up, turning my gaze toward the eastern horizon. Somewhere beyond that skyline, the "Black Cloud" Mykra had warned about—the Storm Clan fleet—was closing the distance. Selena was coming.
“We have the gold, we have the grain, and we have the guns.” I gripped the railing until the metal groaned. “Let Her Majesty see what happens when an engineer builds a heaven in the middle of her hell.”
Next Chapter Intro: The golden convoy made its triumphal entry as resource metrics redlined into the surplus—but at the crescendo of the cheers, the shadow of the Storm Queen’s fleet had already eclipsed the heavens.
Question of the Day: In a sub-zero wasteland where thermodynamic failure equals death, which currency do you bet your life on?
(Click to choose)
?? The Sky-Credit (Aluminum Coin).
Result: Rational Utility. You prioritize caloric intake and thermal stability over historical prestige. You’ll have a heated room tonight, even if your savings are functionally "electrolyzed mud" to the rest of the world.
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