Thinking about it for only a moment gave Ed his answer. Of course, they needed currency!
'Currency makes everything simple' Money was essential for any civilization. It was a tell-tale sign of advancement and evolution.
Money had two simple purposes. One was the obvious one, to pay for stuff. The second was to simplify the paying for stuff. Currency was oftentimes easier to transport than boar meat as a random example and was also much easier to assess its value.
The boar meat would always be relative to the person you were trading with. Maybe they don't want to accept boar meat then what do you do? Starve? Well, maybe not since you have boar meat but with the money scenario, the person wouldn't decline. Money was always useful.
That was because it could be used to buy everything. Even if the orc were to accept your boar meat somebody else might not take it and in that case, they'd have something that could rot before they had the chance to finish it.
'Coins don't rot' Dragons didn't wake up amidst piles of rotten coins after taking a nap following their meal of a full-fledged knight.
The main problem now was how to get these benefits across to the orcs.
"Ed?" Sharog said waving her hand in front of Ed's face.
"Sharog, I think it's time for your lesson" Ed said apparently having come up with a plan.
"Is it?" Sharog asked back in return. There were no clocks so it was reasonable doubt.
"Yes, let's go!" Ed said before sprinting off towards the town hall.
"Ho- Hold up!" Sharog shouted.
"Your first lesson is catching up to me!" Ed shouted back before reaching the town hall and shutting the door on his way in.
Sharog's eye twitched.
"How can you say that at the finish line?" Sharog found it a bit shameless but she still smiled in the end. She then chuckled, it was admittedly a bit funny.
Once inside the town hall, Ed began by teaching Sharog about the alphabet.
"So the sign on Goe's is written like this because…" Ed had his reason for doing this too. If their civilization was going to upgrade, the rate of literacy had to go up. While Sharog knew about magic runes, she did not know the human written language.
'The orc language is and will always be relative to this body' Teaching it to the orcs would just isolate them from the other floors in a future where the residents of different ones could commune with one another.
'A distant future' But one within sight, the lizardmen were being set up in the following floor after all. W was in charge of that and Ed trusted that himself could get the job done.
"Ed, I don't think... I can't learn all this so quickly!" Sharog shouted, her head was spinning from all the mumbo jumbo.
Ed was of course well aware of that fact. He had an ulterior motive for trying to get Sharog to understand so much information so quickly.
'I need the instruction skill' The skeletons were able to quickly retain information allowing Ed to earn the instruction skill in his skeleton body but Sharog and the others weren't pseudo consciousness beings like the skeletons. They did have a brain and they did have bodily functions and emotions.
"It's ok, that was just an introduction, you didn't need to learn anything from it" Ed said reassuring her. Yet for some reason, her face seemed to have paled.
"J- Just an introduction?" Sharog felt that the introduction went on and on for a fair chunk of the day. To be precise, this introduction was actually 15 or so minutes of unintelligible noises. An absolute nightmare.
"Of course, but we'll leave that for another day" Ed replied before standing up from his seat. Sharog's face which looked pale suddenly regained color. If it was just a short moment each day like this she could bear with it!
"Let's instead go to the smithy" Ed said causing Sharog to nod. Indeed, it was much more important for her to handle things about the settlement than to waste time learning letters. She had been promised she'd be learning magic in the first place! The odd language came out of nowhere.
Following Ed into the smithy with a look that suggested Sharog now appreciated life just a little more, the two of them were greeted by the orc smiths.
"Ed, going to teach us anything new?" One of the orcs asked. Ed softly shook his head in response. The orc was disappointed as they watched Ed retreat with Sharog towards the storage area.
This was where carts of ore were loaded.
"What are we doing here?" Sharog asked Ed who was grabbing orc iron from one of the earthen carts. Did she have to come along for smithing?
"This is your next lesson as well as the next plan for the settlement. Currency." Ed said while pointing at the raw orc iron.
"Cu- Currency?" Sharog said causing Ed to nod.
"This is what the orcs will use to buy the alcohol, you know the poison drinks" Ed decided on raw ore. Why? Well, it wouldn't rot and it also had the intrinsic value of the effort put into mining it.
That didn't mean that everyone was to become miners for easy cash in the future though. For one if the currency was introduced so were wages. The mine would be owned by the governing body of Sanctuary rather than the community.
"But why?" Sharog said confused.
"It's an incentive" At the moment, there were still many orcs that lazed about. Since orcs were naturally gifted warriors, some of them had the bad habit of never training. That used to be the only thing they could do in Sanctuary so it was understandable to get bored with it.
'They could be mining, working on the boar farm, the orchard, smithing…' There were lots of roles now that these orcs could play but those still lazing were still getting fed and getting housing they had no need to work.
That wasn't to say Ed would be removing these benefits, rather what would be happening was that he would hide enticing things behind a paywall.
"Incentive?" Sharog probed further, clearly intrigued.
"Yes, if they have to pay not just for a good drink but also for getting upgrades from me, they will start to work hard or think of ways to make more ore" In the scenario of getting more ores the orcs would start to innovate. What that would look likely was beyond the scope of Ed's foresight.
But what mattered was that the economy would be self-sustaining at that juncture and Ed could weed out who was getting upgrades with ease. While the lazy could still be lazy, that came with the risk of losing out on benefits and becoming bottom of the barrel in terms of strength.
"But… why am I here again?" Sharog asked.
"Because it's not just ore" Ed said before starting to melt down the ore with the system flame.
"It is also coins" The raw ore would be too hefty to carry around conveniently. While it could still be used as a crude base value, it was not convenient for everything.
The way Ed pictured it, those with raw ore would pay the smiths to turn the ore into coins.
'I'm not sure if that will affect the economy' Ed was no expert on the rate of inflation and finances as a whole. Whatever the case, everyone and everything had to start somewhere.
The kinks could be ironed out eventually.
***
The marshlands were not stationary while Eon and Brennan got reacquainted, Kurgher was still making steady progress in regard to expanding the Mensch tribe. It now boasted unprecedented numbers.
A staggering 554 lizardmen existed in the Mensch tribe per the estimates of the new Mensch administrator Kurgher had appointed. Whether the number was 100% accurate was not something that mattered at this juncture. The numbers were not pulled out of thin air.
In fact, the odds that it undersold the actual total population was higher than it having been overshot. This however brought a problem.
"We've covered a majority of the known land area excluding that of the hydra god" Another talent that Kurgher appointed as a sort of secretary reported. This was his right-hand man.
"The majority? Why not all of it?" Kurgher asked from where he sat. It was a high chair, a leader could not be lower than his subjects.
"The water is too deep and there is no visible land, we can't venture those areas without your permission great leader!" Kurgher's right-hand lizardman responded.
"Hmm…" Kurgher didn't know what to make of it. Wasn't this too sudden? Were there really only this many lizardmen in the area? That was highly unlikely.
While Kurgher was not aware, the dungeon's floor became progressively larger. It was also a thriving ecosystem. The number could not be less than the orc plains. So his suspicion that something was up, while unfounded, was not against reality.
"There has to be more… Get some boat lizards to find more land" Kurgher's fun could not be so soon over. The feeling of having complete power would not go away if he didn't find new land, but the feeling of growth certainly would.
It was this greed for more and more that Eon would benefit greatly from, but the latter was currently tending to the issue that was Brennan Bosque.