A Serpent's Tale
Chapter 258: First Class, Economic

Chapter 258: First Class, Economic

It took me some time, and I ended up being five minutes late, but because this was my first day, I was excused for my tardiness.

That said, I was now attending my first ever official class at an academy of learning. I’d never gone to a school before.

The place I used to live with my father before he left and my home was taken back by the city was a rather small place. There were probably no more than fifty houses if I remember correctly.

And there was no school either. My father basically taught me everything I ever needed to survive. I never actually learned of any of our race’s customs, nor did I learn much about economics, which is where I was now.

That reminds me, I should probably learn about the former thing so I don’t fuck anything up. It’ll probably be within history, but I don’t really want to sit through all of that just to learn about our culture.

Ooh wait a minute, I could ask for a private tutor, yeah that sounds like a good idea!

That’ll have to come later though, as right now, I was in my economics class, learning all about the system of money.

It was more of an introduction to how it all worked, but I was more than happy to learn all of this as I knew nothing of even the basics of commerce. Everyone else wasn’t as excited, but the teacher didn’t care.

I was actually grateful for this basic lecture though. It taught me that the name our our Empire’s currency was Coil, or Coils.

We had a rather simple monetary system. You had Bronze, Silver and then Gold coins. Above all that was Platinum coins, but those were rare and only really used by royalty and the wealthiest of merchants.

Going back to the first three, copper was split into three simple tiers. Small, medium and large. Each coin requiring at least ten of the previous one.

So ten small Bronze Coils made up one medium one. It was the same going from medium to large.

Then, going from Bronze Coils to Silver Coils, it took one hundred large Bronze to make one Silver Coil.

And a Silver Coil was split into two sizes, large and small. But it was a bit more complicated, as Silver was the most commonly used coin in the Empire as a whole, it had an extra layer to it.

While Bronze was rather simple due to its use for lesser goods that didn’t hold that much value, Silver was used commonly in trading and business.

Both the large and small had three different types. Those types being Quarter Silver Coils, Half, and then a whole one.

For working out the small Silver Coils value, it was rather simple. If one hundred large Bronze Coils made a single whole small Silver, then it was pretty easy to figure out how many large Bronze Coils it took to make a Quarter and a Half Silver Coil.

But when going from a small Silver to a large Silver, it got a little more complicated.

And that was because one whole large Silver Coil was made from ten whole smaller ones. Meaning that a Half large Silver Coil was made up of five whole smaller ones. And a Quarter large Silver Coil was made from two whole smaller ones and a small Half Silver.

Finally, to get to Gold, you required one hundred large Silver Coils to get one Gold Coil.

It was rather complicated to understand, but the teacher drew a sort of graph detailing it on the blackboard, which made it much easier to understand.

And it seemed that some of the other students also started listening partway through since they probably didn’t know about some of this either.

By the time the teacher had finished explaining that and a little about the value of certain things like bread and meat, it was nearly the end of class.

There was only five minutes left so the teacher decided to stop lecturing and let us ask a couple of questions.

A Serpentar raised his hand and asked, "You mentioned a Platinum coin yes? I assume you need a specific number of Gold Coils to make it but I wanted to know how much."

"A fair question. And I’ll tell you the answer. To make one single Platinum Coil, requires ten thousand Gold Coils."

"A THOUSAND!!!" The entire class was in uproar.

And to be fair, it was reasonable after hearing that. Ten thousand Gold Coils to make a single Platinum one. That’s just absurd. Even I was shocked.

Then I remembered, I was filthy stinking rich. I had like ten million in my pocket, even though my Kimono had no pockets. But that begged the question, why didn’t I see any in the inheritance’s treasury?

Surely there should be some there. Also, there should be several tens or maybe even hundreds of people out there at least as rich as I was as of this moment and then many more who were even richer.

When the teacher managed to calm everyone down, I raised my hand to ask about this.

"Teacher, surely there are people out there with more than enough money to warrant owning possibly several hundred Platinum Coils. So why aren’t there such cases."

"Ah! Good question, very good question. And you’d be right, there are indeed several tens of hundreds of individuals and companies out there that could afford Platinum Coils." He answered with enthusiasm as he continued explaining.

"But the thing is, Platinum Coils are more of a symbol of wealth and power, so there are only ten thousand of them circulating within the Empire, so their value is artificially inflated beyond their base cost because of their limited supply."

*DING* *DONG*

But before he could continue, the bell rang. Meaning that our class was now over. As unfortunate as that may be. Everyone else seemed glad now though.

And I can understand why. They all most likely already knew all of this, minus the two small fun facts at the end.

Either way, that was me done for the day. I say that because that was the only class I had for the day.

Meaning, the rest of my day was free to do whatever I wished with it.

And since I had nothing better to do, I might as well get a couple of things done. One of them was about getting myself a private tutor specialised in culture.

But before I did that, I went around the academy to search if there was a specific class dedicated to culture.

Sadly, such a thing did not exist, so, I went to the headmaster’s office to make my request.

When I got there, her assistant was working away at some documents when she looked up and saw me. She then smiled and greeted me.

"Hello there, what can I do for your esteemed person?"

That was... an odd greeting. I’m just gonna ignore it. "Yeah, hi. I was just wondering if the headmaster was in her office right now. I wanted to make a request."

"I’m afraid that Miss Amoranaa is teaching a class right now unfortunately. You can tell me your request though and I’ll make sure she receives it."

"Okay then. My request is for a private tutor that specialises in the general culture of the Empire."

"Culture, eh? I can certainly put your request in for you. Worry not, the headmaster will receive your request. Is there anything else you would like to ask for?"

"No, that was all. Thank you for your help." I bowed to show my gratitude.

"No problem at all. Have a nice day!" She waved me off with an uplifting and cheery attitude.

"Bye!" I waved back and then headed out of the academy to head to my next place of interest.

And after nearly an hour of searching, I found it.

The Adventurer’s Guild.

A place where one could find all kinds of work, from delving into dangerous dungeons, to exploring hidden or secret spaces, or just culling down wild beasts.

There wasn’t much of the latter since wild beasts were actually rather hard to come by. Even rarer was resource gathering since the desert didn’t have much of that.

What there was a lot of was scouting and escorting people to other cities and such.

But I wasn’t here for any of that. I was here to register with the guild. And to do that, I needed to enter and go see a receptionist.

Upon entering the building, I saw that there was a large wall with requests plastered all over it the whole way along, all in different sections. Said sections labelled with ranks, likely meaning only people of that rank or higher could take them.

To my right, was what looked like a pub bar. And quite an enticing one at that, given how it was full all the way along every second with people ordering drinks and hanging out with their friends or party members.

And to the back, was the reception, which is the thing I was looking for.