"We don’t need rock spirits," she said, looking up at the Dragon. "We have a furnace."
Zarek looked down at her. He understood imdiately. A slow, smoldering smile spread across his face.
"You want to lt it," Zarek stated.
"I want you to liquefy it," Roxy corrected. "We need to build a mold. A cast. We pour the liquid gold into sheets, and then we punch out the coins. Or we cast them individually."
She turned to Syris.
"Syris, you know how to mix stuff. Pure gold is too soft. We need to mix it with a little bit of copper or silver to make it durable. Can you figure out the ratio?"
Syris nodded, his weakness forgotten in the face of an intellectual challenge. "An alloy. Yes. I can calculate the precise mixture to ensure hardness without losing the luster."
She turned to Kaelen.
"Kaelen, you have the strongest grip and the steadiest hand with a hamr. You are the Press. Once the coins are cool but still soft, you strike the stamp into them."
She turned to Torian.
"And you, Rian. You are the Quality Control. You know gold better than anyone. You make sure every coin is perfect. If it’s too light, we lt it again."
She walked back to the center of the room, standing before her makeshift class. Her eyes were bright, her posture regal. She wasn’t just a Luna managing a household anymore. She was an Empress building a dynasty.
It tasted good on her tongue at the thought of it.
Why didn’t I think of this before?
[You were busy fucking everything you see.]
That’s actually all on you; if it were left to , I would be fucking only Zarek currently.
[...]
"We aren’t going to wait for the world to catch up to us," Roxy declared, slamming her pointer stick into her palm. "We aren’t going to beg the Serpent Clan for respect. We are going to buy them out. We are going to make our territory so rich, so advanced, that they will be begging to sell us their swamp just to get a taste of our power."
She looked at the gold bars glinting in the firelight.
[TheFinancialGod clicks his tongue. You can even create your own technology. I would advise getting an iron cauldron from the system shop, it might cost a little.]
"We don’t need a factory. We don’t need a mint."
She gestured to her mates, the Dragon, the Tiger, the Wolf, and the Basilisk.
"We have the fire. We have the tal. We have the strength. And we have the brains."
I am going to invest my money to gain bigger later.
[TheFinancialGod nods, that’s actually a very good idea.]
The Iron-Wood cabin transford.
The dining table was pushed against the wall. The rug was rolled up and banished to the corner. The center of the living room beca the Foundry.
"We need a workflow," Roxy announced, pacing the floorboards in her thick fur socks. "Zarek, you’re the Furnace. Kaelen, you’re the Mold Master. Syris, you’re the Design and Quality Control. Torian, you’re the Supplier."
"I am the Bank," Torian corrected, clutching a gold bar possessively.
"Sure, Mr. Bank," Roxy winked. "Just hand over the bullion."
As the n began to move, setting up the heavy iron cauldrons and gathering the tools she bought, a small tug on Roxy’s tunic stopped her.
She looked down. Drax stood there.
The four-year-old looking Dragon boy was looking up at her with hope and excitent. His golden eyes were wide, and he was holding his little toy hamr, a wooden thing Kaelen had carved for him.
He was seeing the n move, and he also wanted to do sothing.
"Mama," Drax said seriously, puffing out his chest. "I help. I make the shiny."
Roxy’s heart lted, but she also knew that molten gold was roughly two thousand degrees of danger. She couldn’t have him near.
"You want to help?" Roxy asked, crouching down.
"Yes!" Drax nodded vigorously. "I am strong like Dada."
"You are," Roxy agreed. She looked around, her mind racing for a task that was essential but safe. Her eyes landed on the pile of raw gold nuggets and old jewelry Torian had dumped on a cloth.
"Okay, Drax," Roxy said, guiding him to the pile. "I have a very special mission for you. You will sort the gold..."
Drax gasped. "Sort?"
"Yes. We can’t lt the big bars with the small chains. It lts unevenly," Roxy improvised. "I need you to separate the big chunks from the small chunks. Can you do that?"
Drax saluted with his hamr. "Yes, Mama! Big. Small."
He may not have understood her foreign words, but he knew big and small.
He sat down imdiately, his expression shifted to intense concentration, and he began sorting the treasure very seriously.
"Mama! Help! Help!"
A chorus of high-pitched voices erupted. The triplets, Axel, Onyx, and Iris, waddled in. They saw Drax working. They saw the Daddies moving heavy things. They wanted in.
Of course, the little ones would want to join in too, how did I even forget about them?
Axel tried to pick up a heavy iron tong and imdiately dropped it on his foot (luckily, it was unheated). "Ow!"
"No, no, no," Roxy swooped in, scooping Axel up before he could maim himself. She corralled the three toddlers onto the sofa, which had been pushed to the "Safe Zone."
"You guys are too small for the heavy lifting," Roxy explained, wiping a smudge of dirt from Iris’s cheek.
"But, want help!" Onyx whined, reaching for the shiny gold.
"I know," Roxy soothed. "But every team needs morale. You three are the Cheer Squad."
"Cheer?" Iris tilted her head.
"Yes! When Daddy Zarek lts the gold, you clap! When Daddy Kaelen pours it, you yell ’Yay!’ You are helping there."
The triplets looked at each other. They nodded solemnly.
"Yay!" Axel tested it out, throwing his hands up.
"Perfect," Roxy kissed his nose. "Stay on the sofa. If you touch the floor, the floor becos fire. Understand?"
"Fire!" they squealed, pulling their legs up.
With the workforce organized, the production began.
Kaelen had brought in a slab of soft sandstone and so dense river clay. Under Syris’s direction, the Basilisk was sitting in a chair, sketching designs on parchnt, and Kaelen began to carve the mold.
They didn’t understand what they were doing, but under Roxy’s direction, they were able to work faster.
"A simple circle," Syris instructed, pointing with a long, clawed finger. "With the imprint of the tree. Do not make the details too fine, Wolf. Gold is soft; it will blur if the lines are too thin."
He was actually doing a very good job.
[He might be weak, but he actually has the brains.]
"I know how to carve," Kaelen grunted, his chisel chipping away at the stone. "I carved the rocking chair, didn’t I?"
"A chair is for sitting. A coin is for comrce," Syris retorted. "Accept Correction."
Kaelen glared at the snake, but Syris whistled his gaze away from him to check sowhere else.
anwhile, Zarek prepared the fire. He didn’t need charcoal or bellows. He held the thick iron pot in his hands.
"Ready," Zarek rumbled.
Torian, looking pained, the idea of lting his gold made his heart ache so much, but he dropped three heavy gold bars into the pot anyway. Syris tossed in a few scraps of copper wire to create the alloy.
"Heat it," Roxy commanded.
Zarek closed his eyes. The air in the room shimred. His hands turned white-hot, but his flesh didn’t burn. He channeled his dragon fire directly into the iron.
Oh my, so he could do that? I thought he only needed to breathe fire into it.
[He is made of fire, every part of his body.]
Inside the pot, the gold began to sweat. Then it slumped. Then, in a srizing display of physics, it collapsed into a pool of glowing lava.
"Oooooooh!" the triplets chorused from the sofa, clapping their hands. "Shiny soup!"
"It is beautiful," Torian whispered, leaning in, his face illuminated by the amber glow. "Liquid Gold."
"Ready the mold!" Roxy shouted, feeling the adrenaline spike.
Kaelen placed the two halves of the stone mold on the table, clamping them together with iron bands. He left a small hole at the top for the pour.
Zarek tilted the pot, and a stream of molten gold, bright and deadly, flowed from the lip of the pot. It hissed as it hit the cool air, diving into the hole of the mold.
A loud popping sound echoed through the room, followed by a plu of steam.
"Is that normal?" Torian asked, backing away.
"It’s cooling," Roxy said, though she bit her lip. "Let it set."
She was kinda nervous since this was her first ti doing it; if not for the information that the system provided her, she might have never tried this right in her living room imdiately after deciding on it.
But she was excited, and she was craving success.
And her mates were working hard so they could see her excited smile and laughter again.
They waited. Even Drax stopped sorting to watch. The triplets busied themselves with small gold nuggets that Roxy had given them to keep them busy.
Five minutes passed. The stone mold was hot to the touch, but the red glow had faded.
"Open it," Roxy ordered.
Kaelen grabbed the tongs and pried the iron bands off. He tapped the stone with a hamr to loosen it. The two halves split apart.
The "coins" fell out onto the table.
And everywhere turned silent.
They didn’t look like the coins she had drawn on the board. They didn’t look like coins at all.
They looked like golden blobs with no design on them.
The surface was pitted and rough, like the surface of the moon. The edges were jagged and incomplete, where the gold hadn’t flowed all the way to the rim. And worse, there were massive bubbles trapped inside, making them look like Swiss cheese.
Torian picked one up. It crumbled in his hand.
"It was a failure." Roxy sighed in disappointnt.
Who said creating anything from scratch can be perfect on the first try?
"Did we do sothing wrong?" Zarek asked with a tilt of his head as he studied the ruined coin that also disintegrated in his hand.
The triplets, sensing the mood, lowered their hands. "No yay?" Iris whispered sadly.
"Don’t worry," she promised them. "The next ti would be a charm."
User Comments
0 comments from readers