Chapter 95 – City Surveillance System and Food Stamps

After Lysfer left, Louie lay quietly on his mountain of gold. Rather than sleep, however, he was in deep thought over his next course of action.

A trip back to Earth was already necessary. While there was still enough food to satisfy the population, he needed more supplies to continue the city’s development.

‘But transportation will be difficult…’

Louie now desperately needed the spatial equipment that people spoke of. Preferably one that could allow him to put in tens and even hundreds of thousands of tons of items.

The supplies that he required could no longer be found at sea. He now needed to explore developed countries.

The problem was that spatial equipment of the required size was of divine class. Those were things that even Gods couldn’t easily recreate, making them impossibly difficult to obtain.

‘And in order to find the energy source to stimulate my growth, I would have to cause more trouble on Earth. It is very likely that some country has already found them and collected them. Trying to find them with just ordinary means is going to be very difficult… Moreover, since I have already created appearances of a dragon and Cthulhu on Earth. I can’t just stop it.’

‘But to cause more trouble on Earth, I would need more complex and varied spells, which simply aren’t easy to learn in an instant…’

‘Forget it. There is always a solution to a problem. Since I have to go back to Earth no matter what, I should wait until the army recruitment finishes. Once the military training gets on the right track, I’ll go back to Earth once more! After I bring back a lot of wasabi, I can develop the bare bones of the magic legion. Dragon City is currently safe, but I’m afraid it won’t take long for outside forces to understand my real situation. Once that happens, the real danger will certainly appear.’

‘Even true Gods can fall. People won’t take me lightly once I transform into a demigod dragon, but I shouldn’t lower my guard. I can’t relax just because of the current stability. If the humans gather enough powerhouses, they can definitely surround me and kill me.’

‘Improving my own strength and speeding up the city’s construction is the path I have to take!’

As a dragon with dreams, Louie could not be as lazy as his fellow dragons. His goal was to become a true God, the Dragon God. Even if he had godhood since he was reborn, he could not take things lightly. If he was killed with this many advantages and cards, then Louie could only call himself useless.

“Hoooo…”

After preparing his plans, Louie lightly exhaled. He focused on his mind, causing countless stars to appear. These stars were actually points that formed an outline of the city. This was how Louie normally patrolled the city, by placing [Protective Detection] throughout every corner of the city.

As long as he moved his mind to any of these points, he could monitor any part of the city at any time.

Although Louie needed to learn spells step by step, he was a dragon. His mental powers exceeded that of mages. This allowed him to be able to use multiple [Protective Detection] spells at the same time. He was like a surveillance room with many open security cameras, allowing him to see the whole city at any time.

This was his surveillance system.

Whenever he was bored, he would use it to peek at the people. Watching the people live happily and build up the city was a great satisfaction for him.

Everything in this city, be it people or things, were all his property!

He first switched to the beastmen side and saw that the beastmen were holding a small dinner party in their own style. Watching them sing and dance, he nodded in satisfaction and moved on to look at other corners of the city.

…….

Creak—

The dilapidated wooden door was pushed open and a tall man walked into a small tavern. There weren’t too many people in it, and most of them were civilians from the neighborhood. They looked up at the man and just averted their eyes, continuing their own chatter.

The man walked up to the old bar counter and called out to the owner of the bar, “Praise the dragon! The lord is finally going to lift the economic ban and allow commercial activities. Heaven knows how much I’ve been needing a drink!.”

The owner of the raven was a slick old man, he took a look at the man and just smiled, “Praise the dragon! Wyatt, what are you drinking today?”

The man named Wyatt snorted and said, “What else do you have here? Now that the city is running low on supplies, you probably only have ale here, right?”

The boss wiped a cup in his hand with a rag and laughed dryly at Wyatt’s words. Then he placed a cup of ale in front of him, “You also know that there recently ain’t been any business with the outside, so the price of wine is a little more expensive; three copper coins!”

“Well… it used to be two copper coins,” Wyatt muttered, but obediently took out a stack of bills, from which he took three and handed them over. Each one had ‘ten cents’ printed on them.

The boss frowned and refused to take them, “I don’t want those. Don’t you have copper coins from the Subila Empire?”

Hearing the boss’ words, Wyatt’s gaze suddenly chilled and sneered, “Haven’t you heard of the lord’s new law? From now on, no one can reject the new currency as a means of payment. Of course, you can try, but once the patrolling soldiers come, you may need to cough up ten times the price of three copper coins that I have to pay you.”

The owner’s expression changed and he hurriedly took the three paper bills. He smiled ingratiatingly, “I’ll take them! Of course, I’ll take them! I’m a good law-abiding citizen!”

This was Louie’s new law. With the basic recovery and expansion of Dragon City, he couldn’t make the people stop their work anymore to go to the construction site to move bricks.

Other than some employed civilians, Louie had restored the city’s business operations.

Unlike in the past, Louie was no longer giving food to the civilians. Rather, he had set up a system of food stamps. Each family received a food stamp according to the number of people in their family. This way, Louie could allocate food sufficiently and without creating a surplus.

The citizens could only use food stamps and money to buy food. Each person could buy a limited amount of food. Louie’s government had also begun to employ people with pay. Because there was a lot of readily available food, it was no longer expensive. As long as there were hands and feet working, it was possible for the people to earn money to buy food every day. If people had a surplus, then they could resell them, thus forming commercial activity.

The reason why Louie used food stamps to limit the purchase of food was that he understood these people didn’t have enough to eat in the past. If the price of food was low and they had money left over, they would definitely spend it on buying food reserves. If that happened the economy would begin to stagnate.

This was the same as the real estate market. Residents would buy houses on loan, causing the real estate money to freeze and distorting the economy.

As for the issuing of paper money, Louie wanted to construct an economic system that belonged to Dragon City. With the basis of having a large amount of food, he possessed a substantial asset base that he could exchange for money. As a result, Louie was equivalent to a bank that issued money and determining product costs. As long as he had food, he would not need to fear a price collapse or bank run.

This way, he could use paper money to take all the gold and silver from the people’s hands to fill his nest. When doing business with other countries, he could then have them exchange their coinage for paper money if they wanted to buy items from Dragon City.

As long as Louie’s regime was stable, it would always be possible to redeem currency for food. Because there was only one city, the system would not have any problems since the money circulated internally.

After he gained an abundance of gold and silver he could properly peg the price of paper money to his reserves. This would further strengthen the financial system.

As for the anti-counterfeiting measures, they weren’t implemented yet. At the moment, he was just holding a trial issue. When he obtained a large amount of wasabi and had Marches refine them into potions, he could coat a small amount of ‘magic origin element’ on each sheet so that it would be hard to make counterfeits. Only mages could counterfeit them, but the cost of doing so would be so high that they wouldn’t be able to succeed, cutting them off from doing so!