Orc Lord

After a long debate, during which several other city residents came to offer their ideas, we finally decided on the preliminary design of Babylon’s currency. I held in my hand the very first prototype and passed it around to make sure everyone was satisfied.

The shape was flat, like a coin, but the edges were hexagonal instead of rounded. I insisted there be a small hole through the middle. Stringing valuable coins on a thread was a long-time fantasy of mine; I’d always lamented that my home country used solid coins. Well, it bothered me less and less as money moved to digital credit and I rarely had to deal with physical funds, but I’d still resolved to make coins have holes in them if I ever got the chance.

As for the size, it was about quarter-sized from my perspective. For Giji, it was nearly palm-sized, and it only seemed about as big as a penny when Bazarath held it. It should be a pretty good size for the races currently living here. For Giants, it would be inconveniently small. We decided to just cross that bridge when we come to it.

For the material, we used the same sea-green crystal that my palace is made of. Apparently, that substance is called Myralifite, but more commonly known as sealight crystal. It commonly grows in caverns deep underground, where there are buried water deposits. The crystals grow up until they expose themselves to the surface, then transfer light down. It allows for more complex ecosystems to form deep underground, and alerts descendants of where vast underground water deposits are located. It’s a fairly sturdy crystal that transfers light beautifully, and it has a wonderful color. Information courtesy of professor .

We made two more prototype coins while we were at it: a circular coin, worth one unit of currency, and a pentagonal coin, worth ten. The first hexagonal coin was decided to be worth fifty units.

Besides the number of sides each coin had, they were identical. To distinguish the coins further, we added some carvings. Fiara had suggested we depict my three evolutions to becoming a Queen Orc, and brother had sarcastically supported the idea. Unfortunately for him, nobody seemed to care that he was being sarcastic, and they joined in with his support. So, each coin has a pair of disembodied tusks on the front, along with the value of the currency in large font. On the back, the circular coin has a spiral going out from the center, to denote an Orc’s curly tail. The pentagonal coin had a pair of wings crowing from the middle, to represent the Dominance Orc’s key feature. The hexagonal coin just had a ring on the back. Combined with the hole in the center, it was supposed to look like my magic eye.

For regular people, coins going up to fifty units should be plenty, but we’ll likely need to make a higher tier for where nations and businesses are involved. We’ll leave that for later.

“What should we call our currency?” I offered. “Like, I spent 50 blank on this dagger?”

“Coins?” Giji offered.

“We called them cores where I lived,” Balig said.

I stroked my chin. “The common things to base a currency’s name on would be the material, the country of origin, or,” I faltered, realizing that most currency names on Earth didn’t make much sense if I stopped to think about it. “Um, those two, I guess.”

“So, something like Babylons?” Bazarath clarified.

“Yeah, or sealights, I guess.”

“Sealights doesn’t sound bad,” momma mused. Others murmured in agreement, myself included.

“Alright, we’ll call them sealights.”

It’s good that I taught everybody basic math. They should be able to use these coins competently as soon as they’re ready for circulation.

After that meeting, one of the spinning wheels I made broke down, so I had to quickly go fix it. The women have made a few hand-lengths of cloth already today, which is more than I thought they’d get. I’m looking forward to my new clothes.

After that, to cover the demand there will be for sealights, I started researching my Golem creation spells. The basic spell crafts a vaguely humanoid thing with broad shoulders, a neck-less lump for a head, and hands like boxing gloves. They can move for a certain amount of time, depending on how much Magic Power I feed them; or they can work and recharge on a cycle, as long as I put a magic core inside of them. In that case, the intervals of work and rest are decided by the amount of Magic Power in the core.

For now, I made one earth Golem and put a fairly ordinary magic core into it. It kind of just stood around, but I could get it to do simple things by ordering it. They seem to respond to the verbal commands of the person who made them. I’ll see later if it’s possible to transfer the control.

Next, I took out the magic core, cast the non attribute version of to engrave it, and put the core back in. The Golem can still move around and stuff, but now it will obey me if I tell it to cast . The spell appears from wherever the core is stuck, so I quickly moved it to the Golem’s hand. After that, I crossed my fingers and had the Golem pick up another magic core, and then cast light on it, and the spell formation was properly engraved in the second core. The only issue seems to be that casting magic makes the Golem tire out faster.

I was half celebrating to myself, but then I realized that I needed the Golems to carve the spell pattern for into the sealight coins. They weren’t made of magic cores, so they couldn’t be enchanted this easily. I basically wasted some time.

Not all of it was a waste, though. I found another magic core and created a very specific spell formation to go inside of it, then I did the same thing two more times, and made three new Golems. After sticking the new cores into the three Golems, I ordered them all to cast magic. The first Golem produced a spell, and the next three produced a circular, pentagonal, and hexagonal sealight coin, respectively.

After producing only a single coin each, the three Golems immediately shut down to recharge. I figured making the whole coin at once was too inefficient, so I made another Golem and “programmed” it to produce chunks of sealight in the exact right amount. I revised the other three Golems to simply shape the crystal into the coins. Like that, they were able to make a dozen coins in one go, easily.

I hope it’s fine to just create money like this. When exactly should I stop before there’s too much and it ruins the value? Well, none of these are enchanted yet, so they’re still close to worthless.

I moved the Golems into a building designated as the royal bank and treasury, which has gone completely unused until now. I told them to just keep making coins when they had the energy. After that, I was going to immediately move on to the next experiment I’d been keeping shelved, but Durghan came and found me first.

“There you are, Lord Vyra.” He was panting slightly, having sprinted over from the nearest teleportation pad the moment he spotted me.

“Something wrong, Durghan? I was sort of in the middle of something.”

“It’s just,” he took a second and his breathing quickly returned to normal. Having them run while marching was good training, apparently. “You haven’t given any orders since we returned. Right now, the people who just got back are resting, but there are plenty of others who aren’t really doing anything. That is, um, Lord Rigdam sent me to ask about tasks to keep the non-combatants from getting bored, and I also think it looks a little strange when you, Fiara, Oolga, and the other high-ranking people are the only ones working hard.”

“I’m not ruling them well, is what you’re saying. No, I’m not ruling them at all, right?”

Durghan flinched and lowered his head. It’s weird looking down at him; I remember when he seemed so huge.

“I’m not blaming you. I’m not good at this. I keep thinking that they’ll somehow organize themselves even if I don’t do anything, and that they’ll dislike it if I try to micromanage their lives. Humans are sort of like that. How was it when you were a chief, Durghan?”

Why am I asking? I don’t care about it. What a waste of time.

“Hmph,” Durghan straightened up and put on a thoughtful expression, his tensed facial muscles relaxing. “I forced the lazy men to go out and hunt, and held back the aggressive women from attacking outside of mating season. Other than that, I let people do what they wanted, but nobody did anything that wasn’t necessary. Besides Olga and I, there was no one who trained themselves, and she was the only one who would go out and explore. Fiara was the only one who would go out of her way to learn things. Nobody else cared to search for things they couldn’t see, and they would only bother to care if it was put in front of them. Nobody complained much when I forced them to do things, so I don’t think it bothered them.”

“Right,” I sighed, then straightened up. “The Goblins should be occupied with managing the fields. The slaves should be subdued and docile, meaning I only have Orcs to placate at the moment. Alright, follow me. After a quick experiment, I should be able to do something about it.”

I feel a little strange, yet it’s natural. I think I’ll have another talk with momma later.

I lead Durghan back to the teleport pad, mentioned to head to the cold storage building, then warped away. Inside the cold storage, I manipulated the carts, until a familiar corpse appeared: it was Azza, the supposed magical genius among the Small Baphomets. I pulled her body out of the bin and laid it on the ground. By placing my hand on her forehead, I sucked out all of the Magic Power that remained in her core, then I healed her body to remove any damage accumulated from fighting or the cold. Lastly, I activated my Law power through the synergy of and .

Durghan had followed shortly after me and stood toward the wall, watching with uncertainty, but trying carefully not to be a distraction.

“Live,” I commanded. Then, more specifically, “Resume your vital functions.”

I disabled my skills and watched carefully. Without any sound or sudden movements, the deceased woman’s chest started to calmly rise up and down. Durghan’s eyes went wide, and he stood off from the wall. He took a step back, probably without realizing it.

I put my fingers on Azza’s wrist, feeling a pulse and steadily rising body heat. One of her fingers twitched with unconscious muscle movement. Nodding in satisfaction, I patted the side of her furry face. The woman’s brow and snout scrunched up and she tilted her head, then her eyes flickered open.

“Where…?” she muttered quietly in the Fomor language. Her eyes slowly focused, until it seemed like she could see me. “Who are…” her eyes narrowed at seeing someone she didn’t recognize, then they settled on my beautiful ivory tusks.

“O-Orc?!” She tried to sit up, using her arms to boost herself, but her body was still weak and shaky.

“Calm down,” I gave my most reassuring smile and kept my voice soft. “I’m not going to hurt you. Can you remember anything?”

“That’s…” her eyes darted around. She only knew she was in a dark building, with strange carts, and there were two Orcs in here with her. “I remember that the Orc Lord was born, and he was picking off our villages one by one,” she glared. “Myself and other chiefs came together to build an army to fight back, but they used to destroy many of us all at once. I spotted your master, so I went to fight him, but his blue and red concubines kept getting in the way with their magic. After that, I,” she trailed off, seemingly having trouble remembering.

Her eyes shot wide open, “That’s—! No, I...” Any semblance of calm was gone, and her weakened limbs were shaking. “Why can’t I use magic?! My skills are—?! My Magic Power is—?! I-I can’t talk to the spirits!” She looked at me and roared, “What did you do to me?!”

“Relax.” I tried to keep my expression calm and comforting, but my lips couldn’t help widening at what was showing me. The experiment had gone exactly as I expected. Really, I couldn’t have asked for a more perfect result. “I’ll help resolve,” I showed my teeth unintentionally, “all of your confusion.”

Name: Azza

Age: 35 years before death; 0 days after death

Race: Living Dead; Soulless

Skills (Embedded): 0/0 skill slots.

N/A

Skills (Learned):

N/A

Blessings:

Law of Life (Living Dead)

Curses:

Soulless (Living Dead)

Status:

Body: Healthy

Heart: Agitated

Mind: Agitated

Soul: N/A

[Law of Life: Through Law Power, the host’s Body has been revitalized after death so that it can live on without an animating soul. All memories and ego are retained through the reactivated Mind and Heart. This blessing will not stop life from being ended a second time, but it can be reapplied as often as the Law user is able.]

[Soulless: Due to the lack of a Soul, the host loses all access to the S system, and all related systems, rendering them unable to learn or embed skills. Evolution, reincarnation, and other transformations involving the soul are impossible for the host. The host’s Race will forcibly change to reflect their soulless status. Previous blessings will be removed. Future blessings cannot be obtained.]