Kristina finishes talking with the kitchen staff and returns to the attendant's desk at the guild's main hall.

  "Did your talk with them help you?" Kreiger, the guild master, asks as they approach. Nicolas, the guild attendant, stands beside him.

  "It did, thank you for allowing it," Kristina answers. I had Ernst write down everything, so we will be able to analyze it more deeply later.

  "Glad to hear that. Anyways, I have used my authority to raise your ranks, here are your new cards," he hands all of the cards to Kristina.

  Her new card now displays her as A rank, while Rose's and Ernst's show them as B rank. "Why am I the only A rank?" She gives Rose and Ernst their respective cards.

  "Without any feats, I wouldn't be allowed to raise your rank to anything above B. However, Cheer Guard reported that you were able to destroy a very large goblin encampment single-handedly, that gives me enough pretext to raise your rank to A. " Is that really all it takes to be A-Rank? "I'm afraid your companions ranks may only be raised to B until they achieve some feats of their own."

  "That makes sense... Thank you for everything, we will be leaving now," Kristina, Rose and Ernst head for the exit.

  "Safe travels," Kreiger waves goodbye.

  As Grand Fang leaves the building, Nicolas turns to the guild master. "So, what did you think of them?"

  "I didn't feel any ill-intent from them, but it's better to stay cautious for now... Still, make sure to treat them well, we wouldn't want to get on their bad side."

  "Acknowledged, sir."

  "I still want to check out food shops when day comes, but I'm pretty confident I want to grow potatoes at least," Kristina comments.

  "Huh, why potatoes?" Rose asks.

  "They are able to be grown practically anywhere and they are also very stable, a bad harvest of potatoes is a rare thing to happen," unless you have a potato blight epidemic... "Honestly, I was already considering it before I even knew the prices."

  "My lady, should we return to the manor for now?" Ernst asks.

  "Hmm... I also wanted to visit a bank, do you think those would be open at this time?"

  "Probably not, my lady."

  Returning to the city at daytime, they decide to go to a bank first.

  I was worrying about having to compare banks to see each one is more trustworthy before choosing one, however... Kristina, Rose and Ernst stand in front of the only bank in the entirety of Seestadt. While this town isn't small, it really isn't big either, so it shouldn't be surprising that they would only have one bank... There's a sign above the entrance, "Seestadt Bank" is what's written on it.

  Without further ado, they enter the building. There's a few customers, but the amount of attendants is greater, so there aren't any lines.

  They approach the nearest available attendant desk. "Hi, how may I help you?" A cheerful young lady greets them.

  "Hello, I am Kristina Sanguis, Lady of Nacht Manor. I would like to exchange an amount of foreign currency for Stark's currency."

  "Nice to meet you, Lady Sanguis, do you have an account?"

  "Oh, do I need an account for that?"

  "No, no. That's just a standard question, it is only necessary for depositing, withdrawing and taking loans." I hate taking loans, I always did my best to keep a budget surplus in Vera to not ever go into debt, and I can just store all my money in my Inventory, so I probably won't be making an account any time soon.

  "I see."

  "Now, what foreign currency are we talking about?"

  "Daemonian gold coins, from the Kingdom of Daemonia" Kristina places a Daemonian gold coin on the counter.

  The attendant pulls out a paper bundle from under the counter, it's a conversion table that shows all other currencies exchange rate with Stark's currency, organized from most common to be exchanged to least common. She spends some time, checking it all multiple times, before giving a defeated sigh.

  "Daemonian you said?"

  Unauthorized duplication: this narrative has been taken without consent. Report sightings.

  "Yes..."

  "I'm sorry, but I just can't seem to find it..."

  "Well, that's actually to be expected."

  "And you let me go over all of that multiple times even knowing it wouldn't be there...?" She mutters. Sorry, I wanted to say something, but I didn't want to interrupt you...

  "Long story short, we're originally from another world and got stuck in this one, the money we have is from a country in that other world."

  "That's quite a claim, but, assuming that's true, it could certainly complicate things a bit..."

  "Will it be impossible for me to exchange it?"

  "Not at all, it's definitely still possible, just..."

  "Just...?"

  "In cases where a currency of unknown exchange rate surges, such as when a new nation is founded and they start minting a new coin, protocols says that we should have it evaluated. I'm not qualified to do such evaluation myself, so I will ask my manager to do it, is that okay?"

  Kristina sits across from a man in a yellow suit, behind her stands Rose and Ernst. The man's name is written on a nametag in his suit, "Eric Klug".

  "I was already informed of the situation by my subordinate," I'm well aware, as I could clearly hear what she was saying when she contacted you with Message. "Could you please show me the currency, so I may evaluate it?"

  "Of course," Kristina places a Daemonian gold coin on a tiny table between them.

  "The evaluation process is likely to damage your coin, you will be compensated with twice the determined value, are those terms acceptable?"

  "Yes."

  "Very well," the manager gets a balance and places it on the table. On one pan he puts a Stark gold coin and on the other he puts the Daemonian gold coin. He notes down the result on a sheet of paper, the Daemonian coin is slightly heavier.

  The manager scratches the coin using a black stone, leaving a pretty visible mark. "First time you see someone testing gold's authenticity, I infer?" He notices the curiosity on Kristina's face.

  "Well, I was honestly expecting you to just bite it..."

  "Oh, that used to be a common method, but some decades ago someone assassinated a bank manager by making a poisonous fake coin," he explains matter of factly.

  "That's kinda scary..." Rose mutters.

  "It is, that's why people have stopped using that method."

  He takes out a small flask filled with a clear liquid and drips a single drop of the liquid on the spot he scratched on the coin, nothing happens.

  "It is very pure gold, it's worth should be about 112 C," he says as he notes down the results on a sheet of paper.

  "C?"

  "Copper, more specifically in this case Stark copper coins. Since a silver is 10 coppers and a gold is 10 silver, it would be equal to 1 gold, 1 silver and 2 coppers if you are minimizing the amount of coins."

  "I see, so it could also be be 1.12 Gold?"

  "1 point 12?" The manager sounds confused.

  "My lady, it's possible that they haven't developed decimal numbers in this world," Ernst suggests.

  "A decimal number?"

  Equip, a sheet of paper appears on Kristina's left hand and a quill pen on her. "Allow me to explain," she says placing the .

  "Alright..."

  "First, the symbols we use for the numbers," Blood Ball, a ball of blood appears and floats statically besides her, she wets her pen with it and begins to write. "0, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9," she says out loud as she writes them.

  "Hmm, we use different symbols, but we represent the same numbers." The translation ring has allowed me to read text and numbers in their language, but it seems it doesn't work the other way around. So for someone to understand what I write, they would either have to wear a translation ring themselves or learn my language and alphabet... Maybe I should learn to write in Stark's language, instead of solely relying on my translation ring?

  "Even 0?" She asks.

  "Yes." Good, they have a concept of a zero, that a hurdle already dealt with.

  "So, to symbolize 10, you use the symbol for 1 followed by a 0, correct?" She writes a 10 on the paper.

  "Yes."

  "If you want a tenth of 100, all you have the do is move the 1 to the right by one space, then you get 10." She writes a 100 and then a 10 below it.

  "I follow so far..."

  "However, what if you want a tenth of 1?"

  "Well, to represent 1 tenth, we would draw a horizontal line, put 1 above it and 10 below it..."

  "Tell me, why don't you just... move it right again?"

  "What...?"

  "0.1," she writes it on the middle of the paper.

  "Oh, this is interesting..."

  "A silver coin is 1 tenth of a gold and a copper in 1 a hundredth of a gold, so 1.12 Gold." In a way, it's like a copper is a single cent, a silver is 10 cents and a gold is a dollar.

  "I think I understand now, thank you for your explanation."

  "No problem, I enjoyed explaining, but if you could show your numbers I would be very grateful."

  "Of course..." She hands him the pen and he awkwardly wets it with the blood before starting to write on the paper. As he finishes, she takes off her translation ring momentarily so she can see the numbers 'untranslated'.

  "Interesting..." All of the numbers are made with straight lines, no curves in sight. Store, the paper disappears into Kristina's inventory and she puts her ring back on.

  "Now, how much money would you like to exchange?"

  "For now, just 1000 Daemonian gold coins."

  "Hmm, that equals to 112000 C, but there's an exchange fee of 5%, which would amount to 5600 in this case, leaving you with a total of 106400 C... Or 1064 G. That's a pretty large amount, but we should have enough gold coins for it."

  "We would like to have some change, could we receive part of that value as silver and copper coins?"

  "Of course..."

  "I have one question though, if you don't mind me asking, what will you be doing with the coins I give you? It's not like anyone will want to exchange Stark currency for the currency of a country that doesn't exist in this world..."

  "We will be to selling them to goldsmiths, that's why we only verified the veracity of the gold, normally a country's currency would have more impacting its value than just the materials its coins are made of."

  "Oh, that makes sense."

  They ended up receiving 950 gold, 450 silver and 564 copper in Stark's currency. All of it ended in Kristina's inventory of course.

  As they leave the room, Rose asks: "My lady, why not exchange more of your money?"

  "If I were to put all my money in the economy at once, it might cause inflation," just like Mansa Musa. "Besides, they probably wouldn't have enough of their currency lying around to give me in exchange."

  "Inflation...? Like a bag pipe?"

  "I would also be interested in learning what type of inflation you are referring to, my lady," Ernst interjects.

  Kristina takes a deep breath, preparing herself to explain economic inflation to her servants.