Baby System: I'm the Beast World's Only Hope!-Chapter 132: Episode : The Concept of Money

"What’s money?"

Syris’s question hung in the air, innocent and genuinely confused. It was a fair question. In the Beast World, you either hunted for what you needed, fought for it, or traded a pile of furs for it.

The concept of currency, of an abstract representation of value, was alien.

Roxy blinked. She looked at the blank stares of the three Kings and the one curious Basilisk. Even the triplets were looking at her with wide, expectant eyes, sensing that Mama was about to do something interesting.

"Oh boy," Roxy muttered. "We need visual aids."

System. I need a classroom setup. Chalkboard. Chalk. Pointer stick. Don’t ask, just send it.

[System Notification: Educational Request Accepted.]

[Item Dispensed: The Professor’s Kit (Basic).]

[Cost: 500 LP]

POOF.

A large, rolling blackboard stood on the rug, complete with a tray of multicolored chalk and a long wooden pointer. The men jumped. Kaelen raised his claws instinctively.

"It’s just a board!" Roxy barked, grabbing the pointer and smacking the slate. Thwack. "Everyone, sit down. Class is in session."

She pointed to the sofa. "Students, take your seats."

Bewildered but obedient, the Apex Predators sat. Kaelen sat on the floor with his legs crossed. Torian perched on the armrest. Syris, still weak, sat in the armchair with Zarek standing behind him like a bodyguard.

The children, Drax, Axel, Onyx, and Iris, scrambled to the front, sitting in a row on the rug, looking up at their mother with absolute adoration.

Roxy pushed her sleeves up. She picked up a piece of white chalk.

"Okay," she started, writing the word MONEY in big, block letters. "This is the word of the day."

She turned to the men. "Right now, we use the Barter System. Let’s say Kaelen wants a spear..."

She drew a stick figure with wolf ears holding a spear.

Torian giggled, clearly mocking the drawing of Kaelen, but Kaelen ignored it entirely.

"And let’s say the Blacksmith in the pack has a spear." She drew a stick figure with a spear. "But the Blacksmith doesn’t want Kaelen’s furs. He wants... chickens."

She drew a chicken.

"But Kaelen doesn’t have chickens," Roxy explained, tapping the board. "Kaelen only has a cow."

"I have cows!" Kaelen piped up proudly from the floor.

"Yes, but the Blacksmith doesn’t want a cow," Roxy countered. "A cow is too big. It eats too much. So, Kaelen is stuck. He has wealth (the cow), but he can’t use it to buy what he needs (the spear) because the trade doesn’t match."

Syris leaned forward, his analytical mind latching onto the logic. "Inefficient," he murmured. "He would have to find someone who wants a cow, trade for chickens, and then trade the chickens for the spear. It wastes time."

"Exactly!" Roxy pointed the stick at Syris. "Ten points to Gryffindor."

She wiped the board.

"Now, imagine if Kaelen had Money."

She drew a small circle.

"Money," Roxy lectured, her voice calm and patient, like she was reading a bedtime story, "is a promise. It is a token that everyone agrees has value. The Blacksmith knows he can take this coin and buy chickens from the farmer. The farmer knows he can take the coin and buy bread. It flows. It’s liquid."

She drew arrows connecting the stick figures in a circle.

"Money allows you to store your labor," Roxy said. "If you hunt a deer today, the meat rots in a week. Your wealth disappears. But if you sell the deer for coins? The coins don’t rot. You can keep them for ten years, and they are still worth a deer."

The room was silent.

Zarek’s golden eyes were narrowed, processing the strategic implications. "Power that does not decay," he rumbled. "Wealth that can be hoarded without spoiling."

"Precisely," Roxy nodded. "And it makes trade faster. No more arguing if three rabbits equal one sword. The sword costs five coins. You have five coins? You get the sword. Simple."

Drax raised his hand. "I have a rock!"

Roxy smiled. "That’s a very nice rock, baby. But unless everyone agrees the rock is magic, it’s not money. Money needs to be rare. Hard to fake. And durable."

She turned back to the board and wrote: GOLD.

"And that," she said, spinning around to face Torian, "brings us to the chests."

Torian had been listening with a frown. He was a merchant at heart, so the concept wasn’t entirely foreign, but the application was confusing him.

"You said..." Torian started, gesturing to his open chests of treasure. "You said you wanted to use my gold. But if I give my gold away for... for bread? I lose the gold."

"You don’t give it away, Rian," Roxy said patiently. "You are the bank."

She walked over to the chest and picked up a heavy bar again.

"This bar is too big to buy a loaf of bread. You’d have to shave off a tiny dust speck. It’s annoying. But what if we turn this one bar..."

She drew a big rectangle on the board.

"...into one thousand small coins?"

She drew a shower of small circles raining down from the rectangle.

"We stamp them," Roxy explained. "We put a mark on them. Maybe the Dragon’s crest. Maybe the Iron-Wood Tree. That mark tells the world: ’This coin is pure gold. The Kings guarantee it.’"

Torian stood up, his tail twitching. The realization was hitting him.

"We control the supply," Torian whispered. "If we mint the coins... we set the standard."

"Yes," Roxy grinned. "We introduce these coins to the village. We pay the workers in coins. We set up a general store that only accepts coins. Suddenly, everyone wants coins. And who has all the gold to make the coins?"

She pointed at Torian.

"We do."

"We become the heart of the trade," Syris rasped, his eyes gleaming with admiration. "It is not just wealth, Roxy. It is governance. It binds the tribes to us."

"Smart snake," Roxy winked.

She turned back to the board to draw the design.

"So," she said, sketching a circle. "On the front, we put the symbol of the Iron-Wood. A tree with roots. To show stability."

She drew a crude tree.

"On the back," she continued, "we put the profiles of the Kings. Or maybe just a paw print. Something hard to copy."

She stepped back to admire her artwork. It looked like a potato with a broccoli on it, but the concept was there.

"This," she tapped the chalk circle, "is the Iron-Coin. Or the Roxy-Dollar. We can workshop the name."

The four men stared at the drawing. Then they looked at the massive, solid gold bars in the chest.

Kaelen scratched his head, looking genuinely perplexed.

"I get the idea," the Wolf King said, picking up a gold bar and biting it gently to test its hardness. "But Roxy... this is hard metal. How do we turn this big, heavy brick into... tiny flat circles?"

He tried to squeeze the gold bar with his hand. It didn’t budge.

"Do we... cut it with a knife?" Kaelen asked. "That will take forever."

"Do we smash it with hammers?" Torian suggested. "It will be lumpy."

"Do we ask the rock spirits?" Drax suggested, hugging his own rock.

Roxy laughed. She walked over to Zarek. She placed a hand on his chest, right over his heart, where his internal fire burned hottest.

She grinned, a wild, ambitious smile that made Zarek’s heart skip a beat. "We are going to produce it ourselves."

A/N: I enjoyed writing this *giggles*