Vainqueur had never understood the appeal of agriculture.

How could anyone spend their life wading through dung, manhandling cows, or laboring in the fields, when they could look for gold instead? Peasantry was the very definition of minion work.

But as he opened his coin seed bag, imagining them growing into shining piles which he could then harvest, the dragon realized that he had been wrong. Watching his gold grow from the earth would make for honest dragon work.

Especially since he mostly watched his servants do the heavy lifting for him, as a true ruler should.

“Kobold Rangers!” Vainqueur ordered, as his minions dug trenches in the farm’s soil. “More holes with feathers at the bottom! My coins deserve the best accommodations!”

“Yes, Your Majesty!” His reptilian lackeys happily obeyed him, while Chocolatine cast spells to help with the harvest.

“How many more fields do you want to seed?” Rolo the golem asked, his arms crossed. “Rolo must harvest his tomatoes.”

“I want a field of gold, a garden of silver, and a greenhouse of gems! Each of them as safely guarded as my vault!”

Vainqueur opened his bag, carefully taking a sweet little coin, and then put it in a hole. That was the most important part of the process, the one he would not delegate.

Like the sheep on top of the cow cake, his chief of staff ran straight to the field, followed by Tasty Allison, Corpseling Jules, and Manling Charlene.

“Hi, Vic!” Sweet Chocolatine waved at her fellow minion.

“Hi, Chocolatine.” His favored minion greeted her back, before turning to Vainqueur. “Your Majesty, we need to talk.”

“Choc, what did I tell you about the fields?” Tasty Allison told Sweet Chocolatine with a frown. “No more experiments!”

“But the tomatoes grow faster since I fed the soil with demon blood! I’m sure coins will become alive too!”

“Which will allow them to defend themselves against the vile Furibon when he inevitably returns,” Vainqueur told his minion. “A dragon must think ahead.”

“Your Majesty, that is not how coins are made,” Manling Victor argued.

“I know, minion. Your kind takes the gold from the earth and then mints it into coins.”

“You know?” His friend gave his master a strange gaze. “Then… why?”

“I thought this class system was rubbish when you begged me to become my minion, so I decided to keep an open mind. If the System can create amazing royal capes for me out of thin air, who am I to question how to farm gold?”

Manling Victor stayed silent for a second, before massaging his forehead. “I hate it when things that don’t make sense make sense.”

“Yes, minion, once again, I triumph with logic.”

“Farming gold is not planting coins in the ground to harvest golden trees later!” Victor protested. “Usually, it’s simply killing monsters who drop a huge amount of money when slain!”

… oh?

That was even better! “There are monsters who give more gold than others?”

His chief of staff frowned. “That’s a good question,” he said while glancing at Corpseling Jules. “Are there monsters who drop more loot than usual on Outremonde?”

“Golden Gooses and Jackpot Golems drop an enormous amount of wealth if defeated,” the necromancer said, but quickly dashed Vainqueur’s hopes. “However, they have been hunted to near-extinction by adventurers and are extraordinarily rare.”

“The most lucrative monsters to kill nowadays are Fairy Rafflesias, Sea Serpents, and Phoenixes since their corpses can be harvested for high-quality material,” Allison said. “But good luck finding one, let alone killing it.”

“For manlings maybe, but a dragon never backs down before a challenge. We shall find these creatures and poke them at once.”

“Your Majesty, we have enough gold already,” Manling Victor said a stupid thing.

Vainqueur glared at his chief of staff. “Manling Victor, I will not allow you to act lazy while my bet with Icefang is ongoing. My hoard needs to dwarf his own, for the sake of all dragonkind. I cannot allow this poser to become the richest of them all.”

Manling Victor exchanged glances with the other minions before taking a long, hard breath. “Your Majesty,” he began. “We have too much gold in Murmurin. We are overflowing with it.”

“There is no such thing as too much gold,” Vainqueur replied, confused. “Minion, are you well? Has the fairy bewitched you?”

“No! I mean it!” His chief of staff’s words made the dragon blink. “The more you have of a commodity, the more it loses value! By harvesting so much gold, we are causing it to lose value nationwide!”

Intelligence vs Charisma check… Failed!

You could not understand the broad economic implications of the dragon way of life!