Seraphina's dragon eyes widened in disbelief, Ed was certain that even if she revealed her true form now, he would still see astonishment on her dragon head.
After a moment of stunned silence, Seraphina, looking still shaken, said:
"... I think this is even more powerful than turning the money around."
"It just sounds impressive."
Ed smiled and asked:
So are you sure you want to learn about this subject called 'credit money'?
"If you don't believe me, try adding up the current bank accounts of all the Soul Returner and see if it matches the amount I owe you. If they don't match, then who owes you more...?"
Upon hearing this, Seraphina immediately closed her eyes and began calculating. As Ed's half-baked financial assistant, Seraphina possessed the corresponding permissions for the money section of the Root Network.
After silently operating for a while, Seraphina opened her eyes in astonishment.
She felt a sense of bewilderment she hadn't experienced in a long time, as if she were a newborn baby encountering the world for the first time.
In Seraphina's mind, Ed's need for money should be extremely urgent:
The common people of the Second Holy See used to belong to the Tree Worship Church, and apart from some people who kept a few old coins at home, all the rest of their currency was tree seeds.
And among those privately hoarded coins, there weren't even any gold coins; they were practically negligible.
In other words, apart from the small amount of money brought in by Gray's occasional visits, all the precious metal currency in the entire Second Holy See came from Seraphina.
Ed borrowed a total of one million gold coins from her, and he has already spent almost all of them.
So where did all this money go?
If we only consider the location, most of this money is actually still in Seraphina's alternate dimension.
A small portion of the money ended up in the pockets of ordinary members of the Tree Worship Church who were unable to apply for accounts.
But Seraphina knew that although the money was in her own space, it didn't actually belong to her. Only the money Ed used to buy her combat services had truly returned to her hands.
The gold coins belonged to Ed after Ed borrowed them, and then to Soul Returner Soul Returner after Ed distributed them. The Soul Returner were simply temporarily storing the money in their accounts, and the numbers in their accounts would change accordingly.
So no matter what Seraphina thinks, all the money added up should indeed amount to one million gold coins; she still knows basic addition and subtraction.
But reality is not like that.
The Second Holy See currently has nearly 300,000 Soul Returner. Seraphina added up the money in all of their accounts, and before even counting Ed's account balance and the physical currency held by the Soul Returner and civilians, the total already exceeded one million gold coins.
Ed only borrowed one million gold coins from her, so why are there more than one million gold coins in the Soul Returner ' accounts?
What exactly went wrong?
White steam appeared above Seraphina's head, her brain had gone into Overload mode.
Seeing the dragon girl's blank expression, Ed knew she had noticed the problem.
Although Ed had already explained the relevant prerequisites to Seraphina, such as the over-issuance of currency and bank runs.
However, the Dragon Girl's understanding of these things is still at the physical level, and it will take some time for her to shift her thinking towards non-physical concepts.
In other words, she can only understand the concept of excessive money printing at present, but she cannot understand Ed's point about creating money out of thin air by simply changing account numbers.
After a moment's thought, Seraphina said seriously:
"I want to learn this, but the interest rate... it can't be lowered to one percent, it has to be at least one and a half percent."
"Make a deal."
Ed agreed so quickly that Daenerys instinctively felt she had been tricked again.
But knowledge doesn't lie, that's the only thing she could tell herself.
When the day comes to collect the debt, and this grinning guy can't come up with the money, then just wait and see!
Seraphina looked at Ed, remembering that the dragon scale containing her study notes was still at the Obsidian Bank in Valhalla, and said with slight anxiety:
"I want to know exactly how you did it. Why don't we meet in your study? You should be able to go back by yourself then, right?"
Ed smiled and nodded, saying:
"Okay, you can go back first. There are still people waiting for me at the Rotting Corpse Dark Lake."
Seraphina nodded, stretched out her scorching hot palm, sliced open a spatial rift, and disappeared before his eyes.
Ed looked around, found a relatively open space, raised his arms, and his body rapidly grew into an ordinary-looking tree.
Klaf City, the Rotting Corpse Dark Lake.
The giant trees supporting the entire city began to weave again, Ed quickly opened his eyes.
A figure with eyes closed sat upright on an island in a lake not far from the big tree.
He was strong and tall, with a bright silver helmet with blue patterns resting on his knees. He looked exhausted, as if he hadn't rested in a long time.
Even so, the man opened his eyes as Ed took his first step toward him.
Xilǐ'er glanced at Ed's location, then stood up and bowed respectfully.
"Were you waiting for me?"
Ed approached him and asked with a smile.
"Yes."
Xilǐ'er nodded:
"To my shame, I truly have no idea where to go."
Ed patted him on the shoulder in a friendly manner:
"That's normal. The fact that you haven't gone crazy means your mental capacity has surpassed that of ordinary people."
Xilǐ'er clutched his head, looking slightly pained.
"I just realized that I'm no longer human."
"Ah?"
Ed was somewhat taken aback:
You only just realized that?
"The first time you came to the Second Holy See, I ripped your head off..."
Xilǐ'er remained silent, Ed thought for a moment before saying:
"So it's not so bad to not be human. Just because you were born a human doesn't mean you'll always be one."
As he spoke, he stretched out his hand and demonstrated to Xilǐ'er what instantaneous Alienation meant.
Seeing Xilǐ'er's surprised look, Ed and said:
" The Demonic Tide has been here for a hundred years. Look around this world, where are there any real 'humans' left? Your expectations of yourself are a bit too high."
Ed said this from the bottom of his heart, after all, the Demonic Tide was powerful enough to kill the World Tree.
Even so, Xilǐ'er still wanted to become human, a wish that, though seemingly simple, was in fact incredibly difficult.
Seeing that Xilǐ'er didn't respond, Ed asked again:
"Your feelings towards the Twin Kings must be quite complicated, right?"
Xilǐ'er nodded and said:
"Yes... the two... the Vampire Grand Duke and the Amber Dragon are my enemies, but the King of Domination and the Immortal King are the ones I serve."