Five days later.

White Swan Castle.

Rosen received the messenger from Aaron in his study facing the lake.

This time the messenger was not Sir Jarak, for this nobleman had been imprisoned by his king and his future was uncertain.

The new messenger is called Ruifa.

A fourth-ring magic master of common origin, in his early fifties, with a tough look in his eyes, a calm personality, and meticulous attention to detail in his clothing, without the refined style of a child from an aristocratic family.

Because of his status as Aaron's messenger, he was given the honorary title of Knight.

"Sir Ruifa, the 'Night of Bloody Knives' launched by your Majesty really opened my eyes."

On the night when the Lion Fleet was defeated by him, Danger staged a big event in the Hero Hall of Lion Castle.

He dispatched Aaron's Night Guards to kill all 122 noble members of the Noble Cabinet Council and their 488 assistants.

That night, the night guards from all over Aaron also went out together.

The entire Aaronic nobility was killed or captured, and their family property was confiscated into the Aaronic treasury.

In the middle of the night, a large number of civilian assistants were promoted to key positions to fill the vacancies left by the nobles.

After one night, except for a few alert nobles who managed to escape from Aaron, 90% of the nobles were killed.

This night is also called the 'Night of the Bloody Knife' by the Aaron people.

The Lion King's decisiveness and swiftness shocked all the friendly countries in the alliance.

Rosen couldn't help but sigh, thinking that this lion king was really a ruthless man.

Sir Rifa said solemnly, "The southern decapitation operation launched by the Duke was not bad either, and the glorious victory at the Gilded Strait is enough to be recorded in the annals of the alliance's naval battles."

After a pause, he said, "Your Excellency the Duke, we have 40,000 brave warriors staying in Weilan. Your Majesty hopes to redeem them."

Rosen was short of money at the moment, so he nodded readily.

"Redemption is no problem, but I need compensation. Here is the compensation list."

He handed the book to the messenger with the hand of a wizard.

Sir Rifa looked at it carefully, and soon said, "My Lord Duke, this is too much."

Rosen certainly knew why he said that.

Because the total amount of compensation was as high as 20 million Oggs, and a series of treaties to open up bilateral trade were proposed.

Rifa frowned, "Aaron has no money at the moment."

In his opinion, there was no major problem with the treaty and it was relatively fair, but the amount of compensation was too outrageous.

"Aaron has!"

Rosen grinned, "Your Majesty has just raided the homes of the great nobles in the country, and the gold in the treasury is piled up like a mountain."

He and his ministers made an estimate and agreed that the King's treasury of Dange had increased by at least 50 million Ogers of gold!

This is just gold. If other wealth is added, it will be an even more staggering number.

After all, Aaron is much richer than Weilan.

Therefore, although 20 million Oger is a lot of compensation, Danger can definitely afford it, and he will definitely take it.

First, Aaron needs this group of capable and combat-ready naval soldiers.

Second, Danger also needs to know the truth about the naval battle.

Because naval battles take place on the sea and there are no bystanders, the most reliable way is naturally to ask the soldiers who personally participated in the naval battle.

Sir Ruifa's eyes twitched: "Duke, His Majesty did get some money, but actually..."

Rosen waved his hand: "You can't hide this from me, because I just did the same thing, and I know that the nobles are very rich."

Then he pointed to the compensation list and said, "Sir, go back and tell His Majesty that after paying this amount of money, this incident will be over. The two countries will resume normal trade in the future."

Sir Rifa had nothing to say and turned away.

Entering again was Prince Lafayette of Levender.

As soon as Rosen saw him, a cold smile appeared on his face.

"Your Highness, Levinder has greatly disappointed me."

Seeing that the other party was about to make an excuse, he raised his hand to suppress him, signaling the prince to listen to him, because he no longer wanted to hear any meaningless excuses.

"I know this is not something you can decide, and I don't mean to blame you."

Having said that, Rosen looked at the prince, his eyes moving across his emerald green eyes and long light golden hair.

"I'm just reminding you to be careful that the glory of the Xila family will not be taken away by despicable villains through conspiracy."

Prince Lafayette was startled: "What does the Duke mean?"

Rosen threw a ring to the prince: "I have done a lot of research on bloodlines. I developed this ring based on what I know."

"The magic weapon is called the 'Ring of Pure Bloodline'. When it is near members of the same family, it will emit a faint light of the same color."

"Look, it's in the prince's hand, it's a thick green light, which means holy blood. If it's near non-holy blood, like me."

Rosen picked up a similar ring, and the gemstone on the ring surface showed a light green metallic luster.

"See, I only have a little bit of natural blood in me, so it's this color."

At this point, he had already noticed the thoughtful look on Prince Lafayette's face, so he said no more.

"Your Highness, I will keep your country's Black Stone warship. It just happens to offset the debt you owe me."

"As for your country's warriors, there are about 6,000 of them, and the average ransom is 500 Oggs, or 625 gold Sheela.

"Your country can decide on how to give it. If not, I will tell these soldiers that their motherland has abandoned them, and then I will make them citizens of Veran."

Prince Lafayette was in a confused mood and hardly heard what was said afterwards.

He hurriedly saluted Rosen and quickly left the lakeside study.

After he left, Acting Minister of State Kruber walked in in formal attire.

"My greetings, Duke."

"My Minister of State, please get down to business from now on. There is no need to waste time on empty formalities."

Kluber already knew Rosen's character, and immediately got to the point: "Duke, after the trial operation of Weilan Citizens Bank, almost all the certificates of deposit on the market have been exchanged."

"There are less than 4 million Oggs left in the bank's gold reserves, and bank customers have lost trust in any deposit slips, so they only withdraw money and do not deposit it."

“Although it can still be maintained for now, it obviously makes market transactions much more difficult. Too many gold coins are scattered and accumulated among the people, and are not involved in market circulation.”

Rosen understood: "So, we don't have the money to do big things?"

Kruber nodded. "Yes, Duke. The situation is much worse than it was on the White Sturgeon Island. There are too many mouths to feed, too many places to spend money, and the way to make money has not yet been opened."

Rosen naturally knew this very well.

As the business expands, the ceiling for development will naturally be much higher, but the maintenance costs will also increase, which is natural.

But he knew better that the biggest problem at the moment was not that Weilan had no money, but that the liquidity of money had greatly weakened.

Because of the fake deposit certificate incident, the bank's credit collapsed and Weilan returned to the era of metal currency.

People preferred to keep their excess metal currency at home rather than in a bank.

But once the money is kept at home and not moved, it is equivalent to leaving the market and becoming dead money.

Almost non-existent.

The more people save at home, the more dead money there is, and the less money Rosen, the Duke of Weilan, has to call upon.

In this social context, even if Rosen really received 20 million Ogg in compensation, it would be used up quickly.

He envisioned building a new capital, creating a powerful magic industrial zone, investing huge sums of money in magic research, and other major events, which might require hundreds of millions, or even billions of Oggs of investment.

With the current backward ability to mobilize social resources, it will not be accomplished even in a hundred years!

What to do? One option is to force the people to work, which is what the nobles love to do.

But Rosen naturally couldn't do that.

Otherwise, the so-called "Welan citizens" would become a joke, which would not only greatly damage the enthusiasm of the people, but also destroy the basis for rule.

The only way is to use various clever tricks to take money back from people's pockets and turn it into living money circulating in the market again.

So Rosen asked: "What are the benefits of some of the methods I thought of earlier?"

Kluber nodded: "Not bad."

"The noble castle parks in various places can earn about 20,000 Oggs a day. The rental and sale of noble heritage also brings in a lot of money. Private gambling also brings in a lot of money. But these revenues can only maintain the status quo and cannot solve the root cause."

Rosen nodded to show that he understood. He knew that it was time to take the next step.

He asked: "Have the public made demands for bank deposit certificates?"

"Many people have raised the issue, and it's not a small number. Everyone feels it's inconvenient, but they are also worried that the fake deposit certificate incident will happen again."

In fact, because of the fake certificate of deposit incident on Weilan Island, the bank deposit certificate business of the entire Natural Alliance has been greatly affected.

Rosen nodded: "It is indeed inconvenient to carry several kilograms or even dozens of kilograms of coins to trade all day and run to the bank every now and then."

But the collapse of trust happens in an instant, while the building of trust must come bit by bit.

Now, Weilan has defeated Aaron's counterattack, and his position as Duke has been completely secured.

The stability of power is the greatest basis for gaining the trust of the people.

Now that the foundation is stable, the second step is to make people believe that large-scale fake certificates of deposit will not appear again.

Why not believe that there will never be fake certificates of deposit?

Because it's impossible.

There is no perfect anti-counterfeiting technology in the world. As long as you are willing to invest the cost, any deposit certificate can be forged.

Therefore, the truly feasible path is to use various methods to make the manufacturing cost of most fake certificates of deposit higher than the value represented by the certificates themselves.

To achieve this, we need to first raise the technical threshold for certificates of deposit, second, strengthen law enforcement, and third, reduce the amount of "bearer certificates of deposit".

That is to say, the use of 'small-denomination bearer certificates of deposit', that is, paper money.

Rosen smiled and said, "Kruber, in a month, let's hold a government bounty meeting throughout the Natural Alliance, and set the bounty at 10,000 Oggs."

Seeing Crewe's confusion, he explained: "I will release a new deposit certificate sample in a month."

"The reward is to find the technology to forge brand new bank deposit certificates. Whoever's forgery can fool the eyes of a hundred savvy businessmen will be rewarded."

Kruber exclaimed: "Duke, this is the largest bounty in history."

“It’s not a big amount, how can it attract everyone’s attention?”

Only by paying attention and arousing widespread discussion among the people can a new social consensus be formed.

While Duke Rosen was directing state affairs in his lakeside study, his real body was staying in the northern suburbs of Mondanya.

This was originally the military camp of the Earl of Montshire, covering an area of ​​more than 5,000 acres.

Now it has been transformed by Rosen into Weilan's aircraft design and manufacturing center, and the area has been increased to a full 20,000 acres.

At present, a large area of ​​above-ground and underground buildings has been urgently built using tempered yellow clay, covering an area of ​​about 100 acres.

In a secret underground laboratory, Rosen was staying with a large group of mages who specialized in wind magic, surrounding a 'Shadow Assassin'.

That is the invisible self-destructing drone that performed remarkable feats in naval battles.

These wind mages were, of course, talents recruited from all over Weilan.

There are more than 500 of them, plus the mages and craftsmen from the original aircraft research center, a total of nearly a thousand people.

A group of people are discussing how to improve this thing.

This matter is also very important for reopening banks, even the most important one.

Because violence is always the first means to maintain the credit of the national bank.

If you want to open a bank, print banknotes and collect seigniorage, you must have thugs! How powerful the thugs are determines how big the bank can be.

If the thugs back down, the bank will go bankrupt!

(End of this chapter)