"You mean…"
Baldr's face showed a look of confusion and bewilderment.
"Snap!"
Casually snapping his fingers with a crisp sound, Loki grinned effortlessly.
"The dwarves."
"The dwarves?"
Baldr first repeated it in confusion, then seemed to understand Loki's meaning, and a look of astonishment appeared on his face. He couldn't help but shake his head.
"Although those dark elves are all outstanding craftsmen, they are not the servants of the gods. Forcing them to build palaces for the deities is really… really…"
The dark elves, that is, the dwarves. At the beginning of creation, after the primordial giant Ymir was killed, his blood became rivers, his flesh became mountains, his bones became minerals, and at the same time, there were still some maggots on his rotting corpse.
Those that turned towards the light became beautiful and kind light elves, deeply cherished by the gods. The deities ordered these elves, who were less than half the size of humans, to tend the gardens. But those that turned towards darkness became clever and cunning dark elves. The gods detested them and banished them to Svartalfheim in the west, and those short-statured dark elves who couldn't tolerate the sunlight lived underground all year round.
Although unsightly in appearance and deceitful in nature, these dwarves were all genuine master artisans. Whether it was the invincible hammer Mjolnir of Thor the thunder god, or the necklace Brisingamen worn by Freyja the goddess of love and beauty that could make everyone unable to resist its allure, they were all masterpieces of the dwarves. Moreover, many of the gods' divine artifacts were crafted by the dwarves.
Undoubtedly, having those dwarves help the gods rebuild the palaces would obviously be a very simple matter.
However, Baldr the god of light was a true paragon of kindness, tolerant of everyone, finding it hard to be ruthless, hesitating and indecisive. For any judgment handed to him, he often found it difficult to decide. For a benevolent god, this was an excellent quality, but for an heir to the throne of the king of the gods, it clearly lacked the resolution a king of the gods should possess.
In fact, one of the major reasons his son Forseti, the god of truth and justice, was able to rank among the twelve leaders was to assist him in adjudicating those disputes.
Otherwise, with Thor the thunder god constantly away fighting the frost giants, in theory the throne of the king of the gods should have gone to Baldr, who was more revered and adored by the gods and was also Odin's eldest son after Thor. But if the king of the gods lacked decisiveness, it was obviously not a good thing, so a deity who could assist the future king of the gods in making decisions naturally had the qualifications to rank among the twelve leaders.
But for Baldr, coercing the dwarves to build palaces was something that clearly made him feel averse, but evidently, not everyone shared his view.
"However, if we could get those dwarves to build the palaces… it doesn't seem like a bad idea."
Beside Baldr, Skadi, the goddess of winter, had a flash of inspiration in her eyes as she contemplated.
For this goddess who was accustomed to driving away winter wolves and the cold, and had witnessed plenty of death and cruelty, any act of violence was trivial, just a minor issue.
But faced with the gods' speculations, Loki instead looked at them in surprise, then snorted disdainfully and wagged his finger.
"Coerce? No, no, no, you've misunderstood. Not coerce, but purchasing with gold coins."
"Purchasing with gold coins?"
Freyja, the goddess of beauty, asked somewhat uncomprehendingly.
It must be said that even in the mythological world, in some aspects, objective laws still had to be followed. Take this heaven and earth that had essentially been born less than a hundred thousand years ago. Although long before the creation of heaven and earth, in a time of primordial chaos, the gods and frost giants had already waged countless years of prolonged warfare, there were still not many deities and frost giants in existence at that time. So, it was only after the creation of heaven and earth in these past hundred thousand years that humans gradually emerged, slowly progressing from primitive to civilized.
Even with the aid of the gods, the humans of this world were clearly severely imbalanced in many aspects. For a long time, they were in a state of nomadic tribal clans, subsisting by hunting birds and beasts. The history of truly settling down to farm was less than two thousand years, and the concept of currency only gradually emerged in these past few millennia. For a long time, humans still engaged in barter trade, and even now, many human villages still adhered to the concept of barter trade, utterly ignorant of currency. The notion of measuring wealth was often still how many cattle or sheep a household had, not how much money.
And the gods, often preoccupied with their own responsibilities of overseeing mountains and stars, flora and fauna, even the four elements of wind, fire, water, and earth, all the living and the dead, clearly still lacked sufficient understanding of these small things gradually emerging from human civilization. Even if they had a cursory understanding, they didn't pay too much heed. Only Loki, who frequently mingled among humans, was keenly aware of the true value of this not yet widespread concept.
"Of course, purchasing with gold coins."
Loki said as if it were a matter of course.
He looked around at the gods before him.
"Do you know, now in the world of mortals, some precious things are all traded with something called currency, and the most crucial material for crafting currency is gold and silver."
As he spoke, he stood up from his divine seat and raised the two coins he had pulled out from somewhere, a gold coin and a silver coin, crudely made but already bearing some patterns and designs.
He walked among the gods, holding up these two coins to show them, speaking with a hint of smugness.
"This is a very intriguing thing. As long as you have it, you can buy anything and everything. Currently, whether it's humans or dwarves, this novel item is gaining popularity…"
"I still don't quite grasp what you mean."
The clueless war god Tyr scratched his head, looking blankly at Loki who had suddenly become animated before him.
Loki looked at the gods before him. Some had pensive looks on their faces, but most still appeared blank and uncomprehending. He couldn't help but shake his head.
"Do you know just how much gold and silver Asgard possesses?"
Without waiting for the gods to answer, he directly raised his voice a few degrees and spoke loudly.
"Nine-tenths!"
"More than nine-tenths of all the gold and silver in this universe is in Asgard! What does this signify? It means we can use this nine-tenths of gold and silver to directly control all the gold and silver currency in the entire world!"
"The value, circulation, and use of all currency in this world will be under our manipulation!"
"By strictly regulating the output of gold and silver and stabilizing its price, we can use this little thing called 'currency' to manipulate the value of all goods in this world. Whether it's those fine weapons, or hiring mortal warriors to fight for us, or acquiring those exquisite and novel little things, it will all become incredibly easy, effortless. And all we need to pay is a tiny bit of insignificant gold and silver."
"Even if we promote the concept of currency to those frost giants, let them also enter this world market to purchase goods and use currency, we may not even need to wage war against those frost giants anymore. We can just use this currency to tempt the greedy among the frost giants, causing them to divide and rebel, and even use this tiny currency to hire those frost giants to fight for us…"
"And if the concept of gold and silver equaling currency takes root, we can even use leaves to replace the actual gold and silver, letting it become conceptual currency. Then we won't even need to mine gold and silver, just use those completely worthless leaves to control all living beings in the nine worlds…"
"Without war, without plunder, just by establishing a complete world economic system, we can easily manipulate the nine worlds and thoroughly bring the nine realms under actual rule!"
Towards the end, Loki's expression had clearly become agitated. His speech was getting faster and faster, his eyes seemed to be glowing, as if he was feeling proud and smug about his sudden, novel idea.
"Leaves can manipulate this world? How is that possible?"
Hearing this, Thor couldn't help but reflexively refute.
Although Loki had said a bunch of things that made his head spin, there was one thing he undoubtedly understood, and that was that this Loki, who often had all sorts of strange and bizarre ideas, seemed to have come up with some "preposterous" strange notions again.
But at this point, Odin spoke up.
"What Loki said is not entirely without reason…"
The king of the gods lightly rubbed his forehead with his thumb, carefully pondering something. Having imbibed from the well of wisdom, he vaguely sensed that what Loki said seemed possible to achieve, but his reason was also telling him that these words were truly too absurd. Although he could barely comprehend Loki's concept of gold and silver currency at the beginning, for the latter talk of "fiat currency", "leaf currency" and such, he found it hard to imagine.
In the end, he shook his head and said:
"Loki, your idea is very interesting, but leaf currency is really too absurd… However, if using that gold and silver can get those dwarves to work for us, that's not bad. You can try negotiating with those dwarves."
And seeing the doubt on Odin's face and the mostly undisguised astonishment and derision on the other gods' faces, Loki knew in his heart that it was impossible to convince these deities to believe in and support his establishment of a "world economic system".
But that didn't matter. It was just a flash of inspiration anyway. He himself couldn't be completely certain of its success either. Although somewhat regretful, he didn't really mind.
Thinking this, he casually tossed the two coins in his hand, no longer taking seriously the "world economic system" he had just thought of.
Then, he confidently said to Odin:
"I had anticipated this long ago. I've already negotiated with the dwarves. They've agreed to repair the gods' palaces with gold as payment."
With that, he turned around to look at the gods behind him and said:
"Before I came to Asgard, I originally thought there might be other places that needed repairing, so I also negotiated various other tasks with the dwarves. But now it seems… it shouldn't be necessary."
"So, now the only issue… is to discuss that sun devoured by my child."
Hearing this, the expressions on the gods' faces turned grave. They all knew that the truly thorny problem had emerged.