Darkstone Code

Chapter 1472: Chapter 1470: It’s All My Fault

He waited two days before the bank finally agreed to grant Lynch a loan, but actually getting the money out would still take another day.

This also made Lynch realize that Lemar National Bank’s liquid funds were already close to running dry.

They had scraped this money together from God knows where; it might well be the very last bit they had.

In fact, what was happening in Lemar had once happened in the Federation as well.

Capital flowed out, factories closed in large numbers, went bankrupt, workers lost their jobs, crime rates rose...

The Federation’s response back then could be called swift, yet there still weren’t any really good solutions.

In the end they could only cooperate with capitalists on the Federation Mainland, using some dirty tricks to force part of the foreign capital and industry to remain in the Federation, not giving them the chance to flee.

The Federation had that kind of confidence: it was a huge country, with enough population and troops.

Population means the future.

Nagariel has a lot of people; in just a few years, Nagariel’s commerce has already begun to take shape.

There’s no helping it: when the population is that large, each person spending one sol is equivalent to each person in the Federation spending four sols.

On the surface it looks like Nagariel’s per capita income is very low, like people can’t afford to spend, but once the numbers pile up, the end result is still the same!

Lemar lacks population; with only a few million people, a small country, once foreign capital runs away, the already inactive domestic financial and economic market begins to shrink rapidly. The National Bank has no money—this isn’t a joke, and it isn’t a story. It’s a fact!

And now, Lynch had just stepped on that fact again.

The next day, the funds arrived. Under the pretexts of "paying daily wages" and "buying building materials," Lynch requested to withdraw the loan in cash.

The National Bank agreed quickly this time; the money had already been taken out, and it was specifically for Lynch’s loan. There was no reason to keep blocking it, and blocking it had no other value.

Besides, Lynch wasn’t going to withdraw that much in one go...

But that very afternoon, something happened that no one could have imagined!

It happened at a construction site on one of the small islands. When Lynch hired these workers, he had already negotiated with them: there would be two pay schemes, daily and weekly.

For daily pay, each person earned only three point five Federation Sols per day, roughly equivalent to two hundred and twenty Yares.

Because Lemar’s economy is backward, the average wage level here is also very low. It’s only slightly better than the situation over in Nagariel, and "better" is relative.

Two hundred and twenty Yares is not exactly a trivial sum for many locals; it’s enough to sustain their life here.

And given that the situation in Lemar isn’t good right now—after foreign capital fled, the factories all stopped operating—people really do need work, so a large number of locals started working for Lynch.

No work experience or skills were required, just listen to the company’s arrangements, clear out the islands one by one, and you could get paid daily. There was no better job than this!

Yes, daily pay.

In fact, according to the pay scale Lynch set, those who were willing to be paid weekly could earn about one thousand eight hundred Yares.

But on daily pay they would only get about one thousand five hundred and forty, which is equivalent to working an extra day and a half for the same money.

Yet even so, quite a few people chose daily pay; less than forty percent opted for weekly pay.

The incident occurred at night, when wages were being distributed.

One worker believed the company had paid him in counterfeit money. He went to the person handing out wages and demanded that he be given real notes instead.

This matter quickly reached Lynch’s ears. The people he had brought with him suspected Lemar National Bank might have quietly screwed them over.

Lynch had someone pay that man in Federation Sols while ordering that the "counterfeit notes" be brought to him.

He had never really considered such issues before, but now that it had happened, if the National Bank really had given him fake notes, he didn’t mind letting them experience what "playing dirty" actually meant.

The Federation’s joint fleet hadn’t left yet!

The next morning, Lynch saw the new notes that were being called counterfeit.

The man bringing the money was from Darkstone Security Company. Lynch glanced at the more than a dozen bundles of notes in the briefcase, then looked up at the employee standing behind it.

The employee seemed to sense what Lynch was thinking and took the initiative to explain. "I collected some cash of this same batch from other places as well. They’re all identical."

"Only one person thinks they’re fake. The others don’t see any obvious difference."

Lynch nodded slightly. "Thanks. Bring me the man who said these are counterfeit too."

Then he sat down behind the desk and picked up one of the bundles of banknotes.

The moment the notes touched his hand, he knew they were genuine.

This wasn’t mysticism; it was the distinctive feel created by special paper and ink.

Because money circulates, it is constantly being used. There’s no such thing as electronic payment in this era, and physical currency is the primary payment and settlement medium—period.

So to make sure that these notes won’t wear out or tear easily through long-term use, their carrier—that is, the paper—and the dyes used for printing must be very special.

The fibers in this kind of paper are extremely tough; that’s true for the currency paper of any country. Toughness means it’s less likely to tear.

When you touch it, it doesn’t give you the "brittle" or "soft" feel of ordinary paper; it has a certain elasticity!

Then there’s the dye.

The dye isn’t bright and garish, and you can feel a slight oily layer on it, yet it doesn’t pile up the way ordinary oil-based pigments do!

Most importantly, this is intaglio printing!

In this era of underdeveloped technology, the plates used to print money are basically pure copper engraving plates. Every line is actually an intaglio/relief line carved into the copper!

Making such copper plates is extremely difficult—for an individual or ordinary organization, not everyone can tackle all these problems at once.

That’s why, although counterfeits exist, they are still relatively easy to distinguish.

Not long after, the worker who had first kicked up a fuss about the money being fake came into Lynch’s office.

The worker looked to be only in his twenties. He was a bit stiff, and his eyes were full of barely concealed curiosity.

Lynch invited him to sit. "No need to be nervous. I just have one question..." The young man nodded quickly, and Lynch asked directly, "Why do you think this money is fake?"

"You know, this money was taken from the National Bank. If it’s fake, that means the National Bank is printing counterfeit notes. But they don’t look counterfeit..."

The young man looked at the notes for a while, apparently thinking. Lynch added, "No one else will hear what you say."

Everyone left the room, and only then did the young man tell Lynch the truth.

"Mr. Lynch, I once copied a hundred-Yares banknote..." he said, a little embarrassed.

The young man had loved drawing since childhood. His parents, the neighbors, and even his teachers at school all marveled at his Talent.

If he had been born into a wealthy family, he might already have held his own solo exhibition and begun to shine in this field.

But he was just a poor kid from an ordinary family. Drawing didn’t make life any better. As he grew older, he gradually came to see the harshness of reality.

After a quarrel, he locked himself in his room and tried to use his paintbrushes to persuade his parents.

Unfortunately, although the money he painted looked very similar to real notes, there were still some differences.

In the end, he chose to bow to reality, completely abandoning his dream of becoming a great painter, and started working instead.

It was precisely because he had once copied the hundred-Yares banknote that he knew the details of the hundred-unit note very well.

When he received these notes, he immediately noticed some oddities—for example, certain patterns had shifted position, and some images were at different angles.

From this, he concluded that the money was counterfeit.

He even reminded Lynch, "Sir, did you notice?"

"The print date on this money is this year, yet it’s only April now..."

This sentence gave Lynch great inspiration. He encouraged the young man a bit and said he hoped to see the young man’s paintings; maybe someone in the Federation would be interested.

At the same time, he gave the young man some money so he could buy canvas and paints and so on.

After the young man left, Lynch ordered people to start gathering news reports from last year and this year about additional issuance, extra printing, or currency redesign and recall.

Generally, the circulation of new currency has prerequisites—for example, when the state believes that the current currency in circulation can no longer satisfy market allocation needs, it will issue more.

They will publicly state whether this additional issuance is policy-driven or circulation-driven, whether it’s backed or not.

Of course, there is another situation: when old notes have been circulating too long and the rate of damage starts rising, then, in order not to let these time-worn notes affect the use of currency in circulation...

It’s also permissible to recall worn-out notes from the market.

If some portion of circulating currency is recalled, then naturally another portion must be released to replace it, and all of this must be announced in the newspapers!

Lynch did not seek confirmation from Lemar National Bank. Doing so might prompt them to hastily issue a retroactive announcement, and once that announcement came out, this whole matter would lose its value.

After his staff combed through a large amount of information from last year to this year, and obtained some answers from relevant people who were not bank employees, it could be confirmed that Lemar had not publicly announced any additional issuance or new currency within the last few years!

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