Chapter 91: The Lords' Mutual Pickpocket Tricks (33)

In the laboratory.

Luosen stayed alone, holding a few of his own Dawn City Bank deposit notes.

These were collected from a noblewoman of Shire County and had never been used.

At this moment, he placed the old deposit notes together with the brand-new ones provided by Maxim, using a high-magnifying glass and a backlight source to carefully compare the differences between the notes.

After examining each note one by one, he finally reached a conclusion.

"Three of the deposit notes are counterfeit!"

"Although they are identical in material to those of Dawn City Bank, they absolutely do not belong to Dawn City Bank."

"Fifty deposit notes: forty-seven genuine, three fake, one worth 2000 Ogres, meaning a loss of 6000 Ogres."

Luosen did not point this out to Maxim, because he felt the matter was not simple and did not want to startle the snake.

The production technique of these three counterfeit notes is nearly perfect; ordinary people cannot tell real from fake at all, and even the vast majority of people in the world cannot distinguish them.

The reason Luosen could detect the abnormality immediately is his extremely high sensitivity to magical aura.

Any spell, after being cast, converts most of its mana into spell energy, but still retains an extremely tiny trace of mana.

This tiny trace of mana is the unique soul aura left by the caster.

The longer the time, the fainter the aura.

Once it exceeds half a month, it basically surpasses the perception limit of an ordinary mage.

But Luosen is a Ten Rings mage.

These three counterfeit notes were made two months ago, and their residual mana is extremely faint.

Yet he still felt an extremely subtle difference between them and the genuine deposit notes.

"Dawn City has a total of five Arcane Masters involved in making the deposit notes; I am very familiar with the aura of each Arcane Master, but on these three notes there appears a completely unfamiliar Master's aura."

"This aura is lively and spirited; its owner should be no older than thirty, whereas the youngest Arcane Master in Dawn City who participates in engraving the deposit notes is already forty."

Therefore, the deposit notes must be forged, and the minute differences in the paper craftsmanship also strongly corroborate Luosen's speculation.

Counterfeiting bank deposit notes is essentially stealing money from the bank.

Dawn City Bank belongs to the Dawn Duke, so this is stealing the Duke's money.

"So who is stealing?" "Bank deposit notes use a very special alchemical paper; forging them is extremely difficult, and deciphering the magical seal is so hard as to be nearly impossible—it is a mother‑son voucher."

"To achieve this level of counterfeit‑to‑real deception, one needs collusion between Dawn City Bank insiders and outsiders; two, it requires extremely high alchemical craftsmanship."

Previously, Luosen had considered the idea of counterfeiting Dawn City Bank deposit notes to cash out, but later discovered the difficulty was extremely high.

He would have to invest enormous time and effort into research, and also take great risks to launder black money, so he ultimately gave up.

Now someone has actually done it, succeeded, and does not fear the risk.

"Eight or nine times out of ten it is the Levinde Royal Family!"

The Levinde Royal Family, mobilizing a kingdom's top‑tier power, forged bank deposit notes and secretly siphoned money from the Dawn Duke's purse!

No, it is not just taking the Dawn Duke's money; it is taking the wealth of all the Weilan people!

Because after this batch of counterfeit notes entered the market, Levinde merchants naturally used them to purchase resources from all the counties of Weilan.

Its essence is exchanging a pile of low‑value alchemical paper for huge quantities of genuine material goods.

After figuring it out, Luosen couldn't help but curse silently.

"I've always heard that the little king of Levinde loves to play. Now it seems this old six is actually a big player!"

"Then what are the consequences of this?"

In Weilan, and even in the entire Natural Alliance of nations, paper‑based credit currency has not yet arisen.

Such unnamed bank deposit notes are used only for large‑scale transactions; ordinary civilian transactions still use metallic currency such as gold, silver, and copper.

Nobles and wealthy merchants are the main users of such bank deposit notes.

Once the matter is exposed, the first to be affected are the interests of these upper‑class nobles and wealthy merchants.

If the credit of the bank deposit notes collapses, Dawn City Bank will suffer a run on withdrawals, and thereafter it will inevitably trigger a series of chaotic disturbances throughout Weilan.

Ultimately, this consequence will be borne by all the Weilan people.

Everyone will become collectively poorer.

Genuine material goods have been swindled away by some tricks—of course that makes us poor.

"The world is truly treacherous, but I cannot just let myself be robbed for nothing!"

"We must find a way to pull the wealth back from Levinde."

This wealth is not gold or silver, which serve as circulating currency, but various kinds of tangible material resources used in all aspects of society.

"But how do we pull it out?"

This can be done; the 'Lightning Messenger' he just sold is a kind of reverse‑pickpocket operation.

But such things cannot be done too often, because he is currently weak; revealing too many good things will attract attention.

While he was pondering concrete measures, the door of the government office was knocked on, and it was Muladi who arrived.

He and Knight Maxim are on the same road, but they are not accomplices.

The Knight had left, but he was still there, and moreover his business with Luosen had not yet been completed.

"Baron, my goods are ready; when do you have time?" "I have time now; just wait a moment while I prepare."

Soon, Luosen saw Muladi's goods.

This batch of goods was placed in a newly built warehouse in Crescent City.

Among them were 150 sheep, 120 ewes and 30 rams.

There were 60 people, 10 women and 50 men.

The uniform characteristic of this batch of goods is 'young, ordinary appearance (referring to people), but with a very well‑proportioned physique and excellent potential for transformation.'

It is obvious that the sheep go to the low‑end market, the people to the high‑end market, and both male and female tastes are fully catered to; Muladi truly deserves to be a professional brothel owner.

But there are also some characteristics that are hard to understand.

Luosen stood at the warehouse entrance, holding a cargo manifest and studying it closely, and couldn't help asking, "Are male courtesans that popular in Levinde?"

Among the high‑end sixty people, men outnumbered women five to one; it was truly off the mark.

Mu Ladi shrugged, a blank expression on his face: "Our queen dowager is fond of handsome men, and a group of noble ladies follow suit. Moreover, they are often especially generous."

"Especially generous?"

Luosen savored those five words, then turned to Mu Ladi: "Could you give an example?"

"The queen dowager has a male favorite, a commoner who is now one of the cabinet ministers. I admit he has decent abilities, but without the queen dowager's favor he could never have risen to such a high position, let alone received a Baron fief!"

Mu Ladi wore an expression of 'Why not me?' in his anger.

Luosen clicked his tongue in amazement: "Truly generous!"

His mind suddenly lit up: 'Since the market for noble ladies' demands is so huge, and what they seek isn't tangible goods but rather frivolous services, that's exactly my specialty.'

The queen dowager's affair is essentially the decadent trend of the upper class.

Decadence, when applied to ordinary people, leads to wasteful households; when applied to a nation, it ruins the country—the effect is the same.

Thus, he continued reviewing the detailed transformation requirements, and while doing so forwarded them to Laifu.

While waiting for Laifu's model, he said, "Mu Ladi, regarding the Transformation Technique, I have a new idea; would you like to hear it?"

Mu Ladi nodded without hesitation: "Of course."

He now greatly admires Luosen's abilities, especially his transformation skill, because Luosen has just cured Sir Maxim Knight's serious illness.

"Look, the base of these goods is actually quite ordinary, especially their temperaments—they're all common folk. I think you should bring over a batch of sharp‑witted, clever people."

"Huh?" Mu Ladi didn't quite understand.

Luosen switched to Spiritual Whisper and said, "Research those truly wealthy and powerful noble ladies, delve into all their preferences, then transform this batch of clever people into the forms the ladies require for long‑term dealings."

Mu Ladi understood at once, his eyes flashing brightly, then he hesitated a bit.

"Doing it this way can indeed make a lot of money, but the risk isn't small; after all, this attracts hatred, and the noble ladies who dare to keep male favorites usually have considerable power and background."

Luosen obviously understood the risk; using tricks to extract money, there's no way it's risk‑free.

But the risk is still manageable; as long as one is careful, it won't backfire.

He then whispered, "We can hire a few pairs of clean‑handed operatives; regarding transformation, I will support you one hundred percent. Let me tell you, I've recently developed an extraordinary Transformation Technique, its effect is highly covert and can evade all currently popular transformation detection methods on the market."

"Of course, this extraordinary Transformation Technique is also very expensive, but if you're willing to do it, I'll handle the transformation side all the way."

Mu Ladi's face showed a hint of struggle.

But he is a person with strong execution ability and a highly adventurous spirit; otherwise he wouldn't have traveled thousands of miles on mere unfounded speculation to invest in Luosen.

After a brief hesitation, he nodded in agreement: "I'll do it!"

Luosen grinned slightly: "That's the spirit."

"For this, I only charge for the Transformation Technique, which of course is pricey. But as long as you pick the right target, I guarantee no loss."

He plans to stay behind the scenes, collecting steady fees.

Mu Ladi was already mentally prepared for this, and in fact he had already thought of many ways to siphon money from the noble ladies, only lacking a peerless handsome man.

Now that a Baron has joined, the final piece is in place! His eyes sparkled with excitement: "Hehe—Baron, I can't wait to get started."

Luosen smiled inwardly, his face unchanged.

At this moment, Laifu had already built the model.

He then produced the pre‑prepared arcane lattice, using the arcane transformation energy stored within, and began fulfilling the prior transaction agreement between them.

This method of using a lattice to pre‑store energy for large‑scale transformation is very costly; ordinary people can't afford it, but it can amplify a person's magical effect by roughly 30 to 200 times.

Luosen is currently, on the surface, a mid‑rank mage; he channels all his mana into control rather than converting it into transformation energy, barely managing to transform everyone present and the sheep.

Inside the warehouse, the men were handsome and vigorous, the women beautiful and captivating, each with a distinct charm, leaving Mu Ladi dazzled and increasingly trusting Luosen's abilities.

He immediately took this group back to Levinde, promising to return as soon as possible.

Luosen wasn't idle either.

The second batch of supplies had arrived, and he had to quickly start the next step.

This step has a name: the 'Island Guard Plan'.

As his earnings grew larger, no matter how hard he tried to avoid it, White Sturgeon Island would inevitably attract increasing attention.

If there isn't enough armed force to protect it, then he's merely helping others make money.

(End of Chapter)