Chapter 426: Adrian, The Secret Billionaire

Adrian nodded and followed behind him. As they walked, he saw a few other artifacts that the mages were working on. Some of them were basically magically enhanced swords. Some of them were heavy pieces of armor that were heavily inspired by the Avarice Kingdom’s recent armors.

Seeing this, Adrian could not help but let out a soft sigh.

"You know what? Let’s do one thing. I can give you a massive discount, but let’s make a different kind of deal instead."

Roderick raised his eyebrows warily. "What do you mean a deal?"

Adrian smiled. "Let’s go back and talk in your chamber."

Almost two hours later, Adrian returned to his own bedroom in Oresfall with a very satisfied smile on his face, along with a spatial ring filled to the brim with gold coins.

He had successfully sold all ten thousand mana crystals for exactly one hundred gold coins each. It amounted to a staggering one million gold coins in total.

Adrian still had a few tens of thousands of gold coins left over from what he had originally won from the auction two years ago, but he just did not know exactly how much he would need in the future for the development of his newly unified territory. One thing he did not mind doing was splurging money to make things faster.

After all, those ten thousand mana crystals were literal chump change for him and his dungeon.

Adrian looked over at the large bed. Claire, Serena, and Aria were still supposedly sleeping.

Just as he was about to quietly leave the room, he heard Claire’s voice.

"Where are you going?" Claire said playfully, sitting up. "You left without telling us anything. Are you cheating on me?"

Adrian turned around and looked at her with a sigh.

"Why would I even cheat on you?" He shook his head. "I just went to meet Roderick."

Claire raised an eyebrow, the sheets pooling around her waist. "Why meet him?"

"Just a small business deal," Adrian said casually.

He walked over to the edge of the bed and held out the ring Roderick had given him. He looked at Claire, and then his gaze drifted over to Serena and Aria, who were suddenly both ’awake’ now. It was obvious they were just acting like they had been sleeping the whole time.

He channeled a bit of mana and simply emptied the entirety of the spatial ring right onto the floor.

Gold coins poured out like a waterfall, clinking loudly as they piled up into a massive, glittering heap.

The three girls just stared at it in complete awe.

Aria was a little powerhouse in her past life, but money was something she had rarely seen. Whatever she earned back then, she spent it on survival in a few days.

Saving was a luxury she couldn’t afford.

As for Claire, her father was favored by the emperor. But other than getting a bunch of people for training and having a bunch of soldiers, there was nothing else the empire provided for him. Yes, he did get a bunch of money, but most of it was reinvested back into the soldiers themselves to make them stronger. Even though Claire was from a noble family, this much gold was just unbelievably high.

Serena, on the other hand, was the daughter of a Duke. She had seen her fair share of money in her life. Tens of thousands of gold coins were a common sight in her family’s treasury, but most of the time the gold was diluted into silver coins because it was much more usable. Gold was mostly used to make big purchases like buying land, mansions, shops and things like that while silver? It did almost everything.

But the money she was looking at right now? One million gold coins in one spot? It was something even she hadn’t seen in her entire life.

She looked up at Adrian with wide eyes, and spoke up first.

"Just... how many coins are these?" she asked slowly. "I did not expect you to have this much money. I knew you were rich from selling all the iron, but even that is not enough to get you this much raw gold. Even if I consider the fact that you didn’t really pay any loans, this just doesn’t make any sense."

Adrian chuckled.

"Well, the iron is basically a business that I set up specifically for the running of the territory and Oresfall alone. The real business that I have is thanks to me being the ’Blessed of the Goddess of Prosperity’." ℴ

He chuckled and confidently lied through his teeth.

"I get a little bit of mana crystals from the dungeon as a direct blessing from her. All I did was save them up, and now I basically sold a fraction of them to Roderick for all of this money."

He looked at the three of them with a smirk.

"Don’t tell anyone though."

The three of them just silently nodded. This was something that they had never expected.

Iron was a highly lucrative business, yes. But mana crystals? Just finding a few high-quality ones was considered a huge fortune. And this man had saved so many that he made a literal mountain of gold.

Claire looked up at him.

"How many gold coins are those again?" she asked.

Adrian smirked. "Well, one million gold coins," he said slowly, dragging out the syllables to make it sound dramatic.

Even though his dramatic delivery kind of failed, the sheer weight of the number still worked perfectly. The number was just completely unbelievable.

But the reality of it was sitting right in front of their eyes.

Adrian had taken his own resources and his richness for granted. While he didn’t really show off or expose how insanely rich he could technically be, he was just someone who never really cared that much about money. Especially not in this life. But for the girls, who never really knew what the true extent of his capabilities were, this was no different than a massive shock.