Chapter 29 — The Mithril Treasury
Blade of Dawn · Page 1 of 3
At Gao Yang's instinctive outburst, the veiled mysterious woman paused, blinking in some bewilderment: "My name is Meitzen Purnia. I suppose the pronunciation does differ somewhat from the common names of the northern lands..."
Gao Yang hastily reeled his straying thoughts back in: "Oh, sorry, never mind, never mind—it's my pronunciation that's off."
Then he cleared his throat twice, striving to look serious (and to salvage the atmosphere while he was at it): "So, Miss Agent of the Mithril Treasury, what brings you calling so late at night—and entering through the window, no less?"
The woman dropped down from the windowsill and came to stand before Gao Yang: "The window was a last resort. Heaven knows how many eyes are fixed on this place right now, and what you left in the Mithril Treasury is classified as 'top secret.' By the agreement of that year, whether a deposit or a withdrawal, the whole process must be conducted in confidence."
As she spoke, she fixed Gao Yang with those eyes of hers, faintly gleaming violet in the night. Though the veil hid her expression, the scrutiny in her gaze was plain enough.
Gao Song's mind was already racing.
He knew the Mithril Treasury—or rather, his memory contained records pertaining to it.
The Mithril Treasury was no mysterious organization; in fact, the vast majority of sentient beings in this world knew of its existence. Yet at the same time, not a single soul dared claim to understand the true face of this "Treasury."
On the surface, it was a comprehensive vault service: it would store your money, safeguard your treasures—pay a sufficient fee, and you could confidently entrust anything whatsoever to their keeping. At least, such was the Treasury's public proclamation, and to this day, no one had ever heard of anything entrusted to the Mithril Treasury going missing. The Treasury also offered loans; with countless branches and agents across the world, anyone meeting the credit standards could easily find them and borrow money or whatever else they required—provided one minded two things. First, how much you could borrow depended entirely on the "rating" the Mithril Treasury assigned you, and the criteria for that rating had never been made public. Second, you had to repay.
The Mithril Treasury made certain that every copper coin it lent out came back with interest.
Just as no one had ever heard of goods entrusted to the Mithril Treasury being lost, so too had no one ever heard of anyone evading a debt to the Mithril Treasury. It was said that a cunning fire elemental lord had once attempted to defy this rule—though elemental beings have no need of money, this particular maverick of an elemental lord borrowed a vast sum from the Mithril Treasury, then returned to the elemental plane to watch the mortal world make a fool of itself. In the end, however, it repaid every last debt.
On the third day past the due date, that elemental lord's core and elemental fragments appeared at an auction in the north, and the proceeds from the sale precisely covered the sum of his debt and late fees.
From this one can see that the Mithril Treasury dealt not only with humans; in truth, it traded with every sentient race in the world. Anyone with a financial need was a potential client—even those mumbling, mystic elves of the south and those rock-hard dwarves of the west were no exception (it was said that Mithril Treasury outposts could be found even in kobold burrows). No one knew whether the organization had been founded by humans, elves, or some other race entirely; it simply persisted, and even the Demon Tide of seven hundred years ago had failed to disturb its operations. In fact, the very founding of the Kingdom of Ansu had been made possible by a loan from the Treasury—though Charles I had, fortunately, managed to repay it in the end.