Eliza's words had given me a great deal to think about. I understood why Jespain's currency couldn't be replicated now. Jespain's currency had all been made inside of a dungeon. Those coins were bound to that dungeon and only existed as long as they were within a proper range of that dungeon. Once the coins were too far away, they would disappear.

This was fundamentally different than the items that were dropped in dungeons or left in chests and could be taken out and used. Those were physical objects. Mana was put into them and they were converted into real items. Sometimes, the laws of the dungeon caused those items to function differently relative to other items, such as a copy of a malacrum or silvthril sword acting like the real metal while inside the dungeon, but they were still fundamentally their unique objects.

If I took the sword forcefully from some sword-wielding skeleton and it wasn't a drop, I could certainly use the sword in the dungeon, but once I left, it would have disappeared like smoke and the mana from the sword remained with the dungeon. As a result, such items consumed less mana and the dungeon would recover the lost mana when the conditions were met. This was an anomaly I had read about when researching dungeons in my spare time. It had never seemed relevant, and I had never considered using the technique in such a manner.

When Marina had said that the coins couldn't be counterfeited, she had meant it. Although Eliza had copied the lore of the coin and made a duplicate, that duplicate could either be attached to Eliza's dungeon, and thus not be carried very far away, or it could be a real physical coin. Either way, its existence as a forgery would be rather obvious. It wouldn't have a connection to the dungeon, and anyone who knew about the true source of the coins would be able to quickly tell.

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I still considered having Eliza make me a few bags of counterfeit coins, but I threw out the idea. Such a thing would only cause an incident if it was found out, and I couldn't see it benefiting me very much. Rather, brushing up on my negotiation skills and creating a proper trade agreement was the direction my focus should go.

"Daddy? What's up?" Eliza asked, noticing the worried look on my face.

"Given what we know about their currency, this suggests two very worrying things about Jespain," I spoke out loud before I could help myself. "It means that Jespain is using dungeons as a natural resource, and it also means that they likely have such a dungeon stretched out underneath most of Jespain."

To use the currency throughout Jespain, the dungeon would need to be nearby Jespain. They had to be doing something similar to what Calypso had done in the Bandit's Respite. She had managed to move large quantities of seemingly immortal bandits around, and she had done so with the power of a dungeon stretched out under the land. Since the country and city themselves weren't a dungeon, that meant that the dungeon was hidden underground.

"Wouldn't such a thing require lots of miasmas?" Eliza asked.

She hit the nail on the head. For such a dungeon to exist, it would eat away at the mana of the country. I noticed the mana was rather low in the city, but this lifestyle there's didn't seem sustainable. When Calypso was doing it, she was fueling her dungeon with sacrifices of countless people she killed, and she had only been doing it for months. Otherwise, the ground above would have turned barren and dead. Jespain presumably had been running like this for years, so they had to have some source of mana. Just where were they getting the supply?

I noticed Eliza still watching me with a clueless and innocent expression on her face. I reached out and patter her head. This had to do with another country and its secrets. The best thing I could do was not get involved.

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