The Demon King's Hero Of Light 175 Chapter 175 Coin Changer

Change the lighting in the council room, so there are no outward distractions during meetings. Utilize communications devices between council members and leaders of every project to cut down on time between groups and messaging. Plan ahead on future needs, to ensure there isn't a shortage due to lack of foresight. Do not allow pictures that have nothing to do with work, to prevent non-work-related arguments.

Aella was running ideas through her head of the things she wanted to implement when she got back, based on the things she had seen here in the gnome lands. They were almost to the coin changer, when an ear-piercing scream caused her to grab her ears in pain.

Glancing around, she didn't see anything immediately dangerous, and realized none of the others had heard the noise.

"Are you alright, Your Majesty?" asked Alfred, as Frederik looked around as well, looking for what could have caused her pain.

"Is something wrong?" asked Manyur, looking puzzled.

"Did none of you hear that noise just now?" she asked, slowly uncovering her ears, prepared to cover them again.

"Noise?" asked Frederik, scrunching his brow in confusion.

"There wasn't a noise," said Alfred, shaking his head.

Manyur looked around slowly, then marched over to the other side of the street, where a young girl was sitting with what looked like a pet bird. As they followed the gnome, it became obvious the bird was mechanical.

"Is your toy making noises?" he asked, putting his hands on his hips.

"I'm trying to make it whistle, but it's not making any noises at all," said the young girl, looking up at him with wide eyes.

"Oh, it's making noises, alright," growled Aella. "You about blasted my ears off!"

"Oh! I'm so sorry! The frequency must be too high!" she gasped, grapping some tools and tearing into the delicate looking object.

"We'll have to be careful of that, in the future," said Alfred softly as they moved past the girl. "If you're sensitive to some noises, that could be used against you."

Aella nodded with a frown, she hadn't thought that could be possible, but obviously it was. Maybe she could figure out a way to control it by moving the air around her in certain ways? She could hear much better because of her air mastery, so maybe protecting herself from noise attacks were possible.

"Maybe that explains why they kicked me out of the cla.s.s," mused the girl, tilting her head thoughtfully to the side.

"Humph," grunted Manyur, turning back down the street. "We're not far from the coin changer, so let's get going."

Aella was amused that Manyur seemed to be so unimpressed with the girl, as if he had never been as incompetent as she was. Honestly, Aella was pretty impressed with the girl's bird, and was half tempted to go back to investigate it more, but there were more important things to deal with at the moment.

The coin changer had what looked like a giant oversized dragon fly sitting on his desk, next to several stacks of paper. He was busy messing with something inside of it when they entered the door. Due to the size issues, Frederik and Alfred chose to remain outside while Aella dealt with changing out their coins.

"Excuse me," said Manyur, straightening his shoulders and tugging on the edge of his leather jacket. "We need to exchange out some coins in order to make some purchases."

"I would hope that was why you were here, seeing as how I only deal with those sorts of things," said the gnome, making a final adjustment and shutting the back of the dragonfly.

It made a clicking noise and then the wings began to buzz, lifting it off the desk and flying over to perch on the top of a bookshelf crammed full of books and doc.u.ments.

"This is what I have," said Aella, impressed, setting down a small bag of gold coins.

She was hoping she could get a lot for them, because she wanted to make a large purchase of the communication devices, and she wasn't sure how much that would take.

"I may have to exchange out more, if these don't cover what I need to buy," she added as the gnome grabbed the bag and pulled it to him to see inside.

"Are these… real?" he gasped, glancing back up at her, before reaching inside and pulling out one of the gold coins.

Manyur puffed his chest out, and stood there proudly. "I am escorting Her Majesty, King Aella. Of course, those are real!"

The gnome gave a low whistle and pulled out his scales. Aella watched as he measured each coin carefully against his collection of weights, and then pulled out several books to cross check things.

"These are worth thousands of coins each!" he finally exclaimed, sitting back in his chair looking amazed.

"What!?" exclaimed Manyur, looking shocked for a moment before getting himself under control. "Um, I mean, of course they are!"

Scratching his head, the gnome coin changer finally shrugged and started counting out coins to put into a small chest. "This will be heavy, but you should be able to handle it. I wish I knew what you planned to buy with all of this, but it's not any of my business."

Aella took the chest when he was finally done, watching as he marked some notes in a book before placing her coins in a vault he had hidden under his desk. She could hear lots of whirring and clinking as he straightened back up and gave her a professional smile.

"Have a nice day," he said as she turned to leave.

Manyur followed her back outside, and Aella handed Frederik the chest.

"I'll let you carry this, as it might be a little heavy for Alfred."

Frederik nodded, without saying anything, as Alfred raised an eyebrow but didn't say anything, either.

"I suppose you want to go to the communications store, now?" asked Manyur.

Aella looked around and said, "Actually, I'm rather hungry. Is there somewhere to eat on the way?"

"Of course, what would you like? We have traditional gnomish food, there's a halfling restaurant near here, but it can be kind of crowded. There's an elven establishment, but they can be a little dodgy. I personally don't care much for them. Then there's a lot of street stalls?" offered Manyur, looking down at the communication device on his wrist.

"Why don't we try the halfling place? If we're going to the halfling lands next, it might not be a bad idea to sample what they have to offer," said Alfred.

"I don't mind waiting in line," said Frederik.

"Halfling it is," said Aella, waiting for Manyur to take the lead before they headed off again.

It was soon obvious what he had meant about the halfling restaurant being crowded. There were lines of gnomes wrapping down the street and around the block.

"It is the busiest time of day," said Manyur with a wince.

"If everyone is this intent on eating their food, then it must be really good," said Aella after thinking for a moment. She had suffered worse than standing in a long line.

"I could try and get us moved up by telling everyone you're a king?" offered Manyur, obviously not looking forward to standing in line for so long.

Aella was amused by his discomfort.

"It's alright. I don't want to cause a scene," she said, stepping behind the last gnome in line, and watching as other gnomes jumped in behind her, not realizing she wasn't a gnome because of how intent they were on their communication devices.

"It would be so easy to overwhelm these people," said Alfred, looking around at them.

"They aren't paying attention to anything other than those devices," agreed Aella.

Manyur wasn't paying attention, as he had also pulled out his own device and was busy clicking away on it.

"Do you really want to get these to take back home?" asked Frederik with a frown. "These people are like mindless puppets!"

"I like how the leaders can get updates immediately, instead of having to wait for runners to check on things, and by the time the runner gets back, things may have changed. Plus, if there's an emergency, we can respond to it immediately, instead of relying on bells or shouts to find out what's going on," she explained.

"I imagine you're not going to allow pictures?" asked Alfred, glancing at the baby turtles the gnome in front of them was scrolling through.

"They'll get to use pictures, but only work-related ones. If I catch anyone using the devices for personal use, they'll have to pay a fine or something," said Aella, shaking her head.

"I don't know how you're going to bring these in. It's going to take a long time for people to figure out how to use them, and then, if anything happens, we won't be able to fix them without having the gnomes come back to fix it for us," said Frederik, still not liking the idea.

"When we purchase the devices, and whatever else we need to make them work, I intend to have some gnomes come over to teach some of our people how to work on them, so I don't have to do that," said Aella, wondering how long that might take. Probably not as long as this line.