Chapter 266, The First Blood Mushroom Crisis
The abundance of Setsuna is about to end.
Most places in this small world are slowly moving toward death.
The rich and diverse plants gradually die as time goes by.
First there were all kinds of weak flowers, then shrubs, big trees, and finally even the vines clinging to the big trees died.
The world is suddenly missing an important piece of the puzzle.
Food production in the external environment has stagnated.
This is a very serious problem.
The rat people did not turn around for a while, and the various breeding houses continued to breed disorderly and violently.
Until each of the Big Claw priests suddenly and directly realized the problem that was no longer avoidable.
Food, food, food.
Don’t worry about the large group of young ratmen in your hands for the time being. Anyway, just give them all to the ratman caravans traveling to and from the rear of the front line.
But those immature young ratmen have become a big problem.
Famine began to appear in some areas of the Skaven Empire. Suddenly, it was very abrupt. It was as if the Skaven had never thought about this problem the day before, but today they had to struggle for food.
During this period, the rat people continued to spread out the city, and urban communities appeared one after another. Workshops and breeding houses became the most popular industries. There was an absence of something that could not be ignored in normal operation. .
Grow room.
Not surprisingly, eating cave mushrooms is really a kind of torture, not only those mushroom slices that have been dried in the sun and look like cowhide, but even the fresh and tender cave mushrooms are definitely not that delicious. .
When you take a bite, strange and greasy mucus will fill the cavity, with an unbearable strange fishy smell and a hint of imperceptible sweetness. This is the experience that cave mushrooms can bring.
After a long period of cultivation, the cave mushrooms now grown in the Rat Man Empire have long been different from the cave mushrooms given by Du Yuan at the beginning.
The Big Claw Priests have not compiled a set of effective agricultural laws, but they are not stupid. The body of the cave mushroom, the mycelium spreading in the culture, was noticed and recognized by them. At the same time, almost instinctive, selective breeding has already begun on cave mushrooms.
Cave mushrooms that grow more, larger, and are more adaptable are gradually born in the deep underground caves of the Rat Man Empire.
The priests of Big Claw are very interested in growing mushrooms. After all, the god's gift that emerges in the blood pool is expressed in the form of a mushroom. They are very interested in blood mushrooms.
It’s just that no one wants to touch those lunatics. The temple guards cannot tolerate any desecration of the temple of gods.
The cultivation direction of cave mushrooms does not include one word, delicious.
This gave it such an unpalatable and weird taste, and also resulted in a skyrocketing production capacity. Every city of the rat people relied on cave mushrooms to support it.
Cave mushrooms are a very important thing, and for a long time it was a necessity that you never had to think about how to consume.
Although it is disliked by almost all rats, its status is unquestionable. The white mushroom that became popular not long ago has not shaken the status of cave mushrooms at all.
In each rat city, free people, workshop owners, mercenaries, warriors, and priests are all in the minority after all.
The real cornerstone of these cities has always been the slave rats whose number is hard to count. These cave mushrooms are specially supplied to the slave rats.
The moment of abundance brought several rounds of population explosions to the rat people, and also hid a crisis.
The newly established city ignored the existence of the planting room in this moment of abundance. After all, those high-ranking people in power never eat cave mushrooms, and those decent ratmen who have just gained freedom will never go back to eat these disgusting mushrooms. The mushrooms remember their past.
In this abundance, as long as some rat men are randomly sent to walk around, there will be no shortage of food at all.
This crisis has long been foreshadowed. As time goes by, it has become increasingly difficult for the ratmen running on the ground to harvest excess food, but not many ratmen seem to care. at this point.
Until now, this crisis has completely emerged, and hunger has truly arrived.
The breeding house began to recycle rat babies to reduce food consumption.
The price of cave mushrooms began to rise, and the economic system built by the Ratmen based on the value of blood mushrooms began to fluctuate violently.
This thing is really original.
Essentially, the rat people just added a link to the most primitive barter, creating an extra thing that can explain the value of everything, the blood mushroom.
Everything is bound to the blood mushroom.
Rat people are very accustomed to this pattern.
In the past, if two ratmen bought or sold a slave rat, there would usually be one or two rounds of disputes.
One ratman may think that the slave rat is worth a piece of leather, but the other does not care about the leather and just wants a pot of berries. This is a very troublesome situation.
Up to the formation of this rough system, now, all rat people recognize a unified price, blood mushrooms.
A slave rat is worth three blood mushrooms at a certain time. At different times, this price is not fixed. The price of slave rats also fluctuates accordingly. It may be more expensive or cheaper. But it doesn't matter.
The important thing is that all the rat people recognized the value of blood mushrooms to slave rats.
Blood mushroom is very advantageous in this regard. It is naturally a precious and necessary thing.
In a very short time, blood mushrooms existed as a currency, anchoring everything in the Skaven Empire.
This has brought great convenience to the expansion of the Rat Man Empire, but there is a problem. After the blood mushroom's anchoring to other things has completely fallen, after this system is formed, it means that the blood mushroom itself is also included. If there is a cycle, it will also change due to the turbulence of things in this system.
The rising price of cave mushrooms has led to the scarcity of blood mushrooms.
A very strange change. The increase in blood mushrooms should be bound to the rat war. Although it may still be affected by one thing, those Goblin farms, it should not be affected by anything. Hook up with cave mushrooms and hook up with this famine.
The Ratman's farm has been steadily expanding, and the Ratman's foreign wars have been going smoothly, but blood mushrooms have gradually become scarce during this time.
The turmoil caused by this spread to the entire Rat Empire, and even the most prosperous underground Rat City was implicated.
The Rat Council will issue blood mushrooms to the rat priests who undertake some basic work in the city every once in a while. The number of blood mushrooms is fixed and does not change. Generally speaking, it is enough. You can still have some left over to meet your daily needs.
This is the treatment that the most orthodox rat priest can receive.
Enviable treatment.
But recently, these guys have obviously had some troubles.
The rat priests have recently developed some urgent needs. In their burning desire for comparison, many things have become absolute rigid needs. A good-looking staff, that's for sure, will allow you to hold your head high when facing other Skaven Priests.
Luxury leather materials, objects engraved with divine patterns, stone walls carved by famous craftsmen, and those from heretics, with different stories and involvement with the great gods. weird stuff.
These are necessities and cannot be lacking.
But there is a problem, these things all require blood mushrooms.
In a very short period of time, the prices of all kinds of things in the Skaven Kingdom began to increase, and these wealthy Skaven Priests soon faced a choice, whether to continue to maintain their own In order to maintain the pomp and circumstance, he still kept more blood mushrooms as his own rations.
The impact of this famine was unexpectedly large.
Slave rats are the foundation of the rat empire and the wealth of all the great rat people.
After the financial system surrounding the blood mushrooms gradually took shape, each slave rat was clearly marked with a price, but their situation actually improved.
Once you have a price tag, it changes from a weed to an asset.
You will trample on the weeds on the roadside for no reason, but you will probably not damage your own assets for no reason. Blood mushrooms are precious, and the slave rats that need to be exchanged for blood mushrooms will naturally make these guys more. Somewhat taken seriously.
In order to prevent problems with their assets, workshop owners, farmers, mercenary captains, and Big Claw Priests and Rat Priests all began to buy cave mushrooms without hesitation.
This famine is actually not as serious as imagined. For the rat people, after all, after long-term cultivation and selection, the output of cave mushrooms has already reached an unreasonable level.
The plants in the world died on a large scale, but the trunks and dry branches were still preserved. These were the materials used by the rat people to cultivate mushrooms.
Expanding cave mushroom production is a simple matter for Skaven.
How can I put it this way? These guys are really rude and barbaric.
After this problem emerged, there was a large amount of hoarding, and in a very short period of time, the cave mushrooms that were originally unnoticed were swept away in cities one after another.
And the momentum continues to spread.
Gradually, more and more rat people are aware of a problem. Cave mushrooms seem to have become unparalleledly important now.
This time things are broken.
The growing room began to increase the price of cave mushrooms, and the breeding room soon followed. The slave rats began to increase the price, as if dominoes were falling.
A strange situation occurred.
On the one hand, there is a shortage of food, and a large number of slave rats die of hunger. On the other hand, there is a shortage of food. The breeding room has increased the price of the slave rats produced.
As the two vicious situations collided, the price and demand for slave rats began to soar. They had never been so valuable.
It also brought about a severe economic turmoil.
Everything has begun to increase in price, and too many things are related to slave rats.
As if it was a farce, and also as if they were following each other, everything in the Rat Man Empire began to increase prices impatiently, as if as long as this was done, more blood mushrooms would be consumed by these The guy who manages the property took him into his arms.
Then, as expected, blood mushrooms began to become scarce. No rat man was qualified to regulate the value of blood mushrooms, and no rat man had the ability to control the output of blood mushrooms. Such a rat man would not be affected by the blood mushrooms. Something that defines and governs, a gift from the gods.
After being included in that simple economic system, it is inevitable to be affected by other things in this system.
The problem has become more serious and absurd.
In a very short period of time, the price of a slave rat was twenty blood mushrooms.
The Big Claw Priest who maintains the planting room and breeding house seems to be making money immediately. Every time a cave mushroom and a slave rat are sold, a huge amount of blood mushrooms will be taken into his arms.
The rat priests who maintained the caravan seemed to have made a profit. The amount of blood mushrooms they could earn from running the caravan back and forth increased tenfold in one go.
All the rat people seemed to have made a profit, and a large number of blood mushrooms were put into the circulation of this system.
No matter what I do, I get more blood mushrooms. There is just one problem. The more blood mushrooms I get, the less and less rat people can afford to eat blood mushrooms every day.
No matter what, blood mushrooms are needed, and more and more blood mushrooms are needed.
Suddenly, things seemed to be back to the starting point. The more you took, the more you had to spend. It can only be said that the rat people were messing around and inflated themselves.
But blood mushrooms really have production capacity limitations. Blood mushrooms are truly precious things. The rat people are really consuming blood mushrooms all the time.
The inflation of the rat people seems to have no stopping trend despite the concerted efforts of all parties in the rat empire.
Gradually, the output of blood mushrooms began to fail to keep up with the daily expanding demand in the Skaven Empire.
By analogy, it is probably that a country's money printing machine is beginning to be unable to keep up with the demand for currency. You must know that blood mushrooms are not just a piece of paper. You can print any number you want.
And there are no substitutes. The economic structure of the rat people is entirely guaranteed by blood mushrooms. All goods output are false. The motivations of the rat people for buying and selling activities are also very simple. Everyone is real. Needs blood mushrooms.
And now, the blood mushrooms have been kidnapped by the inflated prices.
A real famine emerged.
A very absurd situation.
The rat people obviously do not lack food, and the breeding house also has no shortage of young rat people, the output of slave rats, and the workshop does not lack weapons. The victory of the war brought a large number of sacrifices, and the expansion of the rat people The farm is also producing a steady stream of output.
The Rat Man Empire is obviously spiraling upward, but the blood mushroom, the support point for all these connections, exchanges of things, and buying and selling, has collapsed.
A spear now requires more than a hundred blood mushrooms, and the Eastern Expeditionary Army needs tens of thousands of spears in one purchase. In other words, in one transaction, hundreds of blood mushrooms are needed. This amount is 10,000.
Not to mention there are many other things, so large that even taking out the blood mushrooms in the entire Skaven Empire may not be able to sustain the resources consumed by the Eastern Expeditionary Force in a war. .
This is a very absurd situation, but none of the parties involved in it are willing to let go.
If prices return to the original price, after relenting, sell the items you have in batches together. This is very simple and will not be unsalable. There is just a problem. If you do this, other items , if it’s still that price, then you’re doomed.
Sell 10,000 slave rats, and the blood mushrooms obtained cannot even be replaced by the blood mushrooms needed to cultivate a hundred slave rats.
No one wants to take this risk.
Everything in the Ratman Empire is gradually coming to a halt.
An extremely absurd situation actually happened in the Rat Man Empire at this time.
(End of this chapter)