Chapter 85 - Programming A Banking System With Magic

Now I know there are going to be some of you who don’t find this very interesting, but... I don’t particularly care, I’m going to share my genius with you anyway.

You see in my previous life on Earth, I had a few courses on programming during my time at university, and finally in an entirely new world I actually had a use for them.

My plan was simple: my bank would provide our customers with a card similar to the adventurers guild’s guild card, only this card would work similar to a mix of a debit card from back on Earth, and the banking app that some of the banks used.

To achieve this, I had to find something to serve as a sort of ’server’ on which all of the data of all of the accounts would be stored, now obviously in this world there wasn’t anything close to a computer, or a network that could be utilised for these purposes, but why would I need any of that if I had magic.

If I could use my magic to link these cards to my ’server’ and program everything to update in real time, that would be perfect, and because I’ll be using magic, there wouldn’t be any server, or network lag.

Now some of you might be thinking, ’but what about security?’ If the card is stolen from the customer, then whoever stole the card would have access to all of their wealth— which would be exactly the case if their purse was stolen, by the way— but I even had an idea for that.

That of course was something that I learned when I had to apply for my guild card— which by the way I still regret doing, damn quota’s— every person’s magic power is unique to them, it’s basically the magical version of a fingerprint. So if I could find a way to implement that into the activation of my ’debit cards’ then they basically become unhackable, it’s not like you could steal someone’s magic power signature.

I know right! Genius.

So I had all of these ideas, now I just had to implement them, which was actually... pretty easy.

I really have to say, I absolutely love null-magic.

I mean seriously, you could do so many lovely practical things with it, and that experience filled me with new ideas. Ideas for some very profitable products that I could sell.

Ideas so amazing that I couldn’t help the massive smile that spread across my face as I held the three cards I had just made, and the ledger they were all linked to.

Since I didn’t have any materials other than paper, the ’cards’ we held were actually just three scraps of paper, but they served the same purpose.

The one problem with this entire system was that I would need a bunch of employees, it wasn’t like I could link the ledger we were using with any other larger ledgers, because that would overwrite all of the current data, which would mean that each and every individual client’s data would need to be transcribed by hand into their own ledgers.

But oh well, that would just have to do.

Basically I programmed the main ledger to ’format’ once a month, to make space for the new transactions.

The entire system was pretty complicated, but I’ll give you a quick summary of how it worked.

Basically how it worked was that I had a massive ledger that was programmed to link a specific page in it to a specific card allocated to a client.

When a new client came, they would be given a card, which would be activated and linked to them by their own magic power, this card would then be linked to their page in the ledger, the page number of which would then serve as their account number.

As soon as they pour a dribble of magic power into the card, it would display their current balance, which of course it would receive from their ledger. If they wanted to complete a transaction, they only needed to touch cards with whoever they wanted to pay, think of the amount of coins they needed to pay, and once again dribble some magic power into their cards, and if the amount is less than their balance, the transaction would be made.

The ledger would then automatically deduct the amount from their balance, and transfer it to the receiver.

Simple really.

But you can’t deny it... it’s genius in its simplicity.

Which of course my lovely wives agreed with wholeheartedly the moment I explained it to them as I handed them their cards.

Obviously we were the three very first customers of my brand new bank— with a linked account of course.

"You created this entire system just like that?" Cat asked me with a slack jaw.

"Your husband is a genius after all," I nodded.

"That... might be an understatement," Julia muttered.

Of course that made me very proud of myself, I mean who wouldn’t be?

"So, now that you know how everything works," I said as I handed them the ledger. "I’m going to need you to find a way to get us a whole bunch of ledgers, and also some employees that can read, write, and do arithmetic."

"How many of these ledgers would we need?" Cat asked.

"Each client would need their own ledger, into which their daily transactions could be transcribed," I said. "So for now, we would need to have one for each of the people currently in the village."

"One for each villager?!" Julia asked. "How do you expect us to get that many ledgers here?"

"Yeah, it’s not like there’s a constant train of merchants coming here," Cat added. "Or even a courier company that travels from Lofie to the human realms."

"That... might be a problem." I muttered. "Where would we even find a store that sold that much stationary? I don’t think I’ve seen a place like that in Stellor."

"Actually," Julia said with a smile. "There’s a place like that in Virshak."

"Excellent!" I exclaimed with a smile. "I’m heading that way right now."

I noticed my mistake as soon as I saw them looking at me with those knowing smiles of theirs.

"Ahem, I mean I’m supposed to be in Stellor right now, so I might as well make the trip there after I’ve finished my business." I nodded at the effectiveness of my own lie.

"Riiight," They both agreed with me simultaneously.