As a society highly similar to humans, even surpassing them in certain aspects, Goblins possessed an equally long heritage, unlike humans, who were prone to infighting.
Knowing full well they couldn't afford to provoke him, yet still daring to turn hostile over minting techniques, they must have had a trump card that gave them the confidence to do so.
Thinking about it, this made sense. Godric Gryffindor hadn't been known for his mild temper back in the day. After his sword was stolen, he merely retrieved it without resorting to further extremes.
This indicated that the Goblin Kingdom must have possessed something that gave even him pause.
Surrounded by a crowd of wary Goblins, Wayne looked expectantly towards the hall where something seemed about to burst forth from the ground.
A pseudo-Legend... it had to be a pseudo-Legend.
Hopefully, two would appear, so he could gather enough sacrificial offerings for his first ritual.
Boom!
Finally, answering Wayne's prayers, the building collapsed with a thunderous roar. Amid the swirling dust, the outline of a towering figure emerged.
Wayne's smile slowly faded.
"Lawrence, leave now and swear never to covet our minting techniques again, and I shall let this incident pass."
As the dust settled, a five-meter-tall Goblin statue forged entirely from gold revealed itself, striding out from the ruins. A crimson gem glittered on its forehead, strikingly similar to the one crushed earlier by the Goblin elder.
"Why must it be a puppet?" Wayne murmured to himself, ignoring the warning entirely, his dejection confusing Hermione.
Consulting the Dimensional Altar in his mind, Wayne inquired whether puppets could serve as sacrificial offerings. The response was vehement.
Flesh! Spirit! Soul!
The Dimensional Altar craved not mere energy, but the essence of high-level lifeforms.
A mere Legend construct was utterly useless.
"Worthless," the youth suddenly looked up, his tone dripping with disdain.
"What?"
The golden Goblin puppet paused, as if unsure it had heard correctly.
"I said, you Goblins are all worthless. You got my hopes up for nothing," Wayne's voice rang clear in every Goblin's ears. They glared furiously at the youth, armoured guards drawing their swords with metallic rasps.
Finally comprehending, the Goblin inside the puppet shrieked something in its native tongue, raising both hands to unleash twin energy cannons towards Wayne.
A golden shield materialised before Wayne and Hermione, steadfastly blocking the blasts.
"Hermione, enter the pocket dimension."
Ho-Oh descended, accompanied by melodic cries, and swirling flames enveloped Hermione before both vanished.
With his concerns alleviated, Wayne's gaze turned icy.
Though his expectations were self-imposed, how dare they fail to fulfil his wishes?
Just a mere puppet—what gave it the right to act so arrogantly?
Pushing his palms forward, the shield advanced relentlessly. The thick energy beams shattered, sending the puppet staggering backwards. It quickly righted itself, launching high into the air before plummeting down.
A sphere of light spun in Wayne's palm, crackling with red arcs of electricity.
"Ultimate Thunder Flash!"
With a forceful thrust, the sphere shattered, erupting into a terrifying beam of light wreathed in thunderous power.
The massive golem seemed unable to Apparate, crossing its arms before itself as the metal writhed and transformed into a solid shield, bracing for impact.
Boom!
It was as if a second sun had risen in the sky, its brilliance blinding and the temperature soaring. The Goblins who had been surrounding them moments earlier scattered in panic, unable to withstand the dispersing pressure.
Even under the mere ravages of the residual force, the mountain beneath the two figures had already vanished. Flying rubble crushed numerous houses, and unfortunate Goblins were struck, wailing beneath the stone debris.
"You managed to block that attack—truly possessing quasi-Legend prowess."
Sunlight bathed Wayne as he stepped into mid-air, illuminating him like a deity.
As the light faded slightly, it became clear that the golem's right arm had disappeared, but after several writhing motions, a golden arm regrew from its shoulder.
"Lawrence, let's negotiate," said the Goblin inside the golem. "I can give you money, lots and lots of money. I'll even hand over all our British operations to you. Gringotts will withdraw from the British Isles. As long as you don't demand the minting technique, we can stay out of each other's way, alright?"
The Goblin controlling the golem was already terrified, and it was accompanied by intense heartache.
Only he knew the devastating price he had paid to block that earlier strike.
"Are you dreaming?" Wayne sneered coldly, giving no chance for further nonsense. He clenched his right hand, and a thunder spear instantly materialised, hurled with immense force.
Then came a second, and a third.
The previous attack had merely been a probe—he wanted to test the golem's limits.
Now that the probing was done and held no surprises, he naturally had no intention of dragging it out.
The golden golem attempted to block the thunder spears by transforming a shield as before, but it miscalculated. The spears pierced through the shield and its chest without the slightest hesitation.
Thunderlord's Decree was a Domination talent. After the fusion of arcane runes, the various runic talents resonated, each increasing in power to varying degrees.
By the time the controlling Goblin realised the danger and tried to flee, the subsequent spears had pierced the golem's legs and waist, pinning it mid-air. Wayne took a step forward, Apparating before the golem, Gryffindor's sword already in hand, also enveloped in lightning.
The next moment, with a swift swing, the golem's head was severed. Wayne caught it with one hand, carved into it with the sword, and pried out the red gem from its forehead.
Pouring his psychic energy crazily into the gem, Wayne's eyes flashed like lightning as he quickly locked onto an inconspicuous house.
"Found you!"
He dove downward, and the targeted house shattered into pieces. As the ground collapsed, a steel-built secret chamber was revealed.
A helmeted Goblin looked up at him in terror.
Wayne summoned the helmet over, turning it over in his hands. "You're quite the envy, kid. I've never piloted a Gundam, and here you are, playing with one.
"Any other trump cards? If not, I'm about to start the slaughter, alright?"
The Goblin didn't know what a Gundam was. Hearing Wayne's taunt, he merely trembled like a leaf, prostrate on the ground, not daring to look up.
"Milord, we surrender!"
With their final reliance easily crushed, even the greediest Goblins now understood that to avoid annihilation, they must yield and surrender.
Not only did they obediently hand over the coin-minting technique they valued more than life itself, but they also revealed all the secrets of that powerful puppet from earlier to Wayne.
The Goblin tribe only had this one trump card - to be precise, this tribe only possessed one.
The puppet was inherited from the Goblin Kingdom of thousands of years ago, with its core being not the puppet itself, but the red gemstone Wayne had confiscated.
Wealth Gem - this was the name the Goblins had given to this type of gemstone.
According to their records, the origin of these gemstones was unclear, having been passed down since ancient times, with few opportunities for use.
The reason was simple: the cost was too great.
The coin-minting technique was the lifeblood of the Goblins, and Galleons were the blood of the Goblins. The reason the puppet could unleash magical power comparable to a pseudo-Legend was that it converted special energy extracted from Galleons.
One could say that even if the puppet merely took two steps, it was entirely the sound of money.
The battle with Wayne had lasted only a minute or two, yet the Goblins had consumed five hundred thousand Galleons. Watching those completely dulled metal pieces turn into rust-covered lumps, Wayne drew a sharp breath.
'No wonder even during their damned rebellion, the Goblins couldn't bear to deploy these puppets, resulting in no records of them in the History of Magic.'
Who could afford to use this thing? The Goblins would probably go bankrupt before winning a few battles.
"Just this one piece?" Wayne asked with some disbelief.
"During the Goblin Kingdom's most prosperous period, they possessed six Wealth Gems. Unfortunately, half were destroyed in subsequent turmoil," lamented the goblin who had controlled the puppet earlier.
"There are two more in Persia," another goblin added obsequiously. "But they're too poor, they won't even spend on adamantine to form the body."
Adamantine was the liquid metal that composed the puppet's body, possessing not only strong magical and physical resistance but also powerful self-repair capabilities.
"That makes more sense," Wayne said with sudden understanding.
During their earlier confrontation, he had already determined the puppet's capabilities—though through the power of spending money—its destructive force unquestionably surpassed that of top-tier wizards, reaching the pseudo-Legend realm.
But the controller's comprehension of magic was insufficient, resulting in only half-baked performance. One or two definitely couldn't match a proper pseudo-Legend wizard, but with a few more, the pressure would become substantial.
Facing several infinitely self-repairing puppets with mere flesh and blood was clearly not a wise choice.
"I'll go check the Persian tribe. If you've lied to me, you know the consequences," Wayne glanced at the goblin who had spoken earlier, frightening him into immediately prostrating himself.
Indeed, Wayne currently had no intention of exterminating the Goblins. On the contrary, in the bank he was establishing, Goblins would remain the core workforce.
He had to admit that with the current staffing in the wizarding world, it was impossible to assemble a complete team capable of running a bank properly.
How could one expect wizards who couldn't even understand the conversion between Galleons and Knuts to deal with numbers daily?
He vividly remembered helping Mr Weasley exchange Muggle currency years ago - it was just a matter of a few hundred pounds, yet he spent the entire night unable to calculate how many Knuts he needed, eventually withdrawing all the coins from his vault.
Therefore, until wizards received basic education, Wayne still needed to use Goblins to work for him.
While a select few elites controlled the bank's upper echelons, the tellers and ordinary administrative staff at the bottom levels were temporarily assigned to fill gaps.
After plundering all the books and treasures, countless Goblins were heartbroken to the point of vomiting blood—literally vomiting blood. Treading upon a path paved with fresh blood, Wayne departed from the Goblin tribe, now reduced to rubble and ruins.
The method of minting Galleons was split into two: the special metal formula was held by the Goblins of Europe, while the coin moulds and forging techniques remained in Persia.
He would go there eventually, but not now.
The full-moon banquet for the Delacour family's young princess was Wayne's primary reason for coming to France. He had already prepared a lavish gift for his sister-in-law.