<So, no dangerous animals, and no dangerous plants,> Samantha said, as if she was ticking off a box on a form. <That wouldn’t be enough to draw the attention of another faction. What kind of mineral resources does your planet have?>


    I thought for a minute. “We have gold, platinum, silver, diamonds—”


    <Boring, useless, niche, useless–>


    “Why would gold be boring?”


    <Any alchemist worth his salt can turn lead into gold. If you had lead you’d at least have some flexibility, but lead’s too common to be worth much. Anything else?>


    Stolen from Royal Road, this story should be reported if encountered on Amazon.


    “Rubies?”


    <That’s better than diamonds at least>


    “Hang on, is this where it turns out ‘worth his salt’ is literal, rather than just a figure of speech?”


    <Of course it’s literal. Why else would I talk about an alchemist being worth his salt? During acclimatisation most salt is converted into mana, and–>


    “It’s just… we have oceans of salt water. And bi–”


    <''Salt water'' meaning a mixture of primarily salt and water?!>


    "Or course, w–”


    <Oceans… of salt…water. Yes that’d do it. That’d get the Dune faction interested…And the Merfolk. And the Alchemist Academy. If you have those riches, why did you thing anyone would be interested in the gold?>