Another milestone of 500 followers reached. Yey. I am happy, and as you already know, it is important to keep your author happy.

A chappy:

Edited by: KenChi死

Once again I was standing in the training room. The Guild Master was warming up in front of me. As he finished, he threw me a long, well balanced staff.

Appraisal results were similar to the sword from before. Training staff that has attached bonus to receiving skill exp.

“… So… today I will use… a stick?” I smiled shyly. “Ya told, ya wanna learn how to use spears. Imagine it to be a spear. Just with no pointy blade at the end. To many fools are using spears just for stabbing, they are extremely easy to defeat, for as you avoid attacks and get closer, you will not be reached by the spike. Every skilled spearmen in situation like that would use the pole part as staff, and would try to hit you a couple more times gathering distance. We will begin with this. It is better to use a spear as a staff, and be more or less safe in close range, then to more or less master ranged combat… and die as an enemy would run away from your optimal range.” Jeremy said while using the staff to support his weight. “Just one more thing, before we start…” “What is it, kid?” “Can you NOT send me to the nursery today? I need to be fully functional tomorrow morning… oh, and do not plan anything for tomorrow morning either. I allowed myself to invite a guest to your office at this time. We may together solve each others problems.” “Who is that guest?” Jeremy seemed to be annoyed. Well I am not blaming him. I couldn’t predict that the situation would turn to be… so bad, yet promising. “A friend of a friend” I said smiling another time. His eyes widened for a second. “You better know, in what kind of mess you are about to jump. I don’t mind… but there are… personalities that do not like Rogue. But the fact that he is willing to leave the hole he was living in… You are planning something big, don’t you?” “Tomorrow.” I said, as I hate saying the same thing over and over again. “I will tell the details to both of you at the same time… for now, shouldn’t we start?”

I corrected my footing a little bit, grabbed the staff with my hands, and prepared to receive the blow. Of course, I failed and the blunt end of staff hit my stomach.

My teacher sighed

“To not send you to the nursery? This will be a loooong day.”

And the next day morning I was walking to the Guild master office, all covered in bruises. Nothing was broken, all my limbs were in the right places. Yet feeling of irritation stayed with me the entire afternoon, evening and night.

You probably think, that if he promised to not knock me out, he was gentle? Or at least merciful? Haha… no. He just showed off yet another experience gap between us, as he was hitting in such sophisticated way, to not damage any organ or bones and to keep me awake, by hitting only muscles.

But! A promise was kept. It is early morning, and I awoke in my own bed in the living section of the Guild on the second floor.

I entered door to the office.

“Oy, ya’r awake? Nice to see such young kids to be early birds. Morning kiddo.” Jeremy was, as always (in his office), looking the type of nice and kind grandpa.

I muttered something in answer, I was not even completely sure if I have just said “good morning”, “good to see you too”, “greetings” or “one day I will regain supreme and you will pay for what you did to me by bathing in a river of eternal suffering.”

“Is he here?” yup, I was definitely not in the mood for any longer conversation. “Nope, he may show up in an hour or two, I know how hard it is to keep an organization running smoothly, and I hold one building, and he a whole district.” “You are not a leader of every single guild on the continent?” This was something new. “Well… technically… I am… But we are freelancers, boy. We solve our problems by ourselves, sure thing, if we would be on job that would require us to travel, we could stay in the other guild without any problems. But situations where I really need to interfere with the administration problems of another Guild Unit, or to mediate in a dispute, happens rarely. Very rarely.”

I wanted to ask a few more things, but in that moment the door opened again and Rogue entered with a woman bodyguard. The second dark elf I have seen in my life. Half of her face covered by a bandana. Tight clothing… showing a little bit too much body, in my humble opinion. Armed with two curved daggers, which you could mistake as sickles.

“Sorry for being late.” He said from the door. “It has been some time since we talked, Jeremy.” His eyes were running from one corner of the room to another finally calmed down and he smiled “Good to see that you are still alive, old fart.” “Aye, I am good. Do I see a grey hair on your head? This job will kill you, lad. How long do you sleep per day?” They acted like good friends. Bah, they were good friends. It was the first time I saw the Guild Master being truly concerned about someone. “Sleep? What is sleep?” He looked at me “Do you know what sleep is?” “Yeah, it is a state when an enemy is easiest to kill, He actually asked you to put your guard down, do now trust him, I always knew he was planning something wicked.” I said with a tone of being fully convinced, that every word I said was true. “It is a nice feeling to change my environment… but I am afraid I have not much time to waste here. You know, responsibilities, responsibilities and one more time – responsibilities. Oh and did I forget to mention responsibilities.”

Just to be sure, I looked at Rogue’s bodyguard.

“Just to be sure.” I said while looking for all this time at the elf. “We are among friends?” “I trust her more, than I trust myself. Even if she would not be here, I would repeat every word to her.”

She threw an angry gaze at me, looks like she worked for some time for her position and having someone to question her loyalty was a great offence.

“Very well, so let me get straight to the point – You” I pointed at Jeremy “are in need of money. You” I said pointing this time at Rogue “are in need of money. And… well I am in need of everything, money, information, entertainment… So, I would allow myself to start from the very end. We will start a company. Of course, the kind of company that not necessarily pays taxes, if you know what I mean.” I said while looking one more time at Rogue. “What would we do?” The boss of the Syndicate asked while supporting his head on his palm. “I will be responsible for products manufacturing… and of course, I mean potions.” “Wait.” Jeremy was not pleased. “I heard from Hanna, yes we are friends, that you are somehow skilled with alchemy, but finding buyers for them is risky, even in the black market. The Alchemist Guild is looking for every possible track of illegal alchemy, to shut them and force them to work for them or, in case they are not willing to do so, to put them in a jail.” “We will be using as our market… a guild… this guild.” Jeremy got red all over his face from anger. “ARE YOU NUTS?! IT IS IMPOSSIBLE I WOULD ALLOW SUC…” “You will allow it, because you will listen to what I want to say next, and what I will say next will shut your mouth which is disturbing me over and over again.” It was still more peaceful reaction than I expected. “You will give them, as rewards for quests. You will give adventurers a possibility to pick… wait, how much costs medium healing potion?” “About 25 to 50 silver.” Rogue said without hesitation. “So, if someone would get 50 silver from his quest as reward… I am saying hypothetically… we give them option to get those 50 silvers, or 40-35 silvers and a potion. it is impossible for them to reject the second option, as the overall value of second option is clearly higher. And those 10-15 silver will be what we would earn.” “And you think they would not notice that we are giving potions for half of the prince?” “Of course they would, this is why you, as the guild, will buy some potions from the guild.” “What?!” “For every 10 potions you would but, I will create 100 by myself. And then, we would sold those 110, by prince of 50% of market value, we will still be wealthier by those 45 potions.” “You will need a laboratory… fully equipped… and herbs. Lots of herbs.” Rogue noticed. “And this is your part of the job. How hard will it be to gather the required equipment needed to make a laboratory… and I mean a true laboratory, cuz’ up till now, I was working with a pot.” “You can have it up in two or three days, I will also get you a safe building, security, helpers and… students… this is what you are aiming for, isn’t it? But still, we would have no herbs.”

I smiled. And picked from the windowsill a plant in the flowerpot.

“Are you valuing this flower, Jeremy?” I asked. “What?” “Would you be sad if this wonderful piece of flora would get damaged?” “Me? No, but…” I pulled the flower out of thr pot “…Alesia loves it… I am dead.” He said while looking at the flower.

Now, I have a flowerpot with dirt, just as needed. I focused my energy, and casted combination of Seed creation with Accelerated growth. I put the flowerpot on the table. And waited, while still adding mana to maintain the spell. It took over 30minutes, as somehow plant that are used in creation of potions and poisons takes more time to growth even, or maybe especially, while using magic. Soon, we had a beautiful, high specimen healing herb in a pot.

“I would need you to get me one more room. Possibly a big one. And of course, fill it with flowerpots and earth. I will make you those herbs. From you, I need storage, laboratory, and human power, and from you, a market to sell potions. Ah! Of course, I would also need some… lots of those herbs to rank up. It is all nice and dandy… but I don’t like sitting in a room all day doing repetitive stuff. If you have free guyz, that are not a complete morons… send them to me. I will teach them how to do simple alchemy.” “… the last part is the RISKY part here.” Rogue said, “Alchemy is hard to learn… or if there is something you are not telling us.”

I nodded with head, recognizing proper point of view.

“I am going to make the process repetitive. Here, one alchemist have one room, one pot, and makes whole potion from beginning till end by himself. It is a good way… but not perfect. What… if we would divide the whole process into stages… and then we would teach one man to do only one part of this process? As one man would finish, he would give the results of his work to another one, and he would work on it, give in to next one, and this way up until the end? This way you will be able to keep them shut, for they will not rebel, cuz they woun’t have actual knowledge of how to make potions. And, if someone would want to quit, you could quickly teach another man only this part you will need to keep process running smoothly.” “This is… so easy… yet… brilliant… does this process… dividing work, has a name?” “Of course it does!” I said happily. “We call it – mass production.”