After searching high and low, Robert found sulfur in an Apothecary's store.He had forgotten which other uses sulfur had, besides going boom in concert with other ingredients. This made Robert go to each shop describing its properties, in hopes of finding it. The Apothecary had a sack of sulfur in stock and he bought it all.

Robert ignored the questioning look of the Apothecary and walked out of the store, with a sack of sulfur in his back.

Robert knew that saltpeter, the most important ingredient for creating gunpowder was used for food preservation. He bought a sack of saltpeter from a food store. The next one was the easiest to acquire. He bought the required charcoal from a charcoal burners shop.

Robert remembered that the ratio with which the ingredients needed to be mixed to create gunpowder was around 6:1:1. He had made some as a fun project when he was 10, but he had forgotten of which ingredient he needed 6 parts of. He brought all the stuff to his new home. It was a spacious house, big enough for a family of 4 to live in. Being near the center of the city it would cost him at least 20 gold per month to rent. A small room had already been converted into an alchemy laboratory by Isau, which Robert was thankful for.

He ground the 3 raw materials with mortar and pestle into a fine powder and put them into 3 bowls. After that, he combined them in three different approaches. One with more charcoal, one with more sulfur and the last one with more saltpeter. Spreading the resulting powder on a paper, he lit each one and observed the results. And, as always, the last mixture was the right one. Six parts saltpeter, one part charcoal, and one part sulfur. But to ignite it inside of a cannon he would need a fuse. Thus he cooked a rope in a saltpeter solution.

After using up his stock of ingredients he spent the rest of the night training his magical elements.

In the next morning, Robert walked into the weapon shop carrying a bag of black powder. At Seeing Robert, Sophy, who wore a similar gown as she did yesterday, walked up to him.

“You sure are punctual!” She greeted him or didn't. “How many days will it take you to create the recipe?”

“I already made it. Is there any outdoor testing ground here?” Robert was afraid to experiment with the cannon indoors as he was sure it would leave a hole in the wall, or even explode and destroy the building.

“You’ve already made it?”, she paused for a moment before continuing, “There is a firing range in the backyard”

Sophie was quite surprised by the fact that this young man had already created the thing he said he would. Although he had already identified Isau's formulae, she was still a bit suspicious of this young man.

'Well let's see what he can do' Sophy thought this as she walked with him to the back.

She leads him to an open area behind the shop. It was a small ground, enclosed by a stone wall which was almost 5 feet thick and had a target marked in the middle, cracks in the wall were spreading from it. There were spirit cannons lying around, big and small.

Robert went back into the alchemy laboratory and rolled the cannon Isau used for demonstrations out. Every single worker present had to help move the heavy black metal canon. After positioning the cannon he removed the smashing nail and put in a bag of gunpowder. This place was normally reserved for spirit stone, but he had no intent to use one. Robert loaded the cannonball into the barrel. He then used the nail he removed earlier to prick a hole into the gunpowder charge and inserted the fuse into the newly made hole.

As it was his first time firing a cannon, he wasn’t sure if it was going to work or if the barrel was able to withstand the pressure and not explode.

He told everyone to get to a safe distance before lighting the fuse and running the hell away from the cannon. The fuse burned slowly into the barrel and

“BOOM !”,

an explosion rang out. The cannon spits fire and a split second later, the cannonball inserted itself into the wall, missing the target by a meter. But new spiderweb-like cracks had formed underneath the cannonball.

The spectators stood dumbstruck. Even a large caliber spirit cannon was unable to deal this much damage to the wall and so they thought in unison “What the hell ?!“

He didn’t even need to experiment and find the formula through trial and error? He must either be an alchemy genius or might even be the student of some great alchemy master! Sophy’s impression of Robert skyrocketed with this one demonstration.

After recovering from the shock she had received by what had transpired, Sophy quickly asked Robert.

“Where did you get this potion from? How much Gold for the secret? ”, she was already calculating the profits which could be made selling those cannons! This could indeed be the next generation of weaponry. She could envision these beasts roaring in unison in a battlefield and drowning the enemy soldiers in fear.

“I’m sorry but I won’t sell the secret”, Robert replied with a slight smile.

“What then?”, Sophy wasn't sure what he planned to do with such a recipe if he wasn't going to sell it.

“I will sell the ‘gunpowder’, 5 gold a pound! And from each cannon you sell, I get 50 percent of the profit”

“So, this potion is called “gunpowder“ ?“ Sophy was about to say something else when Robert continued speaking.

“You’ll also have to provide me with a factory to produce the gunpowder at a large scale and get me the raw materials required for the production”

Sophy was about to negotiate the price when Robert talked again,

“I also need a laboratory and you have to help me obtain many different rare materials”

Seeing that Robert would go on and on, demanding more and more if allowed, she quickly said

“Alright, alright! I will arrange a laboratory and a factory. And I can bring you in contact with people who can acquire materials for you”, she paused for a second thinking and then continued.

“But 50 % is too much, how about 25%?”

Robert pondered the counteroffer for a while, “I will need her help to create more weapons in the future. And she must have a powerful family behind her when she is running a business this big and successful at this young age. And it was not just any business, she was in the cutthroat business of weapons dealing.It is better to give her the upper hand for now.”

“30%,” he said out loud.

“Alright! 30% it is,” Sophy replied.

“Did I give in too fast?“ Seeing her decisiveness Robert wasn't sure if he gave up too much too soon.He was not well versed in business or doing deals. He had spent most of his life as a scholar, and what he valued most was knowledge rather than money.

After finishing the deal and getting a check about 1000 gold as his advance, he asked her if she could introduce to a library. To his surprise, she invited him to her home.

Riding in a 4 horse-drawn carriage, they reached the front of a large mansion. But it had more in common with a castle than a mansion.

The words “Black Dragon ” were painted in black on the stone walls. There were guards with crossbows on the wall and the gate to the mansion had a few guards armed with swords. They were wearing shiny black armor.

“This family is totally obsessed with the color black.“ Robert was at a loss what to say or think about that.

The guards opened the gates and let them pass as soon as they saw Sophy. They bowed to her as the carriage passed by them. As soon as they left the entrance the gate closed again behind them with a loud noise.

Robert’s intuition about Sophy’s background seemed to be right on point. A path stretched through a garden, which looked like an ocean of flowers, the sweet scent of medicinal plants was in the air. The carriage stopped at the front doors of the mansion. Getting out of the carriage, they walked through the front doors, entering the mansion.

It was as grandiose on the inside as it was on the outside. The floor was polished stone, at the ceiling hung chandeliers made out of light orbs. The walls had a mural of a giant black dragon, the depiction was so realistic it felt as if the dragon was about to fly out of the wall.

Seeing Robert’s astonished expression, Sophy said slowly. “This is the Goldfair branch of the ‘Black Dragon’ family, my house is in the capital city.”

“How can a branch have a mansion this big? What exactly is her background? And why would she be here if her house is in the capital city?“ Robert thought.

“We have 25 shops here, conducting various businesses and our weaponry is the best in Goldfair city.” She explained as they walked up the stairs to the second floor.

“She thinks highly of herself and her clan“ Robert nodded in understanding.

She went on explaining about the Black Dragon businesses in Goldfair but didn’t talk much about her own origin. The mysterious air around her made Robert believe that her position in the clan was not something to be looked down on. She leads him to a room filled to the brim with books, seeing that Robert unconsciously broke into a smile.

He spent the rest of the day reading books. Books on alchemy, books on herbs, books on whatever caught his interest. He was trying to absorb as much knowledge as he could from these books.

Night fell and a maid brought him food. But he was too engrossed in reading “The history of magic” to even notice. The maid had also brought a light orb as the old one in the library wasn't working. She thought the young man must have stopped reading as it got dark but Robert was still reading using a candle flame on his index finger.

Robert spent the whole night in the library and would have read the whole next day too if he weren't dragged out by Sophy to demonstrate the workings of the cannon to an audience.

'Another bookworm?' Sophy knew many men like this, most of the scholars and alchemists who did research for the Black Dragon clan was also like this, forgetting about everything when reading books.

Sophie also knew how to manage them, she just had to drag them out into the limelight.