Once in the castle, Daron went directly to his own room and closed the doors. Since Sirious had analysed it all, there was no need to waste any time.

Without wasting any time, Daron sat on his bed and placed the solid herb, which looked like a piece of exotic metal and smelled like wet grass, into his mouth and just waited.

After 1 minute of calming himself down, he forced himself to swallow the herb that was the size of an eraser. Nearly puking, he somehow managed to pull it off and sighed deeply after completing what Karos told him was the hardest part. As soon as the herb entered Daron's stomach, it almost exploded into energy, which was quickly absorbed by his Internal Energy, and this process took around an hour to complete.

Since he had received the day off, he could waste so much time.

Entering his Internal Energy that was still hovering outside his consciousness obediently had grown by 20%. This result greatly satisfied him. However, he was now in a dilemma.

Food 1 would earn around 1000 copper per day. From that, 700 went to Blaze, where he would send 350 to his incognito Union Bank account, and 35 went to himself. From the left over 300, 100 went to himself, 100 went to retained profits for Food 1 itself or other expansions in the Food subcompany, deposited directly into the company's bank account, and 100 went to all the others.

In total, he would receive around 450 copper per day, which meant that he could only buy a Light-yellow grade[1] herb every 3 days or so. But this was too slow. Since he did not have to wait to grow even further, waiting 3 days for the meagre progress of 20 Internal Energy points was too slow.

It would take him a whole 15 days to get to Rank 2. However, that problem was that in order to reach the next level, he needed to get 200 points, which would take him a whole month to complete. And further he would need even more. At the current rate, it would take him more than a year to reach Rank 6 and become an official knight. And that was not considering things like bottlenecks. Although no one would face bottlenecks when increasing rank within the Novice knight realm, as soon as you wanted to advance to become a rank 6 official knight, most people would face a bottleneck.

Although he had already waited for 6 years, he could not do much to improve his situation during those 6 years. Now when he could do something, he was stuck in a dilemma. The money he was earning from Food 1 was from a majority of the people in Bard City coming over to eat his food. He could not grow his income a lot by making a Food 2 in this very town since not too many people would go there.

What he needed now was a larger market. However, for that, he would need to go to the outside world. But in order to do that without being at the whims of other people he would be required to become an official knight at the very least, to be stronger than the average human, and be able to protect himself when needed.

[You could try alchemy or blacksmithing.]

'Huh…'

Daron began to think. Being a Rank 1 Novice knight, his physical training, which Fals said was the basics would reduce to only combat training which would only be in the mornings. The rest of the day would be given for him to absorb herbs and regain control of his Internal energy. Since he did not need to waste time doing that, and the entire process would usually finish in an hour or so, and he would need to wait 3 days between each herb feast, he had all the time in the world.

His normal bank account currently had around 900 copper, which he would keep for basic necessities. He made up his mind to not waste time buying herbs one at a time, and buy 4 of them in one go when his bank account reached 4,000 copper, so that he could directly advance to Rank 2. The previous 20,000 he had had already been given to Priestess Joanne as payment for everything she had done.

For now, that would take him around 12 days. Since he was now free as a bird, he left the castle once more at around 4 in the afternoon, and went directly to the Blacksmith Union.

The Blacksmith union had a rather unique origin. It was said that a few thousand years ago, long before the creation of the Alchemy Union, there existed 4 large kingdoms. These kingdoms were living in continuous turmoil since they were the first human kingdoms to ever exist, all thanks to the sheer might of the mages.

Although the mages had already driven off all the other races and created a safe haven for human, it did not stop the greedy humans to form kingdoms and wage was on each other. The ones who came out on top of all these wars were these four kingdoms.

However, one of these kingdoms, whose name has already been written off from history, was slightly larger than the rest, and was in constant war with some other kingdom or independent duchy. It's most prosperous sector was the weapons craft sector, in which the kingdom put nearly half of its resources, while the other half went into maintaining their incredible army.

However, in order to maintain the army and make the weapons, the farmers and blacksmith were driven to the edge, nearing the borders of slavery and genocide.

Thankfully, the other three kingdoms united in a temporary pact of peace and after a brutal 10 years of war, finally completely eradicated that nameless kingdom.

The surviving blacksmiths, who were incredibly skilled at their job after countless years of doing the same thing continuously, banded together to form a power that would prevent them from ever being oppressed in that manner ever again. Naturally, the farmers and others from the nameless kingdom also tried to do the same, however, unlike the blacksmith, they were not strategic military resources, and were deal with by the three kingdoms, who swallowed the nameless kingdom together and thus became the three kingdoms of Pierre, Jose and Martin we know today.

The Blacksmith Union slowly spread its influence within the three kingdoms, who allowed this since it would allow their blacksmith to receive the benefits of the Union and become more efficient, productive, and maybe even grow as a blacksmith, which resulted in the current Blacksmith union, in the prime of its power and influence, on par with the Union Bank and the Alchemist Union.

In this remote town however, the blacksmith Union branch was merely a single story building with 5 charcoal-driven furnaces, two of which were running at the moment. As soon as Daron entered, a blast of incredibly heat assaulted him much like the intense smell he had faced in the Alchemy association.

'Why is every association blasting me with sensory missiles?' Daron grumbled in his head as he went towards the receptionist. Trying his best to make his voice heard over the incessant hammering of a piece of iron by one of the blacksmiths working at one of the two running bloomery furnaces.

"I want to learn how to blacksmith."

"Kid. Go back to your moth-"

However, the burly man sitting at the reception desk sharpening a knife stopped speaking. At first, he dismissed the kid from just hearing his shrill voice. However, as soon as he looked up, he noticed the knight in training uniform that kid was wearing and swallowed the rest of his words.

"You will need to pay."

"How much?"

"100 copper to learn the basics, and anything further will have to be discussed with the blacksmith who will mentor you. After you do learn the basics, you can spend another 100 copper to become part of the association."

"Alright. I will be back" Daron said as he quickly left the Blacksmith Union to get money from the Union Bank

…

In 10 minutes, he had returned, with a bag of money.

"Here is 100 copper for basics. Bring to the best blacksmith in this branch."

'He actually has 100 copper lying around like loose change? Well, I can't say no to free money.' Thought the receptionist as he took the money.

[1] I am sorry, but I tend to use level, grade and rank interchangeably. I hope you understand