After about fifteen minutes, the sound of water in the bathroom gradually grew quieter, then finally stopped.
A rustling sound came from inside.
A few minutes later, the bathroom door opened, and a haze of steam drifted out.
A petite, slender figure stepped through the mist. Her pretty, rosy face looked a little anxious.
She leaned against the wall in the hallway outside the bathroom and peeked out, her gaze wandering around the living room, but she couldn't find Ron.
"Where is he?" Nora wondered. She went to the stairs and headed downstairs.
On the first floor, Ron sat in a recliner, holding Elven Reproduction, but he had no desire to read at all.
Hearing movement on the stairs, Ron immediately set down his book and got to his feet, looking toward the stairwell.
Nora came down the stairs, instantly drawing all of Ron's attention.
Her slender, fair ankles were bare. She wore a loose white skirt on her lower half and a white long-sleeved shirt above, which outlined her slim waist.
Her once-dirty face had been washed clean, revealing fresh, rosy cheeks. Her light-black eyes looked a little dazed, and a trace of moisture still clung to her cute nose.
A black work cap sat atop her shoulder-length purple hair, concealing her cat ears.
Nora walked up to Ron, still not quite used to her outfit. She tugged at her skirt, then clutched the hem of her shirt and looked up at him from beneath lowered eyes. "I... I'm changed."
"...Mm." Only then did Ron come to his senses. He nodded and walked toward the stairs, trying to hide his flustered state. "Let's go back upstairs and sign the contract first."
Nora followed Ron back to the second floor and signed a three-year employment contract. Her pay was ten silver coins a week, settled every weekend.
Nora couldn't read, and she didn't know anyone else who could, so she signed the contract without hesitation.
Contracts in this world weren't very binding; they were mostly for show. If one party broke the agreement, the other could use the contract as evidence before resorting to force to deal with them.
Of course, for ordinary people, the threat of contracts and courts was still quite significant.
Nora had signed so readily only because she knew nothing about such matters. Otherwise, if Ron had made even the slightest change to the contract, she might have been sold without even knowing it.
But Ron was an honorable man, after all.
Naturally, nothing like that would happen.
With the contract signed, the two went downstairs.
Ron introduced Nora to the shop's only two kinds of flowers: Nether Orchids, at twenty gold coins each, and Golden Red Chrysanthemums, at thirty gold coins each.
Nora stared blankly at the price list on the wall, feeling as if her brain had short-circuited.
"Twenty... gold coins?"
"Mm, twenty gold coins."
"Does anyone actually buy these?" Nora asked, her lips parting in disbelief. Though she'd asked the question, she'd already noticed that Ron's shop did good business. It seemed like customers came by every day. "Why would anyone buy them when they're so expensive?"
"Because they're worth the price." Ron smiled and explained the effects of the two plants and how rare they were.
Nora knew little about warriors and mages, but she understood they were the upper class of the continent. Perhaps twenty gold coins really wasn't much to them.
At first, she'd wondered whether Ron's offer of ten silver coins a week was too generous. Now that thought vanished instantly.
Twenty gold coins...
Selling just one flower would cover two hundred weeks of her wages!
There were only a little over fifty weeks in a year...
Ron glanced down at Nora's shocked expression and chuckled to himself.
Then he taught Nora how to tell real gold coins and banknotes from counterfeits and showed her the cash box behind the counter.
It was half past eight in the morning.
Nora stood at the shop entrance and hung up the "Open for Business" sign. Then, as Ron had instructed, she sat in the chair behind the counter. She only needed to stand up and greet customers when they came in.
But since it was her first day working in the shop, Nora couldn't sit still. After more than ten minutes, she noticed that there weren't many customers, so she got up and took a rag to wipe down the things in the shop.
She was being paid ten silver coins a week. If she didn't do a little extra work, Nora felt she wouldn't deserve such high wages.
Meanwhile, Ron used "I have to go out and take care of something" as an excuse to open the storeroom door and enter the Dimensional Plane.
Inside the Dimensional Plane was a 2x5 Cultivation Space. One row was planted with Golden Red Chrysanthemums, and the other with Nether Orchids.
Using his mind to control them, Ron began his daily production-line routine.
As his cultivation as a mage grew, the Magic Seeds condensed more and more magic power, and his control grew stronger as well.
Even when he cultivated Golden Red Chrysanthemums and Nether Orchids at the same time, it had no effect on their growth or the speed at which he could grow successive batches.
In just three hours that morning, he had grown more than a hundred Golden Red Chrysanthemums and Nether Orchids apiece.
He could harvest a batch in less than ten minutes. The ten-square-meter Cultivation Space had indeed greatly improved his efficiency.
Ron glanced at his Wealth Points—
Wealth Points: 5801
Then he looked at the shop—
[Cultivation Space]: 1000 Wealth Points to exchange for 1 square meter (maximum exchange: 20 square meters)
With his current Wealth Points, he could still exchange for another five square meters of Cultivation Space.
Besides, he still had two unfinished deals with the Glorious Mercenary Group.
One was a monthly deal for a hundred Nether Orchids. The other was a partnership involving Golden Red Chrysanthemums. Ron estimated that these two deals could bring him between eight thousand and twenty thousand gold coins in profit.
Most of that would naturally come from the Golden Red Chrysanthemums.
Mages were far fewer in number than warriors, so two hundred Nether Orchids a month was already a substantial amount for a Magic Academy.
But for the Glorious Mercenary Group, with its numerous members spread throughout the empire, there could never be too many Golden Red Chrysanthemums, whose effects were so remarkable.
So Ron's guess was that he'd sell the Glorious Mercenary Group at least two hundred Golden Red Chrysanthemums a month, with six hundred as the upper limit.
It wasn't that he didn't want to sell more.
But if the quantity were any higher, it would raise too many suspicions.
Besides, the Glorious Mercenary Group might not be able to come up with that much cash in a short time.
After all, the Glorious Mercenary Group in Chaos City was only a branch. Its headquarters was far away in the Imperial Capital, beyond its reach for now.
Even Jasper, the person in charge of the Chaos City branch, would have to think carefully before spending ten or twenty thousand gold coins.
He might even need to borrow money from the Gold Depository to complete the deal.
That was one way things differed from the Magic Academy.
Disode Magic Academy had a long history, had produced many legendary mages, and possessed deep foundations and extensive connections. It had good relations with every race.
Many great families were happy to send their magical prodigies there to study, and naturally, they weren't stingy with their donations.
Moreover, Disode Magic Academy often developed magical products for commercial use. Which companies those products went to in the end depended on the donors' contributions, didn't it?
So compared with the Glorious Mercenary Group, the Magic Academy was the truly wealthy one.
Before you continue