The First Employee Starts Work (Seeking Recommendation Votes!)

About a quarter of an hour later, the sound of water in the bathroom gradually faded, and finally vanished.

A rustling sound came from inside.

A few minutes later, the bathroom door opened, and swirling mist drifted out.

A thin, petite figure stepped through the mist, her clear, delicate face looking somewhat nervous.

She leaned against the wall of the hallway outside the bathroom, poked her head out, and scanned the living room, but she could not find Ron.

"Where did he go?" Nora wondered, walking to the top of the stairs and heading down.

On the first floor, Ron sat in a recliner, holding Elven Reproduction in his hands, though he had no intention of reading it.

Hearing movement on the stairs, Ron immediately put the book down and stood up to look toward the staircase.

Nora's figure descended the stairs, instantly capturing all of Ron's attention.

Her thin, fair ankles were exposed, and she wore a loose white dress over a clean white long-sleeved shirt that accentuated her slender waist.

Her once-dirty face had been washed clean, revealing a fresh, delicate complexion, her light black eyes looking somewhat dazed, and her cute nose still damp with lingering mist.

She wore a black work cap over her shoulder-length purple hair, hiding her cat ears underneath.

Nora walked up to Ron, tugging at her dress in discomfort before finally clutching the hem of her shirt, looking up at him: "I... I'm done changing."

"...Right." Ron only then snapped back to reality, nodding as he walked toward the stairs to hide his lapse in composure, "Let's go back to the second floor to sign the contract."

Nora followed Ron back to the second floor and signed a three-year employment contract, with a weekly salary of 10 silver coins, to be settled every weekend.

Nora was illiterate and knew no one else who could read, so she signed the contract quite decisively.

In this world, contracts held little binding power and were mostly for show; if one party breached the agreement, the other simply used the contract as evidence before resorting to force.

Of course, for ordinary people, the deterrent of a contract and the local court was still significant.

Nora was only this decisive because she lacked knowledge in this area; otherwise, if Ron had played any tricks on the contract, she wouldn't even have known if she were being sold.

But who could blame Ron for being a gentleman?

Such things would naturally never happen.

After signing the contract, the two went downstairs.

Ron introduced Nora to the only two types of flowers currently in the shop: the Nether Orchid at 20 gold coins per pot, and the Golden Red Chrysanthemum at 30 gold coins per pot.

Nora stared blankly at the price list on the wall, feeling her brain go into a system crash.

"20... gold coins?"

"Yes, 20 gold coins."

"Does anyone actually buy these?" Nora's small mouth opened slightly, finding it unbelievable. Although she asked this, she had noticed earlier that Ron's shop business was quite good, and it seemed customers came by every day. "Why would anyone buy them at such a high price?"

"Because they are worth it." Ron smiled and explained to Nora the effects of these two plants, as well as their rarity.

Nora didn't know much about warriors or mages, but she knew they were the upper-class figures of the continent; 20 gold coins, perhaps, really wasn't much to them.

She had previously thought that Ron's offer of 10 silver coins a week was too high, but that thought vanished instantly.

20 gold coins...

Just selling one pot was enough to pay her salary for 200 weeks!

And there were only fifty-some weeks in a year...

Ron glanced sideways at Nora's shocked expression and chuckled to himself.

Afterward, he taught Nora how to distinguish between real gold coins and promissory notes, and showed her the cash box where the gold coins were kept.

The time reached 8:30 in the morning.

Nora stood at the shop entrance, hung up the "Open for Business" sign, and then, as Ron had instructed, sat on the chair in front of the counter, only needing to stand up to greet customers when they entered.

However, on her first day of work, Nora couldn't stay idle. After ten minutes passed and she found there were no customers, she got up from the chair, took a rag, and began wiping down the items in the shop.

With a salary of 10 silver coins a week, Nora felt she wouldn't be worthy of such high pay if she didn't do more.

Meanwhile, Ron used the excuse of "going out to run an errand," opened the storage room door, and entered the Dimensional Plane.

Inside the Dimensional Plane, in the 2x5 Cultivation Space, one row was planted with Golden Red Chrysanthemums, and the other with Nether Orchids.

Through his mental control, Ron began his daily assembly-line work.

As his cultivation as a mage grew higher and the magic power condensed by the Magic Seed increased, his control became stronger.

Even planting Golden Red Chrysanthemums and Nether Orchids simultaneously did not affect the growth of the flowers or the speed of batch planting.

In just three hours that morning, he had grown over a hundred pots of each.

Basically, he could harvest once every ten minutes; the efficiency of the 10-square-meter Cultivation Space had indeed greatly improved.

Ron glanced at his wealth value--

Wealth Value: 5801

Then he looked at the Shop--

[Cultivation Space]: 1000 Wealth Value to exchange for 1 square meter (Exchange limit: 20 square meters)

With his current wealth, he could still exchange for 5 square meters of Cultivation Space.

Furthermore, he still had two unfinished transactions with the Glorious Mercenary Group.

One was the monthly business of 100 Nether Orchids, and the other was the partnership regarding Golden Red Chrysanthemums; Ron estimated that these two deals could bring him a profit between 8,000 and 20,000 gold coins.

The bulk of this, naturally, would come from the Golden Red Chrysanthemums.

The number of mages was far smaller than that of warriors, so for the magic academy, 200 Nether Orchids per month was already quite a significant amount.

However, for the Glorious Mercenary Group, which was spread throughout the empire and possessed a vast number of members, they would certainly never think they had enough of the astonishingly effective Golden Red Chrysanthemums.

Therefore, according to Ron's guess, the number of Golden Red Chrysanthemums sold to the Glorious Mercenary Group each month would be at least 200, with a cap of 600.

It wasn't that he didn't want to sell more.

But if the quantity were any higher, it would become far too suspicious.

Moreover, the Glorious Mercenary Group might not truly be able to produce that kind of cash flow in a short period.

After all, the Glorious Mercenary Group in Chaos City was merely a branch; its headquarters were far away in the Imperial Capital, and currently, they were beyond reach.

Even for Jasper, the head of the Chaos City branch, a sum of ten or twenty thousand gold coins was something he would need to weigh carefully.

He might even need to take out a loan from the Gold Depository to complete the transaction.

This point was different from the magic academy.

Disode Magic Academy had a long history, had produced many legendary mages, possessed a profound foundation, had extensive connections, and maintained good relationships with all races.

Many great families were happy to send their clan's magical geniuses there to study, and naturally, they would not be stingy with their donations.

Moreover, Disode Magic Academy frequently developed commercial magic products, and as for which families these goods were eventually delivered to, didn't that just depend on the amount of their usual donations?

Therefore, compared to the Glorious Mercenary Group, the magic academy was truly the one with deep pockets.

Staying at home lately, I'm getting fatter and fatter... I think it's necessary to get some exercise.