A Daily Profit of Twenty-Five Silver Coins!

"Quite a lot to gain from this..."

The attribute improvements had all been decided. Now he just had to grind them out.

As for skills...

Lance reviewed the requirements for becoming a [Pale Sentinel] once more.

Weapon skills and martial arts were easy enough. As long as he was willing to spend time grinding, or pay an instructor, he could eventually raise them.

That only left the Breath Combat Technique.

That belonged to the category of secret techniques. There was simply no mass-market version available for sale.

Still, Lance was not too worried.

He remembered clearly that he had once glimpsed skills of this sort on the merit exchange list at the Adventurers' Guild.

Although they required quite a lot of merit points, he had genuinely saved people during this joint clearing mission and helped the vanguard clear out Goblins.

Since that powerful man named Gareth had promised to report everything truthfully, Lance should receive a sum of merit points. Perhaps he would be able to exchange them then.

He went over his career plans in his mind and made sure he had not missed anything.

Yet he still felt as though he had forgotten something today.

"What was it...?"

As Lance muttered those words, the image of someone with braided hair and round glasses suddenly appeared in his mind.

"Damn it!"

Lance slapped his thigh hard, producing a sharp smack.

The moment he returned, the Great Deed Class [Pale Sentinel] had completely overwhelmed his thoughts. His mind had been filled with figuring out how to meet those absurd class requirements, and he had completely forgotten about making money.

He had not yet asked Flora how things had gone with the Hemostatic Ointment.

That was a matter concerning his wallet.

He instinctively turned to look out the window.

The streets outside were already pitch-black, with only the faint glow of lanterns carried by distant patrols.

At this hour, Flora had probably long since gone to sleep.

"Looks like I can only go tomorrow morning."

Lance rubbed his brow in annoyance.

Still, he could calculate the profits he would make first.

On the carriage transporting the wounded back today, he had not been idle either. He had specifically chatted up the guild physician traveling with them and several lightly wounded adventurers.

The figures he obtained were astonishing.

Just today alone, the vanguard's combat intensity had been terrifyingly high.

A mere handful of squads had consumed over a hundred standard units of hemostatic medicine.

And that was only an appetizer.

Once the following two waves of main forces moved in, hundreds of adventurers would be thrown into a meat grinder against monsters in the jungle.

The consumption of hemostatic medicine would absolutely become a horrifying astronomical figure.

"The market is huge. I couldn't possibly fill it all."

Lance bit the end of his pen and rapidly calculated on paper.

He did not need to consider whether his output could meet market demand, because even if he worked himself to death in front of the crucible, he could not fill such an enormous gap.

All he needed to do was force his way in and seize his own small slice of the pie.

Lance began calculating his maximum production capacity.

While making ointment last night, he had repeatedly tested the system's [Research Bonus]. Its criteria were extremely rigid.

Only if he personally completed the entire continuous process, from processing raw materials to brewing and shaping the final product, would the ointment receive that miraculous effect bonus.

That ruled out the possibility of running several crucibles at once for assembly-line production.

"Each batch takes a total of thirty-five minutes..."

Lance wrote down a number on the paper, considered it briefly, then crossed it out and changed it to forty minutes.

He had to leave room for error.

Based on the capacity of his small crucible, each batch could produce roughly eight standard jars of ointment.

If he went all out and spent every moment besides eating and sleeping brewing medicine, working continuously for twelve hours a day...

Twelve hours would allow him to make around eighteen batches.

Multiplying them together.

"One hundred and forty-four jars."

Lance looked at the number and nodded in satisfaction.

That was currently the limit of his daily production capacity.

Next came cost control.

Since the effectiveness of his medicine mainly came from the system's rule-based bonus rather than expensive raw materials...

He could absolutely make some adjustments when selecting ingredients.

For example, he could use cheaper animal fat instead of costly alchemical oil as the base and reduce the amount of supplementary herbs.

As long as he used enough Blood-Clotting Moss, the finished product would still crush the Ordinary goods on the market.

After carefully calculating everything, Lance forcibly reduced the cost of each jar of ointment to around seven and a half copper coins.

And based on his previous estimate, pricing this miracle ointment at twenty-five copper coins would definitely be fair.

Every jar sold would bring a net profit of seventeen and a half copper coins.

Lance's quill raced across the paper until he finally arrived at a total.

"Two thousand five hundred and twenty copper coins..."

As Lance stared at the number, even his breathing grew heavier.

Converted into silver coins, that was a full twenty-five!

A net profit of twenty-five silver coins a day!

Back when he was that miserable copyist, he had worked himself to the bone for an entire month just to earn sixteen silver coins.

Now, a single day would earn him the wages of the past month and a half.

Was this the allure of war profits?

And he could calculate this account over the longer term as well.

Even after this joint clearing mission ended, as long as his ointment made a name for itself...

Even if he could only steadily sell one-third of his wartime volume each day through the apothecary's channels...

He would only need to spend four hours a day making medicine.

That would still provide a stable income of six silver coins a day.

Over a month, that would be one hundred and eighty silver coins, nearly two gold coins!

This was money steadily flowing into his pocket without needing to risk his life in a dungeon or face Goblins and Gnolls.

"It's practically robbery..."

Lance looked at the glittering future on the paper, his eyes shining as if they were glowing.

There were at least five days left before the joint clearing mission ended.

Those five days were the golden period for picking up money.

He almost wanted to rush out right now, drag Flora out of bed, and discuss a partnership.

Lance blew out the kerosene lamp and lay down on the bed.

In the darkness, the corners of his mouth would not stop rising.

The Great Deed Class, Ostella, and that demi-human young lady all seemed to be beckoning to him.

Tomorrow morning.

He had to find Flora immediately!

What Lance did not notice was that the old him would never have forgotten about making money.

But today, through Talent, he had opened the door to a new world. Perhaps his life would change because of it.

Meanwhile, on the third floor of the Grayrock Town Adventurers' Guild, the spacious guildmaster's office remained brightly lit.

The room was roughly eighty square meters and decorated in a rugged style, without many luxurious ornaments.

In the center of the room stood an enormous solid-wood sand-table map, displaying a detailed terrain map of Copper Creek Forest.

At that moment, the map was covered in densely packed little flags.

Red ones represented monster movements, while blue ones represented the positions of adventurer squads.