Earn Twenty-Five Silver Coins a Day!

"That was incredibly rewarding..."

The improvements to his attributes had all been settled. All that remained was to grind.

As for skills...

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

Weapon skills and martial arts were manageable. As long as he was willing to put in the time, or spend money on an instructor, he could eventually raise them.

That only left the Breath Combat Technique.

It belonged to the category of secret transmission skills, the kind that simply could not be bought on the open market.

However, Lance was not too worried.

He remembered clearly that he had caught sight of skills like this on the Adventurers' Guild's merit exchange list.

They required quite a lot of merit, but during this joint clearing operation, he had genuinely saved people and helped the vanguard wipe out Goblins.

Since that powerful man named Gareth had promised to report everything truthfully, Lance should receive a decent amount of merit. He might be able to exchange it then.

He went over all his career plans in his head and made sure nothing had been overlooked.

Still, he had the nagging feeling that he had forgotten something today.

"What was it...?"

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

"Shit!"

Lance slapped his thigh hard, producing a crisp smack.

The moment he had returned, the Great Deed Profession of [Pale Sentinel] had completely consumed his thoughts. He had been so preoccupied with figuring out how to meet those insane requirements that he had forgotten all about making money.

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

That concerned his wallet, after all.

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 bed.

"Looks like I'll have to go first thing tomorrow morning."

Lance rubbed his brow in frustration.

Still, he could calculate the profits he would make ahead of time.

On the carriage transporting the wounded back, he had not been idle either. He had specifically chatted up the Guild physician traveling with them, as well as several lightly injured adventurers.

The numbers he got were staggering.

Just today alone, the vanguard's battles had been terrifyingly intense.

A few squads alone had consumed over a hundred standard units of hemostatic medicine.

And that was only the appetizer.

Once the next two waves of the main force pushed in, hundreds of adventurers would be thrown into a meat grinder against monsters in the forest.

The consumption of hemostatic medicine would absolutely reach an astronomical figure.

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

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

He did not need to consider whether his production could meet demand. 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 a small slice of the pie for himself.

Lance began calculating his maximum production capacity.

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

He had to personally complete the entire continuous process, from processing the raw materials to brewing and setting the finished product, for the ointment to receive that miraculous effect bonus.

That ruled out the possibility of running multiple crucibles at once in an assembly line.

"Thirty-five minutes per batch..."

Lance wrote down a number, pondered for a moment, then crossed it out and changed it to forty minutes.

He had to leave room for error.

With the capacity of his small crucible, each batch could produce around eight standard jars of ointment.

If he pushed himself to the limit and spent twelve hours a day doing nothing but brewing medicine aside from eating and sleeping...

In twelve hours, he could make around eighteen batches.

Multiply that.

"One hundred and forty-four jars."

Lance looked at the number and nodded in satisfaction.

That was currently the limit of his daily output.

Next came cost control.

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

He could cut some corners with the 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 forcefully reduced the cost of each jar of ointment to around 7.5 copper coins.

And based on his earlier estimate, pricing this special-effect ointment at twenty-five copper coins would definitely be a fair deal.

Each jar sold would bring a net profit of 17.5 copper coins.

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

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

Looking at that number, Lance's breathing grew heavier.

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

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

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

Now, he only needed one day to earn what used to be a month and a half's wages.

Was this the allure of war profits?

And he could look at this over an even longer term.

Even after this joint clearing operation ended, as long as his ointment built up a reputation...

Even if he could only maintain one-third of wartime sales through the apothecary's channels each day, he would only need to spend four hours making medicine.

That would still mean a steady income of six silver coins a day.

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

That was money going steadily into his pocket without having to risk his life in a dungeon or face Goblins and Jackalmen.

"That's practically robbery..."

Lance stared at the golden future on the paper, his eyes shining as though they were glowing.

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

Those five days would be a golden period for picking up money.

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

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

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

The Great Deed Profession, 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, his talent had opened the door to a new world. Perhaps his life would change because of it as well.

Meanwhile, on the third floor of the Grayrock Town Adventurers' Guild, the spacious Guildmaster's office was still brightly lit.

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

At the center of the room stood a huge solid-wood sand-table map, displaying a detailed map of Copper Creek Forest.

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

The red ones represented monster movements, while the blue ones marked the positions of adventurer squads.