In the study of the villa on Williams Street.
"Sigh..."
Lorne held a fountain pen, marking up the ledger before him as his brow furrowed ever more deeply.
"We might have to double the number of servants, and hire a dedicated housekeeper, a senior chef, a wine steward..."
No matter how carefully he budgeted, his currently available cash flow seemed stretched thin.
First came the household servants' expenses. Though Lorne was a modern man at heart and cared nothing for the old nobility's notions of propriety and dignity, he would soon be made a viscount and would need to socialize and host banquets frequently in high society. On his butler Asnia's advice, he had agreed to hire more servants.
The amount was not outrageous, but over time, it would add up to a considerable expense.
Next came the full-scale expansion of the pharmaceutical factory.
Then there was the expansion of the pharmaceutical factory. The recent Great Smog and the Charity Foundation's widespread distribution of medicine had further raised the profile of his "Hope" elixir. An enormous number of orders had already come in, including quite a few from other regions.
Clearly, the small pharmaceutical factory's production capacity was nowhere near enough to support this staggering market demand. Expansion was therefore urgent. And once expansion began, buying land, building workshops, acquiring new machinery, recruiting and training workers... every step would cost gold pounds.
Besides that, he also carried two hidden "enormous debts."
The first was the cost of the potion he had purchased from Queen Mystic aboard the Dawn to advance to Sequence 4. Even if he could pay for part of it with supplies, it remained a substantial expense.
There were also the excellent freight resources Antigonus had previously offered to transfer to him. It might be an insider's discounted