While Darius opened the front door of Green Lantern, Edwin exclaimed, “Where in the name of chicken, you have gotten those!”
Darius chuckled, “these are a thanks gift provided by lord Lumbert, I guess. I helped a bit with wounded people.”
“Climbing up the ladder, eh? That’s great news, Darius. You seem to have received a silver token. Also, not many commoners have it. Are you thinking of expanding your business?”
“Indeed, I am, although I have to rely on you for a while longer since my alchemy lab is kind of unmovable for many reasons. Some of the tools are hard to pack.
“That’s fine. I am relieved you are still renting them. You have always paid before due time, boy,” grinned Edwin with bright eyes still eying Darius and his new clothing.
“Do you happen to know where I could buy a house nearby the nobility area? I would also need a storage room and other rooms for an alchemy store. If I can expand a bit, I can get more workers. Maybe I even ask you for more rental rooms for it.”
Edwin took the hint and told Darius about several three-storey high buildings being sold nearby the same street where Darius had bought his clothing earlier.
“Thanks, Edwin. I will see what I can do.”
Darius continued to the lab room and knocked on the door.
“It’s me, Darius.”
The door opened, and Elvira greeted him. She had cleaned the alchemy lab nicely, and after Darius closed the door, she showed some hiding places that she had made. Darius nodded and started looking at the books.
“Elvira, bring me the backpack from upstairs. Here is the key, don’t let anyone see what is inside. Tell Edwin or the maid to bring our meals and extra food to this room for several days.”
After glancing at his new books, Elvira came back with the luggage. While the door closed, Darius locked the door and put a plank underneath the doorknob. Elvira’s eyes were slightly alarmed by it, so Darius said, “Elvira, it is all right. We just have to hide a few items so that nobody finds them. Elvira opened some floor planks and showed that underneath the gravel, she had buried a box for this kind of purpose. Darius could only imagine what kind of undertaking it must have been while seeing one box full of gravel in the room.
“This is work, Elvira. Here is the money for the next task. Go buy yourself anything practical, several weeks' worth of food and drinks for us and order someone to deliver this gravel box to a nearby village. After all, we have to hide these things well.” Darius threw a closed purse to Elvira, and she cached it from the air.
“Thank you, master.”
“Just go all out. We have enough money. Efficiency is the most important thing now.”
Elvira left the room, and Darius sighed and started reviewing what magic books he had gotten. This time there were a lot of them. Topics ranged from different particle magic to meditation and general books on the theory of magic. He would have to go through them with Elvira. She might know a thing or two about them. Several books were spell model collections of some sort. Darius could only read descriptions of the spells because symbols and calculations were unreadable to him.
While Darius was leafling the books, Elvira returned with ten sacks and other minor boxes. Despite her age, she seemed in perfect physical condition.
“You can put them there. Elvira, can you tell me how acolytes differ and do you know how to measure the body’s particles? I have survived this long without the basic knowledge of magic. I have been extremely lucky and unlucky.”
“Yes, master, I can see you are first rank acolyte. The particles act a bit differently than with non-mages or secular people, as mages would say. I can’t perform any detection magic capable of measuring your particles, and all the instruments are costly. You could join academia but its also very expensive. Entry to this magic academy, what we have in this city is around 120 magic stones. It can be cheaper elsewhere, but before joining, they will measure your particles for free.”
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“Ah yes, I can cheat this information from them for free and just continue with the books and materials.”
“In essence, yes, at least until you face a more complicated bottleneck for your advancement. There are countless masters and ways to go about it, but it always costs a lot of magic stones. Also, starting acolytes are treated like gutter slaves, and they have to do dangerous missions at the peril of their lives, and they receive scrapings of what they gather and what they have achieved. But you can still measure it on any day they are continuously accepting people in because Ardon city is so vast, and people come here miles around.”
After a lengthy discussion, they ate and started to do potioneering. Elvira thought aloud how he could have survived with kitchenware and odd equipment. There seemed to be differences in the standards and quality of alchemy tools. During the evening, the output of the alchemy lab had not only doubled. They had worked out a new way with some of the tools used more precisely, and this has already resulted in ten intermediate healing potions, not just two or three like usual. And this was just the beginning. While they had been working on processes of alchemy, Elvira had talked about her huge debt trap as an acolyte that she couldn’t recover. Finally, she had to sign a slave contract, and she had been used as an alchemy slave for several years before her body was so messed up that the experiments on her were gone wrong. She had been sold a few times until mister Trader had bought her. Since her condition made her too imprecise to be used in alchemy experiments, so she was worthless for mages.
The next day, Darius walked alone into the registry office building and went inside to acquire information about buildings that Edwin had told him. First, he was greeted by a young-looking female secretary, and she led Darius to meet a city official. The man was a heavy-looking fellow with a too tiny official coat on him. The official also had fashionable starched neckbands that seemed almost to strangle him.
“Greetings, young man. My name is Orlond. How can I help you?” the registry officer greeted Darius with a swindler look about him.
“My business is to buy a large enough building from the main square leading to nobility area for potioneering store. Do you have anything for me for this purpose?”
“Indeed I do, but it will cost you around 8000 gold coins with the fees. Shall we have a look?”
“Yes, money is not the problem. We can go have a look.”
While they were slowly walking towards the main street, Orlond talked without stopping, sometimes spewing his saliva on Darius' face while reporting all manner of stores and conditions of the buildings when they passed them. Finally, they got on the large street crossing, and Orlond showed him a massive three-story building with a taverna outlook. The location was exceedingly good. It was just less than two hundred meters away from the main gate to the nobility area, and this street crossing was where two important roads met the main road to the nobility area and merchant district. Darius heard that if he wanted to buy a similar building in the merchant district, it would cost him only three thousand gold to little over five thousand.
“Money is not a problem. This location is already good enough for my purposes.”
“Well then, let's go inside. We can’t sell you an unshown establishment now, can we.”
The new level of redundancy commenced. They spent the next hour going through all the rooms and floors, and they even went to the attic hatch that led to the roof of the building. The whole interior was whitewashed clay with sturdy-looking wood beams supporting everything. The place would need renovation, but the street-level hall was perfect for the alchemy store. Darius would have to buy more slaves, though, to be able to handle the large area and expand the range of sold potions.
Eventually, everything was done, and Darius gave the bank notes and gold and received the building papers. After paying some extra, the man promised to use his contacts to get the outside of the building fixed with new paint, decorations, and signs for the alchemy store.
Darius went back inside the building. The first actual building he owned now. It didn’t matter that it was dirty and full of dust, and the furniture seemed rough and broken. What mattered was that he finally had a place in the city where he could not be thrown out. Downstairs hall had a large fireplace, and regular taverna chairs and tables filled the hall with a counter on the wall on the right side from the door. Darrius accidentally dropped a large chandelier while trying to lift the linen from it. He laughed. *Buy a building and die* even that felt funny to him.
After checking the building with more care and making plans for the establishment, Darius started walking towards the nobility area. After seeing him carry the silver token, the guards greeted him, and Darius continued the main street to turn left towards the Black Arc Academy. Afternoon busy hours were hectic, and the streets were full of people. But still, nobody tried to steal anything from him. It felt as the rules in this area were more civilized, at least at the surface.