A week later Persy was constantly busy in her part of the clinic, treating the people of the slums first, as they were proper residents of the city and therefore technically got priority with government charity programs, which this was classified as. Berry had been shifted over to that area to help, and I had even hired two temp workers from the Healer’s Union to help them.
Kanta was busy making salves and disease cure potions all day, using his mana to maximize the synergistic effects of the ingredients, and didn’t have much time to train. The constant mana use, however, did help him put out mana more quickly, and as he used it at his maximum level and sometimes channeled from the necklace, his mana capacity and pressure were slowly increasing.
All this meant that Cam was handling at least half the Standard customers. That was fine as he barely had a few rich or noble clients per day. After half a day of dealing with people getting hurt in stupid accidents due to insufficient safety standards, a merchant came into the Rich area of the clinic with his thirteen year old daughter. Finally, a decent client.
“Uh, doctor,” he said. “I need a woman’s help with this.”
“Why? What seems to be the problem?”
“Well, you see, last night she, uh, had her first, um, monthly?” The guy seemed really nervous about this situation. “I don’t really know how to handle it, and I don’t have a wife, or girlfriend, or even a female servant, so...”
“Sure, not a problem.” I went to switch with Berry and she came to help the daughter while I went to help even more idiot blacksmith apprentices who forgot the metal was hot.
Berry took the girl into the back to explain things to her, and a few minutes later I heard the bell to the Rich section ding again. I quickly finished healing the man’s burnt hands, put the money in the drawer, and wetn back to that section. One of the two temps could deal with that section after all. I noticed it was the knight from two days earlier.
“Hey doc, I was hoping to get some more of that potion. I tried it with both my wife and my mistress and they both liked it.”
“Wait, you offer that kind of potion here?” asked the merchant, temporarily distracted from the issues with his daughter.
I sighed. The knight has corrupted this man. “Yes, though they cost two silver each.”
“Trust me,” said the knight. “It’s worth it.”
“In that case I’ll take one, to try it out.”
“Two for me.” responded the Knight.
I went off to make three bottles of two silver viagra. When I got back the merchant was crying as the knight patted him on the back. I listened to him for a few minutes, not wanting to interrupt him. Apparently his wife died five years ago when his daughter was eight. He had tried getting remarried, dating both women that looked like her and women that behaved like her, but due to “performance issues” none of the women would stay with him. He did manage to stay with a 42 year old female knight for a while, as she didn’t really care about that failure, as she was unlikely to get pregnant at her age anyway, but when things kind of started working he had accidentally called her by his dead wife’s name. This caused her to leave him, stating that she didn’t want to be with a man that still wasn’t over a previous lover. Because of all of that, he had been forced to try and raise his daughter by himself, and was overwhelmed by this latest development.
‘This society was way too obsessed with reproduction.’ I thought. That was probably due to the fact that Aranya, goddess of fertility, was a major deity in this country. At least that meant that I wasn’t stuck mixing Infertility potions all day.
I handed them their potions, and instructed the merchant how to use it. “I suggest starting with a quarter vial. That should be safe for anyone, even without those issues. Don’t take more than half a vial every four hours, or it could result in damage to your ‘little man’ or a heart attack.”
The merchant nodded and a few seconds later Berry exited the room with a much less emotional girl. “I think that’s everything.” she said. “If she has more questions, I or Persy an answer them. Just bring her back.”
The man nodded and paid the three gold for both of them without complaint. Once they left, I collected the money from the Knight and he too left. “I hope things work out for them.” I said.
“I don’t know how I would have dealt with that issue if it happened to me three years ago. Thankfully I had a mom to give me the talk.”
I nodded. “Thankfully I had read all of the medical texts in the palace library and got to skip my dad giving me the talk.” She nodded and we headed back to the Standard area.
We didn’t get a break all day. Around one in the afternoon I sent Persy out to get us some lunch from one of the street vendors and sent one of the temps to cover for her with the slum dwellers.
Once it was time to close the store, I was happy to lock up. A count of the money showed that, even without the 57 people being treated at three copper each, I would still have made more today than any other day. With it, we had a massive profit today. I gave everyone an extra 50% bonus for how hard we worked today, even the temp workers who made an extra 50% over standard employee rates already. I told them to come back tomorrow, then went to do some shopping. Neither of the temps had a core necklace to draw on, so Persy or Berry had to occasionally stop what they were doing to restore their mana reserves. And that was with the amethyst being moved into the standard area for them have more mana to draw on.
I spent another two gold on four more necklaces, buying the last rating four cores the shop had in stock, then went by the healer’s union to recruit two more temps. These two had only gotten their basic certification at the end of last month, but they would work.
Now, having two temps to assign to the Slave area and two to assign to the Standard area, I showed them back to the clinic, and gave them a tour. Once they knew where everything was, I told them to be there at eight a.m. and finished locking up. Persy was still there, reading some novel that Berry had loaned her, and after locking up we went out to eat again. At least it wasn’t Goblin food this time. I much preferred the Elven cuisine she settled on tonight.
The next morning I woke up, got ready, then walked to work with Persy. All four temp people had arrived, as had Berry. I unlocked the door and handed a necklace to each of the temp people, explaining that it was loaner equipment so they didn’t run out of mana, and assigning them to their service areas for the day. I could always move them around if I needed. Just as the first of the slum dwellers started arriving Kanta also entered. He had been running, was wearing a backpack, and was soaked with sweat. “Give me a minute to wash up, and I’ll start making more medicine.” he said, then ran into the back. Everyone else got started and a few minutes later he entered his office.
If you discover this tale on Amazon, be aware that it has been unlawfully taken from Royal Road. Please report it.
I went back to the Rich area and started working on more Essences. Before I could finish with the first batch a female knight stormed inside and started screaming about knowing her husband was cheating on her. Honestly, I didn’t know who she was talking about. Once she explained that he was the man who sent his pregnant girlfriend over here, though, I kept denying even though I knew who she meant. After all, he had payed an extra three silver for me to tell her nothing. Seeing that I wouldn’t tell her anything, and after being informed that a doctor couldn’t discuss the private medical business of his clients, even if the man or the supposed girlfriend was one, she stormed out of the building. Guess she wouldn’t be a client.
I finished the Essence I was working on and started on another when Father walked in. “Father?” I asked. “I didn’t expect to see you here? Is something wrong?”
“I just wanted to come by and see how the clinic was doing with the charity program.”
I nodded. “Well, I hired four temp workers to deal with it. Persy and Berry are kind of in charge of the Slave and Standard areas, so I haven’t really been checking in on them since we opened today, but hopefully with the temps I won’t have to help out today.”
“Who’s Berry?” he asked.
“Oh, she’s the woman I hired from the Healer’s Union the run the Standard area. I’ll introduce you.” lead him into the Standard area and found a busy woman who was setting the arm of a kid that had gotten beat up by bullies as his mom screamed about getting the city guard to deal with the boys. Once she was done healing it and had collected the money, I introduced Father to her. “Berry, this is my Father, Count Virgil Starshine.”
“Very nice to meet you, sir.” she said with her best curtsy. “I apologize for the blood. I just treated a knife wound and haven’t had a chance to change yet.”
“It’s fine,” he said, “I’ve been around plenty of doctors in battle. Blood doesn’t bother me.” He watched them work for a few minutes, then nodded. “Seems like everything here is working properly. Mind if we talk in your office?”
“Sure,” I said, and lead him there.
“Ah, nice chest. I have an older model of that in my office.”
I nodded. “Yep, it was expensive, but I think it will be worth it.”
He nodded. “So, Sir Thomas told me you were selling a special potion.”
I tried to remember who that was. After a few seconds I remembered that was the knight that had talked with the merchant yesterday. I sighed and rubbed my eyes in embarrassment. “two silver each, and you have to promise you’ll only use them with mother.”
“That wasn’t why I was asking. Not that I won’t use them if I need them, but for some reason a lot of the noble men and some of the noble women have been talking about them. Reginald suggested that we make it a special item we export to other cities via your mother’s merchant connections. It appears to be far more effective than any other aphrodisiac on the market, and the rich and other nobles are willing to pay a lot of money for such products. You could probably even increase the price.”
Probably because I actually had some scientific knowledge of what caused the issues. “Ok, that’s less embarrassing than what I thought you were asking. If you want to resell them, I think we can work something out. How about I sell them to you for a silver and a half each, and you promise to not sell them in the city? That will guarantee me the local market, and you can then make a nice profit on the exports.”
“No profit percentage?” he asked. “I know you don’t have merchant certification, but it’s standard for the manufacturer of luxury goods to get a percentage of the sale price on top of the original price.”
“We can consider it for later. For now, lets say that the first thousand vial shipment doesn’t have the percentage on it, so that you can get people interested in it and sell it at a lower cost. After that we can work out something based on how lucrative the market might be. In the mean time I can look over the Merchant Manual and see about getting my certification. Or at least hire someone to manage the business for me. That way I’ll know how much I can hope to make for various medical products.”
“Sounds like a plan. Two questions, though. How long of a shelf life do you think they will have, and how long will it take you to make a thousand of them?”
“They should last for four months with simple packaging, or a year or more if I use the more expensive vacuum and wax method. That will add a few coppers per bottle to the price, but should be long enough to ship anywhere on the continent. As for how long it will take, I doubt I can make more than twenty a day on my own if I have to extract the essences too. I can, however, hire a few temp alchemists and maybe a few apothecaries to do the final mixing and packaging step. With a proper production line, they might manage fifteen or twenty per person per day. I’d probably hire four alchemists and an apothecary in the beginning, as they are cheaper, and make one hundred per day.” Of course, I could always increase the number of employees and hire them permanently to save money in the future, but for a test batch hiring five people for two standard work weeks should work.
Father nodded. “In that case, I’ll send Reginald over to help you set up a workshop and maybe manage it for you. I have no doubt that this product will sell, so setting up a proper studio for a month shouldn’t be an issue.”
I nodded. “Sounds good. I’ll look into buying the raw ingredients and finding alternative sources for all of the essences I will need. Might even put in a mission at the Adventurer’s guild for the plants I need. I’ll mix it in with a lot of other plants I use here at the clinic to confuse anyone trying to figure out the formula.”
Father smiled. “I wasn’t sure if you would think of protecting your formula or not. That should be adequate for now, though once you get up and running, your mother can acquire any ingredients you need through her business, so that we don’t risk people finding out exactly what’s in it.”
The next day Reginald and I left the palace. I let Persy open the clinic, and we headed to the industrial part of the city. There he showed me a small carpenter’s workshop that mother had purchased a few months ago but had to shut down due to the low quality of their goods. All of their employees were sent to work at other carpenters workshops she owned and their signature style of chair was absorbed into one of those shops.
Now that the business was closed, I could use it to craft any good that didn’t need special conditions like a forge or extra ventilation. That meant that there would be no issue with me setting up an alchemist workshop here.
It would be expensive to set up a large number of alchemist workstations at once, as the standard alchemist lab cost around five gold. More specialized equipment, which may be needed later, would cost even more. Father, however, had agreed to pay for the cost of setting everything up up front on the grounds that he could take those costs out of the first payment for potions.
Once I had figured out where everything would go, we set off for the Healer’s union. There we asked about hiring alchemists and apothecaries. Once they understood that we wouldn’t need anyone with an intermediate or advanced certification, they gave us a list of people who were available. As we were hiring them as standard employees, we would need to guarantee them at least one month of employment. If we fired them before then without hiring a certified replacement that would be considered downsizing, which would breach the contract and cost us the rest of the month’s pay.
As I was sure that I could turn a profit at this, even if I had to just pay them to extract essences then sell them wholesale to the guild, I signed the contract. I hired the eight best Basic Alchemists and the two best Basic Apothecaries that they had available, and showed them to the workshop. The standard guild contract they were under restricted them from revealing any trade secrets they learned while working for me, which is one reason I hired from the guild instead of from an employment advertisement. I also bought eight alchemist stations, two compounding stations, and two sets of vacuum sealing equipment, along with all of the vials we would need, and had them delivered to the workshop.
Once the equipment was set up I explained the process to the workers. The Alchemists would be extracting specific essences from the ingredients I brought them. The apothecaries would then compound the essences together and vacuum seal the resulting mixture in vials. As the Extraction process didn’t use mana but you did need to inject mana into the compounded mixture to maximize the synergistic effects of the ingredients, only the apothecaries might need core necklaces. I told them to get familiar with the equipment and each other while I went to get some supplies so that they could practice.
I swung by the Core necklace seller. He was still out of rating 4 necklaces, but I bought a 3.7 and a 3.8 four eight silver and left. Back at the clinic I had two of the temp workers switch necklaces with me, as they were mostly handling simpler injuries and diagnostics which didn’t require high pressure. I then grabbed all I had of the three plants that were used to make the ED medicine and went back to the factory.
There I told the alchemists which essences I needed them to extract, but informed them that extracting the other ones in the plants could earn them a bonus. Once they had all extracted at least one of the essences I needed, I gave the apothecaries the necklaces and showed them how to mix and enhance the compound properly. Reginald was standing by watching. While he didn’t know much about alchemy and not much more about apothecaries, he was technically going to be the manager of this location, so he needed to understand the employees.
Once we were both comfortable that they knew what they were doing, I left the workshop in his hands and went to the Adventurers Guild, where I put in a bulk mission for a total of one thousand each of seven different plants, three of which were the ones I needed to make the ED medicine. Bulk orders essentially paid the adventurers for each of the items they collected that were above a specific minimum quality, and may pay bonuses at specific levels. The one who created the mission can then come by and pick up their orders whenever they wanted. I needed to pay in advance for all of the materials, but they were fairly cheap to acquire them like this, as Adventurers would gather huge numbers of them any time they found them, knowing that they could sell several hundred at a time. Reginald would just have to come by every day to pick up the ingredients, and then deliver the ones the workshop doesn’t need to the clinic along with any essences they produced which weren’t needed.