52 Ch. 33.5 Pt. 3- Exploring the City Some More (1/2)

If I remembered right, the payment was 4,000 credits, which was confirmed by the nice receptionist who was helping us fill out the quest completion paperwork. Her name was Juanita judging by the name badge on her white top. She was pretty from what I could see, but I didn't spend much time looking at her out of fear that Alexis would sick Violet on me in my sleep.

We hadn't started dating or anything, but logic didn't really matter in situations like these, not to mention that I was far more interested in Alexis than some stranger I had just met. She was very friendly despite us being foreigners and quickly helped settle our payment along with the registration and payment for the bandits we took out. I couldn't wait to look and see what they had stored, but this wasn't the place or time, so I would wait until we got back to the inn before looking.

With a much larger number in our accounts than before, we decided to do some long-awaited shopping and pick up some local specialties if we came across any. We started at the produce section and started buying in bulk. My first choice was to buy heaps of fresh and dried peppers along with bags of different and vibrant spices that smelled like they would go great in a stew or on some meat.

Alexis seemed to prefer vegetables and fruit, so I left that to her as I would eat just about anything. I mostly cared for how something tasted, and I refuse to ever be stuck eating plain roasted meat no matter how far in the wild I was. Everything was relatively cheap as well, and since I wasn't hurting for inventory space I bought quite a load. Even if I couldn't use all the spices and herbs, I'm sure I could sell them back home or give them to Mira either to cook or use in some experiments.

I heard that before the New Era, many American and Asian countries used traditional medicine involving herbs and the like, so I wonder how those would work with modern alchemy. It couldn't hurt to try, but I would leave the thinking and experimenting for her to figure out. Wanting to surprise her, I asked the nice elderly market ladies for any strange herbs or medicinal plants from around here.

They even showed me a plant with coagulating properties, I bought a couple of bushels of those for a small price of a few credits. They could be extremely handy and can even be applied during a fight unlike most potions and salves that I had which would take a while to open and use. Apparently all that was needed was to chew the leaf up and place it on a bleeding wound.

I guess them seeing that I was a summoner was more than enough to reassure them that I was in fact not insane for cutting myself. As an apology, I tipped a few more credits to the nice ladies and paid for 10 more bundles of the useful herb, which was nearly their entire stock. I had an idea to make this into a fast-acting paste for heavy wounds, that would cut out the chewing process and allow for a more concentrated amount to act on deeper cuts. I didn't really know much about alchemy other than what Mira had told me about during dinner, but I could imagine that she could make something quite useful out of them.

This would be able to make us a decent sum at the auction or sold to the Summoner's Association, I would have to visit Jeremiah again and set up a deal to bring a steady supply of the herb back to Mira. We could probably outsource some help from some of Mira's Alchemy contacts once she had devised a recipe. Since we would be supplying the recipe and supplies, we could probably work out a deal for 70% of the profit with 30% going to the alchemists.

It wasn't a bad deal, especially since all they had to do was put in the manual labor to make them. I couldn't expect Mira to work on this all the time, so I think this is the best compromise and could make us a fair sum. I'd give Mira 65% of the profit we earned for ourselves since she made the recipe and we were using her contacts, the 35% for myself would go towards my and Alexis's guild house in the future. We didn't really need it right now, but it would definitely be useful in the future when we attracted more members.

The amount of funds we were trying to earn wasn't just for location either, we wanted to make it a fully functional training and lab facility with dorms on another floor. This was so we could spar and train our summons in relative safety, and so Mira would have everything she would need when she moved in with us. I didn't want to be away from her, so this was the perfect compromise, not to mention that it would cut down on the amount spent for potions and the like with her on our side.

After purchasing a bunch of herbs and strange roots, I caught up with Alexis and found her buying up a bunch of brownish/blackish beans. The scent coming from them was distinct but toned down compared to their processed counterparts. After asking her I came to find out that she had bought a giant load of fresh coffee and cocoa beans from the stall.