Chương 68: Chapter 62: A Better Batch

By the fourth week, Edwin's workers had stopped glaring at Joe every time he approached the cutting table. That was progress. The wooden guides Joe had improvised from scrap had become proper tools. A carpenter had made adjustable cutting blocks for the three roots used most often in Edwin's nourishing packets. The filtering table had been rearranged so the concentrate no longer crossed the room twice. Two burners had been rebuilt after Joe proved, to Mira's satisfaction, that the left one really had been hotter.

The medicine itself had barely changed. That was the part Joe found interesting. A month earlier, if someone had asked him how to improve the product, he would have thought first about ingredients. Different herb. Better herb. More concentrated herb. Now he thought about the workers' hands. Where did they pause? What did they measure by sight? What did they estimate from habit? Where could one person's judgment become the next person's mistake? The answer was everywhere.

"Again," Joe said. The young worker holding the measuring cup frowned.

"It is full."

"It is above the line."

"Barely."

"Barely times ten batches are not barely." She looked ready to argue. Mira, seated at the side table with the day's orders, said without looking up, "He will stand there until you pour it out." The worker sighed and adjusted the amount. Joe nodded.

"Good."

"Do you enjoy this?"

"No."

"I don't believe you."

"That sounds like your problem." The worker muttered something under her breath. Joe decided not to ask. Across the room, Edwin was speaking with a caravan merchant who planned to leave Blackwood in four days. Three wooden cases had been packed for him, each holding nourishing packets and two types of recovery powder. That was another change. Joe's improvements had created more product than Edwin's storefront could move quickly. At first Joe had worried that higher yield would simply pile packets onto shelves.

Edwin had looked at him as if he had said something childish. Then he started selling farther. Small shops in two nearby settlements bought sealed bundles. Hunters purchased boxes before entering the forest. The guard quartermaster negotiated a small discount for routine injury supplies. Caravan merchants bought medicine in Blackwood and resold it along their routes. Edwin had already possessed those contacts. Joe had simply given him more product worth distributing. Joe could optimize medicine.

But he could not conjure customers. At the end of the production day, Mira brought the week's ledger to the back room where Joe was grinding a small experimental batch by hand. She set it beside him.

"Eighty-eight." Joe kept grinding.

"Good packets?"

"Full quality."

"Weak?"

"Five."

"Waste?"

"Seven." He stopped.

"Which product?"

"The common nourishing packet." Joe wiped his hands and pulled the ledger closer. The batch had cost just under thirty silverlings after the newest changes. The packaging expense had fallen slightly because fewer packets needed to be opened and reclassified after cooling. Unauthorized reproduction: this story has been taken without approval. Report sightings. Revenue had climbed. Not dramatically. Steadily.

"Twenty-four profit," he said.

"Twenty-three and some smaller coin after transport allocation."

"Still improving." Mira sat across from him.

"You say that every time."

"Because it is."

"You were making thirteen when you started."

"Edwin was making thirteen."

"You were the one complaining."

"That was before I owned thirty-three percent of the complaint." She smiled. Joe returned to the figures. At twenty-three silverlings profit, his share was a little under eight. One batch. Edwin ran several products. Not all had Joe's improvements. Not all could. Some formulas depended on rare ingredients whose variation overwhelmed production precision. Others were already simple enough that waste was small.

Joe was learning that commercial medicine had an ugly rule: The easiest things to improve were not always the most expensive medicines. A rare pill that sold five silverlings each might have wonderful margins but only ten customers. A cheap nourishing packet might earn less per unit but sell every day. Volume. Reliability. Storage. He had spent his childhood thinking of medicine as cultivation support. Edwin thought of it as inventory. Both views were correct.

"You're staring again," Mira said.

"At what?"

"The same number." Joe looked down. He had been looking at the cost of dried bloodroot. Its price had risen nearly fifteen percent since Deepwinter.

"Why did this increase?"

"Two caravans didn't arrive before the thaw."

"Forest?"

"One bridge collapsed south of the river. The first caravan turned back. The second waited." Joe frowned. That single event had raised the cost of three medicines in Edwin's hall. Mira watched him.

"That's why Father doesn't like depending on one supplier."

"Can you replace it?"

"With another herb?"

"With another source."

"Yes. But the western seller charges more."

"Still less than the current price?"

"After transport, almost the same." Joe leaned back. Opportunity. Cost. Transport. Weather. Everything connected. The more he learned about commerce, the more cultivation began looking less like sitting in a room and training. If a bridge collapsed two days away, his medicine became more expensive. If hunters stopped entering the forest, beast-derived ingredients disappeared. If Edwin lost a supplier, Joe's body would eventually feel it. His talents multiplied effort. They did nothing about a broken bridge.

That annoyed him. It also made the world feel more real.

Simon arrived during the evening meal and immediately reached for the largest piece of braised meat. Mira moved it to Joe's bowl first. Simon stared at her.

"You saw me reach."

"Yes."

"And still gave it to him."

"Yes." Joe ate. Simon looked betrayed.

"This is what happens when people get rich."

"You are not rich," Mira said.

"I wasn't talking about me." Joe looked up.

"I'm also not rich." Simon pointed at him with his chopsticks.

"You made more from medicine last week than I made guarding people who actively tried to stab each other."

"Were they good at it?"

"That isn't relevant."

"It seems relevant."

"They were terrible. That made it worse." Mira laughed. Edwin entered the back office halfway through Simon's complaint and sat at the head of the table.

"Joe." Joe waited.

"The caravan order increased."

"How much?"

"Forty percent." Joe stopped chewing. Edwin poured tea for himself.

"They sold out at the first two stops."

"Which packets?"

"The common nourishing packets and the recovery powder you adjusted."

"Same price?"

"For us, yes." Joe considered the production schedule.

"We can't increase everything forty percent without reducing consistency."

"I know." Simon looked between them.

"Why?" Neither answered immediately. Simon frowned.

"No, really. If people want more, make more." Mira said, "With what workers?"

"Hire them."

"With what training?"

"Train them."

"With what room?" Simon looked around.

"This room is large."

"This is the dining room."

"Exactly. Plenty of space." Edwin rubbed his forehead. Joe looked at Simon.

"This is why you guard doors instead of running shops." Simon pointed at him.

"And yet when someone tries to break into the shop, who will Edwin call?"

"Probably the guard."

"Which means me."

"There are two hundred guards." Simon ignored that. Edwin looked at Joe.

"I can add two workers without changing the room. After that, expansion costs real money."

"Then add two."

"You sound generous with mine."

"You asked." Edwin gave him a thin smile. Joe continued, "Don't expand for one caravan order. See if they reorder." Mira nodded. Edwin glanced at her.

"You agree?"

"If the next order stays high, then we know it wasn't novelty." Simon looked offended.

"You asked both of them."

"They answered."

"I also answered."

"No," Edwin said.

"You suggested moving medicine production into my dining room." Simon ate another piece of meat.

"Still think it could work." Joe looked down at his bowl. This was what he liked about Edwin's household. Nobody treated medicine profits as mysterious treasure. Every increase created a new problem. More product required workers. Workers required room. Room requires rent or construction. More ingredients required suppliers. More customers require transport. There was no point where money simply became free. That made the profit feel useful rather than magical.

Joe's own medicinal skill climbed with every meaningful batch. Not evenly. Some days the panel barely moved. Others, a single change revealed enough that several previous observations suddenly fit together. He began testing whether rejected material could become cheaper products rather than waste. One failed experiment produced a bitter powder so unpleasant that Simon refused a second taste even after Joe offered him half a silverling.

"You drank half already."

"I also touched a hot stove once. I learned."

"It isn't harmful."

"That isn't the same as good." Joe tasted it himself. Simon watched.

"Well?" Joe swallowed.

"Bad."

"Thank you."

"But effective."

"No." Joe looked toward the packet.

"Laborers might buy it at one-third price." Simon looked horrified.

"You are becoming Edwin." From the office, Edwin called, "I heard that."

"That proves my point." The bitter powder eventually became a low-grade recovery product sold mostly to people who cared more about price than taste. It wasn't glamorous. It made money. More importantly, it reduces waste. By early summer, Joe's best standardized nourishing batches regularly produced around eighty-five to eighty-eight full-quality packets, several lower-grade ones, and very little completely useless residue.

Profits per batch had climbed from the old thirteen silverlings to roughly twenty or a little more depending on ingredient prices. Joe's share was not enormous yet. But it was repeatable. At the end of one week, Edwin handed him a small cloth purse. Joe weighed it in his palm.

"Twenty-six?"

"Twenty-seven and some smaller coin." Joe opened it. His medicine share for the week. Profit from a system that could run again next week. Joe closed the purse. Edwin watched him.

"Disappointed?"

"No."

"You look disappointed."

"I am calculating."

"That usually looks the same." Joe ignored him. Twenty-seven silver in a week would have sounded absurd in Green Hollow. Even after buying extra food, herbs, and recovery medicine, a significant amount remained. And this was before the process reached what Joe considered stable. One Effort Equals a Hundred had turned medicine from a useful skill into something else. Not wealth. Not yet. An engine. If he fed it attention, it produced money. If he fed the money back into cultivation, it produced progress.

Joe could see the cycle now. Knowledge. Medicine. Profit. Resources. Cultivation. More ability. Better medicine. He liked cycles that strengthened themselves. He liked them a great deal.