At the end of the day, Harry was brought into one of the small lounges in the mansion where I had been sleeping on the couch since this morning.
"So, what's the report?" I asked, yawning after having just been woken up by Luna.
"We received 3 commissions with a total price of 120 mythril. If all goes well, they'll take three afternoons to finish the items while only using 20 mythril of material. Then if we add the pre-prepared items in the shop, we made another 240 mithril coins, minus 80 for materials, subtract 1 mythril for the slaves' food expenses and another 40 as wages for this fortweek and our net profit for today alone is about 119 mithril coins." Harry summarized, ignoring various things and summarizing the prices.
"Woosh. 44 gold coins for a daily profit of around a hundred mithril coins. At this rate we'll make our money back in a month or two." I realized. Was a business really that profitable? Surely it wouldn't pay back so quickly.
"Hmm. According to my research though, a similar workshop twice the size in the capital earns 5 times the profit. I think there's still improvement to be made." Harry sighed.
"We made a decent profit. That's all that matters. You can maximize it if you wish. I'm happy getting 100 mythril a day. I'll pay back my father with interest for the 44 gold and I'll have a decent income for the rest of my life." I reasoned.
"Haaa…" Luna sighed as she listened to my reasoning. "Imagine what you could achieve if you had some ambition…" She commented.
"If you're that depressed I'll lend you the remaining 56 gold to start your own business. Then you can buy those stockings or whatever." I said, before ignoring Harry and Luna and falling back asleep on the couch.
…
A month later.
"Whooo…" I whistled as I looked at the additional reward.
"What's wrong?" Luna asked from across the room, clearing my room's desk, tables and bookshelves of any dust, which she did once or twice a week.
"Ah. Nothing." I answered while excitedly opening the exchange store.
"And here I thought you fell for me." Luna commented before continuing her task.
"If you get any sassier you might find yourself locked in a dark room somewhere." I retorted grumpily.
"If my esteemed lord wishes for it I'll even lock the door and destroy the key myself." She returned sarcastically, giving me the slight urge to throw the nearby book at her.
I sighed. I once again didn't understand Luna at all. She changed incredibly quickly over the past two years and was both incredibly mature and knowledgeable for her age. What did she say again? She took notes on magic right..? Where was she learning magic though?
Such were my thoughts for a while. But just before 15 seconds passed, I decided I didn't care.
The exchange store had several categories. I started browsing through each one and found that basically everything was useful. For 10 exchange points I could exchange for 1 point of strength, stamina or resistance. I could also increase the mana in my core by 5 units for every point.
Not just basic attributes though. Ranging from a hundred to a hundred thousand points there were all kinds of skills and different bits of knowledge I could buy. The same went for blessings and items, with no lack of variety to be found.
Seriously, why was it sorted so that it went: sword, ax, gag, fork, nails, rope, arrow, enchanted sword… And so on. It was really strange. The skills and knowledge had equal variety. Ranging from divine cooking skill, knowledge of all plants, Eternal sword arts, Basic elemental magic, 304 ways to tie a knot and so on…
The last things were Blessings and experience. A quick look found I could get blessings similar to the moon's blessing, though I didn't know what any of the blessings actually did. The experience category was rather self explanatory, instead of having to go risk my life or put in effort to gain real life experience, I could just exchange it for hours of sleep.
"Whoooo…" I whistled again, to Luna's mild annoyment as she looked over only to see I was looking out the window and ignoring her.
'Ima have fun with this aren't I.' I thought with a sinister smile. Effectively so long as I slept I could get stronger. This was way better than any kind of training.
The first thing I did was raise all my basic attributes by 33, for 990 exchange points…
I regretted it a moment later as all my muscles from the outside to the inside organs screamed out in pain as I experienced full body muscle cramps and stinging pains. If it weren't for Luna being in the room I would have screamed right then and there, but whatever pride I had stopped me as I grit my teeth and rolled over, stuffing my face hard into the pillows on my bed as I silently cried while bearing through the pain. If getting kicked in the nuts was a 3 on the pain scale while giving birth was an 8, I was definitely suffering level 7 pain at the very least.
Even so, I bravely held on for half an hour until Luna left the room before I screamed and cried into my pillow, just quiet enough no noise escaped the room. This went on for another 2 hours which stretched for an eternity as my throat ran dry and tears ran out as I endured.