Chapter 55: Expensive Progress

Skin Tempering III exposed the next limitation quickly.

Money.

Joe's twenty silverlings per month sounded substantial until Blackwood began eating it.

Rent. Food. Meat. Lamp oil. Clothes. Weapon maintenance.

Then medicine.

Always medicine.

The guard allotment covered ordinary recovery.

Joe was no longer doing ordinary training.

The third tempering consumed blood energy faster and stressed already-strengthened tissue more deeply than the second.

His body recovered.

Perfect Body helped enormously. But recovery still needs material.

Protein. Fat. Minerals.

Medicinal compounds Joe did not have modern names for.

Calories, even if nobody here used the word.

The body did not construct stronger tissue from determination.

Simon lent him money once.

Joe returned half immediately. "Keep it."

Simon frowned. "You asked."

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"I changed my mind."

"It's my money."

"Your medicine is partly paid through Mira's father."

"So?"

"So, I'm not cultivating by quietly consuming Black-family support through you."

Simon stared. "You're annoying. Mira agrees."

"Of course she does."

Joe needed another income source.

He had one. Knowledge.

One of his older nourishing formulas had become too weak for his current needs.

For an ordinary Skin practitioner, however, it was good medicine. Better than several commercial packets he had bought.

Joe prepared samples.

Mira arranged an introduction to a medicine hall associated with her father's business network.

She did not ask Edwin to buy it. Joe appreciated that.

Her presence simply told the manager that cheating Joe badly might become socially inconvenient.

The medicine was tested for several days. When they returned, the manager looked more interested.

"It nourishes well. We can target muscle tempering"

Joe waited.

"And the recovery effect is stronger than expected."

"I know."

"You formulated it?"

"Modified it."

The man's first offer was five gold coins. Joe nearly answered.

Mira spoke first. "Production rights only."

The manager looked at her. "Naturally."

"He retains the right to manufacture his own packets."

"We would prefer exclusive production."

"Then you're buying exclusivity."

Simon sat beside Joe looking increasingly out of place. The negotiation continued. Joe mostly listened.

Mira was still polite. Still soft-spoken. She was no longer naïve.

The final agreement gave the shop production rights within several named Blackwood outlets while Joe retained the formula, could continue producing it himself and could sell his own prepared packets under agreed conditions.

Price: Ten gold coins.

A thousand silverlings.

More than four years of Joe's current net guard salary.

Joe looked at the payment pouch after they left.

Simon stared too. "You had a thousand silverlings in your head."

"Apparently."

Mira smiled.

"They'll make more."

Joe looked at her.

"How much more?"

"Depends how popular it becomes."

That was the correct answer.

Joe realized then that recipes were not valuable because somebody liked a packet once. They were valuable because the same knowledge could produce profit thousands of times.

He had sold access to repetition. That concept would become much more important later.

Joe did not celebrate by buying expensive clothes. He bought herbs. A great many herbs.