Three days.
For three days I've cooped in the workshop of one of the city's ranches.
Day and night, I worked.
Quartering the pig carcasses I bought off the overseer, setting them up on racks to slowly boil out their fats, boiling bigger fat chunks and actively burning away charcoal to get more lye then stirring the mixture whenever a batch would get ready…
By the second day, I've managed to more or less perfect the process.
There were no wasted movements left, with every tool being right within my reach and the whole thing arranged so that I could do pretty much everything at once.
The fat went to the pot and will now take a while to boil? This would be a perfect chance to cut and sort the meats or maybe take off the roasts that successfully reached this ideal, pre-cooked state that would make them just perfect with just one more quick sear.
Some of the meat I used to sustain myself, living off just the meat and water I would gather from the bail and then cook just for the safety of my intestines.
I no longer poured the thickening soap into random frames I found but used brick molds instead that I found hidden in the corner of the workshop.
With just four of those, I could dump an entire pot-worth of a soap, leaving them to properly cool down and thicken up in an already convinient, square blocks.
By the third night, I've turned most of all my gold into several crates worth of meat and then two more wooden crates of soap.
Knowing I wouldn't be able to afford buying a cart, I then spent the rest of the late afternoon crafting one.
When it came to the pot and grate, however, I didn't waste my efforts on them, not when just a few coins were enough to convince the overseer to look the other way on the day I would leave to do business.
And by the time the third night came, announcing the very last night I paid the farmer to let me stay on his ranch, I was now ready.
The blocks of soap now all cut and arranged on a thin cloth all around me.
If I sold them all, even for half a silver each, I could more than make back my initial investment!
But that was never an issue or a point of contention.
No, what was important was how the news about my cheap soap were bound to travel far and wide! And by the time the news would make rounds and bring even more customers to pay my stall a visit…
I smiled to my own thoughts.
'There's only one universal rule when it comes to companies. It grows or it dies.'
I never planned to make a career making soap. Not even with that insane ability of mine to instantly cure the soap, skipping the month-long period of slowly curing it through natural means.
Soap was just a stepping stone, a means for me to get a foot in the door of the local market and progress from there!
For now, though, surrounded by the soap, soap and then more soap, I closed my eyes, took a deep breath and invoked the name of my ability in my mind.
'Improved Curing.'
I awaited some grandeoise awakening of my ability, maybe a sweep of a find or maybe a flash of light.
Nothing like that happened, though.
Something clicked inside of my mind… and that was it.
I turned my eyes down, to the countless bars of simple soap only to see them changed.
The difference wasn't big or readily apparent. It was only after I looked really closely that I've realized the bars have lost some of its original color while gaining some degree of luster.
'It even looks more appealing now,' I thought, nearly going as far as to inspect every piece one by one before packing it all up back into crates.
Finally, long after I had to start burning candles just to see what I was doing, I finally cleaned the whole workshop out, leaving it exactly the same as I saw it when I first walked in, with the exception of stacked wooden boxes of pre-grilled meat, boxes of soap and then a pot filled with just animal fat.
I had to make my customers dirty their hands really good if I wanted them to have a reason to try out the soap!
And so, with all the preparation that I could think off now done and dealt with, I sat down at the most comfortable of the chairs in the workshop hut before succumbing to my exhaustion.
'It doesn't get any more 'garage company' than this,' I thought as my conciousness ascended to the realm of dreams.
I must've worked really hard and really late into the night because by the time I've woken up, the sun already reached quite far on its daily path from one side of the sky to the other.
Yet, I didn't despair over the hours I've missed just… sleeping.
Instead, I quickly packed all that I could on my makeshift cart before rolling out from the farm and in the direction of the town.
As the lowest level of merchant - a personal peddler - I didn't really need to bother with taxes or buerocracy. All of that was contained within a single fee I paid to the town guard standing at the entrance to one of the town's minor markets.
If I had a shop or even a full-fledged stall, the official side of my duties would increase by leaps and bounds. But as a merchant at the very bottom of the ladder, I was perfectly happy to chomp down on the bone this city threw me in form of the simplified tax duties and ease of access to the market.
I pushed my cart against the outcry of my pained muscles, soon reaching the very edge of the marketplace.
So late into the day, this was the only place where I could squeeze out a bunch of space - not only for myself, but also for my customers to stand on.
Unable to compete with the veteran local sellers, I decided to aim for the customers that were just leaving the place.
And what could they better stumble upon if not a small cart where they could buy perfectly-well grilled pieces of meat sold for cheap and right from the fire?
With my plan of action decided on, I quickly dismantled most of my cart, turning it into a semi-stationary display with a simple, shielded fireplace fitted with a small grill above it.
Ignoring the curious stares of people that just now were starting to notice me, I've started the fire underneath my grill and moved on to put a small bail with water on the side of my immobilized cart.
Next came the meat, which I placed directly on the grill as soon as the charcoal started to nicely take the fire in.
It only took a moment for the delicious aroma of the roasted meat to fill the whole area. Yet, I still continued to rush with my preparations, stacking the bars of soap by the side of my water-pot all the while allowing the smell to do the marketing job for me.
Then, with all of my preparations done, I stood up behind my cart, took a quick look at the meat before redying a bunch of wooden sticks to the side of the grill.
"Freshly roasted meat!" I let out a loud scream while going as far as to take one of the sticks, impale the single most-promising cut onto it before raising it up and swinging around. "Get your meat here! Meat freshly pulled from the grill! Go and take a bite now! Only five coppers a piece!"