"Guys, before we begin anything…"
While it was rude to keep the man in his comfy clothes stuck at the door, there was one question I absolutely had to ask.
It related to the system, after all. And the better I understood how it worked… The smoother our cooperation could be.
"Can either of you write, by chance?"
This question likely appeared to be completely out of pocket.
Shen, however, quickly shook her head.
'Hmm?'
My eyes twitched a little.
'She can play her role so well, yet they didn't teach her to write?'
It felt like a major lapse in logic. Given the role Shen played at her job, it would be perfectly in line of her character to know how to write.
How else could she record her songs?
But out of the two of them, it was the hungover man that brought his hand up.
"I can write a little bit. But I'm rather confident in my math!" he added, as if only now recalling that he should sell himself to the best of his ability.
'Wait, that means…'
I threw a glance over at the girl.
'If he fulfills the role of the craftsman and a scribe, then…'
The implications were clear.
And after not so much of deliberation, I noticed the simple logic in it.
Especially in her job, Shen needed means to protect herself. And those likely were enough to satisfy the fourth and last role I had yet to fill - the guardian.
"Well then, I won't hold you for now. Gather your men, your tools and then meet us at the seventy-four, east avenue," I raised my hand before turning. "Oh, and if we are not there when you arrive, just go ahead and clear the building so that we can remodel the whole thing so that it fits my needs."
And those would be quite peculiar.
Because I could already tell where this was going.
I would procure and sort the goods outside of the town. Then, I would bring the half-processed products to town, before turning them into soap at the shop. Then, I would need a storehouse for everything, curing room for the soaps and finally some offices and living space in the building's higher floors.
'Its nice even to think about having headquarters like that…'
I could already see the project before my eyes.
The bottom floor split between cooking half, where are the hot processing would be done in a series of stoves, and the trading half, where customers could come in to make their purchase.
On the second floor, the office space for all the workers to assemble and organize at, along with place for the administrative staff to manage all the papers.
And finally, the third floor, where I could picture my own living quarters, allowing me instant access to the whole of my company from right where I slept.
For now, though, we still had to make the trip from the man's home to the building seventy-four.
Then, we still had to clear it, renovate it and then install all of the modifications I already pictured in my head. And only once all of it would be done, we could start cooking.
Let's not forget about the whole procurement part either.
As the shop was already in the city, I would rather than have my men dismantle their pigs on the site.
The space we had behind the shop to set up whatever was big, but limited.
Splitting the two was perfectly fine as long as I could afford to quickly move things between the two points.
Which is why, we needed a loading bay for the cart attached to the warehouse. Then, a horse-drawn cart and a series of hand-drawn peddling sets.
Thanks to those two things, however, I could offload all of the ugly and stinky parts of the production back to the farms, outside of the city limits, where livestock was aplenty.
'If I do recall correctly, I won't even need to ask for permission, with how all the meat goes into the circulation in the city…'
I had to pay my fair share for the pigs. And at the back of my head, there was an idea that the farmer I bought all of my starting materials from was overcharging me by some massive amount…
Still, after paying my fair share for the pigs, I would need somewhere to prepare and butcher them before using the cart to move the cleared-out oil to the workshop.
There, workers would cook it again, this time with all the other ingridiends.
With that done, the soaps would get poured into molds before getting stoved away in the curing room and labeled for sort recognition.
Finally, once the two weeks would pass, they would turn safe to use, allowing me to open the doors to my shop wide open and welcome all those who dared to visit.
For all of that to happen, though, I needed to get the work going on the shop first.
I fully expected to wait for hours before the man, whose name I still didn't ask about, would arrive with his men.
Yet, as if this world has blessed me, they appeared within an hour, breaking way past all of my expectations.
"What's the job, boss?" the leader, the same middle-aged, unkempt man I've saw at the doors now appeared full of vigor, his face restored with a quick wash and overall look with fresh set of clothes.
I turned and pointed at the building.
"I need this cleared out. Store the materials in the yard, if need be. There might be use for them alter. And once you are done…" I took a moment to reconfirm the layout of the building before my eyes with the one I had in my head when planning the new design.
"Once you are done, I want you to split the bottom floor in two, with one designed to be a storefront while the other - robust kitchen worthy of a military operations, ten high-quality stoves at the very least."
The foreman raised his eyebrows.
"Ten?" he asked, throwing a worried look at the huge, three-floor building. A bit of color drained from his face. Then, his head reached out for the belt. "I mean…" he glanced back at his men.
"It's possible," the man admitted on a single breath while wearing the look that made it clear just how much he regretted saying this. "But the costs…"
I threw a small pouch over.
"There's fifty gold coins inside. Make it happen, I'm counting on you."
There was no need to say anything else.
My job was done here, the actual act of clearing and remodeling could be left to those who would do it better than me anyway.
"Okay then," I clasped my hands down on my hips before looking back at Shen.
Throughout the short meeting she stood silent, gracefully taking a place just to my right, half a step behind.
'Damn, she's really good.'
Even in something as minor as distancing, she kept just close enough to reinforce her persona, to ooze obedience and devotion.
"Do you happen to know any farm big enough to keep supplying me with livestock?" I asked, "preferably ones who could sell me one of their workshops and help me hire a butcher."