"Let's see, I have training, cultivation, and teaching in the morning today, then I have my chores around the house to do before lunch. After that, I need to head to the forest to collect the sap from last night and hang buckets on the next group of lych trees, then there's cooking down the sap and fat scraps before collecting ashes and soaking them…"
As Lucas looked over his schedule for the day and reviewed it twice to make sure he wasn't missing anything, he came to one inescapable conclusion, "Yup, I can't keep doing this on my own. I need to find help!"
It had been about 10 days since his initial sugar extraction experiment produced great results, launching Lucas into his third major project, the first one being teaching the Unarmed Foundations Art, and the second being manufacturing soap.
Both of Lucas' first two projects had been taking up more and more of his time recently, and now he had added another.
Quite frankly, he was being stretched thin and felt exhausted.
His parents, Anna and Drake, helped out when they could, but they had their own obligations to attend to, including a renewed interest in cultivation.
Previously, both Anna and Drake had been content with their current strength and hadn't put much effort into increasing their Realms, but with the Unarmed Foundations Art now boosting their cultivation efficiency, Lucas' parents both saw hope of reaching the Core Formation Realm within a decade, which was too tempting a prospect to pass up.
While Core Formation Practitioners weren't considered supreme masters, they were far more respected than those in the Vein Opening Realm. In the Rockwell Kingdom, whether it was the army, the nobility, or the business world, only those in the Core Formation Realm had any right to speak; everyone below it could at best be underlings or subordinates.
Core Formation Realm experts also tended to live about 10% longer than those in the Vein Opening Realm while also remaining in peak physical condition for longer, so there were many incentives to reach this level of cultivation, even if one wasn't interested in fighting or combat.
Compared to Lucas' parents, his Aunt Sasha and Uncle Charles were even busier. Planting season had just begun, and since agriculture was still the Newton Barony's primary industry, there were many things for the Town Lord and Lady to attend to.
In short, there was very little time for them to assist Lucas with his 'side projects'.
As for his Big Sister Eris, Lucas had basically enlisted her to help with some of his tasks already, but there was a limit on what a 13-year-old girl could do, especially when she also had training, cultivation, and various lessons to deal with.
Eris was strong for her age, seeing how she had already reached the Sixth Step Body Tempering Realm, but she was still quite immature, so Lucas wasn't comfortable entrusting many things to her. The worst part, however, was that when it came to culinary skills, Eris had completely inherited her father's lack of aptitude, much to the chagrin of her mother.
No, what Lucas needed now was to hire some dedicated workers to help him not just handle his new products, but to expand their production. This was especially true when it came to lych tree sugar, as the time he had to procure and produce this sweet delicacy was quite limited.
Over the past few days, Lucas had improved his collection methods for lych tree sap, including designing a kind of wooden spout which allowed far greater flow of sap from the trees rather than his initial metal nails. However, the critical factor remained the weather, especially the temperature differential between night and day.
After several days of careful observation, Lucas had concluded that just having cold nights wasn't enough to extract sap from the trees, he needed it to also be warm the next day, with the bigger the differential, the better.
Put simply, if it wasn't cold enough at night, and warm enough the next day, the harvest would be meager at best.
Lucas was interested in figuring out why this was the case, but he didn't have enough time to investigate the phenomenon. What mattered right now was to collect as much sap as possible before spring fully arrived and the nights were no longer cold enough.
Returning to his home quite late after a long day of 'tapping' lych trees, or at least that's what Lucas thought the process was called, the young boy dragged himself to his room and fetched one of his notebooks, as well as a feather and a bottle of ink, and sat down tiredly at the kitchen table.
Dipping his pen in the inkwell, Lucas began planning out his next move.
Regarding soap production, Lucas already had a fairly completely production process drawn up, what he needed to do now was divide that process up into pieces and then figure out how many people he needed to hire to complete them.
Fortunately, Lucas now had exact measurements of ingredients to use courtesy of a set of rulers and weights he had designed and fabricated with help from his father.
The young boy had made a fairly accurate 1 metre ruler, then painstakingly divided into 100 centimetres and 1,000 millimetres increments using a compass and many, many failed experiments.
He then used this ruler to design some standard weights like 1 kilogram, 100 grams, and 10 grams, and some volume measurements like 1 litre, 200 millilitres, 100 millilitres, and 50 millilitres.
Lucas also worked together with his dad to make a new kind of spring scale that was much easier to read and use than the common balance scales.
With several copies of this measurement equipment, Lucas didn't need to hire experienced craftsmen or professionals to make soap, just a few people who could read, do simple math, and follow instructions properly.
As for the lych sugar, the whole process from start to finish was actually even simpler than soap making, requiring only physical labour and enough cooking skill to not burn things.
In other words, he didn't have high requirements for workers, but that didn't mean finding trustworthy, idle hands was easy in a rural farming town where if you didn't work, you didn't eat. Everyone who could work, was already working, so if Lucas wanted to acquire his own employees, he would need to find a way to… incentivise them to leave their old jobs and sign up with him instead.
Of course, there was also the issue of procuring enough raw materials and equipment to accommodate a larger scale of production which needed to be addressed.
While some of his prior preparations made certain hurdles easier to overcome, the more Lucas thought about it, the more he realized how daunting a task it would be for him to scale up his small, backyard projects into a full-on business.
Then, of course, there was the all-important issue of money.
Through his various efforts, Lucas had managed to accumulate a little more than 6 Gold Coins worth of capital.
For a countryside boy whose age was still counted in the single digits, this was a huge fortune; however, to take his soap business from its current 200 bars to an initial goal of 1,000 bars a month, Lucas knew he would need 20 Gold Coins for raw materials alone. Then, there was bigger and better equipment, labour, and other production costs to consider.
In short, Lucas was severely lacking funds, helpers, and time, and that was for just one of his prospective products.
Staring at the 'bare minimum' requirements he had just written down, Lucas couldn't help holding his head and groaning. He always knew that creating a successful business was going to be hard, he just never anticipated it would be 'this' difficult.
"What's wrong, Son?" Drake asked, glancing over his shoulder as he stirred a pot of soup.
Lifting his head, Lucas let out a tired sigh that seemed more appropriate for a hard-working middle-aged man to make than a 9-year-old boy, and briefly explained his troubles.
Drake was naturally aware of how hard his son was pushing himself recently, and he really did want to find a way to help Lucas, but there was only so much he could do as he had no experience trying to create or expand a commercial business.
While it was true that Drake was the best blacksmith in Redwood Town, and he had many clients, his current success had been more of a spontaneous thing than a planned venture.
It all started with Drake setting up a forge to do some maintenance work on the equipment from the Town Lord's Manor at Charles' request when the group of friends first arrived. From there, Drake took on a few requests from various members of the Town Guard who appreciated his work, then word spread, and eventually, he had a thriving business.
In other words, Drake just went with the flow of things and wound up successful.
Lucas could certainly follow this model, slowly but surely growing his business, but as a young boy filled with ambition, he felt that would take far too long. What's more, Lucas' ultimate goal was to gain enough resources to significantly advance his cultivation; only by doing so would it be possible for him to venture out and see more of the world.
Shaking his head lightly, Drake apologized, "Sorry, Lucas. If it was just a matter of money, it wouldn't be a problem for your mother and I to invest a few Gold Coins, but I don't have any experience hiring workers."
"I could recommend a few people from the Town Guard, but why don't you try using Senior Farah's approach?" Anna chimed in from the side; she had returned from her job at the Town Lord's Manor a few minutes ago and caught most of the conversation between her son and husband.
Hearing this proposal, Lucas suddenly brightened up and began seriously contemplating the idea.
Farah often hired the older kids from the orphanage, or those who had recently left it, to help out in her shop, not only securing able hands for the odd-jobs she needed taking care of, but also giving the poor children a chance to improve their lives.
While all the kids and staff at the orphanage greatly appreciated Farah's generosity, given the scale of the butcher shop and its owner's complete lack of desire to expand further, all these jobs were part-time, temporary positions.
It wasn't that Farah didn't want to do more for the kids, it was just that there was only so much work she could offer as the demand for meat in town was naturally limited. The living standards in Redwood Town were surprisingly high for a frontier settlement, but that didn't mean everyone could afford to eat meat every day; far from it, in fact.
For the common farmers and labourers in Redwood Town, having a single meal with meat or fish in it ever three days was fairly normal, and that was already considered quite outstanding by the standards of the Rockwell Kingdom. Common folk who lived in towns with less abundant natural resources often went 10 days to half-a-month without tasting meat.
There were all kinds of factors involved in this, ranging from a lack of airable farmland, to excessive taxation by abusive landlords, and everything in-between. Redwood Town just happened to have a laid-back Lord, fertile farmland, a large river teaming with fish, and a massive forest filled with vegetables and wild game, resulting in an unusual high abundance of food.
Still, the orphans of the town, despite the efforts of many kind people like Farah to help them, still lived a relatively hard life. If Lucas offered them permanent employment and a high wage, many of them would jump at the opportunity!
What's more, none of the tasks Lucas needed help with required special skills like blacksmithing or woodworking, it was all just simple labour or cooking, things the older kids from the orphanage could easily handle.
The more he thought about it, the more excited Lucas became, soon letting out a hearty laugh and nodding, "En! That's a great idea! Thanks, Mom!"
With that said, Lucas began frantically scribbling down notes in his notebook, adjusting his plans over and over again.
Seeing their son working so hard, Anna and Drake felt both a sense of pride and a little lost. They had come to accept that their son would grow up far more rapidly than other kids due to his special circumstances, but knowing something and actually watching it happen were two different things.
In a sense, given how successful Lucas' soap making had become, if not for him still being so young, he could be considered fully independent now, no longer needing their shelter and protection. It was a complicated feeling for any parent to have.
Just when the two adults were musing about the impermanence of life like this, Lucas suddenly sprung up from his seat and asked with a big smile, "Mom, Dad, can I borrow some money from you?"
Normally, if a 9-year-old child asked for money from his parents, their first reaction would be suspicion or even reluctance, but for Anna and Drake, in this moment, it actually brought them a sense of relief.
It seemed their son still needed them after all!
"Sure, Son," Drake nodded without hesitation, trying to portray himself as a reliable father figure, "How much do you need?"
"Not much, just 50 Gold!" Lucas said, with a big, innocent smile on his face.