The next morning, Rozemyne swallowed a mouthful of potion and used healing magic to fix up her eyes, so that no one could tell that she had spent all night trying to learn to read, holding several of the castle scholar's hostage in her personal pursuit of this one goal.
She had even skipped the feast and ate in the library, something that would have given all of her retainers a heart attack back home, as even if she was good friends with the Zent, and had her bound under contract magic not to make any move against her, you still needed to show royalty some face.
Rozemyne hadn't cared though, and after an entire night of studying, she knew most of the common words and roots of words. Enough to read something basic.
Now she was moving on to older dialects and more complex words.
Her thirst for reading had shocked and disturbed her hosts, but again, Rozemyne didn't care.
She was even annoyed when they dragged her out of the library and made her stand in front of the castle with the other three summoned heroes in order to receive her appointed retainers. Retainers she was already pretty sure she couldn't trust any more than Ferdinand had trusted the ones Veronica had given him.
The King then gave a speech about how he was letting the adventurers choose who they were going to support before letting them go.
Rozemyne was mildly surprised when none of the twelve had chosen her, with five choosing the Spear Hero, four the Sword Hero and three the Bow Hero.
"I see. I was worried about this. My apologies, Lady Rozemyne." The King said.
"Think nothing of it. I can understand why I would be an unappealing Hero to serve for those who wish to gain glory in battle." Rozemyne said, bowing to the King. "You need not worry. I will wait in the library until such a time as willing escorts can be found."
"Wh…Wait!" The King shouted, but Rozemyne didn't listen.
The siren call of books was too loud for her to hear him.
"I can't believe we are being saddled with watching after the stupid Shield Hero." The whiny noble brat who was supposed to be Rozemyne's guard knight said as they walked along into the field where the monsters would be.
Rozemyne was more than a little ticked off, as the three she had been assigned were about as good as Fran, Gil and Delia had been on their first day. Each of them must have been hand picked in order to piss Rozemyne off.
Only where Fran was a former rape victim terrified of having a female master, and Gil and Delia were kids, these three were just trash, their trashiness reminding her of Traugott and Detlinde.
She didn't even bother to commit their names to memory.
"Alright, here is one now." One of the knights said as a large rabbit with a horn came out of the bushes and shrieked at them.
A horned rabbit, a fairly typical monster, which would charge forward with its horn lowered. Because its eyes were on the side of its head and aren't good as changing directions once they have built up momentum, the textbook method of dealing with one was to wait for it to charge and then use a weapon that out ranges it, letting it just run itself through on your sword or spear.
Rozemyne wondered what her 'knights' would do.
"Alright, show me how you handle a monster." Rozemyne said.
"Huh? You aren't going to fight?" Idiot with a spear said with a snarky tone.
"I wish to see how you all approach this situation. If I am going to lead you, I need to know what I am working with first in order to come up with battle plans." Rozemyne said.
"Tch, watch ever." The man said before lowering his spear and running at the rabbit.
The monster easily dodged his thrust and lunged at him, cutting the idiot's leg.
He swore and swung his spear about, getting a glancing blow on the monster with his shaft, not even pushing it away, resulting in him getting stabbed for real this time.
The other two ran to help their friend, but even after double teaming it, they didn't win the fight quickly.
It was a pitiful performance.
"That was terrible." Rozemyne said before healing the three with her magic, getting glares as she lectured them on how to properly handle that particular monster.
"Shut up! What do you know, you didn't even fight!" Idiot with spear shouted.
"Fools." Rozemyne said in a very Ferdinand like manner as she saw the bushes shifting and another horned rabbit jumped out. She immediately shot it with a burst of mana, instantly killing it. The 'knights' were all shocked. "I would put up with incompetence until such time as you could be trained, but I will not put up with insubordination. You are all dismissed from my service. I have no need for you."
And with that, Rozemyne fired her guards and went back to the city to finally get started on her adventure.
"Excuse me. I would like to buy some basic tools for potion making." The clearly refined noblewoman said after she entered the herbalist's shock, leaving the man wide eyed.
"Ah, yes Milady, we do sell such tools." The rough man who had never spoken to a real noble before said nervously.
"That is great. There are also a few herbs that I need."
Ren had returned to the city after his first day's hunt.
He had sent his men to fight against each monster, coaching them on the proper way to handle them without risks and they grew their first levels.
Now he was heading into town in order to the potion's shop in order to stock up on emergency supplies, as tomorrow would start their grind, and everyone would be split up. Keeping a potion in the pocket was of critical importance, something Ren, as a top-tier solo ironman player, would know.
He was surprised though when there were quite a few adventurers lined up at the potion's shop trying to buy potions. …Or not. As many of them were talking about an unbelievably beautiful girl.
Though they did make way for the Saint Hero of the Sword, letting Ren push through to the front of the line, where he was met with a surprise.
"Good evening, Lord Ren. What can I do for you?" Rozemyne said with a winning smile that caused the young man to choke.
"Lady Rozemyne? Why are you working at a potions shop?" Ren said in disbelief.
"The last minute volunteers that had been assigned to guard me were unforgivably incompetent and refused to take my advice or orders. So I dismissed them. Now I am trying to make money in order to hire my own guards." Rozemyne explained before holding out a potion. "Are you in need of potions? I made them myself and can guarantee the quality."
Ren looked at the potions, the Legendary Holy Sword granting him the ability to analyze their quality and effect. "Superior grade potions of magic and health!?" He couldn't believe he was seeing such a late game item. "Where did you get these?"
"Like I said, I made them." Rozemyne replied. "It's not that big of a deal. I've been making my own potions since I was ten."
Ren was surprised, but readily agreed to buy all he could, not wanting to miss this chance.
Rozemyne also gave him a little extra in exchange for him offering to act as an escort after it came time to close shop.
He flushed bright red that night as he guided Rozemyne to her room at the local inn and bid her a good night.
She had made 50% of the sales price on all the potions she made. With each potion being valued at 50 silver a piece, and with her looks drawing in two hundred customers, she had made 50 gold coins that day, 25 times as much as the King had given her to start out with.
It was a staggering amount of money.
She was surprised by just how much money successful adventurers seemed to have. Not that she was complaining.
Still, she would need more money in the future in order to buy her books, and while her potions were different from most and a novelty at the moment, it wouldn't be long before other alchemists figured out how to replicate them.
…Was there something else she was supposed to be doing?
Well, if she forgot it, it couldn't have been that important.
For now, she needed to increase production, but that would require an increase in the supply of herbs.
Problem was that most who gathered herbs from the fields would sell them to a middle man distributor, the Adventurer's Guild, which would sell to all of the stores that used them, preventing any one store from having a monopoly.
This meant that Rozemyne wouldn't just buy unlimited herbs. If she wanted materials, she'd have to gather them the old fashion way. Using commoner children.
So she decided to go to the local orphanage in order to buy some orphans. …Only to be given some strange looks when she asked and was pointed towards a slave dealer instead.
…Well, she supposed slaves and gray priests were functionally equivalent, even if the word slave made her uncomfortable.
After finding out where the slave trader was, she put on her noble mask and went to talk to them. "Hello, you would like to purchase some slaves, yes!?" A round man with no neck said as he bounced around in a suit that reminded Rozemyne of the ringmaster at a circus.
"Yes. I would." Rozemyne said, getting a good deal of unsettling cheer out of the man before being led back into his tent.
If it wasn't for the fact that Rozemyne believed she could easily kill him with just flexing her magic power, she would have never agreed to enter such a place without her guard knights.
However, when she saw what was in there, she nearly lost control of her mana again.
Cages. Dozens of young children in cages. Many of them were as thin as the orphans that Myne had found in the orphanage basement at the Temple back when she was an Apprentice Blue Priestess. Only these children had animal ears and tails that made it even sadder somehow.
The scene of despair almost made her choke, but she maintained her noble mask.
"Tell me if any of them catch your eye, yes." The slave trader laughed as he led them through.
"Just tell me their prices as we go by." Rozemyne said.
Her heart fell as she was told that the children would go for around two gold coins each, varying based on health.
In order to have enough money left over to cover the cost of the land she planned on putting her orphanage on, Rozymine could only buy around fifteen of them, a quarter of the children who were there, and none of the adults.
The slave trader was ecstatic when he heard Rozymine's declaration, as no one wanted to buy the younger children, especially the boys. He had fully expected them to just sit there in the back of his tent until they died of some kind of disease.
Rozemyne swallowed the vile in her mouth and finalized her purchase, part of her promising that she would return for the other child as soon as she could.