Hectic Day

William quickly made his way to the warehouse; he had decided to skip lunch for now and maybe just grab something on the way. He had far too many things to do and far too little time for his own liking.

Upon arriving, William quickly went inside, leaving his disguised guards some distance away as usual. The guard at the entrance had quickly become accustomed to William's presence, and therefore no longer barred his way; he simply opened the door and allowed him in.

Upon entry, William quickly made his way to Edmund's office, passing by the men who were working around the clock to produce as much soap as possible.

Upon reaching this relatively private corner of the warehouse, William saw that no one was inside, Edmund was not in his office right now.

'What the hell have you gone to? I need you yesterday, who the fu*k is watching the workers anyways?' William thought to himself. Thinking that he was probably on a bathroom break, William decided to go back and supervise the workers himself lest they do something "unfortunate" that might hurt the business.

He left the "office" and went to look around a bit, trying to observe how the workers carried out their tasks. He had more or less given Edmund a rough idea about the concept of the assembly plant, it was not going to be implemented at the same level as on earth, not even close; yet William still hoped that it would raise their efficiency somewhat.

There were dozens of workers in the warehouse, separated into groups, each with a specific task, the idea was that due to focusing on only one task and repeating it constantly, not only will each group of workers only know a small part of the process of making the soap, their efficiency would also increase substantially.

While observing the work, William saw many deficiencies; though the overall idea was implemented well enough, he made a mental note to take care of this issue once he had a little bit more time.

"William? You came a little bit early today." Edmund had just arrived in the workshop, upon finding his business partner, he asked.

"Ah yes, you are finally here? Where have you been man, we have a lot to do." William tuned and addressed Edmund.

"I was relieving myself, it's almost lunchtime and I was just about to give the men a break, had you come any later, you would have found no one but the guard outside" Edmund explained.

"We have no time for a break, I have told my father about our little adventure into the business world as well as the soap, it went well but now I need samples for him."

"That is an easy matter to solve, the scented batch of soap we made yesterday should be ready by now, we just need to cut it onto pieces, the regular soap though could be a problem, if we look very hard we might find a piece lying around somewhere."

"Good, but the bigger problem we need to address is the packaging. Have you done what we talked about yesterday?" William asked.

"Yes, it was not easy but I was able to hire a few tailors this morning, though it was expensive, after some negotiations, managed to convince them to drop everything and prioritize our request. I think they can finish sewing our logo as you call it by tonight, barely."

"Great!! Alright just follow the packaging instruction we agreed upon and all should be fine. What about the people's reaction to the sample giveaway?"

"It is not much since we only gave them yesterday, but from asking around the ladies love them, apparently it makes washing clothes much easier," Edmund explained.

"Perfect, It's all coming together Edmund, if we get the people at the banquet tonight to like our products, we will be rich, filthy rich, not only will we dominate the market in Landow, but we will also have access to their towns and villages." William smiled as he patted Edmund's shoulders, happy and satisfied, with their situation so far.

"Arent you already wealthy as it is? Your father is the marquess after all." Edmund asked, a bit awkwardly.

Upon hearing this question, William's expression changes from jovial to deadly serious. Edmund swallowed hard as he observed this; he sometimes forgot that his partner here was the son of the marquess because of how relaxed and carefree he was when it came to being addressed.

Fearing that he had offended William by asking this question, he swallowed hard his saliva once more as he prepared himself to have a very bad day.

William slowly drew his face closer to Edmund until he was about ten centimeters away, keeping his piercing eyes trained on his, and slowly said.

"Edmund! Listen well here, you should know this already, but nothing comes close to the satisfaction of seeing money flooding in after hard work. I may be the son of a noble." William paused at this point before his expression turned a bit cheeky, and he continued.

"But who wouldn't want to make more money on the side."

William patted Edmund on the shoulders once more, before he made his way to the storage area to get his samples, leaving Edmund standing there speechless.

"What are you waiting for man? We have work to do and money to make!"

Upon being woken up from his stupor, Edmund's expression tuned from frozen still to a slight smile that was preceded by a sigh as he thought.

'What the hell was I worrying for, William is definitely the young man he appears to be, carefree with no pretenses." as he followed his current Partner and a long time from now, a good friend to make money with a wide smile plastered on his face.

----------------------------------------------

The marquess' sturdy chamber, the castle district, Landow.

William had brought the "goods" to his father and showed him how they worked as well as let him test them himself.

"This is indeed a marvelous and valuable discovery, I certainly feel that my hand is a lot cleaner just after using it once, the scented soap is even better as it leaves quite a nice fragrance on the skin." The Marquis exclaimed, pleasantly surprised by the soap.

"I am glad you like it, father."

" You said that this new product is cheap to make, right?" The marquess asked.

"Well... It depends." William said while being a bit hesitant.

"Care to elaborate further?"

"Well overall, the ingredients are dirt cheap to procure, the only exception is the animal fats though even those are relatively reasonable in terms of pricing."

"Then where is the problem?"

"It's the scale; for now, the demand for these ingredients is relatively low, but once we expand and start mass production, the animal fats would not be able to keep up with the pace meaning their prices will skyrocket."

Hearing this, the marquess frowned a bit; he understood what William meant, meat, and anything related to it are relatively valuable and limited. There are only so many domesticated animals in the territory to work with after all.

Seeing his father looking like someone who had just found the golden goose and accidentally sat on it, William quickly threw him a lifeline.

"Don't worry though, I think we already found a solution but it would take some tweaking to eventually get the new recipe right."