"Yeah, the Gemstone Trade Alliance," Mason nodded. "Among the trade organizations in Chaos City, aside from the official caravans run by humans and dwarves, only the Gemstone Trade Alliance has significant strength and influence."
"The student's father is a minor leader under the Gemstone Trade Alliance. He oversees several caravans, mainly transporting and selling daily goods."
The Gemstone Trade Alliance was one of the three major goblin-led trade unions, primarily operating along the outskirts of the Manchester Mountains. It specialized in facilitating trade between the gnome race and other species.
The Manchester Mountains were rich in natural resources, and the gnomes had developed exceptional metallurgical and enchantment industries, often producing extremely high-quality enchanted items.
However, gnomes lived in caves with very basic living conditions, and they had a great demand for everyday goods and external supplies.
The Gemstone Trade Alliance saw this demand and turned it into a lucrative opportunity, developing their network to the size and strength it holds today.
Ron had long been thinking about working with the Gemstone Trade Alliance, but he hadn't found a way in.
His visit to the Jade District's Gold Reserve this afternoon, and his attempt to poach the goblin Guy, had partly been with this in mind.
And now, before he even made a move, someone from the Gemstone Trade Alliance came knocking?
Ron was secretly delighted. He said to Mason, "Then let's meet him. Can you arrange it for tomorrow afternoon when I come to the academy?"
Mason patted his chest in assurance. "No problem!"
After three rounds of drinks, everyone was full and satisfied.
Most of the food on the table had been eaten.
"Saintess Illya, I have some questions about magic arrays I'd like to consult you on. Could we talk in the study?" Ron wiped his mouth with a napkin and looked at Illya.
Illya had come precisely for this matter, so she immediately nodded. "Sure. Since you're Edith's friend, just call me Illya."
Ron nodded with a smile, then looked at the other three. "If you don't have any plans for the evening, feel free to hang out in the living room and play some Legendary Kill or something."
"You do your thing, no need to worry about us." Harper waved him off and plopped down on the couch.
Mason and Edith also joined him, starting a new round of Legendary Kill without using identity cards.
Click.
The door to the study closed.
Ron invited Illya to sit while he took a seat at the desk.
"What questions do you have, Your Highness?" Illya asked while casually scanning the study, hoping to find any trace related to the Goddess of Harvest — Hervesta.
"Here's the thing," Ron said, not noticing Illya's subtle movements. "There's a certain plant I need to grow. Its leaves are the part I require, and I need a large quantity."
"But once the leaves are harvested, it takes several days for them to grow back."
"If I could continuously use Plant Manipulation Spell or Plant Growth Magic to accelerate the process, I could theoretically harvest them multiple times in a single day."
"But mages have limited mana, so I was wondering if there's a type of magic array that can replicate the effect of the plant growth spell, helping the plants regrow their leaves faster?"
Ron could have just gathered a group of nuns and solved the problem with manpower.
But since he hadn't yet taken over the Convent, he wasn't sure if that approach had drawbacks, so he naturally wanted to explore alternative methods.
It didn't mean he wouldn't need the nuns at all.
If Illya could help solve this issue, he could combine magic arrays and the nuns' spells, doubling the output of the Chameleon Radish plant.
Two plans were always safer.
Besides, it didn't cost anything to ask.
Illya didn't hesitate after hearing his question. "If cost isn't a concern, you can directly inscribe the Plant Manipulation Spell onto a staff. Embed a Water Elemental Stone and an Earth Elemental Stone, and even a normal person would be able to cast the spell."
"…" Ron fell silent for a moment, his mouth twitching. "How much does a staff like that cost?"
Illya thought for a moment and made a quick estimate.
"The staff itself doesn't need to be anything fancy—just able to handle basic magic. Common woods like sandalwood or peachwood would work. You could make several for just 1 gold coin."
"But elemental stones are rarer. Water and earth types are a bit cheaper—around 10 gold coins each."
Ron breathed a sigh of relief. That wasn't too expensive, right?
Two elemental stones together cost about the same as one Nether Orchid seed.
But then it hit him—weren't elemental stones consumables?
His eyelids started twitching, and he asked, "How long would two stones like that last?"
"For normal people, around 100 casts or so," Illya estimated. "But if a mage uses them, they could be much more efficient—maybe 400 to 500 uses."
"Uh…" Ron couldn't immediately tell whether that was cost-effective or not. He opened a drawer, took out a blank piece of paper, and started scribbling down calculations.
Illya sat beside him, fully focused.
The moment Ron opened the drawer, her sharp eyes spotted a folded piece of paper inside—covered in handwriting.
She could immediately recognize the distribution of lines on the page. On the visible outer side, three familiar symbols stood out: "Grain禾," "Sun日," and "At当."
The symbol after "At" was half-covered by a fold, but based on what she'd seen from the Headmistress, she instantly recognized it as the "Noon午" symbol.
"Grain Sun At Noon.[禾日当午]"
There were two additional unknown symbols before "At Noon当午"!
Illya already knew that the Headmistress only gave her part of the full set. But with just two symbols, it had been impossible to guess the pattern.
And now, with just a glimpse, she'd filled in two more!
Illya quickly engraved the new symbols into her memory, planning to start her research as soon as she returned to her lab.
Ron didn't notice any of this, focused entirely on his numbers.
Let's assume there are 100 Vital Bloom plants, and a nun is using the staff.
One enchanted staff costs 20 gold coins and can be used 500 times.
That means one staff member could be used to harvest 100 plants five times.
A set of Elemental Cards has 54 cards—let's assume only 50 are needed. One Chameleon Radish yields 100 leaves.
So, one staff member could supply enough leaves for 1,000 sets of Elemental Cards.
Which means the cost per 1,000 sets is 20 gold coins.
So each set costs… 2 silver coins.
This didn't even include land rental, nun wages, or distribution costs.
Too expensive…
Especially when you consider that over in East Chaos City, a bowl of ramen only costs a few copper coins.
And this one deck of Elemental Cards would cost 2 silver coins—200 copper coins.
Wouldn't that just scream "rip-off"?
Sure, Ron wasn't that concerned with profits from the Elemental Cards—he just thought it'd be cool to popularize them in another world.
But that didn't mean he wanted to do something so obviously labor-intensive and unprofitable.
Things like Elemental Cards should be sold on a low-margin, high-volume model, right?
So Ron asked again, "Is there any way to increase the number of uses per staff?"