章 19: Preparations for winter and Joseph's answer Part II

That poison was mostly sold with such a high price because they were always in demand and its raw materials were rare and hard to acquire and hence price gap.

After their Goodbye's John set out to meet Jay and take some rest at home.

"So how was your Journey in the forest this time around?" Jay asked John after meeting him at home.

"Well this time I had quite a hunt plus I didn't have many problems since I traveled with Eva and her team. But there was some hassle with Baron's Son when I was in East sea city."

"It was somehow related to Eva and later he challenged me to a duel because of it," John said to Jay in a sighing tone.

Hearing this Jay was quite surprised as he understood how those guys from noble families usually behaved. But the most surprising thing for him was John's combat prowess. However, he was glad that John was safe and there weren't any problems.

John later made dinner for both of them as he didn't like the bland food here. As he had a lot of money he had bought a lot of spices from the East sea city for his cuisine needs.

Jay didn't decline as he had already gotten hooked to John's cuisine. He even thought if he could he would keep John in his house just for his cooking skills.

The next day he visited Paul to see how was the work on his Mansion going on. And it seemed that paying extra for labor was worth it as they had almost neared completion for building the mansion.

John later gave him another order of making 2 factories for Guns and Paper on the site of Rose soap factory. It was made according to modern architecture. Paul was quite happy these days for getting multiple orders from his rich man.

Three days passed normally, these days his normal routine was to visit grandma Melanie and later he would train by himself.

However these days it was Josephine who dropped by so that she could learn the Swordsmanship technique from John.

He had also improved her own swordsmanship techniques with the help of Sarah.

After three days his Mansion was complete and he had decided to visit it today. Today Josephine was accompanying him as he had decided to visit his mansion after they had completed the training.

During these days Josephine was quite active when it came to John, it seemed that she was quite stirred after watching Eva and John during their journey.

After visiting the mansion he first paid a visit to Sam so that he could have people to take care of his mansion.

Paul and his men had already started building the 2 factories. As it was not a big job like the mansion it was guessed that it will be finished quite early.

After arranging all the things regarding maids and servants he had decided to throw a banquet for building his new mansion.

Josephine was quite shocked after watching the Mansion for the first time. Though she had seen a lot of mansions she had never seen such a mansion in her lifetime with such furniture and architecture.

She decided to ask John "John who made your mansion this time around?" She was sure that John hired some architect from the imperial city or someone who came from a foreign country.

"Well, it was Paul from our town who made it. I designed the Mansion and furniture's, he made sure to make it according to my adjustments." John replied to her in a teasingly haughty tone.

Josephine was surprised at first but it seemed that she has gotten used to it,

She then told him skeptically with serious eyes "Tell me honestly, do you know any profession which you don't know? You even improved my sword techniques."

This time John didn't meet her eyes and said to her with a poker face while changing the topic at the same time "Well I have a thing for learning things faster so it isn't that I know everything and I was just lucky when I improved your techniques. Meanwhile, why don't we go inside the mansion and take a look around and greet the servants."

Josephine still looked at him skeptically but at the mention of the mansion, she decided to have a look for now.

The next day the servants in the Mansion were preparing for the banquet later on. John had decided to go to his factory because Joseph was going to come with his materials today.

After reaching the factory, Joseph was already waiting there for him in the factory, soon they got busy with important talk.

"Well, the raw materials which you had asked were transported by the carriages. But i got message from my father that the family had contacted the baron about the acquisition of North-frontier town and it seemed that the baron was not happy with you but dad said that it was most likely him acting to get more money from you so you would have to be prepared to cough up quite a lot if you want to acquire the town." Joseph said to John.

"Well, I expected something along the lines after my confrontation with Antonio. Maybe the baron was quite happy with his son getting pummeled so that he extort more money and conditions from me." John said to him after thinking for a while.

"Well it will take some time anyway so are you coming with me this time in the south since you wanted labor for your factory?" Joseph said to John.

"I guess I will join you this time since I would need people urgently anyway." John agreed to his proposition.

"However, I have one condition that I would need a continuous supply of metals, can you provide it on a long term basis?" John then asked him.

"Well, that won't be a problem. We deal in a lot of things so don't worry about it."

Joseph then prepared to load the soaps and got into preparations for sending it to East sea city via his men. Joseph had decided to attend the banquet 2 days later and head to South with him later on.

John got busy into making preparations for the Gun and Papermaking factory. This time as well he had decided to take the help of Ron and George from the town so it would save him time.

And just like that the rest of the day passed. This time he was packing his stuff from Jay home's and said goodbye's to him as he was going to move into his own mansion.

"I will certainly miss your cooking while you are not here," Jay said to him sighing.

"Well you can always come by the Mansion if you miss my food so much," John said to him laughing.

After moving to the Mansion he first headed to Grandma Melanie's Pharmacy as he had promised her earlier. These days John already learned middle-grade pharmacy from all the books he had read.

These days Eva and her team hadn't gone out to the forest after hearing the news and were busy preparing for winter so that there were least casualties.

Today John met Eva when he was reading the books. It seemed that she had gotten to know about John training Josephine when he was training as well which irritated her quite a bit. So today she decided to ask his help in combat as well as magic.

"It's a good thing that he knows magic as well maybe he can help me improve my combat style," thought Eva as she approached John.