169 Visiting the Herb Hall

The next day the four friends made their way to Aeris. Since Jayde has expressed an interest to visit the Aeris Herb Hall, Raven, Ash, and Nova accompanied Jayde to the large hall owned by the Alchemist Guild.

The Aeris Herb Hall was the largest herb market in the Southern Kingdom, even though Aeris wasn't the capital, the herb hall had grown over the years mainly due to the students of Damonia. Walking into the four-story building, Jayde looked around curiously as she entered the grey-stoned building.

Besides selling herbs, the Aeris Herb hall also sold various potions, poisons, and pills. Each floor of the herb hall specialized in different products, the ground floor was for potions, poisons, and pills, the second floor for basic herbs. On the third floor, a mage could find intermediate herbs while the top floor was dedicated to advanced and super rare herbs.

Since the four were not interested in any of the potions and pills being sold, they walked up to the second floor. As Jayde walked through the large doorway, she was immediately hit with the overpowering smell of various herbs. Sneezing she rubbed her nose with her finger while looking around her.

The floor was set up with a long counter near the entrance, five assistants stood behind the counter, and behind the assistants were rows of cabinets and shelves. Jayde could feel a powerful spell had been woven around the shelves and cabinets, curious about the spell, Jayde used her magical senses and determined that the spell was a powerful protection come preservation spell.

While Jayde and her group had left the school early, there were still many people standing in queues waiting to be served. Jayde and her friends immediately joined the shortest line. When it was finally Jayde turn, she handed over a list of basic herbs that she needed to create healing potions, including the herbs she needed to increase the strength of her armor.

The shop assistant's forehead furrowed reading through the list in his hand. From years of experience working in the Herb Hall, the assistant could figure out quite quickly what potion or pill a mage was going to create just by looking through a customer's list. While Jayde's list included all the herbs required to make a basic healing potion, there were two herbs that very few mages bought — Blue Silverleaf Speedwell and Spotted Tansy. There were no potion or pill recipes that the shop assistant could recall that used either of these two herbs.

"Miss we only have a small quantity of Spotted Tansy and Blue Silverleaf Speedwell in stock," the shop assistant said after seeing the quantities that Jayde had listed.

"Oh. Then give me what you have in stock," Jayde replied. "When will you be receiving new stock?"

"Well Miss, we usually don't stock these two herbs," the shop assistant said clearly uncomfortable with Jayde's question.

"Hmm, may I place an order for them?"

"Cough, of course. But if I may be so bold as to ask, why would you need these two useless herbs?"

"Oh it's just something I am playing around with," Jayde said.

Bah, she's one of those, the assistant thought, looking down at the list in his hand to hide the disdainful look in his eyes. Every year there was some young mage from the academy who would pitch up at the herb hall, buying all sorts of useless herbs, believing that they were the next great alchemist — that they were going to create new and potent elixirs. They never succeeded, all they managed to do was waste the time of their herb halls' assessors when they rocked up with their useless and often dangerous potions and pills for testing.

"How many stalks would Miss be needing?" the shop assistant asked.

"Hmm," Jayde said tapping her finger against her chin as she thought about how many stalks she would need. "Depends on the price, I guess a couple hundred of each."

"Then that will be one hundred gold for a hundred stalks of each, customers are required to pay upfront for special orders," the shop assistant said.

"What! That's very expensive," Jayde exclaimed.

"Well, Miss we will need to send out a few of our herb boys to harvest these herbs, and they will need guards to escort them, all of that costs gold you know," the shop assistant said smiling slyly.

The shop assistant knew that the price he had quoted was exorbitant. Shop assistants like him earned forty percent off the profit made for custom orders, and he had no qualms about ripping off a foolish mage like the young lady standing in front of him. Serves her right, he thought, playing around trying to create potions instead of studying hard at the academy.

Jayde's eyes narrowed, the shop assistant shivered as he met the icy glare of the young mage in front of him.

"Fifty gold for one hundred stalks of each plus one hundred seeds of each," Jayde counter-offered.

"Ahh, Miss—"

"Or else I will take my business to the Mercenary Guild," interrupted Jayde curtly.

The shop assistant gulped audibly at Jayde's statement if his manager found out that he had chased away a customer due to his greed he would lose his job. The Mercenary Guild and the Alchemy Guild had long been rivals when it came to assignments for harvesting herbs.

Smiling grimly, the shop assistant rubbed his neck. "Well since you are a student of Damonia, I am sure we can help you with this request," the shop assistant said, while his heart bled at losing the commission. Why did this student have to be such a hard case, the assistant thought. Usually, these students were such easy targets.

Taking out two pieces of parchment the assistant quickly drew up a basic contract for Jayde. After he had finished writing, he took a pinch of fine sand and dusted the paper to dry the ink. Waiting a couple of seconds, he then picked up the parchment, turning he blew off the excess sand before handing both copies to Jayde.

Jayde read through the assignment contract, satisfied with the terms she picked up a quill and signed her name, before handing over fifty gold pieces. The shop assistant then wrote a receipt for Jayde. Handing the receipt over the assistant then left to collect all the herbs that Jayde had ordered on her list.

While Jayde waited patiently for the shop assistant to return, Ash was busy placing his own order. When the shop assistant returned carrying a large basket filled with herbs, Jayde quickly inspected the stalks in the basket before nodding her head in approval. Arranging to have the herbs delivered to the academy, Jayde and her friends left the herb hall.

The girls and boys split up after leaving the herb hall as Nova had to visit the blacksmith for some ores. Raven and Jayde strolled to The Golden Thread. On the way, Jayde stopped at one of the stalls selling fresh fruit and vegetables and bought a couple of bags of Silky Green Gallberries and Three-Leaved Traveller's Windroots, which she needed for her experiments in creating face and body creams.

Strolling through the stalls lining the street, Jayde stopped at a flower stall and bought various different flowers, including Gloriosa Possumhaw which looked and smelt very similar to marigolds back in the federation. Jayde was happy to find flowers similar to roses, lavender, honeysuckle, jasmine, ylang-ylang, and plumeria. After paying for a couple of bunches of each and arranging for delivery of her flowers to the school, Jayde and Raven left the flower stall.

***

Maianna Belezin immediately walked over to Jayde when she entered The Golden Thread. She had been waiting in front of her shop all morning for Jayde to arrive.

"Good Morn, Jayde," Maianna called out cheerfully as she neared the two girls.

"Maianna, good morn," Jayde greeted in return.

"This here is a friend of mine from school, Raven Clawrage," Jayde said indicating Raven.

"Raven nice to meet you, any friend of Jayde's is welcome here."

The three women exchanged some small talk before Maianna led Jayde to her office before Maianna and Jayde left, Maianna arranged for one of her assistants to look after Raven. Raven was happy to be left to her own devices trying on various outfits while Jayde and Maianna chatted privately in Maianna's office.

Jayde handed over her new designs to Maianna. Again Maianna was highly impressed with the designs Jayde had come up with. This time Jayde had drawn many different dresses and robes as well as something she called a pantsuit.

She then brought up her idea about expanding The Golden Thread to sell cosmetics, perfumes, and creams. Maianna was excited with Jayde's new idea. While the noble and royal families had plenty of slaves to make these toiletries for their womenfolk, the rest of the women in the Lower Realm had to create their own, and most just didn't have the time to spend on such leisure activities. Maianna was sure that there would be a hot market for Jayde's products.

Jayde promised to deliver samples in fourteen days. The two then left for the changing room where Jayde tried on a couple of the outfits Maianna had managed to make during the week. Jayde was really impressed with the quality of Maianna's work, even the newly created underwear was perfect.

"Maianna, these outfits are splendid," Jayde said smiling with pleasure.

Maianna cheeks flushed a faint pink at Jayde's compliment. She was delighted that Jayde was happy with the quality of her work. She had already made herself a set of the new underwear and had instantly fallen in love with them, Maianna had already received orders for the underwear sets from her staff.

Maianna then showed Jayde the outfits she had made that would be placed on display in her shop the next day. Looking over the colorful clothes, Jayde turned and gave Maianna two thumbs up. After expressing her satisfaction with the clothes that Maianna would start marketing the next day, Jayde bid Maianna goodbye while confirming that she would return in two weeks.

The four friends met up for a late lunch as agreed to before their parted ways, before returning to school.

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