Lloyd ends up returning to the town where Ruby was for an audience with the Queen after saving the ex stainless, where in the presence of the queen and some on lookers the story of how Lloyd beat a high ranking assassin is told. People don't believe him, so he ends up having a match with the knight commander who he one shots and then heals to full recovery. This isn't super important to Ruby but it established why he's in town. Later on after storming a castle and threatening a prince, Lloyd returns to the atelier (through teleportation magic) to seal the teleportation circle he used to use to go gather ingredients for Ruby's alchemy as it would be dangerous to leave open. She spots him as he was leaving and she's still as arrogant as ever claiming that things didn't work out so he came back. But he assured her that he's doing fine on his own and gives her back 2, 000 gold coins he earned working with her (this was mtl so it was a little unclear if he wanted nothing more to do with her -this is the vibe I got- or he felt he didn't really earn it because he says something along the lines of it was money made from her products. There's a reason for this mentality that we'll get to later). Ruby takes it and tells him to get lost because she has another exclusive mage coming to sign a contract tomorrow and so he leaves.

Later the mage arrives. His name is Crowley (can't remember his first name) but he's a hero and a mage and known to be the number one mage around by a large margin. Ruby begins discussing with him and eventually hands him a list of ingredients she needs (by the next day might I add) to which he reads over and states it basically impossible and that it would take several master mages about a week to even get one of the items on the list. She shows him the teleporter realizing that Lloyd sealed it. The mage calls the circle and seal Lloyd put on it beautiful, but he goes back to stating it's still impossible. Ruby is frustrated and lashes out calling him incompetent and slanders his previous employer to which he got upset and left leaving Ruby again without an exclusive mage.

Let's go over some supporting information before we move on. Why does Ruby need a mage so bad? What about the materials on the list?

Well according to the law, an alchemist cannot procure their own ingredients as they're not suited to battle. They are important resources for the country and having a bunch of them dying would be counterproductive so they hire mages to do it for them and they usually pick on exclusively to do so.

Now the materials on the list:

All of the materials that Ruby uses are usually found in areas called Area Zero which are the most dangerous places a person could go and usually resulted in them not returning. Yet Lloyd went to these places regularly, with a pace no one could match. So what's up with that?

Lloyd's master used to down play a lot of the magic he used. Like the typical fantasy genre there were classes of magic and mages, and Lloyd was capable of using master level spells (and even a unique spell only few could use). But his master always said things like "everyone can do that ya know". But in the eyes of Crowley he stated that Lloyd was "A master among master level mages, a Chronicle class mage". Let it be known that Ruby was a Chronicle class alchemist, anyway let's move on.

Later that night a messenger from the palace shows up with a request for goods, but Ruby says she can't because no mage means no materials. The messenger is confused because they thought she had Crowley and Ruby asked how he knew about that meeting. The queen herself was behind the scenes praising Ruby to Crowley in hopes that he would sign with her and to her dismay she just blew it with him (she is sweating).

While this is happening the assassin Lloyd defeated broke free from her jail cell and went looking for Ruby to extract information about Lloyd. She walks in on the scene and knocks out the messenger, while threatening Ruby. But Ruby's actually crazy (not yet anyway) and sees this as an opportunity to destroy her shop, her entire livelihood and attribute her inability to do the work on the assassin. Meanwhile the assassin who saw this got freaked out by Ruby and left. After destroying everything Ruby grabs some stuff and a bag of money and leaves.

Ruby goes around trying to find a mage but everyone turns her down after seeing the ingredients she needs so she decides I need to get Lloyd back until I find someone to replace him. She heads to a restaurant to relax for a bit and buys a newspaper where she sees an article criticizing her and exposing her for being arrogant and selfish. At this moment the Queen's knights find her and demand she meet with the Queen (she's been avoiding them this whole time). She starts stressing but devises a plan to run while using the bathroom. The knights initially deny her, but let her go eventually and she jumps out the window but gets held up because her bag of 10k gold couldn't fit through the window. It eventually rips and she books it from the nights.

Now she's poor and on the run, and public opinion on her is at an all time low. Surviving off of nickels and dimes people throw at her for pity and she starts acting deranged. Her lack of responsibility is amplified and if course Lloyd is the source of her problems. She even tells herself that she needs to save Lloyd from the saintess who is apparently manipulating him and to do so she has a plan, but she's gotta get some help first.

There are two things Ruby needs for her plan, money and ingredients. So she decides to hit up a junior in alchemy (she literally doesn't remember the Junior's name because she feels she above her) and the junior let's her in. She asks her to lend her some ingredients and her cauldron to make a bomb (which the novel states is strong enough to destroy a large building) to confront the saintess and save Lloyd. Though she states the bomb is just to threaten not to kill.

I don't know why, but the junior agrees even after knowing about the fact that she wanted to build the bomb, but there's a hiccup.

Alchemist use what is called idea or imagination magic to create recipes based on knowledge they've acquired to produce a certain item. The problem is that this magic reflects the temperament of it's caster. So the reason Ruby always needed high quality ingredients is because of her arrogant and lofty attitude. Something that's later explained is that if you had good enough skills you close the gap between quality ingredients, Ruby's problem is that she's always had ingredients no one else did but her skills were lacking even compared to her junior.

To explain further alchemist have what's called a synthesis procedure which is just how they make the item, but like the recipe it varies depending on the person, their knowledge and skills. It would consist of the direction one needed to stir the cauldron and color changes (infusing magic for a desired result which changed the color). Ruby's skills are bottom tier so her process would be something like "up, up, down left ", while her junior did something like "lower left red, up, up, lower right, lower right, yellow, left, blue".

Needless to say she failed at making the bomb, so the junior after arguing with her and slapping her for wasting her materials made it for her, gave her a silver coin and told her to never come back. She leaves and is immediately surrounded by knights and arrested.

The assassin is looking for Ruby again to try get actual information this time so she sneaks in and finds Ruby freaking out in her cell because no one believes or wants to help her. She sent letters but no one helped (she sent one to Lloyd too, but once he read "I didn't do anything" he burned it with fire magic and went on with his day. The assassin again didn't get any info so she left and Ruby's screaming for her freedom. The trial is pretty short and sweet. The queen pretty much knew everything but wanted to give Ruby a chance (she was still found guilty and sentenced to the worst prison available).

While in prison the assassin again visits Ruby and after Ruby reminisces on her childhood with Lloyd (she wasn't always a brat) she vows to start a new and train her skills like she set out to initially. So the assassin breaks her out of jail.

Word gets back to the queen but she told them to leave her be. The queen (she's 14 by the way) has a soft spot for Ruby because it was her alchemy that saved her mother. But she also feels guilty because she did nothing to help Lloyd as she did not know at the time that he was the one procuring the ingredients and allowed everyone to mistreat him.

As of now, Ruby and the Assassin have washed up on a random island. The assassin still wants revenge on Lloyd but who knows maybe she'll have a change of heart and could start over with Ruby by moving to some other kingdom, idk.

The MC literally uses master level magic to kill something really early on, only to describe himself as being incompetent at magic and then in the very next chapter explains that master is literally the top tier of magic. If your MC can't spot the logical inconsistency in that, then they have the intelligence of a toddler