Chapter 55: The Sugar and The Atmospheric Pressure (1)

Okay, next was the Maple Trading Company.

I ordered the ship without the company’s permission, but the ship was not only for me to use in order to get sugar, it was for the company too.

If I relied too much on the foundation of the company, I wouldn’t be able to move freely.

That’s why I came to visit the Maple Trading Company.

Unlike Catherine’s Magic Tool Shop, this one felt like an ordinary store in the city.

The store seemed to have been completed, and I saw customers inside.

Well, the dried meat using the ingredients I brought was probably not finished yet, so they weren’t purchasing it yet.

「Is Mercia here? 」

It was faster to ask it directly than to observe it, so I spoke to the clerk immediately.

The clerk looked familiar. I’ve seen him before. Also, since we’ve met once, it was not strange for him to remember my face.

I was the owner after all.

「Ah, yes. I think the store manager is in the warehouse. 」

「I see. Okay, then I’ll go there. 」

I remembered the location of the warehouse.

I followed the same route as before and was able to reach it without any issue.

At Ain, I lacked a sense of direction, but I was not that bad to the point of making the same mistake twice. I clearly remembered the road to the place I’ve been before.

Inside the warehouse, some employees (two men and one woman) were dismantling a Garden (a Monster). Mercia was watching that scene.

Was she supervising?

「Hi Mercia, how is the store doing? 」

「Yes, the number of customers is not bad, and it is as expected. 」

Mercia turned around and replied to me.

She spoke extremely fast to me despite being outside her field of vision. Being able to reply accurately meant that she was actually aware that I was coming here.

「Is it not good? 」

「I think we only have a slight deficit for now. We only buy and sell things that can be bought at other stores at normal prices. We cannot win the competition against the shops that have been doing business here for a long time.」

We couldn’t win against that argument for sure.

「Have you started to sell the meat that I brought? 」

「Yes. The profit from the sales is small right now. You see, it’s a waste if we can’t sell the meat since the employees have a hard time preparing it. So I’ve educated the clerk to advertise the goods in order to avoid waste.」

Yeah, that was a very common sense store operation.

We had an advantage in terms of purchasing, so we didn’t have to play a strange game in other respects.

Everyone spent their lives doing business. Going a strange trick wouldn’t hurt anybody, but I didn’t think it was needed for our cause.

There were successful examples of tactics such as crushing other stores with bargain sales and then raising the price to make a profit, but that was also due to a cheap procurement route that could lead to a larger scale.

It may not be impossible for us to do it, but we could get the grudge of the other stores. It was best to do it normally.

As long as the meat was forcibly supplied from the monster’s realm, it was unlikely that we would fall immediately.

「Is the schedule going well? By the way, I found sugarcane on an island that I stopped by in the other day, so I’m thinking of cultivating it.」

「Are you intending to cultivate sugarcane? First of all, I don’t think you have permission, or do you have permission?」

Did I need to permission to cultivate it?

Did they stop having sugar because it was banned, not because of the lack of farmland?

「Do I need a permit to grow sugarcane? What do you mean? 」

「People are not allowed to grow sugarcane because it increases the generation of monsters from nearby monster areas.」

「I’m thinking of growing it on an island, but is that a problem too? 」

「Are you planning to grow it on an island? Maybe you have a possibility, yes, but isn’t an island a place with a lack of farmland?」

「I have to try it over there. If you magically annihilate the trees on the island by making a flat forest in the area of monsters, you will have a fertile island where a generation of monsters does not occur 」

It was said that monsters that flew in the sky were rare even in Decibator, but it was safer to grow the sugarcane in man-made shelters.

「Do you have a ship and a harbor that can reach the island in the monster territory?」

「I’ve already ordered a ship that carries people from the shipyard. Since there’s no harbor, I requested a small flying boat instead. After that, I will carry the supplies.」

After hearing my words, Mercia gave a little thought and then nodded a little.

「Then, it might work. However, that would require a lot of initial funds, and if it fails, it will bring a big deficit, am I right? Weren’t we going to make this company small in order to reduce the risk?」

「The meat is the most important, which has always been a crucial industry here. I have money, and I’ll take responsibility for it, so I’ll give it a go.」

「Okay, I understand! So, do you want to apply now?」

The talk was pretty quick, and I felt like her eyes were shining brightly.

Come to think of it, Mercia was the right one for this job because she wanted to do business.

If a big and interesting project was suddenly brought in, then her reaction would be like this.

「Did you watch the process of drying meat? 」

「Originally, it’s a job that can be managed without me, but I was watching it because I should know how it’s done. There’s lot of people who rely on me. So I have to use my free time to learn more and teach others too.」

「Is the store manager unexpectedly this free? 」

「In an ordinary store, the store manager also serves as a clerk. But this store is different despite the small size, so my work is small. However, I am always considering the future; therefore, I want to secure employees who have been educated to some extent, so I am hiring as much as I can.」

In other words, she had some free time.

But she was not skipping work. She always found ways to do something useful.

「Then, do you want to apply? 」

「Yes. 」

And so, we ended up going to the Commerce Guild to apply for the cultivation permit.

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