by Mamare Touno
In contrast, the young man who introduced himself as Roderick looked like a scholar. According to the information they’d received earlier, he was an Apothecary.
“Yes, we’re ac…acqua… Um, we know! You’re both famous.”
Marielle beamed.
To Henrietta, it looked as though the burden on Marielle’s shoulders had lifted ever so slightly. According to their preliminary meeting with Shiroe, her responsibility had been to contract with Shopping District 8 for short-term material procurement. In that sense, she’d completed her assignment during the previous negotiations.
The person in charge of this next round of negotiations was Henrietta.
In other words, this is my battlefield.
Henrietta smiled; there was an intelligent gleam in her eyes. The men in front of her were the leaders of Akiba’s largest and second-largest guilds. The huge guilds were on an entirely different level, and ordinarily, they would have completely ignored the Crescent Moon League. Henrietta would have felt too daunted even to speak to them.
That said, all the preparations Henrietta and the rest of the group had made over the past week had been leading up to this moment. The days of hunting, the stocking up on ingredients, the energetic sales under the blazing sun, the trench warfare–like document filing—it had all been in order to set the stage for this moment.
This step was grounded in the previous one, and the step before that had been drawn from the one before it. In addition, it had been Henrietta’s companions who had drawn it out, not Henrietta herself.
If I back down now, I’ll never be able to face the others. Besides, this pitch-black plan came courtesy of Master Shiroe. …If we can’t win with this, we’d never win with anything else. Fu-fu-fu-fu. And here I am, right in the middle of it…
Henrietta considered herself a second-rate Elder Tales player. Up to this point, she had never tackled any large-scale battles nor high-end content. And yet, incredibly, she was sitting right at the center of what was probably the largest strategy since the beginning of this world.
Her strength was useful to someone.
It was all right for her to use her power.
That knowledge brought her elation and a firm feeling of resolution.
“Yeah. We know you, too. You’re the manager of Snack Shop Crescent Moon, right? You’ve turned into the talk of the town over the past few days. I ate some, too. I’ve only had it once so far, but still.”
Michitaka laughed as he spoke.
Marielle responded with her usual smile; she seemed completely self-assured.
“…What’s caused you to assemble production guilds, particularly major ones like ours, Miss Marielle of Crescent Moon?”
As Roderick spoke, he sneaked a glance at Calasin’s expression. He might have been trying to deduce the reason Calasin had been admitted early by himself.
“Hm, why? You want to know why. Well, ’course you do. Let’s see…”
“Before we begin, let me explain why we invited Shopping District Eight to come early.”
Henrietta began to explain, counting her own breaths.
Slowly, bit by bit. Being careful not to go too quickly. Speaking in such a way that she would sound relaxed and at ease. She chose her words carefully, modulating her tone as she explained.
“We’ve asked Shopping District Eight to supply us with ingredients.”
At her words, tension abruptly flickered across Michitaka’s cheery face and Roderick’s keen eyes. Those words alone had been enough to tell them how the situation was trending.
Shopping District 8 had seven hundred members.
The Marine Organization had 2,500 members registered. The Roderick Trading Company had 1,800. While there were differences in the orientation and level distribution of their artisans, the balance of power was roughly equal to their member ratio. However, if, in addition to the ingredients procurement, Snack Shop Crescent Moon were to team up with Shopping District 8 in earnest, the power relationships were likely to flip on them.
Crescent Moon had triggered a food item revolution.
However, its scale meant that its supply system was small as well. Delivering meals to one thousand players every day wouldn’t come close to satisfying the demand: There were more than fifteen thousand players in Akiba.
That said, if the seven hundred members of Shopping District 8 mustered all their strength, they would be able to fill that demand. No doubt the profits would be enormous.
After all, this was food.
Unlike clothes and furniture, weapons, armor, and accessories, food was needed—and consumed—on a daily basis. Once one ate it, it was gone. Even if each individual item was cheap, the total sales were bound to be astronomical. On top of that, since it was consumable merchandise, these sales would be continuous. It was as plain as day to them that with the food supply under its control, Shopping District 8 would turn its power to personnel expansion, and before long it would have upset even the numbers ratio.
Henrietta understood Michitaka and Roderick’s thoughts perfectly. Depending on how it was used, food could become a nuclear weapon able to destroy the balance between the production guilds at a stroke.
“You’re saying you’re partnering with Shopping District Eight?”
It was Michitaka who made the first move.
Apparently his personality was as straightforward as his appearance indicated. There was no telling whether it worked this way with real-world managers, but in guilds in online games, surprisingly, this type of player was the sort who won popularity.
“No. If that were the case, they wouldn’t have needed to call us. Is it something else?” Roderick murmured.
Roderick wore delicate glasses. Between his gender and the glasses, he looked a bit like Shiroe, but he seemed slightly neurotic, and Henrietta thought it counted against him somewhat. Even if he were more blackhearted than Shiroe, she doubted he had the audacity to make people swallow that blackness.
Up until just the other day, Henrietta had assumed Shiroe’s introspective, reserved character was something similar to Roderick’s, and so the difference felt particularly marked to her. Any resemblance between the two was purely superficial.
“Yes, as you say, it’s something else. This other matter is something we want to ask of the Marine Organization, the Roderick Trading Company, and Shopping District Eight equally.”
Henrietta tilted her head slightly.
Negotiations were all about reading each other’s cards.
In that sense, Henrietta had been placed in a very dangerous position.
Henrietta’s group had brought up this topic. That meant that unless they disclosed their information to a certain extent, the talks couldn’t advance. However, the very act of giving up information meant showing their cards.
One of her advantages was that the other parties wanted profit. To them, Snack Shop Crescent Moon looked like tasty, lucrative bait.
In addition:
As long as we hold the initiative in these negotiations, we’ll always get to decide what information to release and what to conceal.
Almost as if she were playing chess, Henrietta organized their information into “can reveal” and “shouldn’t reveal” at high speed.
Shiroe had given Henrietta one condition with regard to these negotiations: She was not allowed to lie.
Since they were all trying to read one another’s cards, and she wasn’t allowed to bluff, this was a significant handicap. When she thought of future developments, she could understand that this condition was absolute, but she couldn’t deny that it placed her at a slight disadvantage.
Master Shiroe certainly does make unreasonable demands. …I’ll have to have him lend me sweet Akatsuki to make this worth it. Aah, darling Akatsuki! That jet-black, glossy, beautiful hair… She’s just like a doll!
Beside Henrietta—who’d started fantasizing, her cheeks faintly flushed—Marielle had a small warning coughing fit.
“…Oh. I beg your pardon. The topic at hand
, then: The Crescent Moon League is currently planning a large-scale operation. You may consider it a—a type of challenge. However, the Crescent Moon League doesn’t have enough power to carry out this challenge. To that end, we’d like to ask for your support.”
“Hm… A quest, is it?”
Henrietta didn’t answer Roderick’s words with either yes or no. She only lowered her eyes slightly, curving her lips into a crescent of a smile.
I do believe he’s been kind enough to misinterpret me…
Quests were a type of mission in Elder Tales. They were sequential adventures that could be triggered by a request from a non-player character, or by a book or clue, and their content was quite diverse.
For example, an old villager might ask one to go find his daughter in the woods and bring her back. Or to clear a certain cavern of goblins. Or to bring back a manticore spine from the swamp. The term quest spanned nearly every possible type of mission.
In Elder Tales, which didn’t have a clear story the way ordinary off-line RPGs did, quests were the game’s story. The decision of which and how many quests to accept was left to individual players. However, Elder Tales had encompassed several hundred thousand, or even several million, quests since the days when it was just a game, and no player had a clear grasp of the full picture.
Just as there were many different types of quests, the rewards given for quests were diverse, too: They could be experience points or gold coins, items, knowledge of magic, or a right of some sort. Rare rewards included training in magic or recipes for the production classes.
Roderick had misinterpreted Henrietta’s “challenge” to mean “quest.” Not only that, but from the words large-scale operation, he assumed that the quest couldn’t be completed by an individual player; it would require multiple players or possibly even a huge group larger than a party.
The operation that was currently under way was the sale of the knowledge of the new cooking method in exchange for funding. However, to Henrietta, the new cooking method seemed more like a type of idea or realization.
If they let even a little bit of information slip, the sharp production guild leaders might pick up on the method, even without being told anything specific. In fact, there was no telling when someone from another guild might catch on, at least to some of it.
In light of these circumstances, Henrietta had chosen to use this “guidance” strategy. She’d use her negotiation partners’ suspicions and rivalry to get them to say the words she wanted them to hear.
…She wouldn’t lie. But, with this trick, Henrietta wouldn’t let them reach the truth, either.
“What sort of support does your group need, Mari?”
Calasin’s question was another assist Henrietta had foreseen. Without answering right away, she gazed into the eyes of the three men.
Making it seem as though she was having trouble making up her mind was another necessary part of negotiations.
Beside her, she knew her ally Marielle was spreading around that brilliant sunflower smile of hers. The three young men seemed to be looking at Marielle’s and Henrietta’s faces in turn.
Well, Mari’s gorgeous. She really is. If only she weren’t so very tall, she’d be just my type, and I’d take her home and hug her like a body pillow… Oh there, see? He’s blushing. Master Calasin is sweet on Mari. How adorably innocent…
Actually, all three were looking at, then averting their glances from, both the sunny Marielle and the moonlike Henrietta, but Henrietta didn’t notice the attention directed at herself.
Several moments after she’d organized what she needed to say, Henrietta opened her mouth.
“Before I tell you what we need, let me explain our system. Unless I clarify the forces we have lined up, you may not trust me. The director of this large-scale progressive operation is Master Shiroe.”
Henrietta had taken a gamble.
This dialogue hadn’t been part of her instructions from Shiroe, and she didn’t have Marielle’s permission. Henrietta didn’t know how much significance Shiroe’s name would have. She’d heard that he was a veteran player with a long career in the game and that he had some very unexpected acquaintances, but in that case, she didn’t know why Shiroe was on friendly terms with a small guild like the Crescent Moon League or, for that matter, why he wasn’t affiliated with a guild.
Henrietta had spoken with Shiroe personally, and she thought he was an extraordinary player. However, was that really all he was?
Henrietta had heard about the griffins from Serara. From what Henrietta knew, those were items that an ordinary veteran player shouldn’t even have had access to.
“Machiavelli-with-glasses is running it?”
Although he’d muttered it in a very small voice, Michitaka had definitely said it.
“We’ve asked Master Naotsugu to hold the front line, Miss Akatsuki to act as the attacker, and Master Nyanta to be the point guard. Incompetent as we are, Marielle and I will form the rear guard. In addition to these, we intend to execute the operation with the Crescent Moon League members and other interested persons.”
Henrietta let her words end there. Surreptitiously, she watched for Michitaka’s reaction.
She was certain he’d responded to Shiroe’s name and to a few of the others. However, he’d repressed the reaction, and she didn’t know what it had meant. Yet even so, he had reacted. She was sure of it.
In other words, Master Shiroe really does have a chance at victory.
Shiroe’s name had meant something.
“I’ve just given you an outline of our core members. We would like to request your support in order to make up the remaining shortfall. …That shortfall is capital. At present, we are in need of five million gold coins.”
The three men sucked in their breath audibly.
It was an enormous sum indeed.
There had, of course, been previous quests whose accomplishment required money. It might have been bribes during a mission or payment for training. If one included quests whose missions required a certain item to accomplish—which meant that players needed money in order to purchase said item at the market—in a broad sense, “expenditures” were necessary in about a quarter of all quests.
However, five million gold coins was far too much. It would have been an unthinkable sum for any quest meant for individual players. …On the other hand, if this were a type of legend-class or wide-ranging quest, the amount wasn’t impossibly large.
Taking into account the fact that they hadn’t heard rumors of such a thing, was it a completely unknown quest? There was a good possibility that it was. It might be a brand-new quest, one introduced with the Homesteading the Noosphere expansion pack, a quest no one knew about. They didn’t yet know exactly what sort of content Homesteading had included, but they’d heard reports that the current level-90 maximum was being raised, and that meant it might have been aimed at characters above level 90.
If it was a long quest, would it be the sort of large-scale quest in which a sequence of multiple quests formed a story? If that was the case, in long quests such as those, each time an individual quest ended, players could expect to gain a certain reward.
In long quests, it was normal for players to be given small rewards at each important point, to keep their motivation up.
…That was probably what was going through the three men’s heads.
People tend to assume that information they want to believe is true. She’d heard this often from her stock-trader father. The three were gravitating toward the desire to believe in this tale of an absolutely unknown quest.
Henrietta asked Marielle to take out what they’d brought.
What she took out was black tea and custard pudding.
“Go ahead, help yourselves! That’s our new offerin’. It’s nice and sweet! It’s made with Roc eggs.”
Marielle urged the three men on with a cheerful smile. They were astonished, both by the delicious flavors and by what they’d just heard.
Rocs
were monsters whose levels were 85 or higher. A recipe made with their eggs… That would be a completely unknown recipe, most certainly higher than level 90, wouldn’t it?
“Of course, we aren’t asking you to give us the money for free. After the completion of this large-scale operation, we are prepared to give detailed information regarding the operation to all three of you. We have also asked our Scribe to copy the cooking method we currently employ and the methods we have learned while making our attempt, and we intend to provide you with these as well.”
To Henrietta and Marielle, the “operation” was a sort of neighborhood watch initiative with the goal of improving the atmosphere in Akiba. They didn’t yet know the details about where it would touch down—Shiroe was keeping that part vague.
However, with an initiative like that one, there would be no detailed information to reveal. Once things were over, it would be—and would have to be—as clear as crystal. Shiroe himself had declared that politics conducted behind closed doors could not maintain any kind of public order. There would be no disadvantage to revealing information, and at that point in time, the value of that information would evaporate.
However, to the three production guild leaders, the story sounded completely different. If what the Crescent Moon League intended to challenge was an unknown long quest, everything about that quest—its starting point, its terms, the puzzles along the way—would be S-rank confidential information. Now, when they couldn’t turn to solutions sites, it might well take them years to discover the same quest.
On top of that, Henrietta had clearly said, “The cooking method we currently employ and the methods we have learned while making our attempt.” If it came with that sort of reward, the quest probably involved production. From the activities of Snack Shop Crescent Moon, it could only be a new—and groundbreaking—food item recipe. Even if it was only a reward for Chefs and had nothing to do with the other production classes, it would be invaluable.
The three of them had begun to believe the story they’d invented.
Henrietta was sure she’d made it over the pass.
That was how unprecedented these terms were. It would be strange for them not to accept.