Chapter 116: Kranzel’s Three Great Festivals

Chapter 116: Kranzel’s Three Great Festivals

「To reiterate, the contest will begin at noon. All participants will be allowed to depart the guild at ten in the morning. You’ve two hours to find and push your cart to a location of choice anywhere within the portside, market, or residential areas. However, be warned that you will be dismissed if you attempt to use another individual’s property without prior consent. Please do not set up without first consulting all relevant individuals. Please also wait until noon to start selling your products. Anyone that starts selling their goods before noon will be instantly disqualified, so please make sure you abide by the competition’s rules.」

The second round’s participants immediately dispersed and began heading towards their respective destinations. We’d originally planned for Urushi to drag our stall along, but a bit of further consideration led us to realize that such an act would ultimately make us stand out, and not in a good way either. So instead, we ended up having our newly employed helper do it for us.

I have to say. Hiring Colbert? Really solid decision right there.

I know I made it sound like cart pushing was all he was good for, but that wasn’t the case at all. He’d actually given us a pretty decent suggestion, a suggestion that ultimately actualized itself in Fran and the salesgirls all wearing matching maid uniforms.

「The curry bread we had for dinner last night was absolutely delicious. However, I can’t say for sure if that alone will be able to carry us all the way through to the finals.」

Colbert commented as he gazed upon our surroundings.

Each and every shop seemed to have its own selection of beautiful clerks. Though, I guess I should’ve expected that to be the case from the very start. The fact that pretty girls led to more sales was a universal truth, a fundamental axiom that simply couldn’t be overturned regardless of what world one was in.

Cuteness simply wasn’t something that could be defended against, but you know what, cute is justice, so whatever.

「Colbert and I have been thinking over how to optimize our sales, so don’t you worry Fran! You’ll be cruising right through the second round!」

「I’ll do my best too!」

「And I’ll use my charms to attract as many male customers as I can!」

Luckily, it looked like like all three of our salesgirls were pretty much ready to go full steam ahead. They’d been quite shocked at how the curry bread and rice I fed them last night tasted, so telling them that I’d feed them even more extravagant meals if we made it into the finals seemed to have fueled them up all the way.

A large group of people started to tail us as we headed towards our final destination. At first, I’d assumed that they were up to no good, but they actually turned out to be customers. Apparently, following the stalls around and camping out around them till they opened was actually a thing.

The number of people trailing behind us gradually grew as we continued to move. Travelling around caused us to end up with about fifty followers, which apparently was actually a pretty low headcount. Some of the more popular participants had about two hundred odd people following them around already.

Crap. I think I might not have taken this whole thing as seriously as I should’ve.

「Lots of people.」

「Hahaha. They don’t call this one of Kranzel’s Three Great Festivals for nothing. The Spring Lunar Banquet features the King of Cooking, The Orison Rite, and the Minstrel’s Contest, amongst many other events, so it draws in folks from all across the land. In fact, I’d say you’ve yet to see anything but a drop in the bucket.」

「Three Great Festivals? Others are?」

Fran tilted her head as she questioned one of Colbert’s statements.

「The other two would be Ulmut’s Dungeon Fiesta and the Royal Capital’s New Year’s Festival.」

「Though, I don’t really think the New Year’s Festival isn’t actually too different from the Lunar Banquet hosted here in Barbra.」

Apparently the only real difference between the New Year’s Festival and the Lunar Banquet was the fact that the King would give an address each time the former was celebrated. Both contained an enactment of The Orison Rite, and both featured stalls lining the streets with food for purchase. It wasn’t all that difficult to for me to picture it. The Dungeon Fiesta, on the other hand, had led me draw nothing but a blank.

「Nn. Master. Amazing.」

Judith, was a merchant’s daughter, so she was able to familiarize herself with the coin counter almost immediately.

In fact, it didn’t look like any of our three salesgirls had any trouble learning to use the tool, which was good. Effectively employment of the coin counter would allow them to work much more efficiently than they would’ve been able to otherwise. In other words, the coin counters would facilitate that whole selling en masse strategy I had going.

We had everyone head off to the side for lunch after we finished setting up. We decided to eat a little bit earlier because we had no idea how busy things would be getting. There was a pretty decent change that we’d end up having to work nonstop for the next few hours.

「Now, lunch.」

「You have no idea how long I’ve been awaiting this!」

「Same here. You could very well say that we only accepted this request for the food’s sake.」

「Don’t forget about breakfast! It was absolutely splendid.」

「Them egg salad sandwiches... Hnnnngg.」

Apparently everyone really liked the egg salad sandwiches I’d randomly whipped up for breakfast, so I decided to stick to the whole sandwich theme for lunch too. Specifically, I ended up having four different types: egg, roast pork, chicken teriyaki, and tuna fillet.

「Swooo goooooddd!!!」

「Hey! I saw that Lydia! Stop trying to hog everything! You too Fran!」

「Heh heh heh...」

「Survival of fittest.」

「I’ll be taking this then.」

「Oh come on! Not you too Maia!」

「Wow! This juice has got quite some flavour to it!」

Our so called picnic lunch ended devolving into something along the lines of a skirmish as all five people fumbled around to get their hands on as many sandwiches as they could. I figured that the fifty I made would be more than enough, but apparently I ended up being about as wrong as wrong could be. The sandwiches had almost seemed to perform a vanishing act; they all disappeared in a matter of moments. If anything, it kind of ended up looking like I didn’t make nearly enough to satisfy everyone present.

The salesgirls didn’t seem to be all that happy with each other, and they ended up in a bit of a squabble. Hopefully they’d be able to get back to normal by the time they had to get to work.

One thing to note was that the Chef’s Guild actually had a staff member watching over each establishment in order to ensure that no one cheated. That is, they would also be responsible for aggregating sales numbers and ensuring that everyone used the exact materials that they’d prepared before hand and nothing more. You’d be disqualified the moment you tried to bribe or trick one of the aforementioned staff spectators.

We figured that they’d end up pretty hungry and exhausted at the end of the day, so we tried offering them a few sandwiches, but they ultimately ended up refusing even those.

「I really have to say that the meal before is delicious, but I think the item we’re going to be selling are actually even better.」

「I know right? We’d actually considered buying ourselves some a few portions even though we just had lunch.」

Colbert and Lydia purposefully raised their voices so that the people spectating us could hear them. Apparently, it worked, as a few onlookers actually ended up running over and joining the line. Said queue was already well over a hundred people long. It looked like we were going to have one hell of a busy afternoon.