HTACS 06

Chapter 06

After that, I was able to obtain various pieces of information from Aila.

Though she was wary of me to some extent, she’s surprisingly easy to handle—if I gently prod her with chuunibyou-style theatrics, she’ll hand over information cleanly.

[*Hmph. Aila. How much of this school’s currents have you read?*]

[*Ha, are you underestimating me?*]

[*Tell me then. Kekeke. Do you think you can?*]

[*Hmph. I’ll tell you. First, Zeppelin is…*]

[*Hoo. Not bad—but still lacking. Next, the market prices of goods in this school. Fine items deserve fitting prices. So why is this item priced this way?*]

[*So easy it makes me yawn. That’s because…*]

Like this, I began gradually narrowing the gap between “Zeppelin as reality” and “Zeppelin as a game.”

And the biggest difference I felt was in the distribution network—this flowed completely differently from game-Zeppelin.

Think about it. Store A is in a snowy field, and Store B is in a desert. Yet both stores sell basic equipment and potions. Isn’t that strange? How is that possible? Did they lay railroad tracks across the entire world? Can items with identical effects really be supplied that widely?

Has product standardization and logistics stabilization been achieved, with giant manufacturing corporations monopolizing retail? Then why is this a medieval setting—that’s steampunk. Just let them take over the world.

I threw one last question at Aila.

[*Then can you show me the indicators for what sells well and what doesn’t?*]

[*That’s our trading company’s secret—can’t do that. Even less so for free.*]

[*Ha. Would candy do the trick?*]

[*…Candy, you say. Perhaps it might. If you can get your hands on it, that is.*]

With that, Aila smirked and left.

And in those words, I found the biggest hint.

“Candy is expensive. …Well, that makes sense.”

Whether you grow sugarcane or concentrate and boil down fruit, candy takes a lot of labor. And even if you farm, you grow basic grains like wheat or barley—do you really grow fruit, pick it, boil it down, pour it into molds, and let it harden? What about the monsters that appear in between? What about the beasts and magical creatures that target the fruit?

Fruit is expensive, and candy is even more so.

“Yeah. That’s right.”

I smirked and started writing out an order form. For the first time, what I’d sell was decided.

—

Four days after the acquisition.

“For real?”

Zero customers.

“For real, I said.”

My grocery store was getting astonishingly zero attention.

I covered my face with both hands and slumped down. I couldn’t help but cover my mouth and chuckle.

“Ah, honestly—how did anyone even open a convenience store here?”

Phil—you really shouldn’t be in business.

But I can’t just keep laughing.

“If this goes on for a few more days, Aila will show up and say ‘I’m disappointed in you!’ and stab me.”

Just as Wolfram is a pompous, villainous imperial prince, his fiancée Aila is an “ambition-filled villainous lady.” Her ambition runs so deep it’s practically replaced her brain—she lights up the moment she hears anything about grand schemes.

The only reason I survived last time was all thanks to my “ambition act.” For someone like her, the moment I slack off, she’ll be disappointed and stick a knife in me without a second thought.

Even without mentioning Aila, I need to establish myself somehow, starting now.

And whether customers come or not doesn’t really matter.

“I put in an order, so it should arrive around today.”

As if on cue, I sensed someone outside the door. It couldn’t be a customer—probably someone from my order.

“Your order has arrived.”

“Good work.”

“……”

A short-statured girl squinted at me, let out a sigh, and handed me a document.

“Total comes to 3,524,800 rin. Please confirm the items and sign here.”

“Yes.”

I checked each item I’d ordered one by one.

“All correct.”

“…A hot water dispenser. A handcart. …And a set of dining tools for simple home use…? Why do you need these?”

“Is it your job to wonder what someone buys?”

“…No. Maestro’s delivery staff just deliver. Thank you for your order.”

I took the items, signed, and she nodded curtly before leaving. I shrugged.

I am, after all, her customer—and her attitude was a zero in customer service, but that doesn’t really matter. She’s a clerk from Maestro, the Gold Demon dwarves’ organization, and what matters is that Maestro sold me goods.

This is both Zeppelin’s loophole and advantage.

Maestro won’t buy from or sell to “individual Wolfram.” However, under Zeppelin’s anti-monopoly and fair trade regulations, they have no choice but to accept orders from “convenience store owner Wolfram.”

Apparently, something like this happened before. The Magic Department monopolized magic, the Knight Department monopolized mercenary work, Maestro monopolized all tools and equipment, and Yggdrasil monopolized magical garments—making everyone furious at each other. The student council apparently lived it up however they pleased back then. What a mess.

Anyway, as a result, the Academy was pushed to the brink of collapse, and on rare occasion, the Emperor himself stepped in, punished those involved, and enshrined it in the school regulations.

At minimum, show courtesy between organizations—so the rules say.

Thus, now that I own a grocery store, I can place orders with Maestro.

And Yggdrasil too. Even the Five-Color Magic Towers can’t refuse my orders.

“…Delivery from Yggdrasil.”

“…Delivery from the Five-Color Magic Towers.”

I grinned and welcomed them, and they brought my goods with sour faces. They even handed me pamphlets of their products and recommended order items—with wholesale prices listed, naturally.

“Just as I thought. It’s seriously tangled up. No—it’s completely different.”

Glancing at them, I shrugged. A low-grade healing potion costs 10,000 rin. In the game, it was 100 rin.

Even an idiot like me is starting to get a sense of why prices are like this.

Anyway—I just need to use this to my advantage.

“Boil fruit juice, add edible slime, and let it set—that makes traditional Zeppelin candy.”

That’s the basic recipe for candy.

But if you add a few game-like factors here, the profitability skyrockets.

For example—

“Mix healing potion with water for irrigation, and fruit grows overwhelmingly faster. Plus… dried fish jerky, radish, and leftover vegetables. I can use these too.”

Phil had left behind a whopping one hundred healing potions, along with dried fish and vegetables as leftover stock.

I plan to use these to play at being an alchemist.

—

In the Lohengrin Empire, magic is a great discipline.

A hundred geniuses lead a hundred thousand ordinary people—literally, a profession where innate talent decides everything.

In the past, nobles monopolized magic, but when the first Emperor overhauled the Empire, magic became a discipline for geniuses who could even aim for noble titles if they had magical talent.

Even commoner parents with some money send their children to academies for early magical education, where the wheat is sorted from the chaff, and the gems worthy of shining in Zeppelin are polished there.

In theory, it’s the surest path for a commoner to rise to nobility. The odds are about as likely as a red dragon flying over the backyard, but it’s not entirely impossible—so countless talents grind themselves away in Zeppelin’s laboratories even today.

Magic is a long, long discipline.

Undergraduate magic students complete four years of basic education. By that standard, they typically learn up to Tier 7 magic out of a total of nine tiers.

Starting from the most basic Tier 9 Light, over four years they learn the four-element projective spells of Tier 7—Stone, Fire, Water, and Wind Ball—and upon completing that, they’re considered to have fulfilled their major and are granted a diploma.

Most talentless nobles and commoners graduate here and use their knowledge to become the court mages of rural barons or viscounts.

But those with talent knock once more on the door of academia.

They either resolve to dedicate their lives to magic or, exceptional in their gifts, fall for professors’ persuasions and begin assisting with research. These individuals go beyond the undergraduate level, making magic itself their home.

From the fifth year onward, those who never give up until they’ve achieved their learning—staying up all night to assist professors’ experiments, writing new magical theses—these people are called by the world:

Great—aspiring to greater purpose,

Academy—striving to learn,

Research—making their study their home,

Students—those who have devoted their lives.

Magic graduate students.

Upon graduation, they enter at minimum a ducal central count’s household, and at maximum the Imperial Family’s direct mage corps, or receive an assistant professor position at Zeppelin—these individuals refine their magic day and night in the Magic Quarter.

“Ughhhhh…”

“Ghhh… ghraaaaa…”

Today too, endlessly—

They refine themselves.

—

Birds chirp after dawn breaks.

But graduate students start their racket before dawn.

“Ghraaaa…”

“Professor… niiim…”

Hearing the groaning arrival sounds of graduate students crawling up from hell, a smile naturally crept across my face.

This world—with its ‘class system’ and ‘academic achievement as a legitimate path to social advancement’—spells out in the official setting how great Academy Fortress Zeppelin truly is. Within that, Zeppelin sets the first half as 4 years of undergraduate education and the second half as 3 years of graduate education.

Well, not that the 3 years are strictly observed—it often stretches to 5 or 7 years—but anyway. At this hour, most of those showing up are “magic graduate students.”

Unable to sleep on time, unable to wake on time, becoming one with their lab, staking their lives on a single research grant their professor secured, submitting theses with academic significance—these future pillars of the Lohengrin Empire walked in, darker than the dawn itself.

“You’re all working hard.”

“…Huh?”

“………Ugh?”

Two graduate students met my gaze. Their eyes, dead just moments ago, drifted unfocused.

Wow—look at those eyes. A mackerel left outside for a week in summer would have brighter eyes than that.

“The early morning chill is harsh—heading to work?”

“…Uh.”

“You are…”

“Wolfram. Wolfram von Lohengrin.”

“…Y-yes. We know.”

“But why are you here…?”

Confusion filled the graduate students’ faces. At that, I smiled naturally.

Undergraduates between first and fourth year—especially the younger ones—would have been wary and rejected me on sight. But older graduate students, rather than rejecting, tend to first feel curiosity.

Whether that’s the innate curiosity of those who’ve chosen to go all the way in academics, I’m not sure—but the fact that they didn’t reject me outright was enough for my plan to work.

Truth be told, whatever happens among undergraduates is none of their concern—they’re too busy managing their own affairs. Even a senior soldier nearing discharge stops caring about barracks duties; in a way, these guys are like discharged reservists.

“The morning’s chilly—how about a cup of soup before you head in?”

“…Uh… huh?”

“Soup…?”

Soup.

A fancy name for dried pollack soup.

Last night, I filled the hot water dispenser with boiling water, threw in vegetables and dried fish that seemed like they’d go bad soon, simmered them thoroughly, and seasoned with salt—making something like dried pollack soup.

Early morning. Stomachs twisted from mental labor the day before. Whether coming out of the lab or heading from the dormitory, a warm broth is what you crave at dawn.

A warm bowl of dried pollack soup for such people.

Ah, no way you can resist this.

“I boiled this myself for you, who labor for the Empire from early morning. It’s not scalding—I’ve kept it warm.”

“Hwaah, ghuu… ghuuuuh…!”

“One cup—10,000 rin.”

“Th, that’s a bit expensive…”

“Refills available.”

“………Ugh.”

“Up to three refills—effectively 3,000 rin per bowl.”

We communicated through our eyes at that moment. They pulled ten 1,000-rin bills from their pockets, and I handed them paper cups and a ladle.

“Hwaaah… It’s melting…”

“Ghuuu… huuuu… ghhuu…!! Good. This is good.”

At first they thought it would be hot and blew on it, but I’d precisely set it to “sip-at-once temperature.”

The two graduate students repeatedly scooped Wolfram’s special dried pollack soup into their paper cups and poured it down their throats. With each cup, vitality returned to their bodies.

“Hoo. That was good.”

“…Wow. I feel alive. Seriously.”

“It’s good to see you happy—you who will become the pillars of this nation. Apply yourselves to your studies.”

“Y-yes…”

“It’s really delicious. Did you put anything… special in it?”

“Hm?”

Now that they’d drunk it, they seemed uneasy—they looked at my face. I’m the villainous student council president, so they must have wondered if I’d spiked it with something.

“Why? Think I laced it? Everything here passes food inspection from Yggdrasil. I swear it on the Imperial Family.”

“Ah, I see. Yes.”

Once the prince staked the Imperial Family on it, they nodded.

“Then we’ll be going…”

“Thank you for the great drink.”

“Going’s fine, but—”

“Yes? Is there something more…?”

“No—research in the lab consumes a lot of energy, doesn’t it?”

“Yes, it does.”

“Look over there.”

“Huh? …Ah.”

I glanced toward the display stand next to the hot water dispenser. Inside were candies—enough that they’d have spoiled—and a single paper cup.

And a sign with a flamboyant inscription:

[Candy—one cup for 50,000 rin. No matter how much you pack, it’s 50,000 rin per cup. Pack to your limit! One cup per person per day!]

“Want to give it a shot?”

“…Ha.”

“This is something…!”

With that, the graduate students took my bait and began carefully placing individually wrapped candies into the cup, one by one.

Their fervor, their effort—using magical engineering design and intelligence to pack the cup full—it was almost like watching the driving force that leads the Lohengrin Empire. And seeing them hand me many bills, I smiled.

“Your Highness. We’ll take the candies.”

“Hehe. You underestimated graduate students, didn’t you?”

With that, they stuffed their pockets full of candy and looked at me, and I shrugged in defeat. They strode off toward their lab triumphantly, and I clicked my tongue pityingly at their backs.

But if they’re happy, that’s what matters, right?

I shrugged and calculated the profit from the candy and dried pollack soup just now.

Good.

I’m making a profit.

No—I’m making a killing.

“Heh, hehe.”

I smiled without realizing it, and at the same time, the birds began to chirp.

*Chirp. Chirp-chirp.*

After dealing with those two, dawn must be breaking. Soon after, graduate students began walking toward the Magic Quarter one by one.

Unfocused, reminiscent of zombies—I grinned at them.

“You all work tirelessly for the nation day and night! Here—warm soup and unlimited candy you can take!”

At my loud voice, the graduate students all stopped at once, *thud*, and slowly turned toward me.

Man, this isn’t a zombie movie or anything…

And so, one hour later.

“…Ugh. H-hehe, th-thank you. Thank you… A warm broth like this… First time since coming to the Academy… Heh, hehe… *sniff*.”

“Ghraaa… Thank… you. Really… thank you…”

“Head in safely.”

Until the very last graduate student had entered the lab, I looked at the now-empty hot water dispenser and candy display, and realized a truth.

“I swear—no matter how much I dedicate myself to academics, I will never become a graduate student.”

I meant it.