A few days after the monster wave ended, I went back into Silbaerin.
It was to give Duke Kailan the hardtack recipe and to discuss business with Kallius.
Iseria said she would stay home, perhaps because fatigue had built up over the past few days.
I just want to live quietly and cook, but the world simply won’t leave me alone.
I once again thought over the business I had half been forced into starting.
The first thing I felt when Kallius proposed the hardtack business to me was trouble.
Part of it was because the proposal had been almost like a threat, but surprisingly, that part didn’t really get under my skin.
After all, Kallius had also given me a false guarantee, so if we were found out, he wouldn’t be able to avoid reprimand either.
But Kallius, who was already deeply rooted in Silbaerin’s market, had a different ability to deal with the aftermath even if he received the same punishment as me.
That must have been why he had confidently brought it up with the guarantee as bait.
But another thing to consider here was the price of my crime if I got caught.
I did lie about having a merchant company and entered the garrison. But? In the end, didn’t everything turn out fine?
It’s a little awkward to say this, but it’s not like the duke and I are strangers...
And, well... Arthur ate my food and reached Expert!
In any case, even if I had to pay for my crime, it wouldn’t be that severe a punishment.
Then one might think, why not just refuse the business and tell them to do whatever they want?
That would be true. Even so, the reason I accepted the proposal was... because of Kallius’s nature.
When I spoke with Kallius at the shelter, he never lost his cheerfulness.
Kallius had a personality that was somewhat impudent, and also like a veritable Great Jolly Mountain.
The people of Silbaerin also generally evaluated him as,
“Kallius may sometimes be excessively cheerful, but in any case, he is a man who keeps faith.”
However, whether he was cheerful or impudent, he was still a merchant. A merchant who lived and died by money.
Having already properly caught the scent of my hardtack, Kallius wanted to make hardtack a main product of his trade somehow.
Kallius’s instincts, once firmly fixed on something, would not be broken just because I refused; rather, he might cling to it even more tenaciously.
‘I sure am getting obsessed over a lot after coming to another world.’
After the obsession with re-enlisting, now even the hardtack business was getting obsessed over?
None of them were obsessions I liked...
In conclusion, there was nothing bad about doing business.
Even if I wasn’t greedy for money, it would be good to earn some, and I might even get my hands on rare ingredients.
“Hello.”
“Oh! Isn’t it the supply officer?”
“No, I am not...”
First, I went to Duke Kailan’s mansion to hand over the hardtack recipe I had modified to make it easier to produce.
The soldier standing guard recognized me and called me the supply officer, but not a chance.
Even if it killed me, I was not re-enlisting.
“Please deliver this to the duke. If you say I sent it, he’ll know.”
“Yes, understood. But are you really not going to be the supply officer?”
“I said I’m not.”
I turned away, forcing myself to ignore the soldier’s eyes, which were practically dripping with regret.
My destination was the agricultural district, which was responsible for a significant portion of the food for the entire city of Silbaerin.
The places I had usually gone around were the commercial district and, recently, the castle district near the northern wall where I had been staying.
Because the terrain rose the farther north one went, the agricultural district was located at the southernmost part of Silbaerin.
I boarded a carriage headed for the agricultural district.
It wasn’t a distance I couldn’t walk, but there was no need to walk on purpose.
As I dozed off to the rattling rhythm, we soon arrived at the agricultural district.
Mm. The moment I got off the carriage, the smell of earth and hay lodged itself in my nose.
Feeling my heart grow inexplicably warm, I walked toward the place Kallius had told me about.
‘It should be around here somewhere...’
“Oh, Jinu! Over here!”
After walking for about twenty minutes and barely making it nearby, Kallius, who had arrived first, spotted me.
As I approached Kallius, the surrounding buildings came into clearer view.
When I had only heard about it, it hadn’t felt real, but seeing it in person, it was pretty impressive.
“Now, what do you think? I repaired the communal ovens the village used to use in the past, and built a few more.”
“Oh... This is more than enough, isn’t it?”
“Haha! Isn’t it?”
I was genuinely impressed by the workshop Kallius had prepared.
Of course, it wasn’t on the scale of a modern factory, but a large tent roof had been set up over a wide open lot to keep out the rain.
The drainage channels had all been worked on as well, so it didn’t seem like water would pool, and the fences set up in all the right places looked quite sturdy.
Under that tent, the ovens were arranged in two rows of three each.
They were about the same size as the ovens in the knights’ kitchen, and there was one more of them, so if we operated it like an actual factory, the efficiency seemed like it would be considerable.
On top of that, based on the recipe I had taught him, the space for kneading, the wide and flat worktables, and even the drying racks for drying the fully baked hardtack had been arranged in order with the process in mind.
Kallius... I thought he was just a Great Jolly Mountain, but he was a much more capable middle-aged man than I expected.
“Everyone, introduce yourselves. Jinu, these are the employees who will be working with us from now on.”
“Hello.”
Kallius introduced the employees he had hired just yesterday.
There were exactly ten employees. A few were young people just old enough to start proper work, and most were women from the village.
Whether in another world or anywhere else, you can’t beat a mother’s touch.
Mothers also had a lot of cooking experience, so they were good at picking things up. It was a decent selection.
I liked the employees, but the employees, seeing me, their nominal boss, for the first time, looked at me with uncertain eyes.
Their expressions seemed to say, “This black-haired man is good at cooking?”
But I had anticipated this too.
I took out the hardtack I had brought in advance, along with the secret weapon I had newly developed.
Then I handed out the hardtack to the employees.
“I thought you all might not trust me yet. That’s why I brought this, so please try some.”
“Well, it’s not that we didn’t trust you...”
“Is this that new hardtack? Oh my, it really does look different from regular hardtack.”
The employees chattered among themselves about the hardtack, then immediately put it in their mouths.
Crunch—! Crisp!
The employees, who had cautiously bitten into it expecting it to be hard like the hardtack they were used to, realized this hardtack was different and soon began eating it heartily.
For a while, only crisp, crunchy sounds echoed through the wide open lot without a single word.
The hardtack was almost all gone before I knew it.
I hurriedly shouted.
“Stop!!”
“Hm? Why all of a sudden?”
“Were we not supposed to eat it all?”
“No, it’s not that. Try sprinkling this on too.”
I opened the pouch I had brought separately and carefully tapped it.
This was the secret weapon I had prepared.
“Oh my, oh my! What is that?”
“Magic... or something? Snow is falling from the pouch?”
‘The reactions here are generous.’
Fine white powder piled softly over the hardtack left on the plates.
It was powdered sugar made by grinding sugar.
After accepting the business and returning home, I had thought over various things in my own way.
No matter how tasty my hardtack was compared to existing hardtack, it was still hardtack, wasn’t it?
I thought it needed a more definite feature to attract people’s attention, and what I came up with was this powdered sugar.
I mixed sugar and starch in a ratio of nine to one and ground the powder as finely as possible with a mortar.
It wasn’t ground as finely as with a modern blender, but compared to plain sugar, the particles had become much finer.
If you sprinkled this powdered sugar over plain hardtack, it looked as if snow were falling on brown earth.
“Just sprinkling white powder on it makes it so pretty.”
“It’s like Silbaerin, Silbaerin!”
One of the women got the answer right.
Just as she said, the sweet sugar falling over the barren hardtack was reminiscent of Silbaerin, which lived closest to snow.
That was right. I planned to combine this plain hardtack with powdered sugar and make it a specialty product of Silbaerin.
A mysterious hardtack invented in the barren north, covered in a soft layer of white snow.
Even people in modern Korea go to Gangwon-do and buy potato bread made from potatoes.
And medieval people from another world would be able to resist “hardtack covered in the mysterious snow of the north”?
Absolutely not. I could guarantee it.
This was something I had come up with independently, without even telling Kallius.
I looked at Kallius and said,
“What do you think? It’s not bad, right?”
“We’re...”
“Yes? What did you say?”
“We’re going to be rich!!!”
Wow! Reno Jackson!
Kallius, who had thrown out the sound effect from a certain card game, spoke in a highly excited state.
“This is definitely going to be a huge hit! I thought it would sell reasonably well with just the hardtack, but if a performance of this level is added to it... We could even get it into noble banquets!!”
“Hmm, is it that much?”
When I was planning it alone at home, I had made it because I thought it was a good idea, but now that he was making this much of a fuss, I actually cooled down a bit.
Well... Still, Kallius was a local of this other world, and perhaps there were things only a merchant’s eye could see.
“The name! What did you decide to call this?”
“Uh... the name?”
To be honest, I hadn’t thought about it at all.
Did something that was just hardtack sprinkled with powdered sugar really need a name?
I quickly racked my brain and tried to think of a suitable name.
I supposed I had to name it in a fantasy-like way. If I simply called it “Snowflake Hardtack,” it would sound a little cheap.
Silbaerin, the north, snow, hardtack... Ah.
“A name, then how about ‘Barren Snowflower’? Because beautiful snow like flowers has fallen upon dry hardtack.”
“‘Barren Snowflower,’ is it... That’s good! It’s full of romance, so bards and adventurers would likely enjoy it too!”
As if he liked the product’s name, Kallius nodded repeatedly.
Even as I said it, I had thought, “Ah, is that a little cringey?” but was this the sensibility of another world?
The employees, having deliciously finished all the hardtack, looked at me with eyes full of respect, unlike earlier.
Mm. Now we were finally ready to start working.
Kallius had probably already told them when he hired them, but it was better to be clear about matters of money.
“As you all have heard, the daily wage is 60 copper coins. Lunch is one hour and thirty minutes, so eat during that time, rest a bit, and then start the afternoon work. You may eat separately, or you may eat the hardtack you make. It’s free. Around sunset, you can go home.”
I stood in front of the employees and briefly explained the working conditions.
Since the daily wage for day laborers in this world was around 20 to 30 copper coins, this was about twice as high.
Even so, from the perspective of a modern person, it was still cheap labor.
Feeling sorry, I told them that if they were fine with hardtack, they could at least eat it for lunch.
“60 copper coins? Really?”
“They’re giving us lunch for free? Why?”
“We can rest for an hour and a half...?”
However, to the residents of another world, it seemed these were quite extraordinary conditions.
The employees whispered among themselves and kept asking, “Is this for real?”
Come to think of it, I remembered Kallius being horrified when I brought up the employees’ working conditions while discussing the contract with him.
Originally, I wanted to pay them even more, but most of the capital wasn’t my money, but Kallius’s, so I couldn’t insist too forcefully.
In truth, even this much was Kallius making a considerable concession.
This much of an announcement should be enough.
I began explaining the actual work in earnest.
The dough ratio, the proper texture, the way to shape the dough, the baking order, and so on...
The employees did get headaches over the fairly finicky and complicated process, but it couldn’t be helped.
Unlike Iseria and me, who could skip the delicate processes with a snap of spirit arts, they had no such ability.
They had to make up for every possible part with effort.
Still, I had handed out one copy of the recipe to each employee, so they would get used to it if they made it often.
After finishing all the handover like that, I discussed the details of the business further with Kallius, then headed home.
Before I knew it, darkness had fully settled over the world.
I walked along the dim forest path with my heart pounding anxiously... and finally, my house began to come into view.
But not a single light was on inside.
I had definitely taught Iseria how to turn on the lights before leaving, so why was it dark? Was she already asleep?
“Iseria. I’m home.”
Without thinking much, I opened the door and entered the house.
Naturally, the interior had not a single speck of light.
I groped along the wall, searching for the light switch.
Click—
And the moment I turned on the switch and the interior became brightly lit,
Thwack—!
“Huh?”
An unpleasant sound of impact and a shock came from the back of my neck.
Crash—!
I collapsed straight to the floor.
The last thing I saw before losing consciousness was
a group of suspiciously pointy-eared assailants wearing large robes.