The town VIP has arrived.
A genuine VIP, too — his entourage numbered seven.
Breakdown: one secretary, six high-rank adventurer bodyguards.
They call him Deputy Mayor Arman, so yes — genuinely important.
The Adventurer King Marcus came too, incidentally.
He brought several people from his own trading company.
Turns out our dirt-cheap sugar has become quite the topic in town, and the company brass had been itching to visit the source.
“So — going forward, alongside the sugar, I’d like to move THESE in town…”
That was my opener.
Business before banquet, of course.
You can’t negotiate seriously with liquor already in everyone’s bloodstream. Basic physics.
And with that, I rolled about a hundred white spheres across the living room table.
”…Pearls?”
That single word — and the entire room inhaled at once.
Pearls, here as in Japan, sit firmly in the luxury bracket.
“But, Tatsuya? There’s no ocean anywhere near here, is there?”
Marcus eyed me with deep suspicion.
“Strictly speaking they’re not genuine — but they should be functionally identical.”
A pearl, at the end of the day, is a crystal of calcium carbonate.
I once saw a TV segment on making artificial pearls, and later looked up the details online.
The ingredients are almost comically humble: mayonnaise and slaked lime.
Mayonnaise, I can make in this world from scratch.
Slaked lime runs a few dozen yen per kilo… so import it once, and mass pearl production becomes viable forever after.
Materials are unlimited — but in practice, the crystallization step is genuinely difficult.
With ingredients and process known, what’s left is artisan’s instinct and technique — in other words, I outsourced it to Katia.
Even she failed several times — but being a true craftsman, she found the knack mid-way and ultimately delivered flawless product.
Arisa’s proposal was, quote, “Let’s just SAY they’re real an’ sell ‘em!” — which earned her a firm fist-bonk and a “that is a crime.”
Obviously artificial pearls can’t command natural prices.
But here’s the thing: in this world, the very CONCEPT of man-made pearls doesn’t exist.
Buyers will happily accept “crystals of a mysterious ultra-magic” as the explanation — by which logic, per Arisa: “Half to a third o’ natural price should hold up fine, I reckon.”
—Which means: near-zero cost basis, unlimited upside.
Now THAT is alchemy.
Overdo it and we crash pearl prices themselves, though — so the plan is small volumes over long horizons.
At which point Deputy Mayor Arman went pale and managed, faintly:
“Mass sugar production in a subarctic region, and now pearls… what ARE you people? I can only interpret this as the work of gods.”
“Well — trade secrets, and all that…”
And so it went.
Arisa took over the fine print, and pearl sales would flow through Marcus’s company.
The red-wine sales license, incidentally, was granted without a moment’s friction.
And then — the banquet.
“Devil boar… you say?”
Red wine in hand, Deputy Mayor Arman reached — with visible trepidation — for the devil boar tonkatsu.
“Delicious! The coating — it CRUNCHES!”
Well, yes. It’s tonkatsu.
If it doesn’t crunch, it isn’t tonkatsu. That’s definitional.
“And it pairs wonderfully with the red wine! What IS this sweet-savory sauce? A-and… is this… DEATH HAWK?!”
The deputy mayor’s eyes spun as he worked through the karaage.
Fair — it’s an ultra-high-difficulty subjugation target that trades at idiotic prices. The shock is warranted.
“Goodness — luxury ingredients like these come around a handful of times a year at best. What a FEARSOMELY lavish banquet… Now then, a bite of the main: this dragon steak.”
“Ufufu~ that’s not regular dragon — that’s KAISER dragon steak~♪”
At Sonya’s words, the deputy mayor’s face seized and he very nearly ejected the contents of his mouth.
“KOFF! KOFF! Even ORDINARY dragon is touch-and-go at the imperial capital’s finest restaurants… and this is KAISER? Am I truly permitted to eat this?”
“Haha — go right ahead. Kaiser dragon’s delicious, isn’t it?”
“It truly, truly is. And beyond the ingredients — the chef’s skill is extraordinary. Every seasoning… like something out of a dream.”
Ma’am, it’s karaage mix and tonkatsu sauce.
Plus some wasabi-soy.
Credit to the Money-Grubbing God on this front, honestly.
And right then… the ones I’d explicitly banished from the building for guaranteed-shock reasons came filing in.
“No fair~♪”
“A banquet~!”
“Meat, meat, carrot, meat, carrot~♪”
The palm-top rabbits, of course — and on sight, the deputy mayor’s face went blue.
“HII! PALM-TOP RABBITS!”
This is EXACTLY why I said stay out…
“It’s fine — really, they’re safe.”
A rabbit nodded along solemnly:
“I’m not a bad palm-top rabbit, honest!”
Where they source these bits remains a mystery — but the line did seem to reassure the deputy mayor slightly, through the very visible terror.
“My word… palm-top rabbits… astonishing.”
Then the deputy mayor looked hard at Sonya.
“Palm-top rabbits present… and a rabbit-person of identical appearance. Which would make this young lady…?”
“Yes — the queen~♪”
And, per tradition, the deputy mayor fainted on the spot.
And then—
One thing led to another, and the entire room got thoroughly plastered.
Good food makes the liquor flow. It’s a law of nature.
For the finale, everyone had ramen to close the night — and this time not just the deputy mayor but Sonya’s whole crew fainted. From delight.
I’d made a LOT, too — it vanished instantly, and a genuinely dangerous mood developed between the binge-eating palm-top rabbits and everyone else over the last servings.
So, left with no choice, I ordered packet-type instant chicken ramen and served a second round — which was ALSO a runaway hit.
Yep. Ramen is undefeated in every world.