Orc Harem Vol 5 Chapter 16

Chapter 16: Confectionary Shop With Long Line

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After various things happened in the home village that I dearly  missed, we returned to the commercial city and several days passed. Then  it’s finally the day of the festival.

……To be honest, I wanted to forget the various things that happened  in my family home. I thought that daughter-in-law and mother-in-law  would have worse relationship with each other, but not only they hit it  off with each other, in the end Kaa-san also told Tita and Kururu about  my hilarious dark history.

(Well, it was a net gain with what I was able to hear from Tou-san though.)

Also right now I’m coming to the stall that I’m opening together with Zacharic Company.

Although I called it a stall, the location is facing the biggest  street in the city and also included the largest scale plot of land. A  refined and large café is standing there.

Tita, Kururu, and Marle have also worked since early morning in order to help out.

「What a splendid shop. This isn’t at the level of a stall anymore. Perhaps this is too much instead.」

「There is no worry for that. Try looking outside.」

When all of us went out, the eyes of the three of them widened like saucer.

「Uwaa, what an amazing queue.」

「There is still two more hours before the festival started isn’t it!?」(Kururu)

「So many people.」(Marle)

A fixed time had been decided beforehand for all the shops to open at the same time in order to prevent chaos from breaking out.

And yet, customers are already flooding here.

「Rurine’s influence is amazing.」(Tita)

「Her being called as the greatest treasure of Forland Kingdom isn’t just for show……」(Kururu)

In the first place I asked Rurine to spread the rumor about the  showpiece this time, tiramisu because I expected a lot from her  publicity’s impact, but I didn’t expect the effect to be this great.

「By the way, I asked Marle to go see how long is this queue is  stretching. She went until the city’s entrance and turned the corner  there around the rampart……」

I had only seen a line this amazingly long once in my previous life.

The eight hour queue for S*aring, the super popular newest attraction of Di*ney Sea.

That was insane, but this line here also didn’t lose to that.

「Uwaa, our tiramisu stock won’t be enough if there is this many customers won’t it?」(Tita)

「We will just barely make it if we limit the amount one person can eat and the large set for souvenir I guess.」(Ork)

「Even so, their obsession is amazing. If they line up in a queue this  long, the festival will be over when they finally managed to buy the  tiramisu. Even though this is the long awaited festival, it will be a  waste if it’s over with them just being able to eat a single cake!」

「It’s the same with the line for So*aring, the visitors dashed right  when the park opened and they were able to ride it only when the park  was going to close.」

「Sometimes Ork-san will say incomprehensible thing like this huh.」

「Aa, sorry. But, I understand their feeling. After all the  ingredients that tiramisu is using are white sugar and coffee, what’s  more the recipe isn’t known in any other city. It’s a cake that can only  be eaten in this city. Furthermore it has been highly praised by  Forland Kingdom’s beautiful princess you know? It has enough value for  them to waste their whole day just for it.」

In this world that is infested with monsters, travelling between cities has a lot of hurdles.

People have to hire guards and other staffs with a lot of money. Or  else they would have to travel while risking their life and feeling  scared of monster.

Either way the risk is high.

There are caravans that are formed exclusively only for the festival  to transport people. The cost is subsidized so that people can travel in  low cost. It vitalized the flow of people, but something like that  rarely happened.

For many people, this is their first and last time coming to this city.

That’s why, it’s rational of them to seek experience that absolutely cannot be experienced anywhere else.

「Certainly that’s true. I don’t understand how amazing that is because Ork-san has made the cake for me.」

「But, if the line is this long then perhaps some people won’t be able  to eat it even after going through this. Not being able to eat even  after lining up the whole time, that’s tragic.」

What Tita said is also correct. It will be despairing if people who  has lined up for the whole day can’t buy the item in the end.

I too, when I lined up for three hours in front of a popular ramen  restaurant and then told by the waitress that the soup has run out, I  easily radiated murderous intent.

「I have made arrangement for that. You got to take care of something like that properly after all.」

I have hired people to count the number of people lining up.

The number of tiramisu we have in stock is limited after all, so  announcement will be made at the spot of the line where people won’t be  able to get any share even if they lined up.

「As expected from Ork, you don’t miss anything.」

「Well yeah. It feels like we will be able to handle the current amount of customers who are lining up right now.」

「Since when you have made that many!?」(Kururu)

「I have made a lot beforehand after all.」

The taste has worsened slightly, but yesterday I asked my childhood  friends to freeze all the milk they had in stock and brought them here.

After I defrosted them milk, I made tiramisu using them and put them in cooler for today.

We will split them for stock of three days.

The festival would be held for three days. We can’t sell all of them in just one day.

「That’s not like the usual Ork-san. I thought that you won’t do something like that because the taste will drop.」

「Certainly the taste will drop, but I have predicted beforehand that  this many customers will come. Because of that I went through hell.」

The astonishing queue today. I have seen the sign of it since a long time ago.

The reservation number for the caravans transporting people between  cities, the number of people entering the city, the reservation in the  inns.

All of them were three times greater than the average year.

In a glance that sounded like a great thing, but too many people will also cause a lot of problems.

With this city’s characteristic as a commercial city and how it held a  large scale festival every year, it possessed substantial lodging  facilities. The infrastructure has also been designed to receive greater  number of people than the city population.

Even then, the number of people reached the peak at the days of the  festival, and the festival this time is visited by three times the usual  number. It’s not a number that can be endured by the city design.

There isn’t enough inns, the infrastructure also won’t be able to  keep up, even the food and water stocks aren’t sufficient. The vigilance  committee is also overly burdened.

Urgent response is needed to deal with that.

Common citizens are permitted to rent their room or house to visitors  even though it’s normally not permitted. The government purchased a  great amount of water, special toilets are set up everywhere, a simple  fence for defense is created outside the city, relatively close towns  and villages are asked for help.

The number of stalls opened in the festival is also increased as much  as possible. With the original number of stall, all their products  would be sold out right away before this crowd. The visitors won’t be  able to enjoy the festival properly like that.

If that happened than all the visitors who flooded this place will  get bad impression. It will cause bad influence to the future festivals.

It’s great that there are a lot of customers, but it will become negative if it went over the limit.

「So that’s why Ork looked like a dead person walking recently.」

「Well, this is caused by the seed that I sowed after all, if not I  wouldn’t work that hard……I’ve been made to keenly realize how badly I  have underestimated Rurine’s influence.」

「But it was horrible wasn’t it? Those people, they kept dragging us down even at this kind of time.」

「Yeah, as expected it made me wanted to kill those senile old fools.  Even though this is a critical time that might cause this festival to  collapse, they still prioritized their own emotion. Those guys aren’t  merchant. I might use force if Zacharic-san wasn’t there.」

「It’s scary because in Ork’s case, that doesn’t sound like a joke at all.」

The harassment from the merchant association still came even at this emergency situation.

Thanks to Zacharic-san obstructing their hindrance and supporting us,  I somehow managed to take countermeasure, but they really almost ruined  this festival for real.

「But this is really annoying. How dare they acted as they pleased so much like that.」

Even Kururu is in agreement.

Usually she didn’t get involved with my work as merchant, but this time she had been a great help with a lot of things.

「Well, for that, I’m going to make them pay properly.」

I’m making preparation for that.

Of course, unlike them, I’m going to do it properly fair and square through business.

「Now then, let’s stop the idle talk here. There isn’t any time until the opening time.」

「You’re right.」

「Yes, I’ll do my best.」(Kururu)

Other than us here, we also have the super first class staffs that Zacharic Company arranged.

My presence here is more for supervision rather than labor work.

Works like cleaning the café, preparing coffee, defrosting and  cutting tiramisu, all of them have been carried out without accident  since some time ago.

This place will turn into a battlefield after this. Only a dream team of super first rate staffs will be able to deal with it.

I gave my instruction to those capable subordinates.

There is an existence that is shining radiantly even among those super first rate staffs.

「Marle is amazing.」

「Yaa, Marle want to be useful for Otou-san!」

The blue haired beautiful girl wearing waitress uniform is making a spectacular showing everywhere without rest.

She is three times faster than even a super first rate staff. She  looked exactly like an azure comet. And yet her movement is extremely  precise.

「Marle-chan is a genius.」(Tita)

「She is. She can remember anything just from being taught once.」(Kururu)

Yes, Marle’s adaptability is out of the norm.

She has instant memorization ability in addition perfect tracing of other people’s movement.

She can quickly learn to do anything that she is told to do.

Most likely it’s the ability of the endlessly evolving slime.

Unlike human, bad habit and subjective impression doesn’t exist for  her. On top of that she has extra special basic specs. I’m jealous.

「Marle is amazing. Everyone can praise Marle more!」

「Yeah, you’re the best. You’re really a great help Marle.」

I took advantage of her ability and asked her to learn a lot of things to help out.

She is my prided daughter.

……That made my hesitation grew even more.

Originally she was created as spare part to heal my magic circuit.

Right now she is staying at my side to eat my mana and emotion, to learn to be even more suitable to me.

And then, when the time came, I would make use of her and she would vanish.

「Otou-san, what’s wrong? Trouble?」

When I noticed, Marle has come to in front of me and peered at my face from below.

Her blue eyes wavered in worry.

「It’s, it’s nothing.」

「There is no need to worry. Marle will do something about it.」

Marle patted my head.

She desperately stood on her tiptoes and patted my head as though she is consoling a child.

It’s a warming childish appearance.

And yet, I felt relieved for some reason. I felt motherhood from her.

「Thank you Marle.」

「Nn, no problem!」

I slapped both my cheeks.

「Yosh, the opening preparation is going well. It will be time to open  soon. Resolve yourself, this café is going to be a battlefield today!」

Everyone energetically replied back.

The objective of this café isn’t just to sell as many product as possible.

It’s to advertise coffee and sugar, the main products of Ork Company and Zacharic Company.

That’s why, we have to make all the customers satisfied no matter  what so that they will become customer again next time. The business  doesn’t stop with just selling cake here.

The objective of this café is to develop a new customer base for coffee and sugar.

There are a crazy number of customers out there. Furthermore all of them are on edge after lining up for so long.

Our mission has extremely high difficulty level.

But, I think we can possibly overcome it.

If it’s with the members here.

The door at the lower part of the marionette clock opened, and a bird puppet came out, chirping *poo poo*.

It’s a cuckoo clock that I made as hobby and presented to Zacharic.

「We are open!」

Now, it’s the start of the war!

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