Ascendance of a Bookworm (LN) - Volume 1.3 - Chapter SS3

Benno — Pound Cake Sampling 

At the conclusion of the meeting held with only those running stores large enough to pay taxes above a certain set amount, the Merchant’s Guild guildmaster looked at all the participants one by one. The dang geezer. 

“Is that all we have to discuss today? In that case, a reminder that the Othmar Company is holding a taste-testing event in the larger meeting room for a confectionery I plan to sell soon. Drop by if you have the time. My granddaughter said that there would be enough for everyone here and their servants. Benno, Freida put her all into this knowing that you would be coming. You wouldn’t betray her expectations, would you?” Having no other choice, I stood up and headed to the larger meeting room. 

The meeting we just had consisted exclusively of rich store owners, which meant they all had the money to buy expensive sweets and good eyes for valuable products. It was doubtful that many of them would go all the way to the guildmaster’s house just to taste-test food, but holding it in the guild right after a meeting all but guaranteed a good number of them dropping by. He was so clever with this kind of thing it was frustrating. No doubt the event would draw a lot of attention. 

The taste-testing event could be traced back to Myne leaking the recipe to something called a ‘pound cake’ to the geezer’s granddaughter, then giving her the idea to have a bunch of people taste-test variations on the original recipe. Seriously, will that idiot ever stop messing up?! Doesn’t she realize her products are big enough to shake the market?! I’m breaking my back so nobody realizes she exists but nooo, she’s just gotta spill secrets without thinking! 

When she sold products to me, I didn’t announce them ahead of time since I wanted to monopolize them for myself. Announcing a product before selling it brought extra attention to the identity of who created the product. Doubly so if nobody else can replicate said product. 

And frustratingly enough, sugar wasn’t a healthy market yet. The only company who dealt with sugar from the Sovereignty was the Othmar Company. This pound cake would probably be a huge hit with nobles who were riding the trends of the Sovereignty and searching for sweet stuff to eat. By holding this taste-testing event, the guildmaster wasn’t just revealing his intent to fill that niche, he was marketing his granddaughter’s skill at the same time. That girl inherited her nose for money from him. 

“Welcome to today’s taste-testing event. Please select your favorite pound cakes and put these cards into their boxes.” 

Boys and girls wearing identical handkerchiefs on their heads were standing by the door to the large meeting room and giving three wooden cards to everyone who entered. “You may put all three into the box of your choosing, or you could select three different ones.” 

I gripped the cards they gave me and looked around the room. You could tell who was a staff member for the event by the handkerchiefs on their heads. As of yet there weren’t many visitors in the room, and the few there were cautiously keeping an eye on each other without trying the pound cake. 

There were five tables lined up and each had a different kind of pound cake on it. The cakes were sliced into bite sized pieces, but still, there were many more kinds of cake than I expected. 

“Oh, it’s Mr. Benno!” Myne, the one at fault for all this, saw me and came walking over (waving hard) with my apprentice Lutz. He was wearing our apprentice uniform, but Myne was dressed as one of the event staff members. I raised a hand casually, which I then used to grab Myne’s head once she was close enough. 

“What do you think you’re doing here, Myne?” 

“Ow, ow! I’m helping them. Can’t you tell from my outfit?” she said with a tilted head. I ripped the handkerchief off her head. 

“Get changed right now. Don’t leave an impression on the merchants coming into this room. Why do you think I hid you and didn’t publicize who made the paper and hairpins? You wanna come back to my store and make a big fuss about who you are? Should I throw a big ad campaign for you?” 

“Aww... I’ll go change. Stay here, Lutz.” I gave back her handkerchief and Myne speed-walked out of the meeting room. I sighed as I watched her go. 

Myne was an abnormally smart girl who picked up on things a lot faster than you would expect from a kid who just finished her baptism. She knew so many things she had no business knowing. And yet, she so often acted seemingly without thinking at all. That was normal for a kid, but she was so abnormal in other ways that acting without thinking put her in a lot of danger. She stuck out, and the less she stuck out the better. Nothing good would come from a kid with no protection sticking out. Even when my father died and I took over the business immediately after reaching adulthood, I got mocked as a greenhorn and went through hell to keep the store running. A kid who just finished her baptism would get eaten alive out there. 

“Mr. Benno... You sure are hard on Myne.” 

“Lutz, if you want to protect Myne, remember this. Right now Myne doesn’t have a merchant backing her up and she doesn’t have a noble in the temple supporting her. She’s dangling from the air, completely exposed to danger.” 

Considering the magic tools there and the connections she would over time form with blue-robed nobles, entering the temple now was a good idea for Myne. But it was hard to think her good situation would last for more than a few years. 

“Huh? But Mr. Benno, aren’t you backing her up...?” 

“To some degree I’m considered her guardian given my relationship to her workshop, but that’s a thin connection. I would have more options if she were an apprentice like you, but now that she’s entered the temple there’s not much I can do. She’ll be harder for you to keep an eye on too now. It’s better if she learns not to stand out like she has been. Don’t forget that nobody knows what she’s thinking and she runs off to do who knows what the second you take your eyes off her. The harsher she’s managed the better.” 

“Aaah, that’s definitely true.” Lutz nodded with a solemn expression. He looked so much like Mark I couldn’t help but laugh. 

Once Lutz finished his baptism and started apprentice work, his language shaped up and he began acting a lot more like Mark. Apparently he was using Mark as an ideal to model himself after. Unlike the children of merchants, Lutz was lacking in a lot of places necessary for a merchant due to the difference in his upbringing. He was desperate to catch up to the others. I noticed him carefully watching Mark and me to copy as many of our mannerisms as possible. I was fairly fond of his strong ambition. 

“What do you think of pound cakes, Lutz? As a product.” 

“...I think there’s no doubt it will sell really well. I imagine nobles will love it.” 

“Your proof? How do you know what nobles like or what they normally eat?” I said antagonistically, but Lutz replied in an instant without showing any signs of hesitation. 

“Myne told me that the guildmaster is working to make Freida’s living conditions as close to a noble’s as possible to help her when she needs to move to the nobles’ quarter. It seems that even their chef used to work in a noble’s mansion. If both Freida and that chef are confident that the pound cake will sell, I trust their assessment.” 

I knew that the guildmaster was spending a lot of money on his home, but I didn’t know that he was fashioning it after a noble’s home. My eyes widened reflexively. One couldn’t look down on the information network provided by children chatting with each other. 

“I’m back, Lutz.” Myne came back, dressed like one of my apprentices. Now people would assume that I had brought her with me and not think twice about her, just like Lutz. 

“Mr. Benno, this is a pound cake with nothing in it. It’s the first kind I tried myself,” said Lutz, pointing at the rightmost pound cake. He was practically drooling as he stared at the sliced up pound cake with excitement in his eyes, probably remembering how it had tasted when he first ate it. 

“Leise is really passionate about improving her recipes, it tastes a lot better than it did back then. The cake on this table was made with apfelsige. This table is mixed with honey, and that one has nuts. The last table has the newest kind, made with tea leaves. Try them out! They all taste really good,” explained Myne with her chest puffed out in pride, as if she had made them herself. I snorted in amusement and looked down at the pound cake. 

“Judging by how many different kinds there are, I’m guessing you just let a bunch of info slip for free?” 

“Ngh... I-I traded the information for sugar, so I didn’t let it slip for nothing.” It seemed that she was using her information to trade for sugar. I wasn’t sure if I should praise her for acting like a merchant or chop her for giving the guildmaster more valuable information. 

“Also, I only told her about the apfelsige and tea leaves. I didn’t even tell her the measurements; she found them on her own through experimentation. This isn’t all my fault,” said Myne, pouting and looking away from me. She then reached out to some of the cake on the table. Lutz went after some cake of his own after seeing her plop it in her mouth. Judging by the surprised cries around me, there was no mistaking that the cake was pretty good. I grabbed a piece for myself. 

...The heck is this?! I figured it would be the second I grabbed a piece, but the cake was fluffy and so soft it melted in my mouth. It looked like bread on the outside, but no bread was this soft. Normally you ate bread with soup to soften it. 

On top of that, it was so sweet I couldn’t believe it. It had a solid sweet flavor, but it wasn’t dense sweetness like something soaked in honey, or sharp sweetness like that of a fruit. A gentle sweetness spread throughout my entire mouth. It smelled of butter mixed with a sweetener and stirred my appetite, making me want more. 

“Does it taste good?” Myne looked up at me, golden eyes sparkling with anticipation for my praise. It felt kind of wrong to just give her what she wanted, so I ignored Myne and reached for the apfelsige cake. 

It was fluffy and the smell of apfelsige spread through my mouth. It had a refreshing sweetness that made it easy to eat. Just a little flavoring changed it so much. I lifted my head up and looked at the pound cakes on the other tables. 

“Isn’t Leise amazing?” I avoided Myne, who was praising another store’s chef, and moved to another table to try the honey pound cake. Unlike the prior two cakes, it was a bit heavy and the sweetness was thicker. I was used to sweet things and it felt the most sweet out of anything I had eaten so far, so it would probably be a favorite for children and those who cared more about sweetness than anything. 

“It’s sweet, but not too thick, right?” 

Next was the nut cake. It resembled bread with nuts in it and thus looked more familiar than any of the other cakes. But it wasn’t anything like the cake I normally ate. It was much more soft and that made the hard nuts stick out more. The cake melted in my mouth immediately, leaving only the nuts. Over time the mixture of crunch and softness might end up pleasant, but I didn’t like it very much. 

“Come on, Mr. Benno. Tell me what you think.” 

“Shut it. Be quiet.” I headed to the next table while Myne circled me, being loud and annoying. 

At first I hesitated to try food with tea leaves in it, but once inside my mouth the smell and flavor was surprisingly good. Unlike the nuts the tea leaves were completely ground up and didn’t have bad mouthfeel. The cake did taste of tea, but it was still a sweet, which made for a weird combination. It wasn’t that sweet, but it tasted good. Out of everything I imagined that the tea cake would be the favorite of men. Or at the very least, it was my favorite. 

“Which box are you going to put your cards in?” Each of the pound cakes tasted good enough to be surprising. There was no doubt that pound cake would be spreading throughout the noble class in no time. Anyone would want more after trying it once. The cake was so much better than any other sugar-based confectionery I’d had that it wasn’t even funny. 

“Myne. Why did you give this recipe to the guildmaster?” The pound cake recipe was a sizable weapon for those wanting to push into noble society. I would have wanted it for myself. 

I glared at Myne and she tilted her head, blinking in confusion. 

“But I gave it to Leise, not the guildmaster.” 

“That’s the same thing as giving it to the geezer and his store.” The pound cake would doubtlessly give the geezer yet more influence within the nobility. Myne, noticing my frustration, frowned with worry. 

“You really don’t like the guildmaster, do you? Why is that?” It hit me that I had never told Myne about my long and not so pleasant history with the guildmaster. 

“He has been picking fights with my family’s store ever since it started growing. The second my father died, that geezer tried to marry my mother so he could take over the store.” 

My father had been killed on his way to do trade with my grand-uncle’s store by bandits looking for money. Since he died close to his city, his corpse was returned to us, but it was so brutalized that my mother ended up bedridden. The only one happy about my mother’s hurt heart was the guildmaster, who saw it as an opportunity to exploit. 

“Wait. L-Like, he would marry her himself?” 

“Yeah. She turned him down and ever since then he’s been bothering us in every way he can. You remember how he held up my applications in the guild and blocked me himself?” Myne and Lutz both grimaced in understanding as they thought back to all the times they had gotten wrapped up in that. He wasn’t just bothering me, he was bothering everyone associated with me. 

“Do you think you could be nice to a guy who greeted you with a full smile after your fiancée died, offering one of his daughters for you to marry? You think I can forgive him for trying to marry my little sister to one of his sons before she reached adulthood? A son older than me?” 

He had messed with my business in countless awful ways, but there wasn’t any point in complaining about that to Myne. I just wanted her to know that the guildmaster was a flat-out messed up person. 

“...Ummm, if you look at it one way, doesn’t that mean he has a very high opinion of the Gilberta Company? He’s definitely more forceful and persistent than he should be, though.” Myne was avoiding the truth in a pretty painfully obvious way, but at least she recognized what a pain in the butt he was. 

“So. Why did you give this recipe to a guy as annoying as the guildmaster?” 

“Well, like I said before, I made the pound cake with Freida at her house because I promised to make sweets with her.” 

“But you signed a contract with her, didn’t you?” 

“Only to give her exclusivity for one year. It’s not that big of a deal.” The fact she added a time limit to the contract was fairly clever on Myne’s part, but who knew if that would be upheld. Knowing that geezer, it wouldn’t be a surprise if his granddaughter did everything she could to keep her monopoly going. 

“...Are you really gonna publicize it in a year?” 

“Uh huh. Sweets shouldn’t be monopolized, and I want a lot of different people making them.” Regardless of her recipe, given how difficult it was to get sugar right now, the guildmaster’s store would keep their monopoly for some time. I didn’t want their store getting ahead of mine too much but it felt like another big gap had just opened up between us. 

“Hey, Myne. You said you know a lot of other recipes, yeah? Would you sell any of those to my store?” Myne looked up at me with a surprised expression, then shook her head. 

“There wouldn’t be any point to selling you the recipes right now. You don’t have the sugar or the chefs for it.” 

“What’re you talking about?” 

“The sweets recipes I know about almost all use sugar. And what’s most important is having a good chef. If you don’t have a chef skilled enough to have worked in a noble’s mansion, you won’t be able to recreate the recipes even if I tell them to you.” 

“A noble’s mansion...?” 

“It’s absolutely required that you have an oven you can work freely with. As far as I know, ovens aren’t that widespread out here. Only bakeries really have them, right?” Almost no homes had personal ovens. They weren’t necessary unless you were fairly rich and quite the gourmand. Both of which, in fact, the guildmaster happened to be. 

“My my. It seems I will need to buy all of Myne’s recipes before Benno can organize what he needs. My chef has quite the love for new recipes.” 

I turned around after hearing a little girl giggling and saw the guildmaster’s granddaughter, her flowery pink hair bundled into tails above both her ears. 

“Good afternoon, Benno. Nice to see you, Lutz.” She looked up at me with defiant eyes just like the geezer’s. I thought my chances for winning would be boosted with the geezer out of the picture, but I couldn’t let my guard down around his granddaughter. She was using every trick in the book to get closer to Myne, and her nose for money was just as sharp as her grandfather’s. I had my guard up around her but Myne just waved with a friendly laugh. They looked to be on such close terms that I felt a sizable burst of anxiety. Myne was going to be eaten alive. 

“Hi Freida. How’s the event going?” 

“Splendidly, thanks to you. Everyone is positively loving the pound cakes. More than a few of them are eagerly awaiting the recipe’s publication in a year.” 

...How many times do I have to tell this idiot she needs to be more on guard?! Will she ever listen?! I had tricked her myself several times already, but that always just ended with her pouting. I was the one testing her and she was so defenseless that it honestly made me worried. She was definitely lacking something inside her that made most people wary towards others. 

But regardless, the two of them looked like two young girls talking as friends. It would reflect poorly on me as an adult to get in their way. Lutz and I had to settle for listening in on the conversation and glaring at Myne before she got wrapped up into one trap or another. 

“Hey, Lutz. How come Myne can keep smiling like that when her life’s on the line and everyone’s tricking her?” 

“...I have no idea. I don’t like Freida that much either.” It was written on Lutz’s face that he didn’t want Freida anywhere near Myne. I couldn’t tell whether the possessive fire in his eyes was him being protective over a friend or a sign that he had already started falling in love. 

Either way, seeing Lutz be so protective of Myne reminded me of all the warm feelings within me that had died with my fiancée years ago. It put me in a hard to describe, sentimental mood. 

“Looks like you’ve got a hard road ahead of you, Lutz. It won’t be easy to keep Myne to yourself.” I ruffled Lutz’s hair. My words must have inspired him somehow, as he nodded with a fire burning in his green eyes. 

“How’s the cake taste, Myne?” said a sizable lady in a friendly tone as she approached Myne and Freida. She was radiating a sweet smell and she was wearing a staff handkerchief. Lutz and I both stiffened up, on guard since we didn’t recognize her, but Myne nonetheless beamed a smile and ran up to her. 

“They taste great, of course! I just had some, but the tea pound cake was super super good. You never cease to impress me, Leise!” 

The woman grinned at Myne’s praise. It sounded like she was the chef working for the guildmaster and making these pound cakes. I took a close look at her, my merchant instincts compelling me to size up the chef who was about to earn the guildmaster a preposterous amount of money, and in turn she looked at me. 

“You’re Benno, then?” 

“Yeah, what of it?” I didn’t know why a chef would know my name and address me in particular. Myne must have done something. I narrowed my eyes and Leise looked me over. 

“...Hmph.” Her judging eyes reminded me of the guildmaster’s, putting me in a bad mood. I had been holding back since it wouldn’t be mature to go all out on a little girl, but an adult like Leise was another story. 

“So you’re the one who locks up Myne’s knowledge and keeps it all to yourself, huh?” 

“Clearly not. She gave the pound cake recipe to you, remember?” 

I would have wanted to keep Myne’s knowledge to myself, but she wasn’t making it easy for me. Not to mention that I was only “locking it up” because a spare word from her was enough to flip the marketplace upside down. Introducing her products to the world bit by bit was safest for everyone. 

“Really, you guys are pushing all the hard stuff about managing Myne to me and reaping the benefits of my hard work yourselves.” 

I was working hard in the shadows to protect Myne: signing magic contracts to carve her relationship with me into stone, gathering information to help her protect herself, making the Plant Paper Guild to hide Myne’s existence, and so on and so on. Her thoughtless nature was forcing a lot of hard work onto me, not the guildmaster. 

“Well, you’re the one who was ripping me off, Mr. Benno,” said Myne with pursed lips. I flicked her on the head. 

“I threw away all the money I ripped off from you for your rinsham on those two magic contracts, y’know?” 

“Bwuh?” 

“...Two magic contracts, you say?” Myne and Freida’s mouths opened wide as they looked up at me with the same expression. I looked down on them and shrugged. 

“Seriously, you don’t know how hard I’m working for you.” 

“I don’t care how hard you’re working,” interjected Leise. “Myne said she’ll only give recipes to people she thinks can recreate them well. You can have the other things, but her recipes are mine.” Even the guildmaster’s chef was declaring war against me. It seemed that everyone involved with him felt compelled to treat me like an enemy. 

“Not a chance. They’re mine.” I wasn’t going to let the guildmaster keep this pound cake all to himself forever. I would get my hands on sugar and search for a skilled chef while the one year contract was in effect. It would be difficult, but getting sugar through my somewhat distant family members shouldn’t be impossible. I glared at Leise while doing calculations in my head. Myne nervously pulled on my sleeve. 

“Mr. Benno, Mr. Benno. It’ll be really hard to find a good enough chef. You’ll need a noble’s help, I think.” 

“I don’t need any help. I just need one with ambition and the ability to work an oven, yah?” They just needed enough skill to work at a noble’s mansion and an opportunity to practice with an oven. They didn’t absolutely have to have worked in a noble’s mansion before. 

“You’re the one who said you would just make books if you couldn’t buy them, right? What would you do if you wanted a good chef as much as good books?” 

“...Train one myself?” 

“Exactly.” I would prepare a kitchen, search the city for a skilled chef, and train them specifically for making sweets. 

“...Let’s do this thing.”