Leave a comment

Author’s Note:

I know this is a bit late of a notice, but we are heading right towards the end of the first “volume.” Unfortunately, this means the “fun, loose, everyday life” that the protagonist enjoys will be cut out of the story. I might post it as a separate side story, but I’m just trying to finish this part of the story for now, so do forgive me.

This has gotten long. The third chapter starts here.

This is Luneville, a city located south of the capital city of Rondoville Kingdom.

East of here is Pineaville, a city that once went by the name of Pineadist when it was under the control of the Acradist Kingdom. As a result of its geographical position, it served as an important military stronghold to protect from attacks from the East. With time, the fortified city grew larger around fort Balta.

The king before the last had taken over the Pinea area, and the last king made the Acradist Kingdom’s first princess his wife, making the need for a stronghold unnecessary. As a result, the trading route that once ran through Luneville shifted to other cities, and the city began shifting towards an agricultural economy unbefitting of its high city walls.

Despite being an agricultural city, the area doesn’t produce anything special, and two of the largest Thief Guilds decided it was a good chance to fight for power over the city.

Naturally, people began leaving the city. The people who couldn’t due to either financial or family reasons worked in the fields while fearing the conflict between guilds… but, this all happened a while before I arrived.

Soon after, Ector was given rule over the low priority, and borderline troublesome city. Frank, a young, accomplished man was also promoted to the role of guildmaster at the age of 27. With the efforts of these two men, the thief guilds “Salle of Copper” and the “Lotus Marvel” were driven out of the city. Now, Luneville has transformed into a city where almost anyone can start their day at noon and leisurely make their way throughout the day.

The next person’s eye the city would catch was mine: Illya Shultz. For someone who had spent most of their life wandering from place to place, it was the perfect place to make my dreams come true. And anyone who gets in the way of me and my dreams will not be forgiven!

I’ll show them hell!

…Jokes and stories aside, I am currently sitting face-to-face with Frank in the reception room. A tired Haku is sleeping soundly on a blanket beside me.

“A lodging city?” I ask, echoing what Frank said.

Frank, who sits on the other sofa, nods.

“I’m sure you’ve noticed that the number of people coming to Luneville has increased, right?”
“Well… I suppose… “

I also know that a majority of them come mainly to try the food that the guild office makes. The influx of people has also led to an increase of merchants and craftsmen trying to take advantage of the sheer number of visitors.

“Compared to the neighboring cities, Luneville has been recognized as a rather safe and peaceful city, but the capital knows that too. Apparently plans to expand Luneville was brought up during the Cabinet’s discussion about the national budget.”

I quickly scan through the documents that Frank hands me, and indeed, plans to redevelop Luneville as a lodging city were mentioned. On the last page in those documents, the seal of the King of Rondoville was even carefully stamped onto its surface.

The plan included outfitting the city with organized blocks as well as proposals to create new highways. Some of the documents even treated the current highway as the “old one” while describing a new road that would pass through Luneville.

“Is Ector at the Capital?”
“Yeah… he was complaining about this and that about noble’s having bad taste, so I assume so. He sent the plans to us in advance.”

They were intending to use the guy to take care of a basically useless city, so I’m guessing some of the other noble’s aren’t exactly happy about an upstart taking all this attention. Maybe some of the nobles are having an allergic reaction to just how unsophisticated our Ector is. My condolences.

“And did Ector say anything about this plan?”
“No, I haven’t exactly heard about how he feels about all of this. But if he’s willing to send it back here, I’m sure he isn’t completely against the idea. He’s the kind of guy to rip the papers to pieces on the spot if he really didn’t like it.”
“I… I see.”

I didn’t really expect that…

“We usually have to try and get by with whatever the country gives us, but we might actually have to give an estimate for how much we need this time. I think he wants us to estimate how much it would cost to expand lodgings as a commission to the guild.”
“The guild, huh? …We don’t really even know what scale of a lodging city they want to make from these plans.”
“What exactly do you mean by scale?”
“I mean the quality of customers we want to serve.”

I don’t know about high quality inns, but if they’re going to be building poor quality lodgings where people are forced to sleep in huddles, then I would rather not be on board with this plan.

“If the number of people increases, it will usually lead to worse public order. If we invite poor quality customers to stay in Luneville, the main attraction of Luneville, its peaceful environment, will be gone.”
“I see… However, most of the people who come here will be guild members anyways. I don’t think it would cost too much for lodging here.”
“So you’re saying we can proceed with the assumption that the quality of our customers won’t change much, right?”

Frank took a moment to think, then nodded.

“I would like to prevent the current situation from continuing.”
“…Yeah, I was thinking the same thing.”

Recently, almost all the inns in the city have been fully booked. When it’s especially bad, some people don’t even bother checking the inns, coming to the guild directly to find lodging. We’ve had to lend rooms to travelers and peddlers who simply couldn’t find a place to stay for the night. We’ve even made requests to locals to ask if there are people willing to lend a room to a traveler.

Honestly, for marketing, which focuses solely on having the supply to meet the demand, this might as well be the worst case scenario. It’s not like we do selective demarketing.

“Gathering the landowners of different areas and talking about organizing the city skyline is Frank’s job, right? We just need to calculate the price of constructing the actual inns as well as the infrastructure. Is that correct?”
“Yeah. I notified Caron as well, so he’ll probably bring some more people from the manufacturing guild.”

Carpenters fall under manufacturing in terms of guilds. Building construction, unlike normal commissions to the guild, each party’s (or maybe more accurately, each construction firm) representatives gather, and have a meeting about the commissions given to the guild. Then, the commissions are given pricing estimates, and the firm with the cheapest price is given responsibility for completing the job.

Whether a firm competes for a job is up to themselves, but there is a common agreement that larger firms should not take jobs that smaller companies could handle.

It’s possible for clients to directly contact construction firms as well, but similar to other guilds, this prevents firms from ranking up within the Manufacturing Guild, losing them the chance to receive greater merits for their contributions. For this reason, unless there are special circumstances, deals outside of the guild are usually avoided.

Plus, if there is a firm that you would prefer for the job, it isn’t hard to just specify that on the commission. However, because that usually leads to direct negotiation between the client and the firm, it usually leads to a loss for whoever is in a disadvantageous position in that power dynamic.