111. Hunt Festival Begins
111. Hunt Festival Begins
I sat alone on my dormitory bed, staring out the window.
The goddamn sunny sun was rising, beginning to brightly illuminate my room where the curtains hadn't been drawn at all.
In the end, the time had come.
The Hunting Festival had begun.
"I did my best."
Two weeks... it was a period that could be called long or short, depending on how you looked at it.
I did what I could before the Hunting Festival began.
From now on, as always, I had no choice but to watch what unfolded and deal with it.
"I was planning to just laze around and enjoy the Hunting Festival, so why is it turning out like this..?"
This was all because of that damned Buckingham and that damned sword.
I was going to work Buckingham to the bone until he begged for death.
And I needed to hurry up and hand that sword, which kept buzzing and vibrating in the corner, over to a necromancer or something.
I just hoped that no major incident would occur... and that even if one did break out, I could wrap it up neatly within my own boundaries, just like I had so far.
.
.
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.
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The Hunting Festival proceeded over two days.
On the first day, each class presented what they had prepared, and from the second day onward, the full-scale Hunting Festival began.
In other words, today was the day Woodville and the Class 5 students would show everyone the bread-baking they had practiced so hard for.
As per Woodville's suggestion, those who hadn't made the bread and pastries were wearing uniforms procured from somewhere, to make it easier to distinguish between those serving and those controlling the crowd.
The male students wore tuxedos, and the females wore black and white dresses reminiscent of maid outfits.
No one disliked them since they were all comfortable to move around in, without any wires inside.
Woodville stood confidently in front of the Class 5 students who had come out early, wearing their uniforms to open the tea house.
Behind her, the students who had helped bake bread with Dorothy Woodville wore exhausted expressions, but if they were like this on just the first day, what were they going to do?
I was even wearing strange clothes, for crying out loud.
I should feed them some fatigue recovery potions and make them work more.
"It was quite difficult, but thanks to everyone working so hard, we somehow finished on time."
"Oh oh, it looks decent."
Behind the students, there were piles of bread and pastries, the initial stock for sale.
Before, there had only been lumps of charcoal, but now they had an appetizing-looking brown color.
"Heh heh... it's not just for show on the outside. Here, here."
Woodville handed out small pieces of bread and pastries on a plate to the students.
"Here... what do you think!! The quantity is limited so I can't give you a lot, but there's enough for everyone to have a little taste."
I picked one up and tried it; it was quite plausible.
In fact, at the point where it wasn't burnt or undercooked from prepared dough that just needed baking, wasn't it stranger if it didn't taste good?
"It's delicious, but I've never been to Ben's Bakery so I don't know if it tastes like theirs."
But I wasn't confident enough to say this was the taste you'd experience at Ben's Bakery.
"That sort of thing doesn't matter! The masses are beings who consume information, after all..! Whether what we prepared is actually the same as eating directly at Ben's Bakery or not isn't important! What's important is that this bread was made from dough supplied by Ben's Bakery!"
This guy was talking scathingly about it like it was nothing.
"Besides, there aren't many people in this academy who have actually been to Ben's Bakery. And those who have gone to Ben's Bakery have no particular reason to come here anyway. Now then, Class 5 will begin operations now!!"
The students began frantically carrying the products.
———————————
Class 5's tea house wafted an appetite-stimulating aroma all along the hallway.
The flyers scattered everywhere, the large signboard visible the moment you entered the floor, and the scent of butter filling the hallway naturally drew people in.
The lecture hall, once filled with desks and chairs, had been transformed with an interior reminiscent of the cafe on the academy's first floor.
Black tea, pastries, bread, and more began to be served one after another to the seated students.
"It came together quite nicely, didn't it?"
"Decorating the inside could be done just by ordering the golems... the props were bought by Woodville."
Emy and Liber, who had decided to enjoy the festival comfortably today, were also in the lecture hall together.
Since they were in the same class, they could just come in without waiting in line.
However, sitting down was impossible.
"Atlas!! Over here, over here!!!"
Nina, the short, pointy-eared half-elf, was waving her hand wildly.
Fortunately, perhaps because Perda was stuck in Class 3, she had come alone.
It looked like she wanted me to come to her spot and serve her or something.
"Oh, I'll just eat quickly and go. Don't expect me to serve customers."
"Wearing clothes like that and not serving is dereliction of duty. I came alone, so at least talk to me."
"The main branch does not offer such a service."
Saying a unified atmosphere was important, Woodville had brought these personally, and I was wearing them because I couldn't just throw them away, but I didn't really like clothes like this.
At my height, wearing suits like this only gave off a somewhat awkward vibe, so I wasn't fond of them.
If you're short, no matter how good your proportions are, you tend to avoid clothes like these.
The bigger they are, the more advantageous they look, after all.
"A tuxedo...."
"Wh-why??"
Beside me, Liber was staring at me intently.
Liber's eyes, scanning me from head to toe as if trying to memorize every detail, were intense.
"No... I was just thinking, so this is what you look like in a tuxedo."
The atmosphere was heavy.
"A...tlas.... It suits you well...."
"Thanks."
I heard Lucia's voice from behind and answered automatically.
"Whoa... why are you carrying something like that around here..!"
But the moment Lucia's voice was heard, murmuring sounds came from the surroundings as well.
Wondering what was going on, I turned my head and Lucia was dressed not in casual clothes, but in attire that would let her swing a sword at any moment.
"Are you going to train somewhere?"
"... I forgot the hunting is tomorrow..."
So that was the reason.
She must have been nervous and forgot.
"Are you just going to carry that around? You can just go back to the dorm and change."
"... I have to carry it around all day tomorrow anyway... I'm going to consider it training to get used to it..."
As Lucia stood there dejected, it started getting noisy outside again.
"Whoa, it's Frigia..."
"Hey, hey, move aside for her!!"
Shara was just walking with her subordinates, but the people waiting in front of her scrambled to get out of her way.
Her subordinates didn't even threaten those blocking her path.
It was just that the group of them moving together looked like a single massive carnivore, so people gave way on their own.
Having broken through the entire long line, Shara stood in the center of the class and folded her arms.
Seeing that, Dorothy smirked and approached Shara.
"Welcome to Class 5, Miss Frigia."
"...."
Shara glanced once at me, standing in the back, then turned her gaze back to Dorothy.
"You have a customer here and you're not even going to guide me to a seat?"
"Of course not. I'll guide you to your seat, so please don't lose your way."
I was dumbfounded at the idea of losing her way when everything was wide open.
Frigia sat down softly at the seat Dorothy guided her to and ordered several items highlighted on the menu.
They were the menus Dorothy had underlined, saying they were representative of Ben's Bakery.
Shara, who had been waiting for her empty cup to be filled with hot black tea, subtly raised her eyes.
"...!"
Then, her eyes met mine again.
Shara's face flushed red, and she closed her eyes once before starting to focus on what she had to do now.
—————————————-
As soon as Shara Frigia finished gathering information on Class 5, she immediately took her leave.
'I thought my heart was going to stop.'
Shara Frigia clutched her pounding chest as she left Class 5.
The cause was Atlas, who had been wearing a tuxedo.
She had seen him wearing a neat jacket at the academy a few times, but this was the first time she'd seen Atlas like this, with his hair swept back like a gentleman and fully styled.
Would he dress up like that when he attended Frigia's party?
'I'll have to prepare the most beautiful dress.'
Shara had never given much thought to her own height, but recently, she had started thinking her current height was really good.
Because she had realized that her height, being slightly shorter than Atlas, didn't prick his strong pride.
As she was imagining dancing proudly with Atlas dressed in a tuxedo at the party, the moment she arrived at Class 4, Shara's mind snapped back to reality.
'No, no. I need to pull myself together... now's not the time for thoughts like this.'
She'd seen something nice, so now it was time to work properly.
If she defeated Dorothy Woodville through a direct approach, Atlas would praise her.
He wasn't someone stingy with things like that.
That was why she had gone in person to inspect the atmosphere and various things.
Based on the information she had gathered so far, she began evaluating Class 5's tea house.
'It was nothing special.'
It was a tea house full of hollow formalities and vanity, just as one would expect from Woodville, lacking real substance.
The bread and pastries only had plausible shapes and colors; compared to the actual products of Ben's Bakery, their quality was inferior.
They had used good tea leaves, but they had steeped them so clumsily that much of the taste and aroma was killed.
If she were to criticize scathingly, there was plenty she wanted to say.
They had somehow managed to bake the dough, but seeing it, it seemed they knew roughly how to bake but hadn't figured out the details for each individual item.
But that definitely didn't mean it wouldn't sell.
It was a place like a gangjeong, fancy and glossy on the outside but hollow inside, yet even so, this tea house would do well.
Even at the academy, most of the students were people who had never set foot in the capital even once.
Among them, those who had been to Ben's Bakery, which always had crowds at its door, would be even fewer.
Shara was confident that almost no one would notice this sense of incongruity.
'Anyway, once people get swept up in the festival atmosphere, they just want to eat whatever's around... if you say it's bread and pastries from a bakery that's hard to even eat at in the capital, wallets will open naturally.'
At most, they might feel a bit wistful about the clumsy tea-steeping skills with the good tea leaves.
In a business run among students, putting in that much effort naturally meant Woodville's Class 5 would have crowds flocking to them.
"But still, I will win."
Though a formidable opponent, Shara was confident.
Confident that, at the very least, she could beat Woodville.
Because, after all, there was a gap in class between Woodville and Frigia that was hard to bridge by effort alone.