"Sprite—and what's that?"
Seeing that Jhin wore a complicated expression and was slow to answer, Megumin stepped forward, snatched the cup from his hand, and gulped down the rest of the drink inside in two swallows. Since Kokkoro already knew full well that the two of them had a thing going, there was no need to be coy about a trifle like this.
Smacking her little lips a couple of times, she raised an eyebrow, somewhat surprised: "It feels like... another kind of drink similar to cola?"
"I suppose you could put it that way." Jhin took the cup back from Megumin and shot her a startled glance, baffled at how she could be so bold—sharing a cup with him right in front of Kokkoro without the slightest reservation: "How do you find the taste?"
"Mm, it's all right, but personally I prefer drinking cola."
"Then I'll try swapping in two other ingredients."
"First pour out all of that... Sprite in here. Just treat it as a cola substitute and let me satisfy my craving for now."
"Mm."
After this, Jhin added the rainbow hen's egg and the spring-water syrup separately into the mix for crafting, but what he ended up with was still Sprite. Just as he was agonizing over how to make cola, Pecorine, having finished filling in the illustrated guide, walked out of the room. Seeing him sitting before several cups of drinks with a knitted brow, she took the initiative to ask what was wrong.
After grasping the current problem, she suggested that Jhin try adding the maple syrup collected from the tricolor sugar-maple tree. So Jhin added the three kinds of maple syrup—wine-red, blue, and gold—separately as flavoring ingredients.
The results were most gratifying: the drink with wine-red maple syrup added was successfully made into cola, while the one with gold maple syrup became orange-flavored sparkling water, and the blue maple syrup one turned into cherry-flavored cola—which contorted Jhin's face when he tasted it.
Driven by curiosity, Jhin mixed all three special ingredients together, then likewise increased the amounts of the other three raw materials and the wine-red maple syrup and put them into a large iron pot for crafting.
Whether or not it was because the sugar content was too high, what finally flowed out of the iron faucet was a thick cola concentrate. Based on his experiments, this concentrate, when diluted with ice water, could produce a whole ton of cola—at the very least, a one-cubic-meter section had already been specially partitioned off in Jhin's storage space, filled to the brim with cola.
Megumin drank drink after drink until she was waterlogged, grinning so hard that the corners of her mouth went crooked.
With the cola crafting complete, this long-distance adventure of the Gourmet Edifice came to a satisfying close, because they were in a hurry to head back to promote the cola, on top of needing to start preparing to dig up information on [What Heads Toward Death].
After obtaining everyone else's consent, Jhin drew out Kokkoro's void and cast [Blessing of Light] on everyone to boost their speed, hurrying back to Landosol.
Back in the guild cabin they hadn't seen in ages, Kyaru rolled up her sleeves and got ready to clean the place along with the other girls. Jhin had meant to help too, but she shooed him off with, "Don't you still have things to take care of? Stop getting in the way here, hurry up and go."
"Thanks, Kyaru. I'll treat you to something tasty later."
"It's not like I'm doing this so you'll treat me!"
"Got it, my cleanliness-loving Lady Kyaru."
"I told you not to call me with that kind of title!"
After his daily round of teasing Kyaru, Jhin left the house. The first thing he had to do was still promoting the cola, and along the way deliver the letter Megumin needed sent back to the Adventurers' Guild.
As for how to promote the cola, Jhin had long since had a plan in mind. The restaurant "Wild Eats" was a rather good partner candidate—the dishes on offer there were themselves mostly meat-based cuisine, and the drinks usually provided and paired with them were likewise focused on cutting grease and being refreshing.
Not to mention the restaurant was quite famous within the royal capital and had a good relationship with the Gourmet Edifice. As an initial promotional location, it was excellent in every respect.
Pushing open the heavy wooden door of "Wild Eats," Jhin greeted the owner behind the stove: "Yo, boss, if you're not busy in a bit, mind if I run something by you?"
"No problem. Find an empty seat and wait." The owner's way of speaking was as terse as ever.
Once he'd finished up, an unlit cigar dangling from his mouth, he came over and sat down across from Jhin: "What is it? Out with it."
"Snap!" Jhin snapped his fingers, manipulating the fire element to light the cigar for him.
"Hey... what are you doing."
"Boss, no need to stub out the smoke. When it's just you and me, you can still have a smoke."
"Pff~ all right then, go on with your business."
"Naturally. First, give this drink a try."
The pitch-black, bubbling liquid in the glass bottle made the owner furrow his brow: "Is this that weird drink from before?"
"As expected of the boss—saw through it in an instant. But this one's the improved version; the taste definitely won't be as awful as the original."
Hearing this, the owner pulled out the stopper without hesitation and took a sip of cola, a flicker of surprise crossing his eyes: "Very fitting as a drink in my shop."
"That's right. This time I came specifically to talk to you about promotion."
"No problem."
"I haven't even mentioned the promotion fee yet."
"A ninety-ten split works. I only want one-tenth of the sales."
"All right. Talking with you is so refreshing. Tomorrow I'll send over a batch of cola for a trial run. Remember, this drink is best paired with ice cubes."
"Understood."
Jhin took several more bottles of cola from his coat, placed them on the table, and pushed them toward the owner: "Consider these a gift for you."
After concluding this plain and unadorned business-partnership negotiation, he ran off to the Adventurers' Guild to exchange the monster materials he'd gathered during this period into Eris, then sent off Megumin's letter, and afterward found a staff member to post a commission.
The content of the commission was a special monster he described based on his impression of [What Heads Toward Death], saying he wanted to find this kind of monster. The reward offered was very high—even higher than the reward for subjugating a boss-class monster—which, among information-type commissions, was a truly astonishing sum.
Jhin planned that, once the cola and sanitary pads began reaping large amounts of Eris, he would gradually raise the commission reward, to see whether, under the magic of money, any adventurers would find some trace left behind by the virus [What Heads Toward Death].
To prevent it from coming to find him, he deliberately disguised himself after sending off the letter before returning to the Adventurers' Guild to post the commission, and he also put the contact address out in front of Landosol's city gate.
Having done all this, Jhin returned to the guild cabin. On the lawn in front of the door, Pecorine had already set up a barbecue grill and was making food. Seeing his figure appear on the path, Megumin stood up and waved at him excitedly: "Hey~ hurry over, the skewers are just about done!"
"Coming!"
No sooner had he sat down beside Kokkoro than Kyaru asked him: "How did things go?"
"Very smoothly. The cola promotion can go ahead tomorrow. Oh, right, I used part of the guild's funds to post a commission. If you all see a high-reward information commission, don't take it."
"What kind of special ingredient are you looking for, that you'd even need to post a commission?"
"It's got nothing to do with ingredients. Anyway, just don't worry about it."
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