Even though I barely slept a couple of hours before Antoninus and Lucillus escorted me to Happy Bakery, I feel like I might have slept a full night in the arms of my big-chested future wife. Truly, I must have been among the peaks of the bosom Goddess in my dreams to get this much rest.

Well, I am certainly not going to complain about it.

"What are you doing today?" Antoninus asks sneakily. "Can I have some of that chocolate, by the way?"

"I need to show Clodia just how much more efficient Happy Bakery will be now that we have a mixer. She was skeptical. And don't misunderstand me; I think she had all the right to—well, almost all," I say with a shrug. "Oh, and about the chocolate, sure. Today, we'll be going over the recipe with Flaminia. I intend to incorporate as many new recipes to Happy Bakery as possible."

"So, are you really challenging The Three Roses?" Antoninus asks, eager to know.

I look at the piece of information he could have only overheard while spying on me, and I sigh before nodding. "Yes. I promised Clodia one year of work. Even if I decided to leave afterward, I would still want to leave behind a heritage. It's high time the Elves step up their game."

"How my cousin is not going to kick you up a tree for saying that is simply exceptional," Lucillus says. "I have never seen her tolerate someone as much as she tolerates you."

"Your cousin knows better," I wink at the gruff [Guard]. "I'm working with her. Whether she likes my ways or not, she will benefit."

"If Aunt Marcella is putting money on it, I don't actually doubt it. But Joey, you are assuming Clodia will behave as rationally as her mother. That's why I say I'm surprised you still have all your teeth."

"I wouldn't mind losing a couple to her, then. Let's leave it at that."

…

"Chef."

Both Tiberius and Quintus stand straighter than arrows, both looking sharp in their black uniforms. Since I inducted them into baking, they have shown subtle changes in the way they relate to me.

Most of Quintus's anger has turned into energy, and Tiberius has turned his own resignation to focus.

I am conflicted.

On the one hand, I love what the job is doing to them—I also love how their commitment to it is causing some of the military postures to resurface. Yeah. They treat me as their officer, which, while pretty ridiculous, also makes working with them much easier. On the other hand, though, there's a small barrier given by the fact that I'm their boss. The more they work with me, the more they know the difference in what we can do; that has resulted in a weird reverence. It almost looks like they think I can squeeze masterpieces out of my ears while I sleep.

"Tiberius, would you mind asking Clodia to come here? Quintus, get me the ingredients for the mixer."

"On it," Quintus says, walking toward the storage room while Tiberius walks to Clodia's office.

As I get closer to the massive Mana-powered bronze mixer, I spot Raissa and Flaminia and wave to them.

"Girls!"

"Chef!" They wave back, with Flaminia adding a bit of cheekiness and giving me the military salute.

I get to the mixer and make sure there's no dirt, dust, or anything wrong with it.

[Advanced Mana Sense]

I take a look at the enchantments, which look pristine too. The materials I used for it were not of the highest quality. It's fine since it's just a prototype. But if we want to scale it up, I'll need Clodia to cough up more gold and redo everything from scratch.

I should have asked the book about enchantments: if there are any in the Cantrips. I mean, 529 Cantrips… there must be some enchantment mixed up in that.

I think.

I knock on the giant bowl, making it clang like a church bell.

I exhale.

Man, I'm really curious to check out more Cantrips... listen, the bread part of baking is getting really boring, ok? It's not that I'd rather do magic than baking; it's just that it's new. Magic is the new shiny toy.

Baking? I know baking.

I can do as much baking as I need, really. And considering that I have to teach everything myself, it's… not ideal. Yeah. Let's go with that.

Stolen story; please report.

"Joey."

I turn to face the muscled boss of mine.

"Good evening, boss."

"We need to talk. Later."

"I agree. But I wanted to show you exactly how much bread we can get out in a day with a few bad boys like this one. Let's say we had five; we would probably need more ovens."

"Do you have an estimate?" Clodia asks, whipping out a piece of paper and an enchanted pen.

"Considering the size and the strength of this things, and how much dough I tested it with, I'd say we can make, give or take, eight-hundred pounds of bread in thirty minutes to an hour."

Clodia's pen slips from her hand and almost falls to the floor as I tell her my rough estimate.

"S-say that again," she frowns.

"Semolina flour, durum, takes slightly longer to form the proper gluten nets. The more bread you make at once, the longer it takes. With a thing this big, it might take an hour, if not more. But yeah, I would say that with the current speed, it should take an hour. With a more complex design, perhaps less. But that would require cooling runes."

"How much Mana?"

"I have absolutely no idea," I say, scratching my head. "I am not even sure how much Mana the enchantment can take at once. I'd say fifteen minutes, based on my instincts. Per charge. A charge doesn't take too much work from me. I can probably just stand around and give it some energy when it needs it."

Clodia scribbles down some notes and nods, suddenly very interested.

"How much bread does your average girl make per hour?"

Clodia looks at me with what looks like embarrassment.

"It depends on whether they have no skills, one skill, or multiple. Let’s say, twenty to forty on average—make it thirty. But they have to rest. Flaminia can probably do more than a hundred in an hour, but she rarely just does that."

"Well, I've seen the bread they made by hand,” I say, drumming my index fingers on my uniform. “It's not perfect. We want the same consistency for all our batches. When it comes to something that is mass-produced, consistency is key. This prototype, and the proper ones I'll design, will be able to handle even twelve-hundred pounds per batch. How much bread do we sell?"

Clodia looks around before speaking.

"Joey, do you mind coming to my office for a moment?"

…

"What's the problem?" I ask once I'm in her office.

"That thing you built— can it really mix that much bread?"

I give her a nod and see Clodia plopping herself into her chair.

"You… you are the only one who can build that thing, correct?"

"Yeah?"

"And it really doesn't take too much Mana?"

"I don't think so?"

Clodia starts rubbing her face.

"Happy Bakery has more than a hundred employees. But…"

I see the woman shaking her head repeatedly and writing down some numbers.

"If you can really make a thousand pounds of dough per hour per thing, that's sixty-thousand pounds in twelve hours of work. If we ran the dough non-stop…"

She looks at the notes repeatedly, and I see despair on her face.

"Clodia? What's up?"

"Joey… I… these numbers… I am not a [Merchant]. These quantities are a logistical nightmare.”

“So what? We can ramp up slowly. We don’t need to make a hundred thousand pounds of bread tomorrow. We can work things out as they come, you know? Let’s make this work first, and then we move on to the rest. How much bread does Happy Bakery make at the moment?”

“Around fifteen thousand pounds on a good day. But we haven’t been able to make more than a thousand a day of your Altamura Bread yet. It takes longer than normal bread.”

“Yeah, yeah. But what’s the problem?”

Clodia raises her eyes to the ceiling and closes them for a second, shaking her head.

“If we kept our normal production on top of what you might be able to do tonight, we would encounter problems regarding the ovens. We don’t have enough ovens or people to man them. We would be doubling our production overnight, almost.”

“So?”

“Happy Bakery can’t handle those numbers at the moment. We’d need to buy up more space and expand. That’s… it would cost us tens of thousands. Not to mention the flour itself, rotten roots. We would need to buy large fields in the Green Stretches. Prime soil too.”

“Yes, but the prices would also come down precipitously after that. I am pretty sure that once we have the tools and the space, I can make do with fifty of your [Bakers] that I can personally train to be hyper-efficient. They would need to move the dough in order to have it rise once, then move it onto massive trays for the second leavening. But that’s all they’d need to do all day. And that’s way less labor-intensive than, say, kneading by hand. I mean, especially considering you only employ women.”

Clodia glares at me.

“What? Not all the girls have those big guns of yours, you know? I wish, man, but it’s simply not the case. If they have to shuffle the bread around, it just comes down to the tools.”

Clodia takes out a flask of what I hope is water and starts drinking from it, pensive.

“Do you even know how we do deliveries? How would we sell all that bread? We would need caravans. We would fill entire warehouses for daily delivery.”

“Don’t you have some upgraded version of the baggy thingies? Like, backpacks?”

“Bags of holding? Upgrades? Like, chests of holding?” I see Clodia choke at that.

“Yeah?”

“How much do you think a bag of holding costs?”

“A couple of golds?” I ask.

Clodia facepalms.

“Tens of golds for the cheapest. A good one costs as much as a house, Joey. And I’m not sure there are enough on sale in the whole Amorium for what you are thinking.”

“Let’s open shops around Amorium,” I shrug. “Buy up some buildings up North too.”

Clodia reclines back in her chair, massaging her temples.

“I—I will need to talk to my mother, it seems. Rotten roots. She’s going to love this—fuck, she’s going to love you. You are going to get me a [Merchant] class if we go down this road.”

“Is that bad?”

“My mother always wanted that. If I tell her that I’m going to marry you and give her grandchildren, she might give me her entire fortune on the spot.”

All Clodia is saying would normally cheer someone up. But the way she’s speaking makes it very clear that she’s not enjoying such a prospect.

“Tell you what, why don’t we work out a couple of batches with the mixer and slowly ramp up? Let’s make literally two batches today and see how they come out. If all is good and it takes an hour per batch, we stop there, and I can help you run the numbers.”

Clodia sighs and nods.

“Damn Humans. Go first—I need a moment. Go put the ingredients in that thing of yours. I need to think.”

“Sure. I’ll see you in a minute.”

Clodia doesn’t say anything as I leave her office.