Casual Heroing, Rosy Interlude

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Camilla is CRAY CRAY?! 🤪🤪🤪

3/4 chapters this week

Next chapter comes out tomorrow!

Rosy Interlude – Camilla, Flavia, and Amelia

Irene pulled on the handle of the door that led to the meeting room in the Three Roses or, as Camilla preferred to call it, the War Room. The door was completely covered with the bakery’s carved motifs filled with bright shades of red, blue, and yellow. The pigments were further enhanced by enchantments that donated them a soft, shedding glow.

As she entered, she saw the three sisters sitting at a round table. Motifs of roses spread across it in various colors and sizes, and the older sisters silently sipped tea while the youngest didn’t move in the slightest.

Irene took her seat quietly, noting how Camilla had her index fingers placed in front of their mouth, deep in thought. The small, blonde Elf did this when she needed to think about something very important. For all Amelia and Flavia, Camilla’s older sisters, loved to egg on her on any other occasion, they knew better than to disturb her in such a moment. Irene had done that once, not thinking there would be any consequence to it—and, for the World’s Tree roots, she had been sorely wrong.

All business at the Three Roses started in Camilla’s mind. Amelia was the hands-on [Chef] who took care of the kitchen, and Flavia was the [Manager] who ran numbers and took care of supplies. But Camilla was the genius who wrestled every other bakery out of the foot-traffic business. If you wanted to have a refreshing dessert while visiting Amorium or spend time with fellow women while sipping sugary drinks and eating rose-shaped cakes, the Three Roses was the place to be.

Irene did not fully understand why the disgustingly sweet cakes and pastries sold that well, but they did. They did and kept doing better and better. They were the better-known bakery in Amorium—if Clodia didn’t have her people so focused on bread and custom orders, the Three Roses might have been thrice its current size.

But for all Camilla wanted nothing more than to poach and absorb Clodia’s business, the Elven brute with muscles of steel made bread with consistency and reliability that they did not possess. And now, Clodia’s new bread was starting to take Amorium by storm. By Flavia’s estimate, Happy Bakery had recently doubled their bread deliveries and would soon do much better, being only constrained by their lack of supplies. And they found out that Clodia had rented thousands of golds worth of crop fields for the tougher varieties of grain. Even if they wanted to do the same, [Farmers] able to take such an order weren’t many, and it would now cost them much, much more than the prices Clodia managed to fetch.

The only consolation was that Happy Bakery had apparently fired one of their best [Bakers], Violante, someone who was renowned for being in the high 20s with her class. Even at the Three Roses, where quality came before quantity, she would have been a first-class employee.

Only the people present in this room had a higher level than Violante.

But that begged the question: What was it that Camilla wanted to discuss exactly?

And the said question didn’t have to wait long for an answer.

“Fire Violante,” Camilla declared, slowly reclining into her padded armchair and unlacing her hands.

“I fucking knew it!” Amelia slammed her fist on the table, letting her tea double over. “You are a fucking idiot! Why now, Camilla?! Couldn’t you think about this before we paid her three fucking months’worth of salary?!”

“It is indeed a terrible financial move, sister,” Flavia, the calmest one, sighed.

Irene just watched in silence. It was an honor for her to be included in these discussions, and she knew not to overstep unless absolutely needed.

“I want the Human,” Camilla said with a smile that betrayed her bristling anger. “Clodia has tricked me. Violante is sloppy and arrogant.”

“Camilla, you know that they could just be rumors about—”

Flavia was cut off by a teacup flying over her head.

“I. Want. The. Human,” Camilla trembled in her seat. “He is the fucking genius. Dump Violante into a fucking pit. Do you not trust my judgment, Flavia? Do you not?”

Amelia put her head between her hands as she screamed in frustration. “Why do we always have to do this?! Can’t you fucking tell before time?!”

“Because I don’t see the fucking future, you molded-brain moron,” Camilla snarled.

Irene, while all of this took place, simply sipped from one of the two cups of tea that hadn’t been thrown yet. These cups, by the way, had been enchanted not to break because the meetings between the sisters were, for the lack of a better word, very spirited. In fact, if someone had just written a transcript of their conversation without including the beautiful looks of the three, as well as their innate femininity, it would have sounded like a fight between [Sailors].

“Why now, then?” Flavia asked with a sigh.

“I’ve overheard Violante drop the word Worm five times in a row,” Camilla said while looking at the ceiling. “How could I have missed it?”

“That she’s speciesist?” Flavia asked, confused.

“That she got fired because she couldn’t coexist with the Human, Flavia. Put your head out of the fucking numbers and start looking at the people!!! The Human is worth much more than the fucking idiot wegot!”

Amelia, the tallest sister, a beauty even among the very doted Elven women, seemed close to taking her chair and breaking it on Camilla’s head.

“You already tried to recruit the Human?” Flavia asked her younger sister.

“Shut up,” Camilla snarled at her, looking over some notes for the day. She kept a detailed journal of her work, what she did, and everything else. She was extremely meticulous in tracking her advancement in class, skills, and business. While not as great as Flavia in that aspect, she was akin to a [Strategist], while her older sister was more of an [Accountant].

“He’s making my skills go crazy, Flavia. Fucking crazy. He shrugged my fucking level 30 capstone skill just like that! I want him. I need him to work for us.”

“So, you have gone there and gotten a rejection, haven’t you? You fucking mean Goblin!”

Camilla, while not the most beautiful among the three, was the sweetest-looking and the one with the biggest eyes. Irene knew by now that Amelia and Flavia called her a Goblin because of how unnaturally she behaved compared to her looks.

“I will take a knife to both of your rotten eyes, sister,” Camilla said with a sick smile. “If you think you could have done better, you could have gotten out of Clodia’s muscled arms and put some fucking work into discovering what they are doing with their bread!”

Irene actually shimmied with her chair away from the table little by little, expecting more tea to fly through the air by now. Touching on the subject of Amelia’s love life meant that Camilla had gone into the conversation with a nothing-to-lose attitude.

“Say that again,” Amelia reclined in her chair and said with a plain tone.

That put everyone else in the room on edge.

Physical fighting was nothing new in the War Room of the Three Roses.

“Please, Camilla,” Flavia begged, “let’s not be childish. Violante said the Human brought some barrels and scooched some beer from them. We will arrange to mix some bread and beer together to see what happens. It’s not too costly to replicate such an experiment.”

“I don’t trust that failed prostitute,” Camilla slammed her fist on the table, frustrated. “I want the Human. He is the one who’s worth the money. Clodia’s mother thinks so as well. Can we outbid her for him? How much can we offer him for an exclusive contract?”

“You want to give that Human a contract?!” Amelia seemed on the verge of losing her mind. “Violante said he cooks with Pigfeed!”

“And that is why we should fucking look into Pigfeed!” Camilla shouted back. “Take anything that idiot says and investigate it as if our very lives depended on it! Clodia is going to make so much money she might try to buy out or rent more buildings to expand her stupid fucking bakery! The Human clearly gave her the recipe for the new bread and knows much more than that muscle-brained fuck! Violante said that he won a cake contest against Flaminia!”

“Clodia’s investments have already passed beyond ten thousand golds. If you do the math, that means you would have to promise half of that as a bonus to the Human and half of whatever profit we make from whatever else he knows. That’s your math, Camilla. My [Intuition for Numbers] is telling me so. And even then, I’m no [Merchant]. I can’t force him to [Name a Price].”

“There must be something we can do…” Camilla said wearily. “He is the key, Flavia. Whatever we need to get him must be done.”

“Is the old bag of gold really getting back in business?” Amelia suddenly asked after a few deep breaths. “Like, is she getting involved personally?”

Irene understood that Amelia wasn’t scared of Clodia’s mother just as a business competitor.

“Only her money for now,” Flavia sighed, taking a long sip of her tea. “With how much money Happy is poised to make, I can see her getting more and more involved.”

“I bet the Valerii are crying over that,” Amelia murmured.

Marcella Iulia Aureamanus was the most dangerous business individual in Amorium, if not the whole South of the continent. Rumors had it that she had barely thrown a penny to her daughter when she had opened her bakery. Clodia had to work her way up with only the slightest help from her mother. The Valerii had tried putting a wrench into Marcella’s business, only to see entire streams of supplies get acquired by her and prices increasefor all nobility. No one – as in literally no one – messed with the Aureamanus. It was a secret exactly how much of Amorium she owned, including the Green Stretches, but it was enough that whoever the current [Mayor] was would be kissing her ass every other day with a cup of tea in hand.

“We need an ‘in’ with the Human,” Camilla massaged her forehead. “We need something. Irene, do you have any idea what we could use?”

The question was asked off-handedly, but the answer almost had Camilla double-over.

“He said he would take me out for lunch,” Irene smiled. “I’m sure he’ll be back.”