Chapter 54
"............Please stop glancing over here."
"Oh? But I think Tina-chan would be fine, too. She's short, but she has a nice figure... I think she'd be perfect for the job."
Perhaps annoyed at having her short stature pointed out, Tina snorted, turned her gaze away from Takako, and declared, "I'm a shorty, so I'll pass!"
For the past month, Tina had been staying at a church beyond the residential district north of Valman. She spent her days guiding lost lambs (as she put it) and occasionally joined Kagami's party to delve into dungeons.
"Tina-tina's out. I have something even more important for you to do than being a bunny girl."
"Setting Tina-tina aside... what is it you want me to do?"
"Be a cult leader."
"Huh? Sorry, I couldn't hear you. What did you say I should do?"
"Be a cult leader."
After Kagami made the declaration with a perfectly serious expression, Tina put her head in her hands and pondered for a moment, murmuring, "A cult leader... So, um..."
"You want me... to start a religion?"
"That's exactly right, O Great Leader."
"I refuse."
Watching Tina flatly refuse, Kagami wore an expression of disbelief. "Is that... supposed to be a joke?" he muttered, abruptly rising from his seat.
"I'm serious! Also, why do I have to be a cult leader?"
"You see, Tina will save the hearts of people who've lost at the casino so many times they've turned completely black and clouded. Then she'll sell them good-luck charms and get them coming back to the casino. That's the plan."
Ignoring the stunned expressions of everyone listening, Kagami proposed using this as their sales pitch: "Ever since joining Tina-san's religion, my whole world has changed. Now I go to the casino every day. I even won the lottery!" He continued listing religious jargon after that.
In short, Kagami's devious plan was simply to make money by taking advantage of the church they'd built inside the casino.
"You want me, a servant of God, to use God to make money!?"
"You idiot, Tina! You're an idiot, Tina! We're saving up money for the ultimate goal of beating the crap out of God. So there's nothing strange about using the God we're going to beat up to make a profit! Because God is the enemy! Just like a monster!"
"No... Um, doesn't that deny the very reason I exist?"
"That's not true."
After a great deal of back-and-forth, Tina agreed to work at the church inside the casino on the condition that it would carry out its ordinary duties as a church while displaying good-luck accessories affiliated with the casino.
"So, Master, what should I do?"
Next, Rex stood up from his seat at the counter, walked over to Kagami, and asked him this.
"Hmm... Nipple-kun, could you stop calling me 'Master' already?"
"Then you stop calling me Nipple."
Ever since the attack on Salmaria a month ago, Rex had been calling Kagami his master. He wanted to learn various things at Kagami's side so he could change the way he'd lived until then.
Rex had spent his life bound by his role as a Hero, with the goal of defeating the Demon King. He genuinely admired Kagami's free way of life, unbound by his role, and had decided to follow Kagami's example in order to discover what he truly wanted to do of his own free will. Perhaps as proof of that resolve, Rex had taken to calling Kagami his master entirely on his own, even though Kagami wasn't actually training him.
A Hero asking a Villager for guidance was something that would normally be unthinkable. Kagami was glad to see Rex willingly break down his own preconceptions and try to move forward, so aside from being called his master, he didn't make a fuss about it and joined Rex in doing various things.
"Rex... As your master, I command you: Stop calling me that! You've graduated!"
"Don't get the wrong idea. I call you my master because I respect you. We're equals. I just decided to call you my master and observe the way you live."
"Huh? Isn't that kind of messed up?"
"That's why I help you out with all sorts of things in return! Gathering 10,000 gold is for my sake, too—so I can learn the truth behind the words of that demon, Estellera."
"All right, then you're in charge of cleaning the toilets."
"Wait, Master."
For the next dozen or so minutes, Kagami and Rex argued over how to divide up the work. As she watched the two bicker right in front of her, Alice felt happy that she, a demon, had naturally become part of their group. She kept smiling as she watched Kagami and Rex's ugly squabble.
"Then Alice can clean the toilets."
"Hold on, Kagami-san."
At that final decision, Alice put on a serious expression and called for a stop.
This time, Tina, Kururu, and Alice joined Kagami and Rex, and the group began bickering loudly. Watching them from the counter, Takako and Menou smiled fondly.
"By the way, Kagami-chan. There's a basic problem here: will we have enough staff on our own?"
Takako asked Kagami, who was still caught up in the discussion about how to divide up the work. Kagami paused as if thinking it over, then answered with a straight face:
"Not even close."
That was his reply.
Takako had easily guessed that was what he would say.
Kagami had started with total assets of 5,547 gold. He'd spent 847 of it on construction and preparations. Over the past month, he'd completed quests while killing monsters like crazy, collecting around 300 gold. His current total assets stood at about 5,000 gold. Their immediate goal was to gather the remaining 5,000 within the next eleven months.
According to Kagami, "If we'd had two years, I might've been able to scrape it together by brute force." He regretted not having started saving money in earnest sooner.
At any rate, there was no way to gather 5,000 gold by the end of the year through ordinary means, so Kagami had proposed building a casino.
His idea was based on the money-grubbing notion that a casino would make the Guild, adventurers, and, of course, nobles with money to burn pour their cash into it.
Since they were willing to do anything to make money, the casino was the main attraction, but the establishment also included a restaurant, bar, tavern, church, large public bath, and a wide range of other facilities, making it a substantial entertainment complex.
But, frankly, they didn't have enough people to run such a large casino.
Valman was a vast city facing the sea. It was large enough to draw in traders, numerous mercenary bands and adventurers, and people from all the Guilds, making it a bustling place.
To build a casino that could target everyone who gathered in such a vast city, as well as the kingdom's nobles, they needed a fairly large establishment. In the end, they bought part of an unused harbor in Valman and the surrounding land, then built the casino facing the sea. It had grown so large that it took up what must have been one-twentieth of the entire city.
"I thought we could manage somehow if we just put our backs into it."
"But we can't, which is why you're panicking now, aren't you? You should've started recruiting staff much earlier. What have you been doing this whole past month?"
"Well, um... I went into dungeons... and, uh... beat up monsters."
As a fellow business owner, Takako made Kagami sit in seiza and began lecturing him. Faced with a situation that seemed far too difficult to overcome, everyone except Kagami let out a deep sigh.