“I… I see. My pardons, then.”
“That’s okay. Just be careful around them. But I do like your point of view here…”
Rimuru didn’t seem overly concerned about the issue, unlike Mjöllmile. I’d say he’s a little skewed, too, he thought as he waited for Rimuru to continue.
“There is one vacant section of town. Perhaps we could turn it into an opera house, huh? Maybe that’d encourage people to become playwrights, and that’d lead to some new forms of entertainment. And an arena, huh…?”
He looked at Mjöllmile, and the merchant could almost see the gears turning behind his smile. Great, he thought. He’s got some grandiose plan in mind again. Why does he always have to look like that? He’s good-looking enough as long as he keeps his mouth shut…
“Mollie!”
He shuddered. The moment had come. “Y-yes?”
“You know a lot about battle tournaments, right?” Rimuru stood up and then sat next to Mjöllmile, voice as ingratiating as possible as he practically whispered in his ear. “How ’bout we hold one, then? Can you arrange that for me?”
“N-now, wait just a minute! That’s a lot to put on my plate out of—”
“We can build the arena for you. For now, I just need you to handle the ‘show’ aspect!”
Mjöllmile’s objections fell on deaf ears. There was no point resisting him any longer.
“There’s just no beating you, is there, Rimuru? Every single time. All right. I promise I’ll do my best for you!”
He showed a bit of a smile now. Honestly, Mjöllmile didn’t hate this. In fact, being assigned such a vital mission was like music to his ears. What did he need to put on a show like that? He’d have to both research it and put his thoughts into action. Never in his dreams did he ever think he’d be entrusted with such a large-scale event.
Well, I’m in deep now! I… I’ll never get this chance again!
He didn’t even care if he messed this up. Based on all the business partners he ever had, he knew this man, Rimuru, wasn’t the type to get angry over one failure or the other. He brought ideas into fruition fast, and he could be trusted—the most important thing to any merchant. If he said he’d build an arena, he’d build an arena—as unbelievable as it was to Mjöllmile, he could give his monsters any orders he wanted, and they’d be able to pull it off for him.
He may not look it too often, but Rimuru’s a demon lord. As long as his plans are sound, it’d be simple for him to assemble everything he needed. And now he’s relying on me…
“Good to hear,” Rimuru replied blithely as Mjöllmile’s emotions ran wild. “And I know we’re trying to get lots of world leaders, but make sure regular people can join in the fun, too, okay? You can’t make a profit if it’s not open to the general public, after all. I saw that in Englesia.”
“The general public?”
“Yeah. I’m going to build a coliseum capable of holding fifty thousand people or so. Like I said, there’s some vacant space to work with. If we build that fast-food stand we were talking about nearby, that ought to goose our profits, won’t it? We could have people go around selling food, and besides, the more foot traffic passing by, the more customers we’ll get, right? What do you think, Mollie?”
Rimuru was picturing entertainment for the masses—and taking the masses’ money. A fifty-thousand-seat coliseum would compare to Englesia’s pretty favorably—in fact, it’d be five times that arena’s size. It showed how serious Rimuru was about this.
“You see, we can have some standing-room sections that we’ll let people into at no charge. Meanwhile, we can direct rich people to the reserved seats and charge them appropriately. And then we’ll have royal boxes for the nobility with more money than sense. We’ll also need seats for special guests and invitees and things. I’d like you to figure out the ratios we need for all these seat types, if we want to make as much money as possible.”
Once again, he was leaving it all to Mjöllmile with a smile. Not even Englesia’s arena allowed the farmer and citizen classes to watch arena events for free. Mjöllmile could see the logic to it.
“I see… I thought fifty thousand was too high a number to aim for, but if that’s what you’re picturing…”
“Right. It’s important that we attract people’s interest with this stuff. And if we pack the standing-room sections, won’t that make a reserved seat look more attractive if you can afford it?”
“I bet it would. Better to reserve a spot instead of vying for space you don’t know will be available. That’ll naturally make the seats more valuable.”
This was a completely different approach from the arena in Englesia’s capital, which was chiefly a diversion for the upper classes. The aim here was to build buzz and pack as many people in as possible. It sounded deeply compelling to Mjöllmile. If admission was free, farmers and field laborers would come over to see the show when work didn’t occupy them—and when they spread the word about what they saw, that’d attract the middle classes from neighboring nations.
Besides, having tens of thousands of visitors would no doubt fill up the inns along the highways to Tempest—it’d be kind of neat to build the “fast food” establishments Rimuru described at stops along the way. When they arrived, of course, they’d need somewhere to stay. And if it could help advertise their food, their lodging, their baths, and so on, the arena wouldn’t even need to make a profit. The business all these fans would bring to town could more than make up for it.
“I gotta hand it to you, Rimuru. You had this all planned out from the start, didn’t you…?”
“Huh?! Um, yeah, kind of? Of course, yes!”
“You have
