The carriage stopped in front of the Great Cathedral of the Goddess of Harvest.
As soon as Ron stepped down, he saw Mia and Eileen standing at the entrance. It looked like they had been waiting there for quite a while.
"Brother Ron!"
Mia ran all the way to him, puffing her cheeks in dissatisfaction.
"Sister Sylvie said you didn't come back the entire night. Did you sneak off somewhere to fool around?"
"How could that be?" Ron replied as he walked into the cathedral, greeting the other girl. "Long time no see, Eileen."
"Prince Ron." Eileen smiled gently and gave a polite bow.
Compared with before, Eileen's complexion hadn't changed much. She still looked elegant and dignified, perfectly matching every image Ron had of a noble lady.
However, today she seemed a little quieter and more composed.
It was probably related to the recent events.
After all, Ron had ultimately refused Count Hodge's suggestion of "sharing," not to mention the proposed marriage alliance.
On top of that, the Royal Capital Magic Academy and the Royal Capital First Military Academy had begun making their moves these past few days. As the faction most directly affected, the Christine family would certainly not have it easy.
It was only natural that Eileen might face some cold treatment within her family because of it.
Ron wouldn't regret his decision.
At most, he could only give her an apologetic look—nothing more.
Besides, even if he wanted to offer compensation, it wasn't certain she would accept.
"Who knows where you ran off to!" Mia hurried up behind him, still pouting. "A few days ago, I heard you went hunting with Brother Soven and a bunch of noble ladies."
"And someone even saw Brother Soven invite you to the magic club on Queen's Street!"
"But then last night you just disappeared!"
"Tell me the truth! Did you go fool around with Brother Soven?"
"That guy has terrible morals! You can't let him corrupt you!"
"…" Ron rubbed his forehead helplessly.
He couldn't help wondering just how terrible Soven's reputation was.
Even his own sister viewed him like this—let alone everyone else.
"It's hard to explain right now. You'll understand later," Ron said vaguely. Explaining the spatial transmission passage would take far too much effort.
Mia narrowed her eyes suspiciously.
"Later? What, when some noble lady shows up at the door with a big belly?"
"Brother Ron, you've changed!"
Ron couldn't help laughing. He reached out and flicked her on the head.
"What kind of nonsense are you thinking about?"
"Ow…" Mia rubbed her head with a wrinkled face. Then she turned to Eileen for help. "Eileen~ say something for me~"
"Hmm…" Eileen thought for a moment before looking at Ron helplessly.
"If it's Prince Ron, I don't think he would lie about something like that. At least in this regard, I believe His Highness can be trusted."
"Huh??"
Mia stared wide-eyed.
She had thought Eileen was an ally—but the girl had suddenly switched sides.
Then Mia frowned, sensing something suspicious. She leaned closer to Eileen and stared at her carefully.
"Eileen… where were you last night?"
Knock.
Ron flicked Mia's head again.
He and Eileen exchanged helpless smiles before Ron asked,
"You didn't come here just to interrogate me, did you? Since when do you manage your brother's private life?"
"Hmph."
Mia followed Ron into the convent courtyard and sat down on a stone bench. She leaned limply over the cold stone table.
"Of course I came for something…"
"Let's hear it."
"Our hotpot restaurant has run into a problem."
"Oh? Is it an internal management issue, or a problem with external expansion?"
"Management is fine. It's mainly expansion…" Mia sighed, looking a little annoyed. "After discussing with Lyle, besides opening three new stores in the Royal Capital, we also began investigating other cities across the Empire."
"We planned to start with the Northern Region and the Eastern Region, then expand into the Southern Region, and finally move into the Western Region."
"The Eastern Region has the most prosperous economy, so it should accept this kind of new dining style easily. Meanwhile, the Northern Region has a cold climate, so hotpot and barbecue should be very popular there."
"After that, we'd enter the average-economy Southern Region and the relatively underdeveloped Western Region."
"But after our investigation, we discovered that local hotpot restaurants had already opened in the Northern Region!"
Ron was surprised.
"That fast?"
"Exactly… we didn't expect it either. And they opened in more than a dozen cities at the same time!" Mia said angrily.
"After investigating further, we discovered that behind these hotpot restaurants are the Northern Duke and the Grain and Medicine Trade Alliance."
"They must have seen the opportunity in the Royal Capital but realized they couldn't compete with us here, so they secretly copied the idea on their own territory in the north."
"I'm so mad!"
Ron roughly understood what had happened, but his expression remained calm.
"Brother Ron, don't you have any thoughts about this?"
"Relax. Just proceed according to your own pace," Ron said, shaking his head. "This kind of normal commercial competition is nothing unusual. It simply depends on who is willing to invest more time, energy, and money."
"Just continue with your original plan. If they try any dirty tricks, go act cute in front of Father."
"We don't need favoritism—just fair competition. If that's guaranteed, I have plenty of ways to let us overtake them even if we start later."
Seeing Ron's confident expression, Mia looked skeptical.
"Really?"
"You'll see when the time comes." Ron shrugged. "The simplest method is just burning money."
"After opening, we lower prices and run big promotions. We'll steal the customers they've worked so hard to cultivate."
"Then we use one of my top-tier seasonings to make the food taste even better and keep those customers."
"When the discount promotions end, some customers may go back to their hotpot restaurants. But once they taste the difference and realize the flavor is much worse, they'll return to us."
"At that point, we spread the story everywhere so everyone knows our hotpot tastes the best, completely crushing them in terms of food quality."
"And if the prices on both sides are about the same, which restaurant do you think customers will choose?"
"By then, they'll either burn money to lower prices or keep cutting operating costs."
"If they lower prices, we're not afraid. To be honest, I have more money than I can spend."
"As for cutting costs, we can just let them do it. They'll become the low-end hotpot brand while helping us promote hotpot in general."
"Eventually, everyone will know that if they want authentic, high-quality hotpot, they have to come to us."
Ron's long explanation left Mia and Eileen stunned.
To be honest, he didn't actually have any particularly sophisticated business strategy.
But thanks to the seasonings produced by the Spice Pine Seed, their hotpot already had a flavor strong enough to crush all competitors.
In a situation like this, as long as the opponent didn't resort to underhanded tricks—
Victory was almost guaranteed.