Chapter 506: What Do You Suggest?
Thinking about it for a moment, the young Spirit Initiate replied, "High-Rank Mortal Grade 2, if I’m not mistaken."
"Precisely," Talia nodded, "Which means that the average quality of the ingredients had to at least be that high as well, probably higher considering there are no high-Grade Spirit Chefs in our South-Central Region capable of using lower-Grade ingredients to make higher-Grade dishes."
Thinking she had made her point obvious, yet seeing no small number of confused looks around her, Talia had the urge to sigh again, but this time she really couldn’t blame these youths, at least not entirely.
As some of the most talented members of the younger generation and descendants of powerful noble houses, it was quite likely that none of these kids had ever cooked anything for themselves before.
In fact, the only reason Talia, a Crown Princess herself, understood so much about the quality of food and its preparation was because she constantly had to deal with such issues for her merchant/intelligence organization. She too had never needed to cook a meal for herself, but Talia had picked up more than a little knowledge about sugar and other raw ingredients over the years.
However, explaining all this to these completely ignorant children was too much effort in Talia’s opinion, so she just waved the problem away, "It’s not important for you to understand the details. What is important is that in order to produce a dessert that sweet and in such a massive quantity, an enormous amount of extremely high-Grade sugar would be needed."
"How much, exactly?" Zara asked curiously, speaking up for the rest of the puzzled youths.
Doing some quick calculations in her head, Talia replied, "I’d estimate 5 to 6 small barrels of High Tier 2 sugar."
Gasps were heard all around when this figure came out.
Talia’s estimate was actually fairly accurate, as a ’small barrel’ of sugar was equivalent to about 25 kg, while Lucas had used roughly 140 kg of sugar to make the 5,000 servings of ice cream cake for the banquet.
The reason the youth of the Darr Kingdom found this so shocking, however, was because they at least understood how expensive a small barrel of High Tier 2 sugar was.
Even though the Darr Kingdom was a large producer, the amount of High-Rank Tier 2 Mortal Grade sugar that was refined each year was quite small, so the idea of consuming 6 small barrels worth of it in a single evening, in a single dish no-less, was ludicrous, even to the rich, spoiled noble youths sitting in this carriage.
Talia had an even better idea of how expensive 6 small barrels of High Tier 2 sugar was as she was literally the biggest sugar merchant in the Darr Kingdom, 325 Gold per small barrel domestically, 500 when exported to the Kore Sovereignty or Black Tiger Kingdom.
As for how much that sugar then retailed for in a foreign country, another 40 or 50% markup was probably not unreasonable, and that was in one of the Large-Sized Nations which had the power and influence to negotiate a ’good’ price from the Darr Kingdom.
If the Rockwell Kingdom had wanted to then important that amount of high-quality sugar from one of those Large-Sized Nations, the cost could easily double again.
In other words, Talia estimated that in order to make that extravagant dessert with imported sugar, Marquess Balfour would have had to pay around 10,000 Gold.
And that was only possible if all the other ingredients were of equivalent quality, if they were of lower Tier, and the sweetener needed to be of Peak Tier 2 quality...
After having met her in person, Talia’s first impression of Celestina was a serious yet kind woman, but she highly doubted the latter would spend 20,000 Gold on a single dish for her Disciple’s 16th birthday party.
At that cost, it would literally have been cheaper to just eat the equivalent weight of cake in Gold Coins.
That was beyond absurd.
Unless she was completely mistaken, and Celestina was a woman who enjoyed thoroughly spoiling her Disciples and Descendants, Talia concluded that there was only one possibility, the Rockwell Kingdom had to have found a way to produce their own very-high quality sugar.
It was no secret among the nobles of the South-Central Region that the profit margin the Darr Kingdom made on its sugar was big, but few actually knew just how big it was.
Talia, again, was intimately familiar with this cost breakdown, so she knew that while using 6 small barrels of imported High-Rank Tier 2 Mortal Grade sugar on a single dish was ludicrous, using the same amount of equivalent quality sugar you produced locally actually wasn’t a problem at all, possibly costing less than 100 Gold Coins.
100 vs 20,000 Gold Coins, a 200 times differential.
This was why the idea of the Rockwell Kingdom being able to produce its own sugar was so worrisome.
"So," Landon, who was again trying to recover from this shocking development, summed up the problem, "We need to figure out if the Rockwells really have developed their own method of sugar production, and how much of it they can produce."
"Precisely," Talia nodded, "If it’s just a small-scale thing, insufficient to supply local demand, then we probably have nothing to worry about."
"But," Zara, who as an alchemist knew a thing or two about growing crops and harvesting valuable resources, "If they are able to start exporting to the other nations in the South-Central Region, and to the neighbouring Large-Sized Kingdoms..."
Nothing more needed to be said as everyone in the carriage understood the implications.
The Rockwell Kingdom couldn’t possibly dislodge their entire sugar industry, but they didn’t have to, just seizing 10% of the Darr Kingdom’s market share, or forcing them to decrease their sales prices by 10% would be a huge blow to their nation, probably no less than seizing a couple of major cities from them in an open war.
What’s worse, if the Rockwell Kingdom went all out to undercut their sugar exports, it could destabilize the entire Darr Kingdom’s economy, while they probably wouldn’t suffer at all as they had other sources of revenue.
Put another way, the Rockwell Kingdom could afford to lose money on selling sugar, but the Darr Kingdom couldn’t. Sure, the Rockwells would lose out on a profitable business opportunity, but if they could cripple their long-time rival nation in exchange, that would definitely be worth it.
"We have to do something about this!" Someone declared forcefully, a sentiment that gained almost unanimous approval.
Almost.
"Oh?" Talia snickered, leaning back into her chair and letting out a tired sigh, "Like what? What exactly do you suggest we do, about a speculation we haven’t confirmed, in a hostile foreign nation that we have extremely limited formal trade or political relations with?"