The next day, Lily and Junior went to all their suppliers in Three Creeks Village and made sure their standing orders were okay!

  Normally, Lilyburgers #1 (the cart at the mine) sold about fifty-five sets per day on average, and they kept supplies on hand to make sixty-five sets per day.

  Lilyburgers #2, the Three Creeks Village City Square Location, usually sold about a hundred and ten sets, and they kept supplies on hand for a hundred and thirty sets.

  So Becky had settled into the rhythm of just picking up enough to keep inventory at the same level, which was, on average, enough beef, buns, and cheese for a hundred and sixty-five sets each day.

  And all the Three Creeks Village suppliers were fine!

  In fact, Lily made a deal with the suppliers to buy two hundred burgers’ worth of ingredients each day for the rest of the week, until the Stone Pit Village calmed down.

  That would give them an extra thirty-five burgers’ worth of ingredients for Stone Pit Village.

  And, Lily made an executive decision!

  A boss lady decision!

  The priority was gonna be…

  The stone quarry workers!

  They needed their energy!

  And, they were a captive market.

  From a business lady perspective, that was a good thing!

  Guaranteed sales!

  But, if you thought about it from the workers’ perspective…

  They were stuck!

  The people in the village could go home and cook their own food if Lilyburgers #4 ran out of stock.

  But if someone forgot their packed lunch at work, and Lilyburgers #3 sold out…

  They were out of luck!

  They’d have to skip lunch!

  And quarrying stone was hard work!

  Lily could tell: all of those stone blocks were bigger than she was!

  And she wasn’t as heavy as a stone!

  So she decided to send Abel and Brandon to the quarry each morning with enough ingredients for all one hundred and one workers, including the supervisor.

  And whatever they didn’t use, they would bring back and use for the dinner shift at Lilyburgers #4!

  Junior was impressed!

  He was deeply moved!

  He also had come to the conclusion that Lilyburgers #3 should be prioritized, to exploit the captive market.

  But he was just following what he learned in business school!

  Lily…

  Lily was thinking about the customers!

  He even caught her praying for the safety of all the workers there!

  Lily really cared!

  And in Stone Pit Village, they went to the butcher, the baker, and the cheesemonger, but they couldn’t negotiate more supplies.

  They were limited to two hundred burgers per day, plus what they brought over from Three Creeks Village!

  Still, that was wildly successful.

  Lily had never dreamed she would sell over two hundred and thirty sets a day in Stone Pit.

  And yet…

  For the next three days…

  They sold out every day!

  The cart averaged ninety full sets!

  And then every single day, Lilyburgers #4 sold out at dinner time!

  But, on Friday, the other shoe finally dropped.

  Bad news!

  Ingredient prices were going up again.

  But, last time, they had only gone up a little bit.

  A mere fifty percent increase!

  Now, that was a lot, but it happened sometimes, out on the edge of the Kingdom.

  Transportation problems, production problems, and the fact that the villages up in the mountains where they were, were the lowest priority.

  If the bigger cities needed more stuff, they got it first!

  And if there wasn’t more left for the villages…

  Well, it was pickles and potatoes for them…

  The villages got by.

  They were hardy mountain folk!

  They weren’t afraid to go foraging and rustle up some grub!

  But Lily was trying to run a restaurant business here!

  And this price increase was bad.

  Really bad!

  Prices quadrupled.

  Four times what they had been!

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  For beef, bread, and cheese, prices quadrupled, and although Lily had made deals with her suppliers, that was about the quantity, not the price.

  Also, they had been verbal agreements!

  Her ghosts, and even Junior, had urged her to sign contracts…

  But, that wouldn’t have been fair to the butchers, bakers, and cheesemongers!

  If she had, they would be stuck taking a loss right now.

  They might even go out of business!

  Lily did not want to put someone she worked with out of business to protect her own profits!

  Lily wanted everyone to be happy!

  Even so…

  When she heard the news at the butcher, she did the Scream pose.

  For a good solid minute.

  Quadruple prices!

  A Lilyburger with cheese sold for one dollar.

  It was made up of buns, a beef patty, a slice of cheese, ketchup, and a slice of pickle.

  This wasn’t a secret formula someone would want to steal!

  It was obvious!

  The ketchup and the pickle she had plenty of, and the cost for those in each burger was only two cents.

  The beef, on the other hand, had been fifteen cents.

  Now it was sixty cents!

  Buns had been ten cents, and now they were forty cents!

  Cheese was normally two cents per slice, and now it was eight cents!

  A Lilyburger with cheese used to cost twenty-nine cents to make…

  Now it cost a dollar and ten cents!

  The material costs had blown up out of control!

  And, worse…

  These were the prices for everyone!

  It was a production problem!

  The whole Kingdom was in a pinch!

  The profits per Lilyburger with cheese had gone from sixty-one cents, all the way down to negative ten cents!

  She was going to lose money on each burger sold!

  Junior looked at the silently screaming girl grimly.

  They would have to raise prices.

  There was no other way.

  If they sold Lilyburgers at a loss…

  That was no way to run a business!

  Invisibly, the ghosts were, ahem, losing their minds.

  “How could this happen?!”

  “This is outrageous!”

  “Quadruple prices?! I was expecting prices to go back down after the last price increase! What is going on in this Kingdom?!”

  Lily and her crew weren’t the only ones freaking out about the prices.

  The other regular customers were also upset!

  But…

  For them, they would just have to tighten their belts.

  Cheese was a luxury.

  Beef was nice, but there was deer up in them thar hills.

  Some of the stone workers could take a day off and go hunting…

  Bread was a sticking point.

  Bread was made from flour!

  Flour is a white powder made from grinding up wheat!

  Wheat…

  Took time to grow!

  Grassy Hill was the nearest place that grew a lot of wheat…

  Relatively speaking.

  But those farmers would want to sell at a high price!

  But the mountain folk could deal with this, too.

  They had potatoes!

  Potatoes grew really well, even in the mountain soil!

  Venison and potatoes…

  That was what everyone was thinking about for the rest of summer!

  And then, the mayor of Stone Pit Village approached!

  He had a serious frown on his face!

  “Junior, come with me. The mayors are having a meeting to discuss the supply problems…”

  Henry wanted to include his son in this important meeting as part of his training to be the next mayor!

  But…

  “Father, sorry, but I have work today.”

  Junior had a prior commitment!

  He had a job!

  It was almost time to get started at Lilyburgers #4!

  “Lily.”

  Junior turned to his little boss.

  She looked like she was on the verge of tears!

  “Lily, can you go to the meeting with my father and find out what’s going on? Even though I went to business school, you know so much more than me…”

  It’s not Junior’s fault.

  He just wasn’t being haunted by three S-Rank Legendary SSR businessmen from another world’s ghosts!

  (His Piety Points weren’t high enough, too…)

  The mayor narrowed his eyes.

  His son…

  Well, it was good to know one’s limits.

  And to honor one’s prior commitments.

  It was true, he had promised to work today!

  And then, there was Miss Lily.

  She sniffed, rubbed her eyes, and put on a brave business smile.

  She put her business thinking hat on!

  “Henry, would it be okay if I joined the meeting in Junior’s place?”

  “Hmmm… Yes, as a pillar of the community, and so on and so forth, it would be a good idea if you attended… Just, let Junior know the details later today.”

  The mayor…

  Was super concerned!

  He and his wife had been eating Lilyburgers twice a day, every day, for the past week. Ever since it opened!

  He had even started putting on a little bit of weight! A healthy amount!

  With the price increases, if Lilyburgers closed…

  He really would go hungry!

  Venison is tricky to cook so it tastes good!

  There were a hundred ways to prepare potatoes and he was poor at all of them!

  Actually, this was a bigger crisis than he had originally thought.

  “Let’s go, Miss Lily!”

  The meeting was going to take place at the town hall in Stone Pit village.

  All the other mayors had already arrived by the time he and his restaurateur arrived, trailed by three ghosts.

  Mr. Cat was taking the day off at home!

  He had been doing that all week, now that everyone knew about his diet.

  He had been playing with Lily’s Papa!

  There was a stick with a bit of string tied to it, and he always had a blast hunting it and chasing it down…

  Lily’s Papa told Lily’s Mama it was like cat fishing!

  …

  Cat fishing!

  Okay, okay…

  Anyway, Mr. Cat was not attending the meeting.

  The mayor walked with long steps and Lily hurried after him, followed by three ghosts who were still freaking out about margins and price changes and so on.

  They got inside, and Lily said hi to George and the two other mayors, Julius and Marcus.

  They looked at her with interest, the little girl whom they had heard so much about, but quickly moved on.

  Yesterday, they were thinking of ways to entice her to open restaurants in their own villages…

  Today might be the end of Lilyburgers altogether.

  Up in heaven, the God of Literature groaned as the Gods of Ranching and Farming looked down with concern.

  And the God of Tricks and Trials giggled.