The Royal Military Academy's Impostor Owns a Dungeon [BL] novel Chapter 1118

Chapter 1118: Equivalent Exchange

"A balance scale?" Ollie immediately perked up.

The reaction was so quick that everyone could practically see the businessman hidden somewhere beneath all that blonde hair awaken on the spot.

Clearly he needed to hear about this.

"Ah, yes, brother!" Luca nodded. "I think people used things like this back when bartering was common. You’d add or remove items until both sides reached equilibrium, and then they’d treat that as equivalent exchange."

"What?"

Ollie’s expression immediately turned concerned.

"But brother, if it’s based on weight, wouldn’t that mean a giant boulder could outweigh a rare crystal?"

The blonde looked genuinely distressed by the possibility.

"Wouldn’t that be unfair?"

"Hmm, from what I know, it wasn’t just weight. I believe they agreed upon a standardized set of stone weights to determine relative value."

It was something that had been mentioned during one of his lessons back in Tesseris, though not in enough detail for him to understand the finer points.

In fact, when scales were mentioned in Tesseris, the first thing that usually came to mind wasn’t historical commerce at all, but rather that famous Esper who was supposedly capable of weighing lies.

It was one of the strangest abilities he’d ever heard of.

Apparently, while it wasn’t particularly useful for fighting dungeon monsters, the Esper was highly sought after because investigations, negotiations, and business dealings tended to become remarkably honest under his watch.

How much of that was actually true, however, Lucas couldn’t say.

And even now, he wasn’t entirely convinced this scale would be fair either.

As such, he tried to learn a little more about it.

Unfortunately, despite his efforts, he came away nearly empty-handed.

"Well, I asked D-29 about that earlier." Luca tilted his head slightly. "Apparently it doesn’t only calculate equilibrium through weight. There’s something about overall rarity too."

"Rarity?"

"Mm."

Luca looked slightly wistful.

"Unfortunately, that section of the manual is still restricted, so D-29 couldn’t explain exactly what counts as rarity."

Which, naturally, only made him more interested.

"So I thought I’d test different things and see what happens."

Well, to everyone listening, that truly sounded exactly like something Luca would do.

"But how are we even supposed to know what we’re trading for, brother?"

"Hmm?"

The perplexed mop looked around and saw a big fat nothing.

"Oh! I was actually about to look into that."

Golden eyes wandered toward the towering fixture as if looking for something in particular.

"D-29, it should be somewhere around here, right?"

"Yes, Host!"

The manager of managers immediately chimed in, sounding as professional as it could manage, though the rapidly flashing prompts around it made the effort somewhat questionable.

"Please proceed closer to the scanner!"

"The scanner?"

Several people frowned.

Xavier was already preparing to stop Luca so he could properly inspect said scanner first.

Unfortunately, he underestimated how quickly his wife could move whenever curiosity was involved.

Before the Prince could even say a word, Luca had already hurried forward.

Then—

A bright light descended and completely engulfed him.

"?!"

For a brief moment, Xavier’s heart nearly stopped.

He took a step forward immediately, only to halt when a prompt suddenly appeared in front of them.

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