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

Chapter 1093: The First Jar

O...kay?

Not exactly the most comforting thing that could come out of nowhere.

More importantly, the aggressively blinking prompt made it painfully obvious that they weren’t being given much of a choice in the matter either.

But wasn’t this unfair?

Would they even get a reasonable price out of this?

How could proper vendors just sell raw materials like this? While it was probably possible to sell frames, even those would have to be protected while in transport!

How could he just sell it in all its naked glory like this?

Wouldn’t that result in terrible losses? And just how many useful byproducts would they miss out on if they simply sold the capped frames as is?!

The newly troubled beekeeper looked deeply conflicted.

Still, after several painful seconds of internal struggle, Luca managed to regain control of himself.

The cadet carefully attempted to set down the frame in his hands.

Only for another prompt to immediately appear.

This time in the shape of a giant warning triangle with an enormous exclamation mark.

"..."

"..."

"It’s really hell-bent on making us sell something," Xavier finally voiced out exactly what the dungeon owner had been thinking.

"Wait..."

A determined look suddenly crossed Luca’s face. After all, he really had intentions to sell things anyway, because who wouldn’t want to make more CP!

But as a small business owner (not), he should still have some pride in their products!

How could he live with himself if he were to succumb to pressure just because he’d been bamboozled!

"Maybe something like this could work."

Completely ignoring the increasingly aggressive prompts hovering around him, Luca quickly opened his inventory instead and began pulling out several differently sized glass jars before carefully arranging them along the ledge attached to the hive.

"Bottles?" Xavier asked curiously as he watched his wife suddenly scuttle around with growing purpose.

"I’m not entirely sure if this’ll work," Luca admitted honestly while lining the containers up neatly, "but theoretically, it should."

The little beekeeper looked increasingly thoughtful as he worked.

"At first I was only planning to use one jar size for everything," he continued. "But if Level One vending allows us to sell five different products..."

His golden eyes brightened slightly.

"Then shouldn’t we experiment a bit?"

Xavier silently observed him, honestly unsure where this experiment was even heading.

After all, even now, the Imperial Crown Prince still didn’t fully understand what exactly they were supposed to do with all the byproducts from these honeybees that his beloved was so excited about.

What was so good about honey in the first place?

Meanwhile, Luca was already planning ahead enthusiastically.

"First, we should use the honey from the filled autoflow hives," he explained while moving toward one of the systems. "Not only are the combs already capped, but the bees themselves probably can’t comfortably fit back inside anymore anyway."

Then, with visible excitement, the little beekeeper carefully cranked one of the frames open.

"Husband, look!"

Luca’s eyes sparkled instantly.

"This’ll become our very first jar!"

The golden liquid began flowing from the spout.

It initially moved at a snail’s pace, but even so, it looked absolutely divine.

The honey poured out thick and radiant like liquid sunlight itself, gleaming brilliantly beneath the light as the rich scent immediately spread through the area.

Luca stared intently as the jar gradually filled before his eyes.

"If preserved properly," he added excitedly, "honey can even last indefinitely!"

The little chipmunk looked so genuinely happy that Xavier’s gaze softened almost immediately.

"Then we should keep it," the Imperial Prince said calmly. "I think you’d want to show everyone the first jar."

Luca blinked in surprise before looking toward his husband.

Then his entire face brightened.

"Yes!"

The cadet looked delighted by the suggestion.

"I think everyone would really be happy seeing our first jar!"

Xavier completely agreed and privately felt that even if the others weren’t happy about it, they had better not let a single dissatisfied expression slip in front of his hard-working little chipmunk.

Moreover, the overly devoted husband had already decided that the dungeon itself had better allow Luca to keep that first jar.

Otherwise, he might personally start a problem.

It was already bad enough that the dungeon appeared determined to force Luca into vending things against his will.

The very least it could do was compromise a little.

Still, as the honey continued flowing steadily into the container, Luca suddenly tilted his head thoughtfully.

"I wonder how many jars we’ll actually manage to fill with this?"

Apparently...

A lot.

At least, it felt like a lot to their inexperienced minds. If they had known the bees hadn’t even truly started yet, they probably would’ve thought very differently.

But even so, by the end of the harvest, they had managed to fill around a hundred and twenty jars in total.

Ninety of them were their smallest hexagonal glass jars.

Twenty were medium-sized jars, roughly double the size of the smaller ones.

And the remaining ten were the largest jars, each nearly triple the size of the smallest containers.

In truth, they probably could’ve harvested even more.

However, because Luca remained deeply concerned about the colonies’ initial reserves, he ultimately chose to leave several filled frames untouched before carefully transferring them into the newly expanded hives that now honestly resembled children’s playhouses more than anything else.

Still, this time, it wasn’t only the humans who seemed extremely invested in the harvest.

Because sure enough, every single time Luca touched one of the filled honey jars, D-29 immediately reacted.

"Host! It’s happening again!"

[VENDING ELIGIBLE PRODUCT DETECTED.]

[PUT UP FOR VENDING?]

[YES] [YES]

"..."

At this point, the increasingly frustrated little system had already concluded that this was probably what incontinence would feel like if systems were capable of experiencing such things.

The prompt kept firing nonstop like a broken record.

Which honestly felt deeply humiliating for a responsible and cultured system such as itself.

Ever since the dungeon upgraded to Level Four—and especially after the appearance of that suspicious gate—the manager of managers had repeatedly displayed alarming signs of incompetence.

It couldn’t even control its own prompts anymore!

Thankfully, the Host himself seemed surprisingly unbothered, despite the same notification having appeared approximately a hundred times already.

Instead of threatening termination, the Host merely reassured D-29 that this was probably a good sign.

"It’s definitely very insistent," Luca mused thoughtfully while staring at another blinking prompt, "but at least this confirms we were right about the Trove accepting products in different forms."

Then his eyes brightened dangerously.

"Now what I’m really curious about..."

The little chipmunk looked practically possessed by business instincts.

"...is the pricing!"

"..."

"..."

Well, of course, how could the money-grubber not be curious about that when the currency was CP?