"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.

[WELCOME H-9241964!]

[INDEXING AVAILABLE RESOURCES...]

At that, the rather barren room suddenly came to life.

Holographic projections appeared across the walls one after another until they formed rows of floating tiles suspended in the air.

They were blank at first, but images soon began to appear across them, along with what had to be descriptions written in characters none of them really recognized.

This again.

Several times now, they had been seeing all sorts of odd characters that would make even the Empire’s best cartographers and anthropologists shake in their boots.

But since they couldn’t really do much until the Archive Reconstruction was finished, all they could do was brace themselves and look around as more and more projections filled the room.

The next prompt appeared.

[TRANSLATING MEASUREMENTS...]

Almost immediately, the unfamiliar characters began changing.

The process reminded them of announcement boards updating information in real time. Symbols shifted. Values changed. Entire lines seemed to rewrite themselves before settling into something they could finally understand.

"..."

"What the..." Kyle muttered under his breath.

Meanwhile, Xavier had already returned his attention to Luca.

The Prince had spent enough time around his wife to know that complete silence from a little money grubber was rarely a reassuring sign.

Sure enough, Luca was standing perfectly still.

Both hands were covering his mouth.

His eyes were wide.

And he looked like he was exerting tremendous effort not to scream.

Ollie noticed it too.

"Brother!"

The blonde immediately hurried over.

"What’s wrong?!"

Wrong?

How could there possibly be anything wrong?

If anything, this felt absurdly right.

More than that, how meant to be was this when they hadn’t even needed to search much?

When they finally decided to try Luca’s suggestion, he went into it knowing he’d likely have to search high and low for legitimate alternatives.

Because he couldn’t possibly expect things to be convenient when they were doing everything in their power to make it so that it was the opposite.

And yet...

What was this?

All the golden mastermind had to do was turn his head a bit.

That was all.

And there it was.

His gaze remained fixed on one particular display as though afraid it might disappear if he looked away.

It embodied everything that was his sworn brother, Ollie.

Just seeing it was enough to remind Luca of the wonderful human being that was his best friend.

It was perfect.

Absolutely perfect for him.

Sure, he still didn’t know if it was possible to really make mechas with it, because while the values assigned to it looked really great, it didn’t exactly say that it could fit what they were going for. But Luca had faith it would work out because in his mind, the combination was simply meant to be.

In fact, he could already imagine his brother unveiling a mecha made with it.

Now, with one of the most problematic parts out of the way, it should’ve been fine already.

However, there was a teenie tiny problem.

Okay, maybe not so tiny of a problem when it was practically a crisis!

Because why did it need an entire mine’s worth of Lumen Crystals?!

The little mechanic visibly sucked in a breath.

Gasp!