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

It was all very shocking to the lucky few on the tour, as well as to the livestream viewers who were fortunate enough to listen in.

This was because Jax had been more than willing to explain farming to literally everyone and their ancestors.

He explained it with enthusiasm. With hand gestures. With examples. With comparisons that somehow involved cabbage, dirt, and fish poop?

And he didn’t stop.

For the kids, this was the best thing that had ever happened to them.

Excitement, after all, was contagious. With that kind of joy plastered on Jax’s face, how could they not look forward to whatever was waiting beyond the door? Every explanation sounded like a promise. Every mention of crops made it feel like treasure awaited them inside.

Some of them were already bouncing on their heels.

But for the adults, it was an entirely different situation.

Especially for specialists, researchers, or anyone who knew enough about their own planets to realize that several things Jax was casually describing simply did not sound right.

At all.

And somehow, by a cruel twist of fate, many of those people were currently tuned in to Reeve’s livestream.

They tuned in because everyone they knew was watching. But they stayed because what they were hearing made their scalps prickle.

No one had expected to hear anything about farming. Especially from a young cadet whose guild looked more like a war lord’s party.

And yet there they were, listening to a cadet talk about his passion and resurrection.

Farming. Or as Jax cheerfully described it, the practice of cultivating land, growing crops, and raising livestock.

Wow.

To Luca Kyros, this would not have been something worth blinking over. But for people who did not have the luxury of having a lot of arable land, or the option of choosing from a wide variety of endemic plants, this was the kind of information that made hearts pound.

Most modern civilizations were built on planets selected specifically because they wouldn’t attract contamination, or because they were terrible breeding grounds for it.

Which usually meant the land was, well, generally dead.

Not dead in a poetic sense, but dead in the very practical, very scientific sense that nothing particularly human would be able to grow there.

At best, the soil could be partially revived through extensive terraforming and obscene amounts of modern technology. Even then, success was never guaranteed.

And they knew that because, of course, they tried.

They had tried farming the way ancient humans once did. Entire research divisions were dedicated to it. There were studies, simulations, and even that infamous project involving cindermoss burrowers, all in the desperate hope that they could sustain crops that actually mattered.

Obviously, they didn’t really succeed.

Some would like to think they did. But many figured that with the spiritual energy as well as the taste not being close to the descriptions in the historical texts, then clearly they couldn’t really count those as successful.

And when other crises began piling up, as they always did, people were forced to shelve those projects in favor of more immediate problems.

Because survival came first.

And because they were doing well enough surviving on nutrient solutions as well as the produce they had managed to come up with throughout the years.

So they simply told themselves they should be content that they could at least manufacture and maintain greenspaces.

Even if spiritual plants and ancient human crops were beyond their reach, they could still produce oxygen and have a semblance of life on those dead planets.

And so they just did what they could do.

Synthetic greenery. Carefully regulated growth cycles. Plants that were reconstructed by science, powered by artificially triggered photosynthesis.

They were green.

They were alive.

But they tasted like disappointment.

However, to one golden-eyed cadet’s surprise, people hadn’t really been that disappointed in those products until a certain Star Mall vendor came around selling fruit that didn’t taste like styrofoam.

It was then that the illusion collapsed and more and more vendors selling so-called ancient fruits and vegetables lost credibility when their products could only look the part.

But it wasn’t like they were ripping off people intentionally. If they had better products, wouldn’t they want to sell those instead?

However, they obviously didn’t have such products! If the Empire’s best people couldn’t even figure out what the issue was, then how could everyone else be expected to produce such rare goods?!

And yet suddenly they were hearing words that sounded so foreign and unreal.

__

Marco stared at the person wearing special overalls who was casually discussing the endeavor of farming for food sustainably.

He blinked once.

Then twice.

The young man sounded giddy. Confident. As if he were talking about reorganizing storage shelves instead of doing something that half the Empire had written off as impossible.

”There are several types of farming,” the redheaded cadet said brightly, ”but what we will show you today is just a miniature version of the facility we have been running to produce the ingredients used in the goods you’ve tasted, as well as the goods being sold at the cafe, the restaurant, and the minimart.”

”Unfortunately, we don’t have all of the crops here because the space is smaller than what we would have liked to have,” the cadet looked momentarily gloomy but cheered up just as fast.

”But we do have some livestock that you can take a look at!”

Livestock.

The word hung in the air like a delayed explosion.

The redhead waved them toward the door, excitement clear in every step, and told everyone to wait just a moment.

__

But unbeknownst to the tour guide, chaos had already erupted elsewhere.

Across the Empire, professionals who had been calmly working or resting moments ago were suddenly choking on their own saliva or nutrient solutions as they scrambled to pull up holographic projections.

In one of the capital’s research institutes, a woman very nearly broke a bone as she lurched out of her chair, clutching her terminal like it was the only thing anchoring her to reality.

Several types?

A miniature version?

A facility?

All the crops?

And did that cadet just say livestock?

Her brain refused to process it in the correct order.

Livestock was not a casual word. Livestock was not something you mentioned in passing and definitely not something you keep for an expo booth to show to literal children when they’re rather vicious and definitely dangerous.

Did DG seriously bring over those creatures for domestication?!

What kind of insanity was that young man talking about?

Normally, they would have dismissed this as yet another marketing stunt. Some elaborate presentation meant to sound impressive while hiding a very ordinary operation.

They had seen it all before.

But ever since the arrival of that Star Mall Vendor that shook the Empire of Solaris, researchers had been losing sleep.

Because that event had proven something deeply uncomfortable.

It was possible.

Possible on a scale that should not have existed.

Possible without any of the top research institutions having the slightest idea how it had been done.

And now, here was a cadet smiling and talking about farming facilities and livestock like it was perfectly normal.

Like it had always been there.

Like they were the ones behind it.

And what do you know, when that door opened, several people definitely needed medical attention.