My Anime Shopping Tree & My Cold Prodigy Wife!
Episode : 140

Chapter: 279

The task—[Operation: Suds and Steel – The Foundation]—remained stubbornly, maddeningly, open in his quest log. The promised rewards, the one thousand System Coins that would be a quantum leap in his power progression, and, more tantalizingly, the game-changing ‘Farming’ function, remained locked, tantalizingly out of reach.

He checked it daily, a ritual of hopeful expectation followed by a familiar, frustrating deflation.

[Objective 1: Establish a dedicated, purpose-built manufactory.] [Status: COMPLETE]

[Objective 2: Commence successful, consistent, large-scale production.] [Status: PENDING]

Pending. The word mocked him. He looked around his bustling, profitable factory. They were producing hundreds of bars, dozens of dispensers, daily. The production was consistent, the sales overwhelmingly successful. What more did the System want? What esoteric, infuriatingly vague definition of ‘successful production’ was it operating under?

He paced the floor of his office late one night, the problem churning in his mind. He had thought success was measured in gold, in market dominance, in the satisfied smiles of his team. But the System, it seemed, had a different, more exacting, set of metrics.

“What am I missing?” he muttered to the empty room, running a hand through his hair in frustration. “Is it a volume issue? Do I need to be producing thousands of bars a day instead of hundreds?” He considered the logistics. Possible, but it would require a massive expansion, more staff, a second water wheel. It felt… premature.

“Is it the reach? Do I need to be exporting to other duchies, as Elmsworth wants? Is ‘successful’ defined as inter-ducal market penetration?” That, too, seemed like a later-stage goal, not a condition for completing this foundational task.

He pulled out one of the standard, cured hard soap bars from his desk, turning it over in his hand. It was a good product. A great product, even, by the standards of this world. It was creamy, smelled pleasantly of rosemary, and left the skin feeling clean and soft. It was a revolution compared to the harsh lye blocks everyone else used.

But… was it perfect?

The eighty-year-old engineer in him, the perfectionist who had spent decades refining designs, optimizing systems, pushing the boundaries of what was possible, took over. He examined the bar with a new, ruthlessly critical eye.

The texture, while smooth, still had a faint, almost imperceptible graininess if you looked closely enough. A result of using tallow, a less refined fat. The color was a pale, creamy beige, but it wasn't uniform; there were subtle, milky swirls, indicators of a good, but not perfectly homogenous, saponification process. The lather was rich, yes, but could it be… richer? Creamier? More stable?

He thought of the liquid soap. It was a masterpiece of improvisation, a triumph of rustic alchemy. But it was still, essentially, a thick, opaque, soft soap paste. Not the clear, elegant, free-flowing liquid he remembered from Earth, the kind that looked like liquid glass in a clear bottle.

And that was it. The realization hit him with the force of a physical blow, a sudden, cold clarity.

He hadn't achieved ‘successful production’. He had achieved ‘successful production of a good-enough prototype’.

The System wasn't judging him on his sales figures or his market dominance. It was judging him on the quality of the product itself. The task wasn’t just to build a factory; it was to build a factory that produced a product of true, uncompromised, unparalleled excellence. “Successful production” didn’t mean profitable. It meant perfect.

“Damn it,” he breathed, a slow, almost admiring smile spreading across his face. “You’re a harsh critic, System. A very, very harsh critic.”

The lingering question was answered. The path forward was clear. The soap wasn't good enough. Not yet. Not for the System. Not for the one-thousand-coin reward. And not, he realized with a sudden, fierce surge of his own ingrained perfectionism, for him either.

He stormed out of his office and back into the main manufactory, where his R&D team was just finishing their work for the night. Alaric was meticulously cleaning his beakers, Lyra was updating the workflow chart, and Borin was trying to covertly rig a small distillation apparatus to see if he could make a beverage out of fermented rose petals.

“Team!” Lloyd’s voice, sharp and commanding, cut through their end-of-day routines, making them all jump. “New directive. Effective immediately.”

They stared at him, their expressions a mixture of surprise and apprehension.

“Our current product line,” Lloyd declared, holding up the hard soap bar, “is a success. A triumph. And as of this moment, it is obsolete.”

A stunned silence greeted his pronouncement.

“Obsolete, my lord?” Alaric stammered, looking as if Lloyd had just declared the fundamental laws of alchemy to be null and void. “But… the sales! The quality is consistent!”

Chapter: 280

“Consistent is not the same as perfect, Alaric,” Lloyd stated, his eyes blazing with a new, intense fire. “We are not in the business of ‘good enough’. We are in the business of Aura. Of perfection. And our current product… it is merely the first draft.”

He turned to them, his voice ringing with a new, relentless purpose. “Our new primary objective is this: to create the perfect bar of soap. I want a bar so smooth it feels like polished silk. I want a lather so rich and creamy it feels like washing with clouds. I want a product so flawless, so undeniably superior, that it doesn't just create envy; it inspires awe.”

He paced before them, his mind already racing, formulating the new research directives. “Borin, Lyra, your work on the dispenser was brilliant. Now, I want you to apply that same ingenuity to the curing process. I want a controlled environment. We need to manage not just time, but humidity, temperature, airflow. I want every bar to cure perfectly, uniformly, every single time.”

He turned to Alaric. “Alaric, the tallow is good, but it is not great. We need to explore other oils. The olive oil Ken is sourcing… I want you to begin small-batch experiments immediately. Blend it with the tallow. See how it affects the final texture, the lather. And almond oil… I have a hunch that a small, trace amount might be the key. It’s expensive, yes, but I want you to test its properties. I want to know precisely what it adds to the formulation.”

He looked at all of them, his gaze intense, demanding. “We are no longer just a factory. We are a laboratory. We will not rest. We will not be satisfied with ‘good enough’. We will innovate, we will refine, we will experiment, until we have created not just the best soap in this Duchy, but the best soap in this entire, gods-forsaken world. Only then,” he said, his voice dropping to a low, determined whisper, “will our work truly be complete.”

The team stared at him, their earlier satisfaction with their success completely overshadowed by this new, daunting, almost impossible, challenge. They saw the fire in his eyes, the unshakeable resolve in his voice. This wasn't just about business anymore. This was a quest. A quest for perfection.

And they were all, whether they knew it or not, about to become pioneers in the high-stakes, surprisingly complex, world of artisanal soap alchemy. The path to the thousand System Coins, Lloyd now understood, was paved not with gold, but with silk. Silken, perfect, flawlessly lathering soap.

---

The new directive had sent a fresh wave of frenetic, focused energy through the Elixir Manufactory. The pursuit of perfection was an intoxicating challenge, and his team had risen to it with a fervor that was both impressive and slightly alarming. Borin was now happily designing a complex system of humidifiers and dehumidifiers involving heated rocks and damp moss, Lyra was creating workflow charts for a hypothetical ‘multi-oil blending station’, and Alaric was sequestered in his lab, surrounded by tiny beakers, muttering to himself about the ‘saponification index of almond glycerides’.

Lloyd, having set his brilliant, slightly unhinged team on their new quest, found himself with a rare, quiet evening. The ledgers were balanced, the production schedules for the ‘obsolete’ but still wildly profitable standard soap were running smoothly, and the existential dread about reborn enemies had been temporarily shoved into a soundproof mental box labeled ‘Problems for Future Lloyd’.

He returned to his suite to find it in its usual state of elegant, chilly silence. Rosa was there, seated not at her desk, but in the large velvet armchair by the unlit fireplace, a thick, ancient-looking tome open on her lap. The soft light from a single oil lamp cast a warm glow on her veiled face, the silver threads in the lace shimmering, making her look even more ethereal, more untouchable, than usual.

He stood there for a moment, just observing her. The Ice Princess in her natural habitat. She was so still, so completely absorbed in her reading, that she might have been a statue, a perfect, exquisite sculpture of a noblewoman lost in study. He remembered their last, almost-conversation, the one where she had snorted at his glib answer. It had been… a breakthrough? A fluke? An auditory hallucination brought on by stress and bad tea? He still wasn't sure.