The Presidium of the Supreme Council

[Core Room]

One day, after the envoys had departed and things had settled down, all of the Shiso (Asura) gathered in the Core Room.

"Now then, let us begin the meeting of the Presidium of the Supreme Council."

"Marie, this isn't Worker-Peasant Russia's 'Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the Council Union.' Can't you do something about that name?"

So said Rāja.

"We weren't chosen through a proper election, so we aren't a parliament; nor do we have enough substance to call ourselves a cabinet, so there's nothing to be done. Besides, my own Malthus-Darwinism and Worker-Peasant Russia's Marxism-Leninism do sound somewhat alike."

Malthus-Darwinism is a doctrine that fuses Social Darwinism, eugenics, and population control, aiming at "the progress and harmony of mankind" through selective breeding of humans. In a world where Germany was dismantled after the World War, where the Nazis could not win the elections of the Kingdom of Bavaria and so there was no Second World War, eugenics was never made taboo and instead merged with population-control theory. Japan too, having had neither the Manchuria-Mongolia settler migrations nor the Pacific War, suffers from overpopulation, and Malthus-Darwinism enjoys a certain measure of support.

"That's not exactly this dungeon's guiding philosophy, mind you."

"Master, our philosophy is 'to realize a life of health and abundance, in both material and spiritual terms,' so Malthus-Darwinism doesn't differ much in its direction either."

"Setting aside Marie's ideological leanings, Master, the Six-Party Meeting concluded without incident. With that, the chance of the surrounding countries mounting an organized attack has dropped."

So said Rāja.

"That Sumō monk did seem to have caught wind of how dangerous this dungeon is, though."

"Everyone, well, everyone but Lord Oda Nobuharu (織田信治), has surely noticed. It's just that this dungeon would be an obstacle if one were aiming to unify the realm, but since none of them are, they've no particular reason to make an enemy of us."

Sapien-sensei continued. Though the man's name is Oda (小田), not Oda (織田).

"As for our plan from here. Come summer, migrants will arrive by the tens of thousands, so we expand the fields at maximum speed. We won't manage to raise the rice seedlings in time, but whatever vegetables can be harvested by autumn, those we plant no matter what. Does that sound right? And to do it, the question is whether we increase Mint-san's clones or increase the Shiso (Asura)."

The Dungeon Master proposed the plan.

"We need both. Sapien-sensei is busy, and if we consider having Mint-san stationed permanently in the Core Room to oversee the whole operation, then to push development forward simultaneously in five directions we need at minimum two more Named monsters. If we want five survey teams, we'd want at least fifteen of Mint-san's clones, so counting the indoor staff too, we'll need around twenty."

Anne argued for an increase of two.

"Indeed, that's about what we'll need. Although the optimal number for a meeting is around five or six people, so the more we add, the more the meetings are liable to wander off course even worse than now."

Marie agreed as well.

"So what about specialties? It isn't as though we can always summon exactly what we aim for."

"We urgently need someone versed in machinery. If possible I'd want four: machinery, chemistry, civil engineering, and metallic materials."

"Since the population will grow, I'd add one more physician. After that, we'll need a dentist, a pharmacist, and a nurse."

"A police officer and a judge, I suppose? Military and police ought to be kept separate, and the judiciary needs to be independent too."

"Marie-san, when you summoned General Rāja, you tried to summon a soldier but got a Faculty of Law graduate rather than a military-academy one, and Miss Maid is a university graduate too. I really do feel there's some constraint on summoning."

"It does seem there may simply be a constraint that we can only summon university graduates. By 'setting,' of course."

Marie continued.

"In that case, a police officer might end up causing some unforeseen incident. So, machinery and a physician, though multiple physicians would mean overlapping roles, and a physician is too busy to take part in pioneering work in the first place."

"A mechanical engineer and a pharmacist, then? In that case it would be the Faculty of Engineering and the Faculty of Pharmacy."

Anne proposed.

"We pick out some Lamiaceae plant that fits the bill and force the connection. For pharmacy, since they're medicinal herbs, there are no end of candidates, but machinery, hm. We could just try picking an ornamental variety, like coleus, salvia, or ajuga."

"Japanese beautyberry… is probably best avoided. If we try to summon the Heian-era Murasaki Shikibu and there's a problem with her credentials, who knows what might happen. And as for ajuga, its Japanese name is seiyō-jūnihitoe, so we could end up with a similarly grim fate."

"Then let's go with coleus and salvia. Once the meeting's done, we'll attempt the summoning. If we put the machinery one under Mint-san and the pharmacist under Sapien-sensei, there's no worry about the meeting's headcount growing without limit. And on the off chance some unforeseen disaster strikes, we could add one more on top of that… could we manage that much?"

"We have 482 tier-groups, after all. We can't very well have 482 people, but another three or four should be fine."

The rosemary in the garden grows enormous and blooms in great quantities every year, yet for some reason it has never been seen to spread by seed. Of course it isn't that a plant performs population control; it's that, while rosemary is self-incompatible, all the rosemary nearby are clonal plants, or else it's a sterile variety.