The Five-Direction Highway Operation

[Core Room]

"As for our policy going forward, for the time being we've no choice but to run things with the eight Shiso (Asura) at the core. Marie-san on overall coordination, Mint-san on system management, Sapien-sensei on medicine, and the remaining five on the development of five directions, then."

"Continuing on, for the northwest, the Ke direction out of Ōnaruchō, Rāja and Haruna; for the east, the Oda Castle direction out of Higashimachi, I'll leave to Anne; for the west, the Iruma direction out of Kamikochō, Scarlet at the core with me supporting as needed; for the southeast, the Sō direction out of Yoshikichō, the Knight Commander and Kinran; and lastly the northeast out of Domachi I'll entrust to Farigole."

"Once the rice-planting and sowing are done…"

"Let's have the sales pair, Scarlet and Kinran, build up this dungeon's economic machinery. But since large numbers of migrants are bound to come in from the surrounding areas, we'll have to plant as much late-sown soybean and corn as we possibly can before summer hits in earnest."

"How many do you suppose will come?"

"We should reckon on 100,000. That said, summoning seed requires dungeon energy, and managing the fields requires hands, so it would be a problem to have them all arrive at once."

"Then how about converting a portion of them into dungeon energy?"

"Master, that, surely, is going too far into wickedness. Besides, killing migrants, unlike warriors or seasoned adventurers, wouldn't yield much dungeon energy. It is, to be sure, a useful solution to a population explosion, but it also runs counter to this dungeon's ideals."

In eugenics, a hereditary problem is settled by sterilization, and what is not hereditary is a matter of medicine and welfare, so the notion of "a life unworthy of life" is not favored.

"We must increase the planted acreage in great haste, then."

"What do you say to a Five-Direction Highway Operation, after the model of the 'Five-Direction Commuter Operation' but for highways: we lay down the trunk highways first, and use those roads to expand the fields all at once."

"The Five-Direction Commuter Operation?"

"It was a Shōwa-era plan by the Railway Ministry to develop Tokyo's commuter railways. This dungeon has no railways, so in their place we'll improve five highways out to a one-day journey of 10 ri, that is, 40 km, and then out to the three-day journey, 100 km range, prioritizing development along the highways."

"Three days one way, is it. If only we had a car…"

"Even if we summoned a bookmobile or a library official vehicle as equipment, we couldn't maintain it, and it'd soon become industrial waste. If we could summon an automotive mechanic as one of the Master's retainers, we could keep it running for a while, but with no man-made satellites there's also the problem that only manual driving is possible."

"A railway, then, even?"

"There are no electric trains among a library's equipment, so that's impossible. There are AGVs from the automated book-transport system, but their carrying capacity is out of the question and they're far too slow. At any rate, we've secured a 100 m-wide strip of land for each of the five highways, so we'll manage for the time being."

"Now, if it were 'Umeda, the Mercantile City,' whose essence is a train station, I get the feeling it could summon electric trains."

"We can hardly haul electric trains over from a dungeon so far off we don't even know where it is. If the retainer problem can be solved, there's a bus terminal in Tier-Group 58, the second from the bottom, so if we strip out the bookshelves of the bookmobiles we could use them as buses or trucks. Be that as it may, first comes the 'Five-Direction Highway Operation,' out to a one-day journey."