Building a Roof Over a Roof, Stacking a Library on Top of a Library

[Core Room]

"It's about time we expanded the dungeon. My collection no longer fits in the Core Room, and yet it would be a waste to hand the books over to adventurers to burn."

"Marie-san, isn't the Daikan going to bring resettlers over before long? Is there anywhere for them to live?"

"Let's summon a library with a heika-shiki, a 'closed-stack' repository, in the back area."

"His Majesty's style?"

"A closed-stack repository, Master. It's a reading room closed to the general public. Normally it stores rare books or books that aren't used very often, but in this world, where books aren't needed, there's no problem at all with appropriating it for private use."

"Well, the only ones in this library are myself and Marie-san, after all."

"Since the dungeon absorbs garbage on its own, it's enough for the residents to partition off the reading room into rooms."

The Dungeon Master and Marie had both forgotten that humans need baths. Marie does at least use a cold-water shower.

"I'll add a second tier-group on top of the dungeon."

"On top, not beside it?"

"The energy obtained from the World Core is determined by depth for an underground-type dungeon, and by height for a tower-type dungeon. In short, the larger the difference in elevation, the better. By stacking the individual buildings, that is, the tier-groups (groups), one above another, and planting the World Tree on the rooftop, we maximize the energy we obtain."

Marie had brought along the World Tree's potted plant loaded onto a handcart. For a rosemary, it seemed to be growing rather fast.

"As for the dungeon's sphere of influence, or sphere of power, or in short its grounds, that too is easy to expand if the elevation difference is large."

A sprawling ground-type dungeon is, in that respect, quite wasteful.

[Tier-Group 2 Rooftop]

The first tier-group had been a single-story building with a gently sloping roof, but the second tier-group was a building of four stories above ground and one below, with a flat roof. The slender pillars supporting the building were dungeon structures and so could not be destroyed. Staircases had been installed between the tier-groups as well, allowing swift movement from the first floor up to what was effectively the sixth. The second floor, that is, the basement of the second tier-group, was Marie's private book stacks, and the third floor and above were for residences.

"What a fine view. It feels just like an observation deck on top of a hill."

"You can see all the way off into the distance. Which way is the village where the Daikan is?"

"Hmm… It's nothing but wasteland, on and on. If we built it up higher, I wonder if we'd be able to see all the way to Umeda, the Mercantile City. It would depend on whether the world is flat or a sphere, though."

Marie planted the rosemary in the large planter, or rather the planting bed, set up in the center of the rooftop.

"Marie-san, can you actually carry that giant planter?"

"There's no problem if I use the dungeon's reconfiguration function. I'll line up vegetable planters here, send away for seeds, and plant all sorts of things… I wonder if there are any books that come with bulbs or seed potatoes as appendices. Or perhaps the cultivation kits that come with study materials can be summoned?"

"If there were, say, a farm dungeon, do you think we could trade with it?"

"That would be difficult. In this world 'knowledge' has no value, so we couldn't very well summon agricultural manuals or academic papers and offer those. And given the state of the world, there don't seem to be many farms, either."

"It's a long road ahead."

"Now that we've expanded the library, two or three library staff to help with operations…"

"You can't summon Carol Kaichō, or Kochō-Ran the orchid, or Nettle Prima Donna, you know."

"The moth-orchid belongs to the Orchid family, the self-styled 'higher species,' so even if we became able to summon Asura other than Shiso in the future, we likely couldn't summon them."

"The Orchid family?"

"You'll know one the moment you see it. Even though they're Asura, they're marked by a huge 'orchis.' Another lot that gives itself airs is the Chrysanthemum family, the self-styled 'most evolved, most differentiated clan.' The Shiso family is fairly numerous. That's about the size of it. Well, even all the Asura put together are four orders of magnitude short of the 3.4 billion species of Beast."