At Last, Summoning the Imperial Library

[Core Room]

Marie and the others spent a full day disposing of the Awa army.

"So the Awa army just up and vanished without a soul any the wiser. Is that it?"

"Master, the trouble is we have no 'proof' that we beat them. We have the helmets, but not the heads. And we haven't the time to confirm and absorb thirty thousand corpses one body at a time."

"Bah. To show plainly that the whole affair is over and done with, we simply expand the library on a grand scale. Good enough!"

"True enough. Re-checking the existing tier-group list… it's a touch complicated, but some of the libraries housed in redevelopment buildings, where several blocks are joined together, can now have the library-less blocks summoned along with them. Only a portion of them, but still."

"For instance?"

"In the case of Tier-Group 128, Kyupo-Kyupo Kawaguchi, until now only the main building, Block B, which holds the library, could be summoned, but it's changed so that the whole thing can be summoned, from the specialty-shop arcade of Block A right through to the housing in Block E. Likewise, with Tier-Group 34, the entire Prefectural General Cultural Center can now be summoned as well, coming to about two hundred sixty meters wide and a hundred seventy meters deep."

"We'll add those, then. What about elementary schools?"

"Elementary schools can't be summoned. But also, a fair number of relatively small branch libraries and outpost reading rooms have been added. If we summon the ones housed in redevelopment buildings and the like, it should add a good deal of height."

"In that case, Marie-san, try summoning a few of those. And anything else that looks relevant… the Persimmon Asura have all been asking for medical books, so summon everything connected to the Medical Faculty in Tier-Group 3."

"Everything? I doubt they can read foreign-language books. Counting only the Japanese ones, that comes to about sixty thousand titles. Shall I run it as a single bulk summon?"

"That'll do, please. And the additional libraries…"

"Tier-Groups 483 and 484 will be hotel-attached libraries. Plus several small branches in redevelopment buildings and shopping centers. We fall well short of a hundred thousand feet in height, but we've cleared ten miles."

"And with that, can the Imperial Library be unlocked?"

"Erm… Master, we can. It can be summoned… Though I wonder just when it became summonable."

"Good. Summon it at once."

"The Imperial Library can only be summoned as a set, all four at once: the main building, the Kansai branch, the Taiwan branch, and the old building. Size-wise, it would be best to stack them in three levels, with the Kansai branch atop the main building, and the old building and the Taiwan branch set side by side above that. Its tier-group number will be treated as Tier-Group Zero."

Since this was a world in which there had never been a Second World War, the name was the Imperial Library.

"That hauled off a fearsome heap of dungeon energy, sure enough. Roughly more than a hundred thousand people's worth, I'd say. And the books come out of a separate budget, I take it."

"They do. Though since the dungeon energy gained varies with the strength of the foe you defeat, reckoning it in head-counts is rather meaningless."

"Last of all, sort the tier-groups roughly in order of size."

"Tier-Group 4, which used to be the entrance, has ended up more than seven hundred meters above ground. We'll make the first floor of the General Cultural Center in the lowermost Tier-Group 34 the entrance. Above that, Tier-Group 535, expanded Tier-Group 310, and the lower section of Tier-Group 488 are each shopping centers built to handle large crowds, so we'll make those accessible from the outside as well. The Imperial Library, naturally, ends up more than two hundred meters up in the air, so a direct link to the ground will be difficult."

"It isn't something we're opening to the general public anyway, so that's fine. About all we can do, I suppose. The merchants must be having their wits scared clean out of them, eh."

"Master, elementary schools have been added to the summon list. Middle schools and girls' higher schools can be summoned too, though the cost runs somewhat higher. There were few of them to begin with, so it isn't worth much concern. Hm…? Higher schools?"

"Marie-san, what about higher schools?"

"A higher school is an institution dedicated to preparing students for university, so there shouldn't be even fifty of them in the whole country. And yet a great many are lined up on the summon list."

"If they can be summoned, then there's no problem. No doubt it's a world where, back in the Meiji era, they translated the American 'high school' word for word and brought it over wholesale. How much dungeon energy is left?"

"Not a great deal, but enough to build a handful of villages, perhaps… For an elementary school with a library, we can summon not just the single schoolhouse but the whole thing intact. As ever, though, nothing but the library's fixtures can be summoned."

"Just the thing. Let's add a few farming villages with those, then. Still, if the fixtures are out, we can't very well summon a vocational school to get our hands on a workshop, can we."

"Grow the dungeon a good deal more, and in time it does seem we might manage even that."