Status Check

[Core Room]

Some while after the Awa-Sō Allied Army had been driven off, the season reached the height of summer. Since farmers cannot be mobilized in autumn, there was likely no one who would mount a large-scale assault from here on out.

"Marie-san, things have settled down a bit, so let's check our status."

"First, as for the sphere of influence, we've expanded it to roughly twenty ri, eighty kilometers, in each direction. To the southeast we've pushed it as far as just short of Hiratsuka, in the Toshima Magistracy."

"Do we expand it evenly next, or attack the town that Tsukuba built to the east?"

"Existing villages cannot be incorporated into the dungeon's sphere of influence, and attacking with the knight order would put the neighbors on their guard, so let's think of some method. For your reference, with the new establishment of Toda Village, the southern side of the Nakayama Highway can now be opened. However, since it's some two hundred kilometers to Hiratsuka, a car will run out of battery."

"Tricky. We can't procure gasoline. And before even that, there are few who hold a manual-transmission license."

"An automatic car can be operated even without a license, but it's a matter of skill before qualifications. A manual car can't be driven at all without the technique."

"A railway, then, or something like it."

"There's no means of obtaining one. And besides, there's surely not enough travel demand to warrant a railway."

"True enough. The dungeon itself has housing too, so the commute is by elevator."

"Next, food production. The population is just under forty thousand, of whom about half are farmers, and the cultivable fields come to ten thousand chōbu. Seasonally, corn will be the last of it, so for the fields added between now and summer's end we'll sow leafy greens. At summer's end we'll plant potatoes, but since seed potatoes aren't to be found as a magazine appendix, I've asked the merchants to buy up as many potatoes as they can lay hands on."

"We've also got the food the merchants snapped up, so it looks like we'll manage somehow."

"The problem is winter. Whether we can mass-produce potatoes enough to last until the wheat harvest. That's the question."

"It'll be a bother if the population swells too suddenly."

"Next, the dungeon's own systems. First, the summonable libraries. The Imperial Library has been summoned. Public libraries can be summoned only if they were established by a prefecture-agency-city or a municipality, that is, by a local public body. University libraries can be summoned, but for places like the Imperial Universities the summoning cost is markedly high, and private institutions cannot be summoned at all, so in practice it comes down to local national and public ones, and even those run quite costly. Next, school libraries, such as those of elementary schools, can be summoned together with the entire school. As for specialist libraries attached to museums and the like, those have not yet been unlocked."

"In short, no privately-run ones, be they libraries or schools."

"That's how it works out. Though for some reason, even a privately-owned station-front redevelopment building or high-rise apartment block can be summoned whole if it houses something like a municipal library branch."

"The criteria there are beyond me."

"Summonable public libraries number around four thousand, with somewhat over three thousand thought to remain. Of the elementary schools, those holding a reading room or the like that can be summoned are thought to number around twenty thousand. Middle schools, girls' higher schools, vocational schools, and the like total about five thousand. And, while the cost runs higher, there are additional schools summonable from worlds with differing educational systems."

"So how do we go about summoning them?"

"Public libraries with large buildings go in the dungeon proper, smaller ones in the five walled towns and the post-towns, and school libraries are used for the outer towns, post-towns included. In time the villages will number around five thousand, but the schools will be more than enough."

"Five thousand. That's a staggering number."

"Next, summoning dungeon monsters. First, Named monsters still can't be increased."

"This stays at eight, then?"

"Yes. However, for summoning the Shiso (Asura, special), about thirty kinds are on the summonable list as named-ordinary, and at this point sixteen more can be added in terms of headcount. That makes twenty-four in total."

"Ho, a threefold increase. Could we summon the mechanical engineer Mint was wanting, too?"

"We could. Though, judging by the list, it seems we're limited to one per department at this stage. In other words, still university graduates only."

"It 'seems'?"

"Department names differ from world to world, and there are mergers and reorganizations, so the list has its uncertain parts. But while there's a world that absorbed Sakai City University of Economics, we still can't summon multiple Economics-department graduates, and even after the merger with Naniwa University, there's only the one Mechanical Engineering graduate."

"Hanshin University has three engineering faculties, but even if some dungeon somewhere could summon Hanshin University, you can't do a triple summon. So, races other than the Shiso (Asura) still aren't unlocked?"

"They're not on the summon list. And that brings us, last of all, to your kindred."