The Possibility of Monster Farming

[Core Room]

"Marie-san, a thought just struck me, but monsters and retainers both have a limited summoning slot, don't they?"

"Yes, in this dungeon they do. According to the 'Encyclopedia Dungeonica,' ordinary 'main-line monsters' of a nameless common species can usually be summoned in fairly large numbers, while higher species are capped, but in this dungeon that slot has been overwritten with the original monster 'Shiso (Asura),' so no nameless lower species exist at all. Then again, even a pirate-ship dungeon can summon rats and weevils without limit while the pirate underlings are capped, so the situation is the same."

For pirates, captain and underlings alike are of the same common species. Aboard the pirate ship Beagle, for instance, from Captain Fitzroy and Darwin down to the crew, all are human. And incidentally, "main-line" has nothing to do with stars.

"If we bred the monsters, couldn't we get around the cap on the summoning slot?"

"Eh?"

"The other day, Senba Kamon-no-suke of Iruma came by, didn't he? The talk about breeding warlords to increase their number."

"Breeding, you say… It's true, one could mate Senba Sama-no-jō-dono with the granddaughter of Kaneko-no-Naishi-no-jō-dono of Iruma to produce a superior warlord. This is what's called 'racial improvement,' and in the otherworld the Malthus-Darwinist Evolution Party preaches 'racial improvement as a matter of national policy.'"

"Did such a party exist? I've no knowledge of fringe parties."

"Please don't call them fringe. They are hardly the 'True Society Party,' which wins zero seats every single time. At any rate, it's true that any increase obtained through breeding does not count against the dungeon's cap on summoned monsters, and most Shiso (Asura) can easily be multiplied by cloning. However, being not mere plants but Asura, they take ten or twenty years to reach maturity."

"So it takes time."

The True Society Party has nothing to do with the Shakai Taishūtō; if anything, it is a heretic of eugenics, a party that would remake human society into something eusocial, like bees and ants.

"Also, nameless monsters have no ego, so they obey commands and never defy the Dungeon Master, but bred monsters, like ordinary living creatures, do not necessarily obey the Master. There's a case recorded in the 'Encyclopedia Dungeonica': to dig out a cave-type dungeon, a Master summoned giant ants and bred them, whereupon the multiplied giant ants set upon the Dungeon Master and devoured him. Fortunately, ordinary dungeon monsters cannot leave the dungeon, so the giant ants died out when the dungeon energy was exhausted, and the matter resolved itself."

"What happens if you multiply a Named monster?"

"I should expect they would turn into an ordinary species, like the ayu of the Nigōhanryō Marshland, but shall we try it?"

"Try it, how?"

"On the rooftop of this Tier-Group 3 there stands my 'avatar,' or 'true-body,' the World Tree, whatever you'd call it. As the Master is no doubt aware, take a cutting from its branch and you can propagate clone plants of rosemary."

"That's just an ordinary cutting, isn't it."

"A clone plant is genetically identical, but unlike the avatar of a Mint (Asura), it is a separate individual. If we turn a cutting-grown seedling into a monster by the dungeon's power, then in theory it is possible to increase the dungeon's monsters. It takes years, of course. Though if I make a clone of myself, what to name it is the question… I'll give it some thought before this autumn, or by next spring once the pleasant season comes around."

"But a clone wouldn't count as 'racial improvement,' would it?"

"No, it would not. To improve the breed, one must either wait for a bud sport or cross one Shiso (Asura) with another, but crossbreeding is only possible between closely related kinds, and there are compatibility issues besides, so Asura and beastfolk don't multiply as easily as humans, who are all biologically able to interbreed. Mints, being plants, would hybridize readily enough, but you'd only get a high-breeding weed that smells none too good."