Named Mob Monster Summon Candidates (Agriculture) (Reference Diagram Included)

[Tier-Group 3, Conference Room]

The conference room on the south side of Floor 10 of Tier-Group 3. The Master, Marie, Mint, and Rāja were gathered there.

"Marie-san, the Shiso (Asura) had sixteen summon slots left, didn't they."

"That's right. All eight of the Named monsters have already been summoned, and there are sixteen open slots for named-ordinary monsters."

"The Named ones and the named-ordinary ones can be revived even if they die, but in exchange, even if we no longer need them, we can't cast them out. That was it, wasn't it."

"Yes, that's how it works. There are exceptions, such as a monster running off of its own accord. And note that, so long as they belong to the dungeon, they effectively have no lifespan."

"So, then, what kinds of summon candidates do we have?"

"At present there are the twenty-seven basic types for Tier-Group 3, plus the six additional ones brought in from Naniwa University, for thirty-three types in all. The additions are two from engineering and four from agriculture. Of those, eight types overlap with the Named monsters and so can't be summoned. That leaves twenty-five. If the further 'world of possibilities' is ever taken into account, the number might grow someday, but…"

"Marie-san, let's go ahead and decide which Shiso (Asura) to summon."

"For the time being this dungeon's foundation is agriculture, so first, agriculture. Farm machinery, livestock, and the like, you could go on forever once you start, but cultivation technique for crops is what we need above all. Depending on the world it's called 'applied bioscience' and so on, but in essence it's basic agronomy. I do know a fair amount about how to grow plants myself, but I can hardly call myself a specialist."

"Agriculture's a lock, then. Since they're called the Lamiaceae, or 'Shiso family,' let's go with a shiso. They're also called ōba, the 'big leaf,' so let's swap the characters and make it Ōba, the 'big place.' It's Japan-grown, so I figure a name that could plausibly be Japanese is fine."

"In botanical taxonomy, the type genus of the Lamiaceae is the henbit genus, the 'dancing-girl plant' genus, but a dancing girl, well, would that be athletics or the arts? Either way, it's not on the summon list."

"It'd be a different matter if you could somehow force-fit the 'dancing' attribute onto something else. In my own case, basil and jurisprudence aren't directly connected either."

So said Rāja.

"Master, the kindred can be summoned as university graduates too. The technical staff in science and engineering are mostly master's holders, so let's set the kindred (the henchmen) as master's-level, give the Shiso (Asura) a higher proportion of doctorates, and here summon a Doctor of Agriculture. It's purely a matter of their backstory, but still."

"Right now the only one is Sapien-sensei, the Doctor of Medicine, isn't it."

"Yes. Mint, Kinran, and I are master's-level; the remaining four come from faculties where the rate of advancement to graduate school is under half, so they're bachelor's-level."

That said, even Kinran's Faculty of Commerce hardly turns out a great many MBA holders.

The education system of a certain otherworld.

Because there was no Second World War, the old system was repeatedly revised to keep pace with rising rates of advancement, so it is quite a tangle.

What is laid out here is no more than a rough sketch; there are also many transfer admissions and recommendation examinations, and, for instance, advancement from a vocational school to a university and the like also occurs.

And of course, since the tier-groups (the libraries) and the monsters of the "Library-City Dungeon" are summoned from multiple otherworlds, the backstory career histories of the Shiso (Asura) and the kindred are in many cases utterly different from the school system of this particular otherworld. Some have grandes écoles in engineering imported from France, some had public schools imported from Britain in the Meiji era, some run on the American-style 5-3-4 system with twelve years of compulsory education, and so on…