Summoning Work and the Welcome Feast

[Tier-Group 3, 10th Floor, Grand Conference Room]

Morning comes early to the Library-City Dungeon. On the east side of Tier-Group 3's tenth floor sits a conference room that could easily hold two hundred, but at present only the Master and the eight Shiso (Asura) are there.

"Now then, we shall hereby conduct the rite of summoning… Bah, stuffy talk like that doesn't suit this dungeon at all."

So saying, the Dungeon Master summoned the Shiso (Asura) and the retainers all at once. But, the headcount being large, even with each one, the existing Shiso (Asura) included, giving only the very briefest of self-introductions, the lunch hour came and went.

[Tier-Group 3, 10th Floor, Lounge]

The room on the north side of Tier-Group 3's tenth floor held a large table and round tables, exactly seventy-six seats. For the Shiso (Asura) there was liquid fertilizer (filthy green in color, tasting like the water in a ditch gone thick with summer algae), and for the retainers there were canned beer, black coffee, energy drinks, and the like, and a modest banquet was held.

"The maximum number summonable is twenty-four Shiso (Asura) and sixty-four retainers, so with the Master that's eighty-nine. This room's got seventy-six chairs. There's another ten of the same chairs in the conference room, so we can handle up to eighty-six, but if the headcount climbs to the max, won't we be short on chairs?"

Kinran of sales voiced an artless little doubt.

"It'll just go looking for a suitable spot in one of the lower tier-groups, I'd imagine. Most likely the Master hasn't thought about it at all."

Rāja the warrior-general answered.

"Be that as it may, the engineering-related folk are overwhelmingly the majority, and in the social sciences it's only us three, plus the clerical team that joined us this time."

Scarlet of sales went on.

"Even so, we've got it better than the humanities. There it's just Farigole the newspaper reporter and the doctor of philosophy, the two of them. Against that, the science-and-engineering types and agriculture are here by the heap."

So said Kinran, watching Mint bustle about greeting the Shiso (Asura) and retainers summoned this time and handing out business cards. Though of course, the ones just summoned have no business cards.

"That can't be helped, I should think. There are plenty of capable merchants in this world too, but while there are craftsmen, there are no twenty-first-century engineers. If anything, the bigger problem is the one we still haven't managed to solve: that for all it's a library, there's not a single librarian."

"Scarlet-han, it's only book knowledge, mind, but normally there's a correlation between a dungeon and its summoned monsters. Pirates for a pirate ship, bats for a cave. For a library to be 'unable' to summon a librarian, there must be some cause. Or else this dungeon isn't a library to begin with. Not that knowing it lets us do a thing about it."

Meanwhile, some of the retainers, the liquor having gone to their heads, drank on and on into the night, and the next morning were good for nothing, hungover. That said, while the Shiso (Asura) began work the very day after being summoned, most of the retainers, the clerical team excepted, started work in turn from the day after that, so the actual harm was slight.

The retainers are a kind of beastfolk, but their staple food is the peculiar sort of thing like canned beer and black coffee. There are individual differences too, some of them, for instance, being partial to a certain balanced nutrition bar.