Volume One: Cast of Characters

[The Library-City Dungeon]

Born as a library-city dungeon, but because the Dungeon Master didn't know the word "librarian," it ended up burning books for fuel.

Type: Library (produces books, newspapers, magazines)

Scale: 2 tier-groups, 6 floors (each tier-group an unremarkable public library, none very large)

Number of monsters: 3 (3 of them Named)

Can summon books, newspapers, and magazines of the same kinds held by the libraries it has already summoned, drawn at random from parallel worlds. As long as the main library has been summoned, it can even summon the local-history materials of a branch library deep in the mountains. The furnishings used in a library can be summoned too, though at a higher cost than books. Note that both libraries and books are "replication summons," so no library vanishes from its original world.

By its unique law, no flame can be used inside the building. The Core Room is also "No Unauthorized Entry / Staff Only."

[The Dungeon Master]

Has no name at all. First-person pronoun: "I." A Beast.

Staple diet: black coffee, canned beer, energy drinks.

The cause of everything: it skipped the tutorial without reading the introductory manual, "Dungeon 101," and ended up in a state where it can summon neither the navigator-librarian it was supposed to summon first, nor any librarian, nor any clerical or technical staff. On top of that, since it forfeited the tutorial-reward university library, it can't summon specialist books or academic papers either.

It possesses a certain amount of lopsided knowledge from the start, but it is not an otherworld reincarnator who blew its life on the horses and fell into the Beast Realm. (If you ruin yourself on horses, you reincarnate as a horse.)

Understands only Japanese. Has largely forgotten its English. By "setting," it is a graduate of the Architecture Department of a Faculty of Engineering and holds a Master's (of Engineering), but it has never actually attended school.

[Marie]

A Rosemary Asura. First-person pronoun: "I."

Slightly tall (163 cm). Has black hair with a blue metallic sheen (structural color) tied in one bunch, and pointed (but not long) ears. Her skin is white and her eyes are a deep blue-tinged black (not the dark brown-black of a human's eyes, but a dark blue-black). Strictly speaking she has no sex, and no chest whatsoever.

She changes outfits however she pleases. At the spot where she gathers her hair in back, she wears a hairpin set with rosemary (the plant).

She is the founder of the Shiso, and a secretary. Not an apostle. And certainly not a librarian. Her secretarial credentials are, by "setting," not a pass on the policy-staff secretary qualification exam, but a selective-hire screening certification by way of passing the National Civil Service Class I examination.

The Dungeon Master's aide-de-camp scribe. Humans call her the "Secretary-General." Her store of knowledge is vast, and by distributing knowledge into the "World Tree" she can accumulate it without limit. In theory. In practice, no.

She can use at least Japanese, Chinese, English, and French. German is hopeless, and Yiddish is out of the question.

[Mint]

A Mint Asura.

Androgynous, and a little short (158 cm). Short hair, a bright-green metallic sheen (structural color), and eyes of a vivid bright green to match. Pale-brown skin.

Doesn't care about clothes.

A crack super-peppermint (read: super-hacker) who handles not only software but hardware as well, though since the dungeon is small there isn't much to do right now.

Can use Japanese and English. Chinese is around second-foreign-language level.

[Anne]

A Lavender Asura.

Tall (174 cm) and slender, with black hair of a pale-purple metallic sheen (structural color), and eyes of a deep purple close to black (Marie's are black, Anne's are purple).

Her standard outfit is a plain dark-green long dress, with a white apron and cap.

A maid-of-all-work.

A proper, pedigreed English Lavender. Self-styled "True Lavender." She has a habit of calling "French" "Lewd," and looks down on the French maids of the French Lavenders. And yet English Lavender originates in France.

Note that taller maids are preferred; a maid of around 180 cm would be positively welcomed.

Because every summonable library employee at the original library held a university degree, her educational background, by "setting," happens to be university-graduate. She can use Japanese and English. French is around second-foreign-language level.

● The Humans

[Yoshida Nishinoichinojō]

The Daikan. A pompous middle-aged man.

The non-hereditary local lord of this area. Holds more authority than an Edo-period daikan. Since the wasteland is so sparsely populated, he has few subjects.

[Echizen-ya] (given name not yet revealed)

A fuel merchant. First-person pronoun: "I" (humble). Age, sex, and appearance are unspecified.

Dreams of dealing in coal.

[Okada Tarōzaemon]

The caretaker of the settlers. A half-bald man.

Cannot read or write.

● Known Dungeons

[Umeda, the Mercantile City]

A vast underground-type dungeon with 20,000 inhabitants and dungeon monsters combined in the basement levels of its first tier-group, "Umeda," alone.

Because vicious Tōyoko Kids haunt the fifth basement floor of the fifth tier-group, "Shibuya," it is unknown whether any sixth tier-group or below even exists.

[Asuka, the Temple of Stone]

Offers up sacrifices in great numbers. An Asuka that has gone Aztec.

Normally a dungeon can exert its power only within its surrounding sphere of influence, but by offering numerous sacrifices at the "Kameishi" and changing its orientation, it can form a "Kame-no-se" and trigger a landslide against a hostile city far away.

[Battleship Hashima]

A warship-type dungeon, but since there's no sea it has run aground on land. Numerous zombies roam the second tier-group below ground, so no coal can be mined, and the first tier-group above ground is in ruins.

[Coalmine Coal Mine]

One of the few dungeons that produces coal. It sits in a desolate, arid, cold region where not even fog forms.