Too Vast an Influence Zone Makes You Want an Airplane

[Core Room]

"The eastern route toward Oda Castle that we're about to open up runs roughly 340 km. Tokyo to Nagoya, Niigata, or Sendai is the sort of distance where people ordinarily take a plane, too, so down the line we'll start wanting an airliner."

There is no Shinkansen in the otherworld, and one cannot travel from Tokyo to Nagoya, Niigata, or Sendai by rail.

"An airplane, huh. Naturally there's no way one's in the library's stock of equipment, nor as a magazine bonus, and building one's impossible too."

"There are simply far too many component parts, and the materials themselves are specialized. Honestly, it'd be quicker to go hunting for an airplane-factory dungeon. That said, aviation seems especially prone to the accidents of history, so the situation varies wildly from world to world, which makes it hard even to guess where an airplane-factory dungeon might be."

"Varies from world to world, does it."

"For instance, when people say Tokyo's airport they mean Tokyo Airport, officially the 'Tokyo City Aerodrome,' on the southern side of Jōtō Ward and Fukagawa Ward; but in some worlds the airport is along the Arakawa at Urawa, and the books will tell you that the 'Dōai Village Sakurasō wild colony' is the sole case in which a Special Natural Monument designation was ever revoked."

"Ah, that's Tajima and the rest. True, they don't look the most capable of folk."

"Or there's apparently a world where they built an airport at the mouth of the Tama River and named it 'Haneda,' running the Daishi Line, or was it the Anamori Line, in to the airport."

"The Daishi Line goes from Ikebukuro via Ōji toward Minami-Adachi, so that's the wrong place. It'd be the Anamori Line."

Of course, even in worlds with no airport the place is still called "Haneda," but while Marie's memory holds up for ward names on the order of Tokyo City's, her recollection of district names is shaky.

"If we could get our hands on one, an Ogasawara Albatross would be ideal. Since I'm a Named monster I wouldn't object to a foreign-made narrow-body airliner either, like America's CV1100 or the Dister, France's Venus, or Britain's 4-11; but securing otherworld-grade safety in this world would be difficult, so I'm not terribly keen. Worker-Peasant-Russian models are undesirable, since parts supply is a problem in the capitalist world."

"The fool-bird, eh."

"The name aside, the Shimada sisters' basic design is superb. And since their father nearly died in a crash, its safety is the best in the industry."

Of course, in an advanced nation, or even in Japan, an Albatross's accident risk is all but zero; the odds of winning the lottery jackpot are far higher.

"Setting aside the airplane we can't get our hands on, just short of Oda Castle is… er, what was it called again."

"Ōta Bridge."

"Right, up to that Ōta Bridge: at 30 ri, Murakami Village, where the Murakami Navy will be housed; at 40 ri, Koshigaya Village, where Tanigoe was relocated; at 50 ri, Yoshikawa Village, where the Nigōhanryō catfish live. Wasn't that it."

"That's as far as we've settled, yes. The cars can manage as far as Yoshikawa Village at 200 km one way, but the next leg, at 60 ri, brings the risk of running out of battery. The library's official cars don't need to drive long distances, so they carry only the bare minimum of the expensive batteries."

"And how long would the trip take?"

"If we lay down an elevated highway, about three hours to Oda Castle. With a bus that'd stretch out with the stops along the way; and since this world runs on a variable-hour timekeeping system, we couldn't operate a proper timetable, among various other vexing problems."

"From Yoshikawa Village to Oda Castle, for now it was just the inns we'd be setting up, was it."

"That's right. With dungeon structure, holing up is possible even in the worst case. On foot it comes to nine days."