Greenhouse-Grown Teak Wood?

[Tier-Group 3 Rooftop Observation Deck]

The World Tree, Rosemary, had grown to nearly two meters.

"It grows fast. I wonder how big it'll get."

"It's the World Tree, so… a few dozen meters, or perhaps more."

"Marie-san, is rosemary really a plant that gets that big?"

Normally it grows only to about Marie's height.

"The World Tree is an exception, but it seems that because this dungeon's main-line monster is the Shiso (Asura), the other mint-family plants enjoy a growth-promoting effect as well."

"If the main-line monster were pirates, would the pirates grow huge?"

"I don't think that sort of thing would normally happen… but a snake dungeon yielding a giant serpent, or a dog dungeon yielding a giant wolf, that does seem plausible. According to the merchants and adventurers, the Tanzawa Hills produces giant leeches, the 'Tanzawa Hills clan.' Leeches are physically constrained in size, so the very existence of giant leeches is surely the dungeon's doing."

A leech has no respiratory organs and breathes through its skin, which constrains how large its body can grow.

"So the Tanzawa Hills isn't a timber dungeon."

"Its main-line monster is the land leech; the timber seems to be a by-product. The dungeon's name is 'Tanzawa Hills.' Tanzawa is an otherworld place-name, and 'Hills' is a coined word, an English-ish plural of hiru, 'leech.' In other words, it's thought to possess both Tanzawa elements and leech elements."

"Why English, of all things…"

"At its very root, a dungeon runs on English, most likely. This dungeon's system was in English at first, too. Mind you, this dungeon's name is 'Library-City,' and its elements are library and city. Originally it shouldn't have had any Shiso (Asura) element at all."

At the start, neither the dungeon nor its Master ought to have had a name, but that has been forgotten. Incidentally, the Master still has no name.

"Marie-san, if mint-family plants grow large in this dungeon, would it be possible to propagate that World Tree by cuttings and produce timber?"

"Well, whether a 'branch' rather than the World Tree itself would grow to that extent, I can't say. As for teak, a mint-family tree, it's a tall tree to begin with, so as long as the growth-promoting effect holds, timber production should be possible. But there are problems."

"Like whether it's really mint-family. That sort of thing."

"True, in the last century it was thought to be in the vervain family, but that was back when the basis for classification was appearance, not genes. It's famous that, at this time, the old lily family was found to be a 'classification rubbish bin' and was dismantled."

"Er, I think there was something about aloe being 'expelled from its family as not a true lily'… or so."

"Aloe is an example of a plant whose family affiliation took quite a while to settle. There's also the human element of 'where to draw the line,' you see."

"Also, teak was a tropical plant, wasn't it."

"That too. But if we build a greenhouse out of dungeon structure, it can be solved. To produce enough timber to meet this dungeon's demand, though, it would have to be on a considerable scale. Or perhaps the dungeon's functions might make overwintering possible."

"And so the problem is…"

"Teak grows comparatively fast, but it takes 50 to 100 years to become high-quality timber. Even supposing that could be cut to the 5 to 10 years of a tropical fast-growing tree, fast-growing trees generally have sparse, rot-prone wood, so it's uncertain whether it would reach a quality usable as proper lumber. If we cultivate it on a grand scale and the wood rots within a few years, it would all be utterly wasted."

"A great gamble, in other words. But it can't be as poor a bet as Daikonsaku in the Nakayama Grand Prix."

"Master, it's the horse races again, isn't it… True, we are already proceeding with cedar afforestation, but cedar needs a minimum of 30 years until felling, normally 50 to 60. Forcing teak along is a gamble, but it does seem worth the wager."