Pirates Attack... Wait, Aren't Those Bandits?

[Core Room]

"Master, there's an unidentified armed group approaching the dungeon."

Mint said this, pointing at the Core Room's computer screen.

"This is… not the Daikan, nor a merchant, nor adventurers. And in the middle of an emergency, with the place full of the sick."

"Headcount, a little over ten. About half of them wear jingasa helmets, breastplate-only armor, spears across their backs, swords at their hips. The rest are shouldering baggage or hauling a large handcart. One man who appears to be the leader. He alone wears no helmet. All of their gear is shabby."

Mint reported, having cranked the surveillance camera to maximum resolution.

"… They look like bandits. Let's get the settlers out in the fields to safety at once. Fortunately, the crops aren't yet grown enough that losing them would be a real problem."

"Everyone, bandits are approaching the Library Dungeon City. Please evacuate into the building promptly."

Marie called out over the outdoor loudspeakers. By rights such announcements come from the government office, but Mint had rigged the wiring so they could be broadcast from the Core Room.

[Outskirts of the Library Dungeon]

"Boss, the folks at the settler village seem to have noticed us. They're saying bandits have attacked."

"Call me Captain! And… noticed us, from this distance?"

The settler village sat atop a hill roughly 60 shaku (100 m) high, but the Library Dungeon isn't perched on a stone rampart or anything, so its field of view is narrower than that of an ordinary castle keep. There was no way they'd be spotted in the shadows at the foot of the hill, 10 chō (1 km) off. A great host with mounted warriors would be one thing, but this lot?

"Storm it. It's only a settler village. They won't have any forces worth a damn. The crime of calling this Takasaki Pirate Band a pack of bandits is worthy of ten thousand deaths."

The men climbed the hill, wheezing and gasping for breath, and the foot-soldiers drove their spears into the dungeon's entrance doors with all their might, but the spears snapped and their bodies were slammed against the glass doors.

[Library Dungeon Entrance]

"What is this transparent board?"

The leader asked, but there was no chance any foot-soldier would know. Of course the leader knew what a dungeon was too, but since no dungeon in this area had glass doors, there was no way he'd realize this building was one.

Marie, who had come out into the entrance hall on the inner side of the doors, wore a relatively easy-to-move-in outfit: a plain, dark-gray skirt cut below the knee and a white shirt.

"And who are you? What barbarians are making a racket at the entrance to my house?"

"I am the captain of the Takasaki Pirate Band, Takasaki Kōzukenojō. Hand over all your food."

"Takasaki? Monkeys, then."

Marie answered from the inner side of the entrance over the outdoor loudspeaker.

"Monkeys? Why?"

"It's a given that what lives on Takasaki (a mountain) is monkeys."

Whether there's a Mount Takasaki in this world is unknown, but at the very least Kōzukenojō didn't know of one.

"And to begin with, if you're a pirate, where is your ship? Anyone trudging across dry land on foot, huffing and puffing, is by definition a monkey-bandit.

Besides, if you were at least a Kōzuke-no-suke, it might be worth siccing 'the idol who comes to meet you,' AKO47, on you. But a Kōzuke-no-jō? Hardly."

At Marie's scorn the bandit flew into a rage. Incidentally, the idol who comes to your house comes to take your head, but naturally Kōzukenojō knew nothing of the Chūshingura, nor of idols.

"Come out here, coward! Quit holing up in your strange fort and come out. So that's it, you must be part of that grubby little Oyama Shimotsuke-no-suke's gang! I'll let you choose: be assassinated, or become a monk."

Just as the bandit had worked himself into a full fury, the entrance doors opened.

"Men, follow me!"

The bandits, no, the pirates, came pouring into the entrance hall. But the glass doors on the inner side of the entrance hall were dungeon structures too, and once locked they were no easy thing to break. When Mint remotely shut the entrance doors from the Core Room, the brigands were sealed in.

In the entrance hall there was no food, of course, nor anything else of value. Everything had been carried out in advance.

"To lack even the wits to leave a lookout, how pathetic. They really do seem to be monkeys. My second and third arrows have gone to waste."

"Marie-san, sealing them in is all well and good, but what do we do with them?"

"The entrance will be out of commission for a while, and the unique law makes it impossible to let unauthorized people through to the Core Room either, so let's have them come and go through the windows."