Arrangements for Wintering Over

[Core Room]

"Marie-san, it seems we'll have enough food, but… growing rice in a greenhouse, now that surprised me."

"Raising rice through winter in a greenhouse is, in terms of the dungeon's energy balance, an act of sheer madness. The greenhouse itself can be turned over to vegetables from next year on, so at least it won't go to waste."

"It can't be helped, I suppose."

"Anywhere that isn't a dungeon, if you went by efficiency alone, you'd come out ahead by letting the residents you can't feed starve to death. Of course, the dungeon draws its energy from human emotion, so in a 'human farm' like this Library-City Dungeon, we can't very well let famine run rampant."

Since humans breed without limit anyway, a ruler with the military strength to put down a rebellion comes out ahead by forcing famine exports and starving off the surplus population. Such things have happened many times over in human history.

"The population's surged, so dungeon energy is going out at an awful rate."

"Unlike a company's finances, a dungeon can't 'borrow dungeon energy from a bank,' so running short of it means instant ruin. That's why, if the residents' morale drops, we won't make it through winter. Festivals and the like can prop things up for a while, but in the end, living up to the ideal of 'realizing a life of health and abundance, in both material and spiritual terms' is the surest course."

"Of clothing, food, and shelter, housing is no problem, and clothes won't run short overnight either. But food gets consumed day by day."

"Grain especially is needed in great quantities, and it takes time to grow."

"This autumn's harvest of 15,000 koku won't come close to being enough."

"With otherworld varieties and chemical fertilizer, the yield comes to 1.5 koku per tan; for a first attempt, that's about what you'd expect. Going forward, a yield of 2 koku, and in the long run 3 to 4 koku per tan (450 to 600 kg), on par with the otherworld, should be plenty."

"So, what's the outlook for the rice harvest from here on?"

"This autumn, 15,000 koku from 1,000 chōbu (10 km²) (2,200 t, at 1.5 koku per tan); in midwinter, 10,000 koku from 700 chōbu of ratoon double-cropping (1.5 koku per tan); at winter's end, 100,000 koku from 5,000 chōbu of greenhouse cultivation. In late spring, wheat across 50,000 chōbu (500 km²), probably around 500,000 koku at first. Next year's rice planting depends on the number of settlers, but even supposing zero settlers, 50,000 chōbu would yield a million koku. From next autumn on, we'll set up a proper system of hiring people with the land-tax rice to keep things turning over. In short, if we can just hold out until the wheat harvest, we'll be fine even with a population of a million."

"Getting through winter, that's the sticking point. If we can hold out until the greenhouse rice comes in, it looks like we'll be all right."

"With adventurers dwindling, the food supply has stalled. If only there were a food-producing dungeon nearby… but for one dungeon to attack another is no easy thing, I'm afraid."

"All we can send in are Named monsters, and they don't get the dungeon's effects. That was it, wasn't it."

"Yes. A knight order, then, but even within the dungeon we have our hands full, with no spare capacity for campaigns outside. True, the dungeon can record everything that happens within its sphere of influence as footage, but only a knight order can actually catch a thief and put him to the public bare-bottom caning."

As in the Edo period, in this region too "caning" is applied to thieves, brawlers, and the like. Murder and large-scale theft warrant death, but since this dungeon has no one skilled at lopping off heads, the plan is to build a guillotine should the need ever arise.