Die Buried in Books!

※ The R-18G depictions are omitted, but please be advised that the pirates are executed.

[Core Room]

"Master, the plasterboard on the ceiling of the Tier-Group 1 entrance hall… please remove the ceiling panels from the dungeon structure."

"Ah, got it. But once they stop counting as dungeon structure, they'll get destroyed, you know."

"That's fine this time."

Pressing a paw to the Core, the Master removed the plasterboard from the dungeon structure.

[Entrance Hall]

The ceiling gave a creak.

"There's a ninja above the ceiling. Spears… take a spear that isn't broken and stab the ceiling."

At Takasaki Kōzukenojō's command, a foot-soldier still holding an unbroken spear thrust it into the ceiling. The ceiling was no longer dungeon structure, so a hole opened up.

And the ceiling, removed from the dungeon structure, couldn't bear the weight of the vast stockpile of fuel books and newspapers crammed into the crawlspace above. It collapsed, and hard fuel books and ten-kilogram bundles of newspaper rained down like hail.

"What the hell is this…!" "Gyaaah!"

Amid the screaming, the bandits were buried under books and newspaper. The crawlspace hadn't been all that tall, so the newspaper only piled about a meter deep off the floor, but the bulk of the bandits were left unable to move. A few unlucky ones died on the spot and were absorbed into the dungeon.

Of course, from the metric-illiterate perspective of Takasaki Kōzukenojō, what piled up was paper bundles weighing around two-and-a-half kan, heaped some three shaku high. But the result was the same.

[Core Room]

"Marie-san, what on earth is this…?"

"Master, never mind that, just keep summoning books and newspaper, faster and faster."

When books had to be selected and summoned one at a time, Marie handled it, but when it came to summoning huge quantities without a second thought, it was faster to let the Dungeon Master do it.

"Books are supposed to only be summonable onto bookshelves, though… huh, it worked."

"That would be the 'just in case such a thing should happen.' I've fixed bookshelves and newspaper racks to the ceiling slab itself, the building's own ceiling."

[Entrance Hall]

"Hey, you, stop it, stop these paper bundles!"

No matter how Takasaki Kōzukenojō wept or wailed, the books and newspaper did not stop. The last thing he saw in his life was paper tumbling down on him from above, thud after thud.

The bandits, unable to breathe under the weight, were crushed to death one after another and absorbed into the dungeon, and what remained was a mountain of paper filling the entrance hall.

[Core Room]

"Hauling all these fuel books and newspaper back out is going to be a chore… And honestly, what an outrageous method."

"By making the suspended ceiling part of the dungeon structure, you greatly increase its load capacity, then stack books and newspaper in the crawlspace above. Then you remove it from the dungeon structure, reclassifying it as destructible furniture, so it functions as a 'drop-ceiling' that crushes whoever is below. That's the idea."

"I'd assumed you couldn't set up traps in a library dungeon."

"They say 'he who burns books will come to burn people too,' so I did consider placing flammables in the entrance hall, removing the entrance hall itself from the dungeon proper to take it outside the reach of the unique laws, and then setting it alight to burn them all up. But managing the laws would be a hassle, and I couldn't rule out something unforeseen going wrong."

"I wonder if the cause of death changes how much energy you get."

"Who knows. You can't put a number on that sort of thing. The head clerk of Echizen-ya, the fuel merchant, told me that 'at the Temple of Stone, it's best to kill on stone, by stone,' so perhaps at a library it's best to kill the sacrifices by book."

"Not a trick you can use twice, though, surely."

"It's an unusual method, so it'll probably become famous. Next time let's prepare something else, like sealing them somewhere, running the heating, raising the humidity, and steaming them to death."

Marie said something terrifying with perfect ease. After all, the Asura Realm is a world of struggle, fighting over shared resources like light and water.

"Where would 'dying buried in books' rank, counting up from the very worst?"

"Quite far down the list, I'd think. The history books are full of far more outrageous stories. For example… (rest omitted.)

Come to think of it, this dungeon was originally a Library Hell, one capable of summoning Ox-Head and Horse-Head. I'd always assumed the torment of a Library Hell was either being forced to read books or, conversely, being forbidden to read any. But perhaps the true Library Hell was being buried under books and, being a damned soul, unable to die."

"Was Horse-Head the Satsuki Shō winner Beau Centre, or was it Ryūnashi? Was there even an Ox-Head?"

"If the bull of the Ox-Head is the Minotaur, then the cow would presumably be the Minowakka ('wakka' is Greek for cow), but you don't hear of it much. The Minotaur, properly speaking, lived not in a dungeon but in the Labyrinthos, though."

"The right to call yourself by the 'Mino-beef' brand must be reserved for males. Matsusaka beef only comes from females, so there's bound to be a male-only brand of beef too."

It was neither Ox-Head nor Horse-Head, nor was it Hell. And it most certainly was not a racehorse. The librarian who was supposed to have been summoned may weep. Incidentally, the Minotaur is the bull of Minos (king of Crete), not the bull of Mino.

"Marie-san, um… it was the Labyrinthos that the Mino-Tauros lived in, right? How is that different from a dungeon?"

"First, the 'Labyrinthos' is a religious facility originating in the ancient Mediterranean region; it's a single path with no branches. This is also where the Minotaur of Greek myth, Mīnōtauros in the pronunciation of the time, an individual called 'Asterios,' is said to have dwelt."

"So it had a name. And I don't even have one."

"Hell is full of Ox-Heads, after all."

"Had it been the cow Minowakka, it would presumably have been 'Asteria.' The same name as the mother of Hecate, the witch of Greek myth."

"So because it was 'cast away' into the dungeon… I mean the Labyrinthos… it became 'Asteria.' I see."

"There's no connection. It originally had a name in the Minoan language, but it wasn't recorded in any of the books I've read."

"And so, what about dungeons?"

"A 'dungeon' developed out of the underground keep of a castle, doubling as a dungeon-cell and treasury, so naturally it isn't necessarily a single path; the larger the scale, the more complex the structure.

In this world, however, it seems the word has come to mean something more like a cave or structure that has monsters and treasure inside."

The "female Minotaur" is often depicted as a Holstein, but since it isn't Hida beef, which is limited to the Japanese Black breed, a Holstein Minowakka isn't wrong. In a world without King Minos, "Mino" would need some other meaning, though.