More Expansion: The Cheap but Lofty University Library

[Core Room]

"Marie-san, what we need is a university library with an Agriculture faculty and a Medical faculty, at a scale this dungeon can currently summon, and gaining as much height as possible. That was it, right?"

"A university library that's cheap and tall, yes. But even when the campus buildings are high-rise, university libraries are usually low-rise. A library is easier to use when it's low-rise in the first place. Though for a dungeon, taller is more efficient."

The greater the height differential, the more energy is supplied from the World Core.

"What determines the summoning cost, anyway?"

"It isn't a library, but according to the entry on 'Summoning an Otherworld Academy' in the 'Encyclopedia Dungeonica'…"

"So there's an academy dungeon out there somewhere, I take it."

"Presumably. First, the more worlds an academy exists in, the lower the cost. Conversely, one that exists in only a handful of worlds is high-cost. There are minor differences from world to world, but at present we can't specify which world to summon, or strictly speaking replicate, from."

"So existing all over the place is what matters."

"An academy that's large in scale and high in renown comes pricey, while a small, obscure one costs less."

"With books, I feel like the more of a bestseller it was, the cheaper…"

"In the case of books, a bestseller exists in the hundreds of thousands or millions of copies in a single world, and for some titles upward of a hundred million, whereas a specific academy exists only once in a single world."

"I see."

"Then there's cultural-sphere alignment. This dungeon, for instance, is Japanese-language, so an academy in Japan that teaches in Japanese is easy to summon, an international school comes pricey, and a British public school or the like becomes ludicrously expensive."

"So a foreign school well-known enough that even I'd recognize the name comes pricey."

"Lastly, if there are already a large number of relevant people, students, teachers, alumni, present in the dungeon via otherworld summoning, the summoning cost drops. According to the 'Encyclopedia Dungeonica,' there's a method where you summon high-schoolers a whole class at a time, and then summon the school afterward. Of course, since it's replication summoning, the original school and students remain intact in the original world. Although, in cases like summonings tied to an accident, the students in the original world are sometimes corpses, it seems.

Also, if you summon the academy first and then summon the students afterward, the summoning cost gets kicked back and the dungeon energy recovers a little."

"So… what does that mean?"

"Presumably, if you'd summoned Natsume Sōseki, Mori Ōgai, Akutagawa Ryūnosuke and the like in advance (literary greats who were active from before the war but haven't been dead seventy years yet are withheld), you'd be able to summon the Tokyo Imperial University library cheaply."

"But for this dungeon, neither Ox-Head and Horse-Head nor Asura will do… Wait a moment. If someone ruins themselves on horse racing, don't they reincarnate as a Horse-Head?"

"Apparently they mostly reincarnate as racehorses. And besides, Horse-Heads can no longer be summoned."

"A character with the 'setting' of being an alumnus, as opposed to an otherworld summon, wouldn't work, I suppose."

"Summoning, say, Red Shirt or Ogawa Sanshirō or Nagai Daisuke is naturally out of the question. And that, too, is impossible for this dungeon."

"So with a university library…"

"A university that exists in only a handful of worlds is pricey. High renown is pricey. A university taught in English is pricey. Put the other way: one that exists in many worlds, is low in renown, and teaches in Japanese… which applies to the great majority… a library like that is cheap. The matter of relevant people we needn't consider."

"I hold a Master's in Engineering, but I never actually graduated from any university."

"And I, having supposedly passed the National Public Servant Class I examination and received certification as a secretary, carry the 'setting' of being a university graduate, yet I've never so much as attended elementary school."

"Now, to get back on track: every university library is low-rise, but unless you gain height, the energy budget won't balance and we'll go bankrupt. Is that it?"

"That's exactly right."

"What about a world where the university hasn't relocated out to Pochi or Tama or wherever? In central Tokyo there's no land, so they'd build high-rise."

"That's Tama. Many universities have relocated from Tokyo to Tama Prefecture. But finding one with both an Agriculture faculty and a Medical faculty is surprisingly difficult. And a library that exists in only a handful of worlds has a pricey summoning cost. The Tokyo metropolitan area especially, not only Tokyo City and Yokohama City but Kanagawa Prefecture, Tama Prefecture, Saitama Prefecture, Chiba Prefecture too, anything called 'Tokyo' is high in renown, so the cost doesn't work out."

"A world where Sōmugida University has Medical and Agriculture faculties, then. The university itself exists in most worlds, surely. Short of Ōkuma Shigenobu having been assassinated in the chaos of the Restoration, anyway."

"It's low-rise to begin with, and the cost of Sōmugida or Keiō is simply out of the question. Even if Fukuzawa Yukichi had (with his father and brother both long-lived) been an Osakan rather than a Nakatsu man, the dungeon energy still wouldn't be enough… The Tuna University library is twelve stories above ground and one below, and… this one isn't even in Tokyo, yet the cost is too high. Precisely because it's famous."

"What if you go by height alone?"

"If we set conditions aside, Yokohama Medical University is two stories below ground and twenty-one above, but it has no Agriculture faculty in any world. Plus, since it was originally a hotel, it's questionable whether it can even be summoned as a 'university library.'"

"What kind of problem arises if, say, some worlds have no Medical faculty?"

"The cost of medical books rises somewhat. Factoring in book circulation volume and various other things, a university lacking an Agriculture faculty in some worlds would actually be cheaper overall."

"So what's the range of university libraries we can currently summon?"

"Even though our reserve energy went up from the monkey extermination, what's still out of reach is most universities in the Tokyo area, the famous regional private schools, regional imperial universities, which depending on the world may or may not carry the 'former' prefix, and the reasonably famous regional national universities. In short, any university whose name the Master would recognize is basically beyond our cost."

"If a library were part of a complex with classrooms and research labs attached, could you summon the whole complex?"

"What can be summoned is a building primarily recognized as a library. If it's a case of a library occupying only some floors of a high-rise, it can't be summoned. Urban universities often follow that pattern, which is troublesome. Tier-Group 2 was a 'municipal library with a conference room attached,' so it could be summoned."

[Core Room]

A general meeting. Though there were only four of them.

"Since we need a doctor and an agronomist, for Tier-Group 3 we'll summon the library of a university with a Medical faculty and an Agriculture faculty."

"Master, while we're at it, why not make it a university with an Engineering faculty too? Beyond computer programming, we also need to physically connect the wiring, so electrical engineering, electronic engineering, and information science are necessary. On top of that, there's all sorts of machinery, so mechanical engineering, and since the dungeon itself is a building, architecture. Thinking ahead, I'd like chemistry fields covered as well."

"A university with both a Medical faculty and an Agriculture faculty will most likely have an Engineering faculty too."

About eighty percent of the time.

"As a maid, it would be nice to have domestic life… that is, a Home Economics faculty."

Home economics arose and was established as an academic discipline in nineteenth-century America, a pioneer nation short on maids, as housewives sought ways to somehow manage the housework. So in reality it's the complete opposite.

"A Home Economics faculty is surely only found at small women's colleges, so if the opportunity arises, let's summon one separately."

"So, Marie-san, which university library will it be?"

"The list of universities that have all of Medical, Engineering, and Agriculture faculties is… the imperial universities and private schools are all nowhere near our dungeon energy, and some national universities are out of reach too, so what we can summon is a regional national university, but the library is three or four stories…"

"You need the building's own height, too."

"Unless we can get to twenty stories or more combined with the existing groups and greatly increase the energy gained from the World Core, the upkeep will most likely wear us down."

"Marie-san, in that case, what about 'a university with no Agriculture faculty, but that has one in some worlds'?"

"Within the summonable range… yes. Take this one. It's a university with no Agriculture faculty, but in some worlds it does have one set up, so shall we compromise around here? Adding the basement, it tops fourteen stories and reaches twenty stories in total. For its scale it's oddly cheap, though even so the cost is cutting it quite close."

"Good enough!"

Naturally, of course, whether a particular faculty exists differs by world, so it may differ from the high-school entrance-exam guide you have on hand.