Awakening

[Tier-Group 3, Rooftop Garden]

Marie regained consciousness, but her head felt as though it were splitting, and her body wouldn't move at all. She opened her eyes, yet her vision was blurred and indistinct; the surroundings were bright, but the color of the sky was pitch black as night.

(… Right, I fell down the stairs and…)

No voice came out. She had been laid on a reclining chair, fixtures from some library or other, perhaps. If one lined up things like this in a reading room, the patrons would surely fall asleep over their books.

"Marie-san, so you're awake. Do you recognize me?"

(This one was supposed to have been thrown in prison by the Sea-Dew Squad… Did he escape? Whoever helped him out will have to go to the guillotine.)

Of course, none of it became sound.

"A nurse call, but since the one I'm calling is Sapien-sensei, I suppose it's a 'doctor call.'"

So saying, the Dungeon Master called for the physician.

"Everyone in the Library-City Dungeon is unharmed. Unfortunately, there were casualties in Sō, I'm told."

(Because we destroyed Kōnodai… Wait, what?)

Marie felt something was off, but unable to speak, she couldn't even ask.

[Tier-Group 3, Rooftop Garden]

"Can you hear me? … She does seem to hear. You can move your eyes. As for speech… no good?"

Sapien-sensei, the physician who had hurried over, checks her briskly.

"Marie-san, I'll explain step by step, slowly, but first…"

(The four-nation coalition has already been destroyed except for Sumō, and the only thing I need to know about is how to clean up after the rebellion of those traitorous humans.)

Marie, not listening.

"Master, you mustn't rush. Besides, the situation is not one that demands any hurry."

"Indeed, it's only Musashi and part of Ke, after all. And I can't imagine them moving in winter."

"First, let's have Mint, the control-room chief, look into whether something like gaze input might work. If that doesn't pan out, then we can comb through the Imperial Library's holdings; there ought to be a hint somewhere."

"That we were able to summon the entire collection of the Imperial Library is something we have that Kozukappara Execution Ground Dungeon to thank for. Just one set from one otherworld, mind; naturally it didn't summon the holdings of the 'first-floor world' as well."

Not 1F but IF, hence the "world of possibility." Incidentally, many of the low-print-run academic pamphlets and foreign scholarly journals and the like aren't held by the Imperial Library at all.

(Sixty million or seventy million, I think it was.)

"If only we could at least summon a hospital dungeon. Modern medicine can do drastically less without medical equipment."

Sapien-sensei grumbles.

"Even summoning a library attached to a shopping mall doesn't get us the mall's merchandise, so even if we summoned a university hospital, I doubt we could expect much. An elementary school doesn't summon so much as the desks and chairs in the classrooms either."

"Advanced medical equipment is industrial product too, so in theory it's manufacturable, but who knows when."

That said, while a Beast could be handled by adapting veterinary practice, an Asura (a Shiso) differs greatly from both humans and plants, so there are limits to what otherworld knowledge can do.

"Sapien-sensei, will Marie-san recover?"

"With information this scarce, baseless speculation ought to be avoided, but it's a plus that Asura are made more crudely than humans or Beasts. On the minus side, Marie the scribe is a 'prototype' the Dungeon Core rushed together to meet the Dungeon Master's impossible demands, with unnecessary functions stripped out, and her safety margins and durability were likely cut down as well."

(I never heard anything about that.)

thought Marie. Though, come to think of it, it wasn't as if there were no signs she could point to.