Slow as an Ox's Plod

[Core Room]

The rehabilitation was proceeding slowly, ever so slowly.

"Marie-san, do you think the gaze input is workable?"

"○ sloww mstaek no hlep gd betr"

(Truly, it's hard to use. The input takes far too long, and the accuracy, too… well, that part is my own problem. I wonder if it'll improve once I get used to it. Though I'd rather things didn't drag on long enough for me to get used to it.)

"It would be good if we could link straight to the brain, but there's no hospital that can perform such surgery."

(Even if there were, it would be for humans, so whether it could be used on an Asura is doubtful. They'd have done animal testing in the development, no doubt, so perhaps it could be used on a Beast.)

"There's nothing for it but to go slowly. Spirit-steed, was it. The thing with legs grown onto a Nasu. Or was it a horse? Since a cucumber is a nine-crown horse, the fast one's the horse and the slow one's the Nasu cow."

Speak of Nasu and one thinks of dairy farming. Note that the pun "nine-crown horse" is comparatively new, postdating the exploits of the real Triple-Crown horse.

(Nasu… eggplant… milk… something about it nags at me. As if I'm overlooking something…)

"× hrry too ned"

(I have to recover quickly and check on any number of things. Quite apart from that strangely vivid dream, a war against a serious opponent is nothing good.)

"Marie-san, as things stand, if we're talking about haste, there's little to be done beyond corpse-possession summoning."

(That corpse-possession summoning, is it. It may well be effective, but it's an obviously evil method. If anyone knows how it's done, it would most likely be one of the more evil dungeons. Yet there's no guarantee they'd tell the truth. Even to attempt it, we'd need to experiment beforehand on a condemned criminal or the like. Which would mean the quickest route is to capture some pirates. But…)

Marie appeared to be lost in thought about something.

"However, I am opposed to corpse-possession summoning."

"○ no plns die"

(I have no intention of dying, either. And reincarnating through the cycle would surely come to no good.)

"After all, Marie-san, you've been with me since the very first time I summoned anyone."

Had she been a silverfish that was on the summon list from the start, it might have thought nothing of crushing it once it was no longer needed. Incidentally, a silverfish is a paper-eating bug.

(All the same, it was a blunder to have filled up the Named-monster summoning slots. I do wonder whether the summoning slots will ever increase beyond this.)

In this dungeon, to use part of the Master's authority one must hold a master's degree, but, to put it bluntly, sacrificing Kinran from sales would be the smallest loss of the lot.

That said, while ordinary dungeon monsters are absolutely obedient to the Master, the Named, and those that have multiplied by breeding, are another matter. No one holds the authority to tell Kinran "die," and it's hard to imagine he would obey if they did.