New Year at the Human Farm

Human, Beast, Asura, and even Preta are, at heart, indolent. In this region too, the New Year is spent, once the gods have been honored in the morning, eating, sleeping, and lazing the day away. The samurai, however, must report from the morning of New Year's Day to their respective castles and magistracies to pay their greetings.

[Tier-Group 3 Rooftop Observation Deck]

At the summit of the Library-City Dungeon, which exceeds 60 km in height, the sunrise on New Year's Day (the first day of spring) comes more than fifty minutes earlier. Among the residents there are those who ride the elevator up to the higher Tier-Groups 36 and 37 to watch the year's first sunrise. Scaling it on foot would, naturally, be far too tall an order.

"Last year we made a grand mess of things right at the end, but this year I'll keep my guard up to the very last."

"First of all, it's important that the spring rice-planting be finished without a hitch."

"Yes. In this dungeon, securing food is the greatest problem of all. Pulling reckless stunts like raising rice in a greenhouse would put dungeon energy deep in the red. As for the efficiency of the human farm, we'll need to give it a proper reexamination going forward."

[Tier-Group 34, Cultural Center Building, Grand Hall]

In the Library-City Dungeon, the chief work of the Shiso (Asura) and the kin alike is the introduction of otherworld technologies that do not exist in this world, and to run a dungeon already approaching a population of 200,000 requires employing more than a thousand residents, from senior vassals down to foot-soldiers.

A sweeping reform of this world's existing social order would cause enormous upheaval, so within what is commonly called "the household of Lord Shiso, Director of Books," everyone from the ten senior vassal houses holding fiefs, such as the Kishi house and the Senba house, and the three naval houses, down to the hereditary civilian officials drawing storehouse-rice stipends, is granted samurai standing, making it a system the people of this region can readily understand.

Non-hereditary appointments (good for one generation only) by examination and the like are being introduced in stages. Unlike China's imperial examinations, Japan's civil-service exam is easy enough to pass in itself, but since education in this region is still far from widespread, there is a long road ahead.

Besides these, foot-soldiers are employed to handle the lowest rungs of work, such as keeping the peace and clerical duties.

The senior vassals pay their respects to Marie individually from the morning (across a screen, however), while the great mass of the rest assembles in the Grand Hall before noon. The Grand Hall in Tier-Group 34, at ground level, has 1,903 seats, but it will likely fall short by next year, and they'll end up giving the greetings in several rounds, like the Edo shogunate did.

From the rooftop observation deck Marie delivers her New Year's greeting, haltingly enough but very briefly, and once the printed text of the address and the bestowed gifts have been handed out, the gathering breaks up.

[Tier-Group 3 Rooftop Observation Deck]

"It's, over, safely, now, isn't it."

To the Dungeon Master, who has brought liquid fertilizer up to the observation deck, Marie speaks in her own voice.

"Moving the body from the World Tree while using this body's brain for the voice is quite difficult, though."

That much, she displays on the text terminal.

"Once you get used to it, or recover, I think it'll stop being a problem."