The Bulb Cultivation Method

[Third Tier-Group, Front Plaza]

There is a pond in the third tier-group's front plaza, but since living creatures can't be summoned, there are no fish and no aquatic plants either.

Marie had lined up several buckets beside the pond.

"Marie-san, those buckets?"

"A bucket rice-cultivation kit. The seed rice and fertilizer come as a set, so I put the dead soil from around the dungeon into a bucket summoned as library cleaning equipment, supplement it with the fertilizer, sow the seed rice, and…"

"You don't have to grow it all the way in the bucket. Once the seedlings are ready, why not transplant them into that pond over there?"

"Ah… and here I should have known better. This pond is about two ares, so even at worst we should be able to harvest around twenty kilograms. We'll use that as seed rice and, next year, I'd like to prepare a proper paddy on a grand scale."

With two ares, a professional farmer would easily clear a hundred kilograms of yield.

[Core Room]

"Seeds, pricey though they are, I can obtain, but seed potatoes, those I just can't get hold of."

Marie pulls out only the bonus seeds from the appendix and discards the book, the same sort of act as pulling only the bonus card from a candy toy. Fuel is the dungeon's greatest export, so the discarded books don't go to waste either.

"That potatoes and bulbs and the like aren't included as magazine appendices is probably a distribution issue."

"Ah, in a section that wasn't the industry shelves (the 600s), I found a book that had wandered in: The Bulb Cultivation Method."

"The original registration data was probably wrong."

"……A binding error has swapped out the contents. ……The 'Yoshida Government' would be the Daikan, Yoshida Nishinoichinojō, so in short, the Daikan ought to be… huh?"

"That Daikan doesn't even particularly come demanding land taxes or anything, so."

"The Yoshida Government aside, there's no guarantee something like those mountain monkeys from before won't crop up again. A 'military organization' is necessary."

"You're saying we raise the priority?"

"Yes. That said, our agricultural output is still so meager that pulling something like a 'military-first policy' would be suicide."

"It'd be nice if there were a monster that dropped food."

"Food is needed in vast quantities, and dropping enough from monsters to live off of is difficult in terms of the energy balance. Even this dungeon only manages the absurdity of using books for fuel thanks to titles with abnormally huge print runs, billions of copies across worlds. Honestly, how on earth do the other dungeon-cities secure their food?"

"If we knew that, we wouldn't be struggling. This isn't soil that crops will grow in, so farming isn't exactly an option either."

"To return to the subject, Ox-Head and Horse-Head would be a fighting force from the start, but although the Asura Realm is a world of struggle, that doesn't mean they go around using swords and spears. Some among them do physically strangle the enemy or scatter poison directly, mind you."

That the true main-line monster wasn't Ox-Head and Horse-Head but a librarian, no one knows that anymore.

"Marie-san, that smell coming off your head, does it have something to do with how Asura fight?"

"That's a rude way to put it. It's for pest repellent and disinfection."

"My apologies."

"So, next we summon a military Asura, and not a mere soldier but a general, and explore the surroundings. If there's a farm or botanical-garden dungeon somewhere, we conquer it and obtain seed potatoes and saplings."

"This is a measure against bandits, isn't it?"

"That's the premise too, of course, but fruit-tree saplings in particular take years to mature, so I'd like to secure them within this spring."

"As I recall, drop items aren't alive, are they?"

"Just as this dungeon summons magazine appendices, there should be a way to summon living things. If there isn't, we simply look for the next option."

"Is there no room for negotiation or trade?"

"Negotiation doesn't get through to most Dungeon Masters. They have no intellect to speak of. How many Dungeon Masters do you suppose have even read the Encyclopedia Dungeonica?"

"I haven't read it either."

"It's not that you can't read it, Master. You just threw it aside without reading it."