I Want a Horse

[Plaza Before the Dungeon]

Marie was conducting a review of the knight order.

For safety's sake, the Dungeon Master watched from behind glass. The windows are dungeon structure, so short of a dragon body-slamming them, they won't break. It isn't that "I am keenly aware of being bitterly hated by the populace on account of my misrule" or anything like that. It's because Named monsters can recover even from political terrorism, whereas the Dungeon Master is presumed to have no such ability. It might possibly have nine lives, but it's not as if it can go testing the matter.

Incidentally, should the Dungeon Master die, the dungeon collapses and its monsters vanish, but the Named monsters remain. From that point on, however, they can no longer be revived if killed, and will eventually die of old age.

[Core Room]

Having finished the review of the knight order, Marie came to the Core Room. Rāja was off training with the order.

"They call it a 'mustering of horses,' and yet there isn't a single horse. More to the point, it's a shame we couldn't capture the horses the Hiki clan brought."

"In time I'd like to raise the likes of Sledgehammer and his daughter Water, or Kobe Tomcat, and have them race."

"Master, we haven't the luxury to be racing some 'Vietnam Cat' or other… True, if the Nakayama Racecourse Dungeon is still alive, we might be able to obtain racehorses, but for the foreseeable future the horses' role is to form the knight order for defense against pirates, to make farming more efficient, and to haul cargo. In other words, warhorses, plow-horses, and pack-horses. Racehorses are good for nothing."

"What if the horse breeds in this world happen to be the same?"

"True, they're probably native breeds, something like the Miharu-koma. The sort where you change a horse's use according to its size, build, and temperament."

The real horse, mind you, not the Miharu-koma papier-mâché toy.

"Marie-san, do you suppose the Daikan will find horses and bring them?"

"That Daikan… just as the 'knight order' turned out to be the Kishi Band, the 'horses' may turn out to be humans who merely have 'horse' in their names, a Sōma here, an Arima there…"

"Setting aside horse-beastfolk… wait, can beastfolk even be put to work?"

"I should think it's perfectly possible. Both ordinary beastfolk and the unintelligent dungeon-monster kind. Even a nameless dungeon monster can carry out simple commands, so Ox-Head and Horse-Head could probably be used for military and farming purposes alike."

"So originally it was Ox-Head and Horse-Head who were set to handle the book management, the farming, and the defense, then."

It isn't Ox-Head and Horse-Head.

"Ox-Head and Horse-Head… that reminds me, some time ago I told you that in this dungeon a librarian's 'reincarnation' and 'corpse-possession summoning' can't be done. Remember?"

"I certainly don't recall that."

"There are now over a thousand humans in this dungeon, so a librarian's reincarnation… no, still impossible. I tried to recall the contents of the Encyclopedia Dungeonica, but the settlers don't belong to the dungeon itself."

"Ahh, so as far as the dungeon's concerned they're treated the same as adventurers who've come in from outside."

"The only ones who 'belong' to the dungeon are the Master plus five monsters, six in all. The only things we can summon are Shiso (Asura) and a handful of pests. As a back-door trick, tadpole shrimp and fairy shrimp can be obtained as magazine appendices, but those don't 'belong' to the dungeon either, and in a desert with no paddy weeds, there's not much point to them."

"Five must be on the small side, I'd imagine."

"They say there's such a thing as specializing in traps with no monsters at all, but by general standards it's probably few, yes. That said, in this dungeon there's little call to put work on nameless monsters. It would be nice if we could at least summon a horse for the knight order, though."

"Sengarie Adolf the 'Virgin' is too old an era, but there's the 'Dutch-Roll Monster' Haneda Brian, the 'Undefeated Triple Crown' Armageddon, the 'Brown Mad Dog' Goldsmith, 'Armageddon's Masterpiece' Vapor Trail, and, well…"

"That 'Monster' and 'Mad Dog' business sounds like the sort of epithet a warlord would fancy. There was a legendary fine horse called Namagui, of whom they said, 'Offer it meat and it'd probably eat.' Whether it existed in this world too I couldn't say. I'd assumed the Master only knew racehorses, but you know warhorses as well?"

These are bona fide racehorses.

"In point of fact, summoning automobiles is also out of the question. As Marie says, horses are a reasonable choice, I suppose."

"Models are one thing, but I can't even find a partwork encyclopedia for building a real automobile. And even on the off chance we found something like an 'Automobile Dealer Dungeon,' there are no roads, so it couldn't get up to speed and would break down, and with no basic industrial capacity we couldn't service it, and once the battery went bad we'd have no choice but to throw it away. At the technology level, I think firearms could be found if we searched, so setting aside dungeon-made weapons, in this world dragoons would be the supreme fighting force."