Summoning a Slime

(explanation)

[Core Room]

"Marie-san, the monsters this dungeon can summon are just 'Shiso,' which replaced the main line, and the insects, right?"

"That's right. Originally it would have been the library staff, Ox-Head and Horse-Head, plus the pests. In other words, the creatures you'd find in a library.

"As a rule, a dungeon can summon the monsters that would ordinarily be found in that dungeon. For a 'pirate ship,' say, that's pirates, rats, and weevils; for a 'cave,' it's bats and eyeless shrimp and the like."

"What about the standard monsters, the slimes and goblins and so on?"

"A dungeon's monsters and items can only be summoned if they're ordinary things from another world, so they'd be the produce of some other world where plenty of those happen to live in caves. According to the Encyclopedia Dungeonica, the reason slimes are sometimes pushovers and sometimes formidable foes is that the worlds they're summoned from differ."

"Couldn't this dungeon at least manage a slime?"

"Let's see, searching… It's not under monsters, but there is one under books. 'How to Make Slime.'"

The book came with materials enclosed in tubes and pouches. When Marie mixed the materials together as the instructions directed, she produced an object that could be called neither solid nor liquid.

"There's no way this thing is a monster. Look at it."

"It doesn't move, does it. Then again, a nameless dungeon monster isn't, strictly speaking, a living thing to begin with."

"Right, no need to eat or drink, you said."

"Its activity energy is supplied by the dungeon, and when defeated it leaves behind a 'drop item.'"

"So you get candy out of it. 'Trick or treat,' was it?"

"No, Master.

"If a monster were left behind as a whole corpse, the books wouldn't balance, so adventurers are given materials related to the monster instead. For a nameless Shiso (Asura), for instance, herbs would be fitting. But the drop items aren't alive either, so even if you took a cutting of that herb, it wouldn't propagate."

"This slime, though, that's not a monster summon. It's a book appendix, which is to say an item summon."

"That's right. Apparently, as long as it's a book, it can be summoned without trouble even if it comes with an appendix. The summoning cost seems to be set by the print run, though, so it's not exactly cheap. For example… let's just summon one at random."

Marie summoned an object that looked less like a book than a box.

"'Weekly Build the Casablanca-class Escort Carrier.' Is it?"

When the Dungeon Master opened the box, it was full of countless tiny parts. When Marie assembled the materials according to the instructions, a model some 20 cm long was completed. (Whether the metric system holds outside the dungeon is, of course, unknown.)

"There are 50 issues in all, so it seems there are people in that other world with enough time on their hands to build 50 models like this."

"I suppose there's no such thing as a book with a monster for an appendix."

"And since this is a model, it means there's a country in that other world with enough time on its hands to build 50 ships like this."

"What about this, then: a magazine with vegetable seeds for an appendix?"

"Would it be treated as a monster, or as an ordinary vegetable, or would it just not sprout?"

"Let's give it a try at once. Although, the soil around here has no nutrients, so we'll need to obtain fertilizer somehow… The Dungeon Master and the main-line monsters can summon food in the Core Room. Since the Shiso are Asura, that means the foodstuffs in the kitchen should be usable."

Beside the refrigerator in the kitchen, liquid and solid fertilizers were stacked up. The refrigerator itself was nearly empty apart from the foul, muddy-water-like Asura feed, with black coffee, canned beer, and an energy drink lined up forlornly in one corner.

"With this nasty-looking muddy water?"

"No, that's for maintaining a humanoid body. What we need this time is plant fertilizer. Pick one that has the trace elements properly accounted for, if you can."

Asura can, by and large, eat the same food as humans, and don't, in fact, live by photosynthesis. Conversely, a human can also survive on Asura feed. They'd die spiritually from how foul it is, mind you. Beastfolk are tougher against poison than ordinary animals, but there are still some foods that won't do for them. Pretas, even if they can physically eat, can only absorb alcohol and ether.