Stalin's Organ (Day 3, Afternoon)

[Tier-Group 4]

On the first floor of Tier-Group 4, eight of Mint's clone bodies were mass-producing rockets. Since Mint paid no mind to clothing to begin with, the clones were dressed as men or as women, all at random.

"Mint, going smoothly?"

"Aide-de-camp scribe-dono. On the General-dono's proposal, we've developed a multiple rocket launcher capable of firing rockets in rapid succession. We set a great many rockets onto a frame, and since firing them all in perfect unison would cause mid-air collisions, we launch them at slight time intervals."

The original Mint answered.

"Looks like we'll just about have it ready by the end of the day."

"By firing some hundred of these into the enemy's camp, we'll throw their formation into chaos. We can also start fires and burn up their provisions and the like."

As the American national anthem attests, rockets fired into a fortress have little effect, but against this world's open-field encampments they might just exhibit tremendous effect. Perhaps.

[Yoshikichō] Southeast Side of the Dungeon, Foot of the Hill

The southeastern foot of the dungeon, the direction of the Nakayama Highway, also called the Nakayama Road, was named Yoshikichō. In the library-city dungeon there has never been a murder, so there is no Shimohara execution ground.

East was Higashimachi, northeast Domachi, northwest Ōnaruchō, west Kamikochō; the southwest, having no highway, had its gate put off until later, and the southeast was Yoshikichō. Five gates, named from a map of Saitama Prefecture. The knight commanders said it had "gotten much easier to follow," but the Dungeon Master had no intention of even trying to remember them.

"Ah, Marie-san, the wall's finished."

Rāja called out to Marie, who had been inspecting the wall she'd generated.

"We made it just in time. The enemy should be reaching Higashimachi before long, but faced with this, they'll have no choice but to give up and go home."

"They'll likely make camp at 'Minami-Nakano,' on the far bank of the valley, so let's fire 'Stalin's Organ' into them in the dead of night."

"Rāja, what organ is that?"

"Stalin's."

"Ah, the one who pulled off the Great Purge in Worker-Peasant Russia. The one where, if the exile government's Emperor Alexei had been fond of war, Worker-Peasant Russia might have collapsed."

"His hobbies were reading and gardening, his height about the same as Marie's, his temperament much alike too, but…"

"I don't do purges. A Named monster needn't fear assassination to excess, and this dungeon never had enough people to be worth purging to begin with."

"According to a book from another world, I don't know whether the Aleman, who were dismembered nation by nation after losing a world war, reunified, or whether Poland conquered the Aleman states, but there are also worlds in which a second world war broke out between the Aleman and Russia. The multiple rocket launcher Worker-Peasant Russia used at that time is 'Stalin's Organ.'"

Aleman derives from the Portuguese "Alemanha" and means Germany. That it derives from Portuguese is the same as with England and Holland. In the world Marie and the others know, the Aleman, Austria, and the Ottomans, defeated in the world war, were dismembered into small nation-states by ethnicity, and a Second World War never occurred.

"That said, since the enemy is going to the trouble of spending a night, it does seem a waste to scatter them with that 'Stalin's Organ.'"

"Of a fighting force of three thousand, if even a mere one percent or so took a direct rocket hit, we could add about one more tier-group. Stray hits on the baggage train aren't so tasty, though."

"If we could convert all three thousand into dungeon energy, the dungeon would grow considerably, and we'd reduce future threats as well. And as a bonus, we could safely take in the migrants heading our way right now."

"There's no Hague Convention on land warfare in this world, but surely this would still amount to a war crime?"

As expected of a law-faculty graduate. On that point she gives the matter proper consideration.

"Um, this is, at all events, an unfortunate dungeon disaster. Yes."

[Core Room]

"Mint, what's become of the refugees in the northwest?"

"They seem slow on their feet, so it'll still take some time. Also, they include not just humans but a great many beastfolk."

"Horses!"

"That much I can't tell."