Of Course Adventurers Can't Read

[Core Room]

Marie summoned the books one at a time and read them, and once she had finished, lined them up on the shelves in the reading room. Not a single adventurer had come, but it would be a good while yet before the reading room was full.

[The Wasteland Before the Library]

Then, one day, two adventurers were walking across the wasteland, every inch the wandering-traveler type: draped in straw rain-capes, sedge hats on their heads, tabi and straw sandals on their feet, their baggage divided into two bundles tied with cord and slung over their shoulders.

"Oi, was that there before?"

On a low hill in the vast wasteland stood a building. It was a single story with a gently sloping roof.

"Too tidy for a pirates' den, and there's no way there'd be a travelers' inn out here, so who in the world… Let's have a look. If it's a Nanban temple and there are padres or brothers inside, that's a 30-yen bounty."

"It might be a dungeon. It's short for a tower-type, but if it's freshly made… something like this, maybe."

In this world, most of the necessities of life depended on dungeons.

"If it's a dungeon, even a fresh one ought to have something valuable in it."

The adventurers approached the building and struck the glass door of the entrance with the staves they carried. The door, however, didn't so much as crack.

"If this transparent thing can't be destroyed, it's a dungeon, all right."

"No sign of monsters or traps anywhere in view. There's something on the shelves over there."

The adventurers went inside and opened a book upside down, but, apparently unable to read it, soon flung it aside.

"Just paper. Looks like it'd do for fuel, though. Not much value, for the produce of a dungeon."

"That desk and chair over there look more useful, if anything."

Because the building's interior was forbidden open flame by the dungeon's unique law, neither tobacco nor cookfires could be used inside, but fire could be used outdoors even within the dungeon's range. The adventurers ate their meal in front of the library while burning books, took a puff of tobacco from their pipes, and went home shouldering a chair.

After that, the adventurers brought a large handcart and busily carted off books and desks and chairs, smashed the bookshelves to bits and hauled those away too…

The dungeon's "frame," such as the floors, walls, and ceiling, and its "fittings," the doors and windows, normally can't be destroyed, but furniture and fixtures like bookshelves can be. That said, if they're destroyed willy-nilly, there won't be enough energy to repair them. As things stand, there's no choice but to give up on replenishing them.

The literacy rate in this region is about that of the Edo period, but not the "Edo" of the Edo period. Most ordinary folk can read and write nothing but their own names.