I Know, Let's Burn Books. And the Newspapers Too

[Core Room]

"So if nobody can read, then a book has no value except as fuel. That it?"

"But if we just casually burn them up as fuel, the books won't balance. Books can't be summoned for free, after all. And if we keep restocking bookshelves one after another, which cost even more than the books, that could threaten the very survival of the Dungeon. In particular, the extra furniture, for some reason, comes out as teak wood instead of plywood or the like, which makes it all the more expensive."

Marie went on.

"First of all, the only goods this Dungeon can obtain are the 'mass-produced items' of other worlds. That said, even handicrafts can be obtained, more or less, so long as they were produced in great quantity. In the case of this library Dungeon, printed books and hand-copied books reproduced in bulk can be obtained, but a one-of-a-kind item such as a diary cannot."

"That makes sense and also doesn't."

"And the more worlds a book was published in, and the greater the print run, the easier it is to obtain. Though cultural influence does make Japanese-language books 'easier to obtain.'"

"So a global bestseller pays off just fine as fuel. That's the idea."

"Most likely. Then, let me search for the single lowest-cost book among all books and try summoning it."

As Marie said this, a single book appeared on the desk.

"Let's see… 'And unto Oilham was born Isaku, and unto Isaku was born Yakobu, and unto Yakobu was born Yuda and his brethren…'?"

Perhaps because it had been oddly translated somewhere in some world, the text was an unintelligible string of nonsense.

"It is the most widespread book across a great many other worlds, so it can be obtained at thoroughly low cost. Although in some worlds and countries it is banned, and merely possessing it can mean a death sentence."

"Good enough!"

In a world where no one can read, there is no such thing as a forbidden book.

"This is the second-lowest-cost book, but even so it is an order of magnitude more expensive."

Marie indicated a small book with a red cover. On the cover were the characters for "Quotations of Chairman Ma■," the last one looking like a "ヨ" with a "求" beneath it, a kanji the Dungeon Master did not know.

[Reading Room]

Marie summoned low-cost books for her own reading, and since it would be a waste to burn them, she kept them in the Core Room while diligently using the spare energy to summon "books for burning."

As for reading material, even limiting it to books with a fairly large print run, there was a colossal number, and she had only gotten as far as classification number 002 (Knowledge, Learning, Scholarship), not even reaching information science (classification number 007). She could narrow down the content and summon selectively, yet she was simply summoning them from one end straight through, which was the only thing wrong with it.

The books in the reading room that hadn't been burned were too good to waste, so they were crammed into an empty side room at the back of the Core Room. The adventurers would come by from time to time, gather up the books meant for burning, and haul them out. However, books, while well-suited as kindling, have the drawback that as fuel their heat lacks staying power and they don't burn evenly.

Then one day, while reading her usual assortment of miscellaneous books, Marie said,

"It seems that in other worlds there is something called 'newspaper logs.'"

"Shinbun-maki? Is that sushi?"

It was not shinko-maki.

"Let's see, search the Core, and…"

When Marie ran a summon, several books about camping, disaster preparedness, the Tokyo Metropolitan Police, and the like were summoned.

"In other worlds there is something called a 'newspaper,' and apparently they are issued by the millions every single day. Newspaper logs are made by processing newspapers. They are a fuel that makes up for the shortcomings of books."

"So they can be used as firewood, then."

"As for the newspaper itself, Правда, Cankao Xiaoxi, the Delhi Morning Sun, the Shūmai Shimbun, any of them will do, so long as there is a large supply in paper form. That said, if I had the time to be making newspaper logs, I would rather spend it reading books, and however much we may say we 'could use even a cat's paw to help,' the Master alone, one beast, can't keep up. Better to have the adventurers make them themselves."

"So I copy the instructions for making newspaper logs and have the adventurers make them… ah, that won't work. The humans of this world can't read. Show it in pictures, then."

The disaster-preparedness pamphlet from the Tokyo Metropolitan Police laid out the method for making newspaper logs in detailed photographs.

"Water is constrained by the supply from the World Core and can't be used lavishly, but for production on the scale of newspaper logs, it is more than enough."

The "books for burning," counting printing and hand-copied manuscripts, are said to total ten billion copies across all recorded history, or perhaps far more, exceeding the Quotations of Chairman Mao tenfold.

The Qur'an, on the other hand, has a smaller print run than the Quotations of Chairman Mao, because it is neither distributed widely for free nor used in a "use-it-up" fashion, and because anything outside Arabic is treated not as a "translation" but as a commentary.