The Magistrate Comes Again

After repelling Tsukuba Naiyaku-no-jō's main force, Marie had obtained a great quantity of bucket rice-cultivation kits for the fourth wave of settlers (who turned out, in the end, to be a Tsukuba detachment), but from preparing the seed rice to planting takes about thirty days. Until the preparations were complete, the library-city dungeon was pressing ahead with developing its infrastructure.

[The West Gate, Kamikochō]

The Iruma Daikan, who had gone back to Iruma once, had come again.

"The envoys from Sō and Ke should be arriving here before long, so I came. I also bear word from Fuchū regarding our policy for the negotiations."

"Envoys, is it. We certainly mustn't turn them into the deceased by mistake. Though the Master seems the type who would."

That the Dungeon Master had mistaken "librarian" for "Shiso" was the start of it all. Had it proceeded according to the tutorial, it would have gotten a university library and ten million volumes for free. There was a catch, however: the comprehensive library that comes with the tutorial wouldn't hold them all, so one would have to prepare a separate book stack.

"You'll know the envoys by their small numbers, and by the conical hats hung above their banner-standards. Forged envoys are possible, however, so caution is necessary."

"Will Sō and Ke send envoys?"

"To leave such an upheaval unaddressed would disqualify one as a lord of the realm, so any halfway-competent ruler will surely take action. That said, the east is in chaos and won't be able to decide on sending envoys, and from Sumō and Awa this dungeon cannot be seen, so no envoys will come from there."

"Some of the retinue will be ninja, I imagine."

"Ninja aren't kept on retainer at all times, so when one is in a hurry they won't arrive in time. Either they've already been planted, or they'll be sent in disguised separately as merchants or some such."

"There are certainly ninja disguised as settlers. And without doubt some that you, Daikan-dono, have hired as well."

"If I said there were none, Lord Enma would yank my tongue out. Though I cannot reveal which ones are ninja."

"It's a great shame we can't send ninja of our own out. Ordinary dungeon monsters can't leave the dungeon's sphere of influence, and Named monsters are far too scarce to spend on spying."

"Ninja aren't as handy as you'd think, mind you. With my retainers watching, I can't do anything so unreasonable as keeping them on the payroll day to day, so when I need them I hire them from the ninja castle up north. If you don't mind a breakdown in discipline, there's also the method, like Matsuyama Castle, of announcing that 'night-thieves will have their criminal records and debts wiped clean' and rounding them up along with the ruffians. And above all, you can never trust them completely."

"So there's a castle like that."

[Tier-Group 4, First Floor, Reception Room]

"Let's see… the ninja castle and Matsuyama Castle, was it. From the names, I take them to be the equivalents of Oshi Castle and Musashi-Matsuyama Castle, but…"

Marie spread a map across the desk. Many towns and villages were marked on it, but for the most part no names were written in.

"Secretary-General-dono, this map is accurate, isn't it."

"Generally, yes. We calculate the bearings from the top of the tower and from points partway up, but fluctuations in the air produce some small margin of error. And at a distance we can't secure enough vertical separation, so the precision inevitably gets worse."

The Daikan was staring at the map as though to devour it.

"Oshi Castle is here, ringed about with extremely fine sand, impregnable. And this is Matsuyama Castle. Truly, this map is astounding."

"It would constitute a military secret, so distributing it here is out of the question."

"Headed off before I could even ask."

"As for the map, we plan to release it gradually, starting from within the dungeon's sphere of influence and the highways we've developed. And so, Kawagoe Castle would be this one, just short of Kasumigaseki?"

"Just so."

"I don't see Iwatsuki Castle anywhere. If it exists, it ought to be roughly to the northeast of Adachi."

"Never heard of it. The area around Adachi has been uninhabited wasteland since ancient times. Something may have been there in the distant past, perhaps."

In terms of scale, the distances seemed to run roughly five or ten times those of the original. Of course, since this is not the Saitama world after all, the correspondence isn't all that close.