An Envoy Is Coming Soon

[Core Room]

"Director-dono, one horse-beastfolk rider from the northwest of the Nakayama road, one rider plus three on foot from the southeast. And one more rider from the east as well. Each carries a parasol above its banner-standard. They appear, in all likelihood, to be envoys."

Mint's main body delivered the report.

"So the northwest is Ke, and the southeast is Sō. Ke will get here first. And the one from the east, is that Tsukuba come to sue for peace? It'd put me in a spot if they demanded I hand back the prisoners or the heads, though… In any case, let's get word to Marie-san."

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

"Just as the Daikan-dono predicted, envoys have come from Ke and Sō. And one has come from Tsukuba too. To sue for peace, perhaps?"

"A dungeon disaster has occurred, and they can't very well do nothing about it. Besides, if it were pirates squatting here, there'd be a danger of an envoy being seized, but both Sō and Ke surely know it isn't any band of pirates living in this dungeon. If they don't even grasp that much, they'll be overthrown from below."

Ought Kazusa-no-suke to be overthrown from below?

"So, as I thought, from the outside this sudden growth will be read as a dungeon disaster?"

"It's only natural to think a dungeon's sudden growth comes of a dungeon disaster in which a great many died, and everyone knows that Tsukuba Naiyaku-no-jō had been gathering all those mercenaries and adventurers. So they can guess that either the expedition succeeded but at the cost of heavy casualties, or that it failed outright. The strangeness of there being no defeated remnants, that they'll notice only later, I expect."

"We did annihilate them quite thoroughly, after all. Sadly, some of the detached force did manage to flee, but they fled toward Ke, so they likely never crossed paths with the Daikan-dono."

"When a dungeon disaster occurs, the dungeon often collapses as well, but here we have the Secretary-General-dono, so there's no fear of that."

"Indeed, seen from the outside it certainly is a disaster. And since most dungeons have no intelligence, they use up the suddenly increased dungeon energy without a thought for what comes after, fail to sustain themselves, and collapse."

That she had once gotten carried away and done something very nearly that herself was a secret. Collapse had been avoided on two counts: that she had relentlessly added height, so the energy gained had itself increased, and that the dungeon's monsters were extremely few.

"Excess power is the ruin of a man. The request from the lord of the realm at Fuchū is for a settlement in which neither Musashi nor Sō nor Ke monopolizes the spoils. And the fact that Tsukuba is so swiftly sending an envoy to sue for peace means that, for all the losses they took, they aren't in disarray. A formidable opponent, this one."

"It means that even after we dealt them such a blow, they still have strength to spare."

"This dungeon's policy was, if I recall, the Million-Chōbu Reclamation Plan, was it?"

"A long-range plan, strictly speaking."

"Ordinarily a dungeon's sphere of influence is at most a few ri square, yet some dungeons, Nasu-Shiobara and the like, measure several dozen ri square in area alone. A million chōbu means a thousand chō square, and since one ri is thirty-six chō… let's see, about thirty ri square, then."

"Not all of it can be made paddy and field, so a radius of twenty or thirty ri, I should think."

"A million chōbu of paddy and field rather than desert would produce an enormous quantity of food, and whichever country got its hands on it would tip the balance of power all at once. Naturally, the neighboring states would dread that, and war would break out."

"I can brush away the sparks that fall on us, but I can't reach beyond the dungeon's sphere of influence. Stopping a war is more than I can do."

"Well, conversely, if it were a matter of this dungeon being able to occupy Fuchū, then the neighboring states would have to band together and conquer the dungeon. But the only dungeon dangerous enough to warrant that is something like 'Asuka, the Temple of Stone.'"

"Ah, the sacrifice one. This dungeon's guiding ideal is 'to realize a life of health and abundance, in both material and spiritual terms,' but Asuka's, they say, is 'Offer up your heart.' They extract the sacrifice's heart on the Oni-no-Manaita and let the sacrifice's blood run down the Sakafune-ishi, or so it goes."

A guiding ideal, or perhaps a motto. Rather like the otherworld's Tokugawa Ieyasu and his "Forsake this defiled land, seek the Pure Land," or Ishida Mitsunari's "Great One, Great Myriad, Great Fortune (One for all, All for one)." There is also a theory that Hideyoshi recommended Edo (defiled land) to Ieyasu over Odawara or Kamakura on grounds of economic prospects, while pointedly warning him not to rename the place out of spite. Go quickly to the Pure Land (the next world), not to Edo (defiled land), in other words.

"Asuka is a dangerous dungeon that manipulates even the land outside its sphere of influence, summoning vast quantities of muddy water to mount a water attack. I have a feeling famous dungeons like 'Umeda, the Mercantile City' probably hold some troublesome power of their own as well, but fortunately they're hundreds of ri away."

"Dungeons have a power called the 'unique law,' which warps the laws of the world. In this dungeon, for instance, fire can't be used indoors. The larger the dungeon, the more powerful its unique law, no doubt."

"That fire can't be used is plenty powerful in its own right. It means no one can burn the place down, after all."