The Long-Term Plan for Accepting Immigrants

[Tier-Group 3, First-Floor Hall, the Six-Party Meeting]

"The Million-Chōbu Reclamation Plan is a plan to create a million chō of fields and paddies around the dungeon. However, this dungeon's productive capacity is limited for now, so we are short on food and cannot increase our hands; that means we cannot expand our planting all at once. If you would bring a year's worth of food with you, or even half a year's, we could take in a fair number of immigrants."

"For Musashi's part, we judge it worth hurrying the immigrants along, even if it means hunting a few food-producing dungeons to extinction to do it."

"There's no need to go hunting dungeons to extinction. Couldn't you simply buy food from some other land?"

"No land has any surplus of food, so buying it in bulk could touch off a famine."

The desert is poor in productivity, so food is in short supply.

"Humans can live on Asura food for a short while, but apparently it tastes truly dreadful, so in the worst case, if they can endure meals that don't suit the palate……"

Ordinary dungeon monsters are not living things and so need neither food nor drink, but the Dungeon Master and Named monsters do require food. For that reason a dungeon can summon food for its Master and monsters.

At the Library-City Dungeon, what can be summoned is coffee, beer, and chūhai for the Master, and liquid fertilizer and various plant fertilizers for the Shiso (Asura). Since Asura cannot photosynthesize in human form, the Asura liquid fertilizer contains carbohydrates and amino acids and can be used for humans over the short term, but it is a foul greenish color, and tastes like the water in a ditch gone thick with summer algae.

"Better than starving, but it would be cruel to feed the common folk such a thing. For Sō's part, we want to secure the maximum amount of food."

So said Okamoto Shuyu-no-kami.

"Beastfolk eat different things depending on their species. How will that be handled?"

So said Takahashi Tsushima-no-kami.

"Depending on the kind, some beastfolk cannot live on Asura fertilizer, so I'm afraid we cannot take in those kinds until we can secure feed for them."

"Oxen and horses make do with grass, but cats need meat or fish…… some are certainly hard to supply. Tanuki will eat anything, but I'd be glad if you raised some cockscomb or ripe persimmons."

Takahashi Tsushima-no-kami pictured a chicken's head; Marie pictured the plant called cockscomb. A discrepancy in understanding had arisen between them.

"Is Tsushima-no-kami-dono fond of cockscomb, then?"

"Very fond. If you'd increase the supply, it'd give me something to look forward to on my next visit here."

The Iruma Daikan, Yoshida Nishinoichinojō.

"And so the Pretas are still refused, after all?"

"I won't go so far as to say 'absolutely never.' But the Asura are the plant kingdom, the Beasts are the animal kingdom, while the Pretas are the mineral kingdom and are not by nature living things, so when it comes to 'taking them on as residents,' I personally feel a certain discomfort. And we can't very well treat them as 'speaking tools' that aren't even livestock."

Nameless dungeon monsters are likewise not alive, but they can only perform fixed, set behaviors and have no intelligence, so there's no problem treating them as tools.

"What about driving out the Pretas from around Chichibu, and the like?"

"Of course, I take no part whatsoever in anything outside the dungeon's sphere of influence. To go sticking one's nose even into places that have nothing to do with one is the mark of a fanatic. On the other hand, forcibly mixing them all in one place won't go well either. There's no problem with their coming for trade, though."

"To sum up: Asura are no problem, humans must bring food or endure bad rations for a while, Beasts depend on the kind, and Pretas are refused as a rule. Is that right?"

So said Nyūdō Daizen-no-suke.

"That's how it stands. As for Devas, I've never seen one, so I can't say anything, and the Hell Realm I don't understand well either, so we may leave those pending."

"Even calling them residents of Hell, Ox-Head and Horse-Head are Beasts, you know."

So said Yoshida Nishinoichinojō.

"Now, the next matter is the allotment of immigrants. Musashi is not the only one troubled by having too many people. Beasts don't breed as fast as humans, so Ke is at least somewhat better off."

The desert being poor in productivity, Sō too has a surplus population, as Okamoto Shuyu-no-kami had said.

"Ke has few fields as well, so feeding the common folk is hard going. But with a million chō of paddies and fields, the food problem would be solved at a single stroke."

"In the long term, how many immigrants would each of you wish to send out?"

"We can't force people to migrate, and if we call for volunteers, then even granting we'll mostly wait and see at first, in the long term I'd guess our Musashi at 400,000, Sō and Ke at 200,000 each, another 100,000 from the east since they'll come regardless, and since Sumō is far away and few are likely to come, all told with the rest about a million people. Secretary-General, no, Director of Books-dono, you'll still be refusing the Pretas in the future, I take it?"

"Of course. There are surely many Asura who can get along well with Pretas, but I am not one of them. I won't go so far as to refuse those coming for work or sightseeing, however."

"In that case, not many will come from Shina or Kō, I'd think. Koshi, north of Ke, is too far, after all."

Takahashi Tsushima-no-kami went on.

"And when will the immigrants be accepted?"

"Preparations will be needed, so first, during the summer. Before the autumn rice harvest and wheat sowing. That's how it would go. By the start of autumn we should be able to harvest a certain amount of late-sown corn and edamame. Sweet potatoes in autumn, the potatoes planted at summer's end harvested at the start of winter, wheat harvested next spring, the spring-planted potatoes harvested at spring's end, corn in summer. We'll increase the head count in that order while also expanding the planting."