Night Reconnaissance (Day 2, Night)

[The Skies Above the Nameless Bridge Checkpoint]

The Panjandrums had all but swept away the zombies before the checkpoint, after which they culled, as they came, the zombies arriving from Hiratsuka to the south. Any zombie that drew near the checkpoint without falling prey to the Panjandrums was finished off by the knight orders, who sortied once more to hunt down the stragglers.

Around that time, Noda Jibu-no-tayū, of the Senior Fifth Rank, a night heron, arrived at the Nameless Bridge and set out on night reconnaissance.

A night heron's arms, however, are wings, so while in flight he could use neither camera nor telephone. For this reason there was nothing for it but to scout by sight while speaking with the Control Room over a microphone-equipped headset.

"In the otherworld there are methods of fitting trained birds of prey and the like with cameras to take photographs from on their backs, so we shall have to prepare a camera for aerial photography by night herons before long."

"Marie-san, like the angels in the myths, it'd be handy if they had separate wings on their backs as well as their arms, wouldn't it."

"Master, in that case they would, anatomically speaking, have six limbs, which would make it difficult, I should think. Even for a dungeon monster, if its form differs greatly from an ordinary animal or plant, it demands a great deal of dungeon energy. Insects have wings in addition to their legs, but insects cannot grow large because of problems of skeleton and respiration, so to force one to a large size by a dungeon's power likewise demands a great deal of dungeon energy."

What is more, a night heron, though it cannot fly outside a dungeon, can still walk, whereas a giant insect would be crushed flat outside a dungeon.

"Jibu-no-tayū of the Senior Fifth Rank, please take constant care not to stray outside the dungeon's sphere of influence."

"Understood. As for the zombies, they are coming on in a somewhat scattered column, walking one after another up from the south, from the direction of Hiratsuka."

It is commonly said that birds cannot see in the dark, but a night heron can see well enough at night to have no trouble whatsoever.

"Can you make out the situation at the enemy dungeon? Do, however, take care not to leave the sphere of influence, and since we cannot rule out that they have some manner of ranged attack, avoid approaching too closely."

A night heron is, physically, incapable of flight, and were he to pass outside the dungeon's sphere of influence, he would plummet.

[The Skies Above the Zombie Dungeon]

"I've reached the north side of the Zombie Dungeon. The distance is too great to make out the particulars, but even now zombies are being produced one after another."

The night heron said something outrageous.

"Master, it would be difficult to contain tens of thousands of zombies within a dungeon less than a hundred meters on a side. I suspect the enemy possesses the unique law of 'producing zombies inexhaustibly.'"

"Marie-san, can't we win?"

"Whatever its unique law may be, there must surely be a constraint imposed by the dungeon energy of the dungeon itself. How great a store of energy it has laid up is unknown, but if we slay the zombies again and again within our own sphere of influence until the enemy's dungeon energy runs dry, and so drain it away entirely, then in theory we can win."

"The flow of zombies is heading, broadly, west toward Hiratsuka. But a portion of the newly appeared zombies are lingering in the vicinity of the dungeon and not moving."

"Do they head, after all, in the direction where people are?"

"Ah, the zombies, some of them are heading south."

"Eh, south…? Pursue… no, return for now and take a rest. That direction is not within the dungeon's sphere of influence."

[Tier-Group 3: Control Room]

"This is unfortunate. To the south… some two or three kilometers off there's a road linking Hiratsuka and Kōnodai, and south of that lies desert and dry riverbeds, but a little to the west is a village south of Hiratsuka, and farther on still is Hatanodai in Ebara District. Zombies are slow afoot, but they can act day and night, so their travel time in a single day is about the same as a person's. Left unchecked, in as little as three days Hatanodai would be attacked by the zombies."