100,000 Feet (Day 4)

[Core Room]

All at once an announcement issued from the Dungeon Core.

"Thirty thousand meters, thirty kilometers. In other words, one hundred thousand feet. Just as I thought, this dungeon's system runs on the yard-pound system."

Naturally, under ordinary circumstances a Dungeon Core is merely a place where energy accumulates; no management system exists.

"So the next mark is one million feet, then."

"By the present standard (prioritizing things with a fair amount of height, roughly thirty meters or more on a side, three stories or more, or with an adjoining cultural hall and the like), it will most likely come to a little over forty kilometers. And three hundred kilometers is out of the question; even a hundred kilometers we could never reach, not if we gathered every one of the four thousand public libraries in all of Japan. For the whole world it feels as though we might manage something like three thousand kilometers, but the libraries of other-language regions, even the small ones, would require dungeon energy on a scale beyond anything like the Imperial Library."

"Still, ten more kilometers added. The amount of dungeon energy we're gaining is quite considerable, isn't it."

"If the Zombie Dungeon is reincarnating those who died in prison or were executed at the Denmachō prison, the Kozukappara and Suzugamori execution grounds, and the like into another world, then it includes any number of them, from renowned bandits, highwaymen, chivalrous outlaws, gamblers, and swindlers to the patriots of the Restoration. Everyone from Nezumi Kozō Jirokichi to Yoshida Shōin, in fact. Most likely the Zombie Dungeon itself, judging by its location and its stone Buddhas, is in truth the 'Kozukappara execution ground.'"

In Yamaguchi they attach the honorific and say "Master Shōin," but Marie is no native of Yamaguchi Prefecture. Besides, plain "Master Shōin" would be confusing with Gotō Shōin.

"Even so, the zombies still aren't running out, are they."

"Just as this dungeon replication-summons books from many other worlds, that one is most likely reincarnating the dead as zombies from multiple otherworld Hells. With numbers like these it must require a vast amount of dungeon energy, and while dungeon energy itself cannot be quantified, by the laws of thermodynamics it must at the very least be expending as much as we spend summoning libraries here."

"Since the enemy are all Named monsters, don't they just revive and get reused?"

"It's not as if they're ■■■■, so they don't revive in three days. Ordinarily it takes several dozen days, or about a year. And reviving a kaijin is costly in energy terms, so as long as there's no shortage of monster slots, there's no need to go out of one's way to revive them. Though a dungeon with slots to spare for Named monsters is surely a rare thing."

Unless they are cast out under some special condition, Named monsters go on occupying a slot even if they happen to be dead.

"Marie-san, surely the enemy must count among them no few crafty scoundrels with cunning to spare, and yet all they do is monotonously summon zombie after zombie."

"Most of them have had their heads cut off, so either a torso alone has no wits, or zombies simply have brains that don't work. One or the other. But should the famed bandits and swindlers reincarnated from another world ever exercise their talents, I would be no match for them."

"So, are the prospects for capturing the Zombie Dungeon looking good?"

"Barring some special unique law like this dungeon's, a dungeon can be conquered by infiltrating it and destroying its core. As for the Zombie Dungeon, on the surface there is only a Buddhist statue and a stone monument, and it doesn't appear to have any underground chamber either, so the core is most likely buried directly in the ground. But digging through bone-strewn earth to search for the core is no easy task, so we'll have to think of some good method."

"Headless zombies keep welling up one after another, after all. Shall we just burn the whole dungeon down?"

"If we carry only fuel into the enemy's domain, there's the danger it will be treated as an abandoned object, absorbed by the Zombie Dungeon, and turned to its reinforcement. Fuel brought in by adventurers as their personal possessions is safe, but since adventurers are living beings, this time their very emotions would directly feed the enemy dungeon's reinforcement."

"True, the basics of a dungeon are to draw in adventurers and make them fight or hand them treasures, harvesting their emotions as an energy source, after all."

"If anything, it's a 'human farm' like this Library-City Dungeon that is the exception. Ordinarily the inside of a dungeon is a dangerous place save for limited 'safe zones.'"

"So all we can do is go at it steadily, then."

"Only, I'm worried about the zombies that headed south the other day. Before long they may well attack Hatanodai in Ebara District. If it were Kōnodai we could respond, but…"

Since it cannot be displayed directly, it has been rendered as a censored blank.