Operation Total Encirclement of Kozukappara Execution Ground (Day 4)

[Tier-Group 3: Control Room]

"Mint, we'll put the direct conquest of the enemy zombie dungeon, that is, the Kozukappara Execution Ground Dungeon, on hold for the time being."

"Aide-de-camp scribe, have we no means at all?"

"None I can think of just now, sadly. Praying won't send the zombies on to nirvana; sending in adventurers would itself only strengthen the enemy dungeon; and if we send in combustible matter without using adventurers, it gets treated as abandoned goods and absorbed. So we'll content ourselves with sealing off the open southern side, to keep zombies from spilling out hereafter. But we have no crane, so laying stone is difficult as well."

"If a rampart's out of the question, then I suppose we've no choice but to dig a moat. Open a pit within our own dungeon's sphere of influence, then use the fire-suppression system's water cannon or some such to spray water onto the soil outside the sphere and wash it away. Something like that."

"Indeed, the southern side isn't within the enemy dungeon's sphere of influence either; it's just bare earth. If only we could dig away the dungeon itself."

"The zombies keep welling up, so the ground surface doesn't seem to be a dungeon structure. I wonder if spraying water might wash it away."

"Once we've sealed it off completely, we'll no longer have zombies overflowing out of the south in great numbers, so after that it'll be worth a try. Water is a precious commodity in the desert, but as dungeon energy it's cheap. True, by this world's Five Phases earth quells water, so an earth-attribute dungeon is reckoned to be a poor matchup for us, but…"

There was no proof it was earth-attribute. In the Six Realms the color of the Hell Realm is black, so by the Five Phases the world of the dead might well be water-attribute.

"This dungeon was book-attribute, was it not?"

"If forced to say, it would be wood-attribute, but everyone takes it for water-attribute, and there's no need to correct them."

[Beside the Zombie Dungeon: The Forward Fort]

"Word from the Director of Books."

Kishi Harima-no-suke, commander of the Kishi Band, read the report aloud.

"From here on, we are to seal off the southeast and southern faces of Kozukappara Execution Ground. It is dangerous, so we are to withdraw to the northern face. So she says."

"Harima-no-suke, what in the world is she about to do?"

"Dig away the ground with water, let it flow into our sphere of influence, and recover it, digging a deep moat."

"What an extravagant way to go about it. Squandering water in the desert, no less."

"Would you rather march right up to those headless corpses and hack the ground away with a hoe, then? That would be as good as begging to be attacked. That lady will use any means whatsoever to win without sacrificing our own. After all, 'If it will not sing, then tonight it goes in the pot, the little cuckoo.' And to that end she spares no expense. Besides, this time our foe is already dead. Were she to order us to fall upon a village and butcher its innocent inhabitants, I'd be at a loss, I grant you, but for the dead there's no need for restraint."

What Marie actually said was, "Sing though it may, tonight it's grilled fowl, the little cuckoo." Wail and howl afterward, and it's already too late. That said, much like the beastfolk of the Tsukuba detachment, if one defies her and then flees beyond the reach of the dungeon's hand, she does not give chase.

[Tier-Group 3: Control Room]

"Preparations are complete."

"Then begin, if you would."

A deep pit was opened within the Library-City Dungeon's sphere of influence, and the water cannons sprayed a great volume of water onto the land south of the Kozukappara Execution Ground Dungeon; the eroded soil and sediment flowed into the pit and was recovered. Now and then a zombie would lose its footing and tumble into the pit, but these were not absorbed and simply piled up.

"Mint, the zombies are left behind, aren't they."

"Even if we put a Panjandrum down in the pit there's no room for it to trundle about running them down, and hauling it back out afterward would take extra dungeon energy. It would be quicker to make the pit walls movable and crush them from time to time."

"A so-called 'moving wall,' then."