The End of the Zombie Dungeon. And Then... (Day 9, Late Afternoon)

[Beside the Zombie Dungeon, the Forward Fort]

"Director of Books-dono, the enemy dungeon has begun to tilt."

A lookout made his report.

"Goi Kurōdo-san, I'll ask you to conduct an aerial reconnaissance. We'll pour the water in all at once and finish this."

The soldiers who had remained at the forward fort all came out onto the ramparts to a man, to witness the end of the Zombie Dungeon.

"But still, dropping the whole dungeon into a pitfall? That's outrageous."

So said an impressed soldier.

"This is how the Director of Books does things," said Kishi Harima-no-suke, head of the first warrior band to come under their banner, with a faintly proud air.

Tilting to the left (east), the Zombie Dungeon slowly slid down. The boundary of a dungeon's sphere of influence seemed to be fixed to the ground itself, so the portion that left the Kozukappara execution-ground dungeon's sphere and entered the Library-City Dungeon's sphere began to crumble first, and the zombies riding atop it tumbled off piece by piece, swallowed up in the swirling water.

"That's it, a success. We'll keep digging deep beneath the eastern face from here, and slide the whole of the enemy dungeon down under our sphere."

Trembling in tiny shudders, the Zombie Dungeon vanished beneath the eastern wall, just like an oceanic plate sinking beneath a continent. Not that anyone in this world knew of plate tectonics, and Marie had her hands full with the dungeon assault.

When the Zombie Dungeon was about half collapsed, a single point of brilliant white light appeared within the earth, shining more brightly than anything around it.

"What is that light?"

"The Dungeon Core, most likely. Destroy that and we win. Even so, it has stored up an enormous amount of dungeon energy."

As Marie said this, the object she took to be the Dungeon Core rolled into the Library-City Dungeon's sphere of influence.

A Dungeon Core shines the brighter the more energy it has accumulated. The Kozukappara execution-ground dungeon's vast store of energy was released and came flooding into the Library-City Dungeon.

The Library-City Dungeon's Core converted the surplus energy of the overload into library summonings, but quantity aside, the rate of inflow was far more than it could ever process, so it discharged the energy by spreading its sphere of influence outward like a tsunami. People saw a deep blue light racing across the ground. The light stopped where it struck a town or village, but where nothing blocked its path it spread out beyond a hundred ri.

What was more, in the vicinity of the Zombie Dungeon the processing locally failed to keep up, and raw, unprocessed energy was released. The blown-away zombies burst into fragments and were annihilated; then the remains of the Kozukappara execution-ground dungeon, the walls to either side, and the whole of the forward fort glowed pale blue and came crashing down.

From the head of Marie, standing beside Kishi Harima-no-suke, there came a loud crack, and the smell of scorching filled the air. Before the frozen Commander Kishi, Marie slowly toppled over, and then it was all over.