At Kōnodai: Fiefs, Then Settling In, and How the Local Lords Won't Obey

[The Land of Sō: Kōnodai]

"The Library-City stands at two hundred thousand shaku, then. In height alone, three times what it was. To date that dungeon is reckoned to have devoured some hundred and fifty thousand souls. A rough sum, but the headless ghouls would number around three hundred thousand. Had they come surging our way, it would have been a near thing. They are already dead, after all, so there is no worry of feeding them."

Kazusa-no-suke remained calm to the last. Of course, since the dungeon energy gained from felling each one differs from being to being, one cannot truly say the headless ghouls numbered three hundred thousand.

"Your Excellency, I confess I was surprised the envoy spoke so frankly of the Director of Books' condition."

"It is not a thing that could be hidden, even had they tried. We would learn of it sooner or later. And besides, she is not dead. What's more, an Asura's body is a crude, slapdash sort of thing, so it would be no wonder if she recovered at any moment."

"How shall we proceed from here?"

"First, keep close communication with Musashi, Ke, and Sumō. The East is in the state it is, but watch Oda's movements well."

"Your Excellency, shall we seize this chance to tear up the pact and make for the dungeon?"

"No, I have no intention of attacking at once. Naturally, should the situation change, we will respond as circumstance demands."

"It is already a dangerous enough thing, and there is a risk that, left as it is, it grows beyond all handling."

"On that point, can that dungeon even be conquered to begin with? Ordinarily, with a dungeon you need only subdue the core. There are, I'm told, dungeons in the world with dozens of cores. But that dungeon's defining trait is that it is 'impossible to conquer.'"

"I have had the report that our spies cannot get inside."

"Just so. It is not that its guard is strict, or some such thing. It is that getting in is physically impossible in the first place. Of course, even a dungeon like that, being a dungeon all the same, can be throttled by any number of methods.

"But consider it from the standpoint of a lord who must feed the million people of Sō, and it is rather to our advantage to let that dungeon mass-produce rice, or wheat, or whatever it likes. Whatever they cannot eat themselves they have no choice but to sell, and since it is merchants who do the buying, when supply rises the price falls. By contrast, the produce of Sō's own dungeons does not increase, so its price will not drop. In short, it means cheap food can be supplied to the people of Kōnodai."

"They may throttle their production."

"And what would they gain by doing so? Think it through rationally, and producing just enough to meet the demand of the Eight Provinces of Kantō is what profits them most."

"Is that how it works."

"Of course, were it the dungeon's own minions living inside it, that would be another matter. But the ones living there are ordinary people. That being so, they have no choice but to take the same approach as a lord or a magistrate. Moreover, that dungeon's fighting strength is made up of warrior bands it has taken into its service, and what it grants them is fiefs, whole villages, no less. On top of that, it has made the villages' names the surnames of their headmen."

"Anyone would sooner have a fief than a stipend of storehouse rice. No doubt the reason that dungeon drew branch families away from the Musashi warrior bands was that it handed out fiefs so generously."

"But a warrior band that holds a fief soon settles into the land and becomes no different from the local lords. That is to say, they come to prize their own village above the interests of the realm. And what's more, with their surname and the village name one and the same, and the fields they were granted tilled by the warrior bands themselves, there is no mistaking it: in their own minds it has already become, completely, 'their own land.'"

"Truly. The local lords not only refuse to obey, they go and join hands with Awa. Fortunately, the most rebellious of those local lords we drove out into the Library-City Dungeon."

"Just so. The most troublesome fellows in all of Sō have become fief-holders. Do you imagine that lot will toil selflessly for the dungeon's sake?"

"Unthinkable. Well, for the sake of their own houses they'll work themselves to the bone, I'm sure."

"And what's more, that dungeon handed out houses and fields freely enough, but as for people, it left the arrangements to each warrior band. Which means the peasants become less the dungeon's subjects than the retainers of the warrior bands."

"So even to take them out on campaign, the dungeon would have to dangle rewards before them, or they'd not so much as stir."

"That said, the dungeon seems to regard the warrior bands as a tool for keeping order, so I doubt it would mind in the least even if they did go native and turn into local lords."