A Siege Tower Made of Preta

※Another mass slaughter takes place. Reader discretion is advised.

[Ōnaruchō] Northwest Castle Gate

"Welcome to the Library Dungeon City. We'll show you to your lodgings."

Before the opened gate, one of Mint's duplicates called out through a loudspeaker.

"Fools. Fools, the lot of them. To take us in thinking we're migrants."

So muttered the dog-beastfolk under his breath.

"No, any way you look at it, it's a trap. Our true nature has surely been found out."

A Preta retorted, just as quietly.

"Perhaps it'd be easier to become real refugees and just settle down here."

This from a human.

"That's what they call defeatism. Still, this isn't the dungeon proper, it's the outer wall. Until we've gotten inside the main body, we're better off letting them think we're refugees."

Another human spoke up.

"If you dawdle, we're going on ahead."

With that, the beastfolk headed for the gate.

"Ah, you fools…"

Ignoring the Preta's attempt to stop them, nearly all the beastfolk and a good many of the humans made for the gate.

Atop the wall, Marie was envisioning a Chinese-style gate-tower, but for now there was nothing there. In the wall stood two enormous gates side by side, eight meters wide and seven meters tall, with two smaller gates, about three meters on a side, flanking them left and right. Whether at the Zhengyangmen or the Namdaemun, a city wall has a single gate; four of them is abnormal.

The outer doors stood open, and within the gate spread a vast space some forty meters wide and thirty meters deep. The floor was sunk about twenty centimeters lower, the ceiling rose over twenty meters high, and at the far end stood four more gates like those on the outside, though these were closed.

"The inner and outer gate-doors do not open at the same time, so please wait a moment until we've closed the outer gate."

So said Mint's duplicate from outside the gate, but it was a lie. A moment ago there had been no gate-doors at all.

Suzuki, the crow-beastfolk and the only one able to fly, thought to herself, There's something to what the Preta keep saying about traps and all, but Since I can fly, I can just go over a wall like this, and flapping along to get a running start, she caught the wind and lifted off. Being too heavy, she couldn't take wing in the ordinary way.

Fields lay scattered throughout the city, but there wasn't a scrap of the fatty meat a crow loves, nor so much as a piece of fruit.

"Charge!"

Meanwhile, when the Preta's representative gave the command, the Preta all came tottering up to the wall beside the gate, swarming and piling Preta upon Preta to build a tower of Preta. With all the falling and crushing, a human or a beastfolk would surely have died, but the Preta were unfazed.

"Master, it's just like army ants, isn't it."

[Core Room]

"Master, activate 'Utsunomiya Castle.'"

"Got it. 'Utsunomiya Castle,' was it."

A whole sequence of intricate commands to the Core, bundled together into one (a macro), was set off. At once the castle gate was sealed, and the suspended ceiling dropped. The people inside the gate were flattened. For the record, to prevent malfunctions the suspended ceiling is normally lowered to ground level, by design, so that the inside of the gate is the same height as the outside.

"The Preta only get away with it because they're still slow-moving, but even so, what do we do about that pyramid stunt of theirs?"

"Master, a makeshift pit trap, quickly, at the bottom of the moat directly beneath the gymnastics pyramid."

"Even if you say right away…"

Several hundred Preta were building their tower, and the topmost Preta got their hands on the top of the wall. The knight order jabbed down at them with spears to knock them off, but they couldn't keep up.

"The Preta have risen in revolt. Everyone, please take shelter inside the city."

Before the gate, urged on by Mint's duplicate, the beastfolk and humans who couldn't make sense of the situation went filing into the gate. The suspended ceiling was in its lowered state, the corpses crushed behind it had already been swiftly recovered, and the gateway was now a floor the same height as the outside. The ones who had seen through the trap, on the other hand, some waited for the Preta to clear the wall, while others promptly took to flight.

"Master, activate the pit trap even half-finished. Just collapsing the pyramid is enough."

"Pit trap, activate. And there."

The tower of Preta had its footing knocked out and toppled; some of the Preta were swallowed into the ground, but the rest set about building another tower.

"Designate the ground where the Preta are buried as dungeon structure. Set octopus-pot pit traps, one after another, around each individual Preta."

"Marie-san, what do we do about that big bird flying up there?"

"For now we'll keep watch, but if it does any harm, we'll ram it with a drone. From here on we'll need a fighter plane or anti-aircraft guns, I should think."

"A library surely doesn't have detailed blueprints for fighter planes or machine guns."

"These are the Preta we captured by making the ground into dungeon structure, but we have to crush them properly."

"Since we've got the enemy caught inside the gate, we can't send the knight order out."

"That'll want some improvement, I'd say."

Marie buried one after another in pit traps, working before the fleeing humans and beastfolk could get clear of the dungeon's sphere of influence. Some of the exceedingly nimble deer-beastfolk and the flying crow-beastfolk got away, but the most dangerous Preta were successfully wiped out. Even so, the ground before the gate was left riddled with holes, like the surface of the moon.