The Road to Carriage*4
If you capture monsters alive—or bring back their eggs—and keep breaking them down, absorbing, and reconstructing them, you can basically produce as many monsters as you want.
Makes sense. Thinking about it that way, it’s easy to understand why other dungeons are overflowing with monsters.
When I create jewels or traps, that’s all covered by the monsters in those places. And if they reproduce on their own, that’s pure profit...
… When you think about it, producing monsters inside a dungeon is actually a very efficient system, isn’t it? You can leave everything to them—blocking, killing, and luring humans in! You don’t even have to micromanage! At least, unlike my traps, you don’t have to manually activate them each time!
And as I was reminded while building the carriage this time... this world runs in large part thanks to the materials and fantasy-like energy that monsters provide! That means monster materials have decent value, and their demand is pretty high... enough for adventurers to make a living off them!
And now I understand why people go out of their way to protect dungeons! Of course they do! A dungeon that produces materials vital to some parts of daily life—that’s infrastructure! There’s no reason not to protect that!
“Whoa! So we can make as many as we want!? And we can even make super amazing monsters!? Then let’s go catch a Pegasus or a Dragon!”
“Let’s not, Mishisia-san! Let’s not do that! The economy would die! Absolutely die!”
… Yeah, for now, let’s, uh, put that idea on hold!
“Eeeeh... but why not?”
“Well... just looking at the current situation, I really think mass-producing Pegasi or Dragons would be bad news...”
Mishisia-san looked like she was seriously thinking ‘what’s wrong with that?’ but... no matter how I look at it, that’s a terrible idea.
“Right now, things like Dragon hide or Pegasus feathers... they’re considered rare and valuable, right?”
“Yeah. You could say they’re items favored by the nobility.”
Yep, figured as much. Coming from Lisas-san, who used to work in the royal palace, that’s gotta be accurate.
“... Which means there’s a reason they’re rare.”
“A reason there aren’t many of them?”
“Right. Or more specifically... there’s probably a reason other dungeon masters don’t mass-produce them.”
While I wondered how to best explain it to Mishisia-san, I decided to just list the possibilities I could think of.
“Maybe they consume ridiculous amounts of mana, so they simply can’t be mass-produced. Or maybe if they put out too many, adventurers would overhunt them and crash the market, so they limit the numbers. Or maybe it’s to balance the flow of adventurers coming in. There are all sorts of reasons... but the point is, the world’s economy is balanced as it is right now.”
“Yeah.”
“And if that balance breaks, every dungeon master out there would have to completely change how they operate. Some might not even survive.”
“Yeah...”
“So... if I were one of those dungeon masters, I’d probably come destroy my dungeon for doing that.”
After my rough explanation, Mishisia-san just went, “Ohh... that is scary!”
Yeah. Well, wrecking the economy is a heavy crime, you know... kind of like how counterfeiting money can be a bigger crime than murder.
“Even aside from dungeons, there are adventurers out there who make their living hunting things like Dragons or Pegasi, right? If I started mass-producing those materials and their value dropped, those people couldn’t survive anymore.”
“Ahh... yeah, that would be a problem. But... isn’t that kind of inevitable, eventually?”
“Well, sure. Progress in technology and the decline of certain industries always go hand in hand...”
When calculators were invented, human calculators lost their jobs. That kind of thing happens all the time.
And sure, it’s inevitable that some changes will come... but realizing that through something as universal and unpredictable as dungeon power? That’s risky. Once calculators disappeared from the world, could you really go back to training human calculators again? Probably not. It’d be the same kind of irreversible change.
“For that matter, even if it were just Pegasi, I doubt you could build a village right outside a dungeon that has Dragons in it...”
“Ahh... yeah. The moment a Dragon came out, the whole village would be toast...”
Dragons here aren’t like Komodo dragons, right? They probably breathe fire or something. No way you could safely put a village nearby.
“... Yeah. Dragons are definitely a no-go!”
Exactly. Keeping Dragons in the dungeon? Big nope, Mishisia-san...
“Well, anyway, how about we start by checking out the royal capital’s dungeon? Anyone can enter, so it should be fine if we say we’re just visiting.”
Monster copying aside—time to go next door dungeon-hopping. I really wanted to see how other dungeons operated anyway. Might as well.
.. .And so, we arrived at the Royal Capital Dungeon.
“So many people!”
“It’s so lively! Ah! There are food stalls! Wanna grab something to eat?”
This is a dungeon, right? It’s supposed to be, but... there are food stalls lined up outside, people everywhere... It feels more like a rest area for workers. What the heck.
“You could say this place is basically a mine that employs a ton of workers. Naturally, there are food stalls and shops selling daily necessities.”
“Oh, right. There are residential spaces inside too, huh?”
“Yeah… It’s not exactly a comfortable place, but you can at least sleep there. Barely.”
I see. So it’s good for low-income workers, or people who don’t care about comfort.
“Asuma-sama! Lisas-san! I bought some food!”
“Whoa, she actually did it...”
Looks like Mishisia-san actually went and bought some snacks from the stalls, so I guess we’ll eat before going inside.
The food’s basically like hot dogs—sausages in bread. Tasty.
Alright.
Once we were done eating, we finally headed into the dungeon.
There was a reception desk at the entrance, and Lisas-san took care of registration for the three of us.
Watching from behind, I saw that this dungeon had five registration categories:
“Planning to reside in the dungeon for over a month,”
“Planning to reside for one week to one month,”
“Planning to reside for less than a week,”
“Working in the dungeon but not residing,”
and “Tourist.”
Each had a different fee. Naturally, the “Tourist” option was the most expensive per day. Makes sense.
“Well then. Shall we?”
“Yeah!”
And so, the three of us, with “Tourist” tags hanging from our necks, entered the dungeon.
“Ah, so before leaving, everyone has to sell all the ore they mined inside, huh?”
“That’s right. The royal capital keeps the dungeon open specifically for that.”
Right after entering, we came across a mineral buyback counter. Several people were lined up, carrying boxes, sacks, or carts full of ore.
I see. So you can work here as a miner, get paid by results, earn decent money, and also have access to cheap lodging. You pay an entry fee up front, but that just motivates you to work harder to make it back. The more ore you dig up, the more progress the capital makes. Win-win. And buying all the ore on-site prevents leakage. Smart.
“Looks like this is the going rate for ore... huh. That’s actually really helpful to know.”
“Right, Asuma-sama, you don’t really know the market prices here, do you...”
Yeah. I still have no clue about this world’s “standard prices.”
Especially the value of gold and silver. I’d wanted to learn that, so I took notes. Good, good.
As we went deeper in, the atmosphere turned distinctly minelike.
The sound of pickaxes rang out, stones were hauled away... Yep. Definitely a mine. Less “dungeon,” more “quarry.”
“When a dungeon’s used as a work site, it really opens up a lot of business opportunities, huh...”
“Panis Village might not be that different, you know? You’re doing agriculture with Slimes, which are part of the dungeon’s blessings. And the hot springs there come from dungeon power too, right? A lot of people make their living off that.”
“Ah... yeah, true.”
The biggest difference between Panis Village and the Royal Capital Dungeon is probably whether the people working there see themselves as being inside or outside the dungeon.
Technically, Panis Village is within the dungeon’s territory, but most people there probably live with the feeling that they’re “outside.”
The Royal Capital Dungeon, meanwhile, focuses on one specific kind of labor. Panis Village can’t specialize like that, since the whole village is part of the dungeon, but it has the advantage of flexibility and growth potential.
… Anyway, it’s pretty educational to see a dungeon successfully coexisting with humans.
Most of the workers here are adventurers, but quite a few seem to be retirees—probably people like Lisas-san, who have old injuries or aftereffects from their adventuring days.
So this dungeon also serves as a safety net for them. The dungeon wants more people under its wing, and the workers need a stable place—supply meets demand perfectly.
… While we were watching all this, someone shouted, “New vein discovered!” and people immediately started rushing over.
“... ‘New vein discovered,’ meaning...?”
“Just what it sounds like. A new vein appeared… This is a dungeon, remember. Sometimes, veins of gold or silver reappear in places that were supposedly mined out.”
Ahh, so they’re really taking full advantage of what it means to be a dungeon.
Since most of the people here are workers and not hostile to the dungeon, the dungeon probably allows its breakdown-absorption-reconstruction to happen even close to humans. So it can just spawn new gold veins whenever it wants.
… Though I do wonder where it’s getting the gold from. Anyway, since this dungeon produces gold and silver, it’d probably rub people the wrong way if I started doing that too. We’ll just buy what we need from the Royal Capital Dungeon instead.
After that, we finished our tour.
“The lodging really was... like a budget hostel.”
“I wouldn’t want to stay there if I could help it...”
The residential area we’d been curious about looked like a sleeping car—tiny rooms packed with bunk beds. Yeah, not exactly comfortable...
But since it’s dirt cheap, you can earn enough for a bed just by working a bit in the mines. So, naturally, there’s demand.
“It’d be nice if they at least had a hot spring though...”
“Yeah, it was just cold water...”
There is a bathing area, but it’s just water. Not heated. So yeah, living conditions there are as bare-bones as it gets. Efficient, sure—saves on energy—and it keeps only the people tough enough to endure it. From a dungeon’s perspective, that’s probably ideal.
Still... yeah, Panis Village should keep aiming to be a comfortable place to live.
Anyway.
Once we were done inspecting the Royal Capital Dungeon... curiosity struck again.
“Now I wanna see some of the other dungeons too...”
“Yeah, same here. I wanna see a normal dungeon with monsters in it.”
Right. So far, I’ve only seen my own and the Royal Capital Dungeon—and both are apparently pretty unusual types. So I want to see a more standard one! Especially one with monsters! Since we’re going to start producing Mewmya, it’d be good to study a dungeon that already uses monsters.
.. .And right as I was thinking that—
“In that case, how about the dungeon I used to frequent?”
As expected of our reliable Lisas-san! Perfect suggestion!
What do you think about this chapter?
