“Let’s get right to it. I want to talk about what we should do now.”
After finishing breakfast (hot water with a tiny bit of flavor to it), we began our first meeting.
The conferences held by Landmakers to discuss their nation’s future were apparently called Round Tables. Unfortunately, we, the Great Camp Bravo Kingdom, hadn’t a single table. Instead, we gathered around the campfire, which was still barely going even after conserving our fuel. Behind Mizuho, Troach, and I were the other twenty-seven citizens, pressed together to listen. The Court would have no secrets.
“The most dangerous issue we have currently is—,” I began before noticing that Mizuho seemed to have something she wanted to say. I’d almost forgotten. I was better off leaving this to her—she was the Minister.
“Mizuho, if you would?”
“Gladly!” Mizuho stood up, cheerful. “Thank you all for gathering here today. I am Mizuho the Frequent Late-Nighter, and I’ll be acting as chairwoman.”
“Wooow.”
Shooting a glare over at Troach, who was fervently applauding, Mizuho continued. “No applause is necessary. Our kingdom’s only campfire is located right here, and the firewood we use as its fuel is about to run out. Unless we secure more by the end of the day, we will be in an extremely rough situation tonight. We need burnables—and fast.”
Some people voiced their agreement.
“Our second issue is food. We need to secure food for thirty people. Humans can only live without food for— How many days was it, Taiga?”
“Technically, about three weeks—but only if we’re in a situation where there’s hope of rescue. We can’t afford to spend that much time.”
“Indeed. I think we’d all rather pass on going into the dungeon on an empty stomach and being stuck there.”
“Fuel and food…,” Troach stated, her face grave. “So basically, we’ll have to bring in plenty of wood and meat, right?”
Mizuho gave the other woman a look of disapproval. “There is no ‘basically’ about it. That’s exactly what we’ll do.”
“Then say as much sooner next time.”
It seemed like the two would get into a fight if left to their own devices, so I raised a hand to draw their attention. “I don’t have much knowledge here, so please tell me how we can obtain wood and meat in the dungeon. In my world, trees didn’t grow without light from the sun.”
“What is ‘the-sun’?” Troach inquired.
I recoiled. Right, right… “The sun is an extremely bright star… It shines in the day, and it’s hidden at night.”
“Oh? That’s the same as it is here. In the dungeon, trees grow in places where there’s bright stars, too. We’ll have to find one of them.”
“I see. What about meat?”
This time, Mizuho replied. “We have several options for that. There are beasts in the labyrinth, as well as mushrooms. We haven’t tested it yet, but we might also be able to fish in the river. We could use anything edible.”
That reassured me a little. The environment was alien, but these people didn’t differ all that much from me. The things we needed to do to get by were similar.
“All right. No time to waste, so let’s hurry.”
“Hold up,” Troach interjected as I went to stand up. “Don’t get ahead of yourself. We have to decide how many people we’ll bring.”
“What do you mean?”
“We’re about to enter the labyrinth, right? It can’t be just the three of us.”
I blinked. “I don’t understand.”
“Come on now, Taiga. We want to bring as much lumber back as we can, and game to fill everyone’s bellies, right? Who’s gonna carry all that?”
“…Right.”
She was correct. We didn’t have any transport planes or trucks, so we’d have to carry or drag everything we harvested back to camp.
“…Errr, sorry, Troach. I assumed you, the Attendant, would carry back thirty people’s worth of stuff.”
Laughs went up at the joke.
That wasn’t good. I couldn’t get a handle on this world’s common sense, and now even natural laws were suspect. And here I’d just thought that our common humanity would mean all the basics were the same.
As the laughter died down, Mizuho got back on topic. “If there are no objections, I’ll choose the people to go with us. Taiga and Troach probably can’t make quick judgments as to character.”
“Probably not. Anyway, I’m just the Attendant. I don’t have to manage anyone else.”
“All right. We’ll leave it to you.”
I pondered for a moment on who to bring along as a subordinate but stopped myself. I was the one who knew the least about what awaited us in the labyrinth. Me leading anyone else was out of the question.
We were going into the dangers of the dungeon, and we’d have to bring along regular people rather than going ourselves.
As I watched Mizuho talk to the citizens and pick out our team, a feeling of unease began to well up within me.
This seemed insane. Shouldn’t the three of us go alone? Or better yet, just me? Weren’t there horrible monsters and dangerous traps waiting for us in the dungeon? Tossing a bunch of regular people into that situation seemed a poor choice.
True, the three of us in the Court wouldn’t be enough, but still…
Mizuho, oblivious to my deepening anxieties, seemed to have finished her selection. “Taiga, I’ve chosen nine people in total. All of them have ventured into the dungeon as subordinates before. It isn’t many, but any more would be overdoing it…”
“So we’re taking a third of the citizens with us? Seems like quite a bit already.”
“Don’t you think it’s appropriate considering that you, Troach, and I will be taking charge of them?”
“Wait—I don’t need subordinates. And we could probably get by with just six laborers.”
“But the King himself not having a single subordinate would be—”
“I’m not the King. I’m a representative.”
“Ninjas need help, too, don’t they?”
“They do not!”
We argued a bit, but I firmly refused to get an assistant for myself. In the end, we settled on six others. That was still too many for me, but it was the lowest number Mizuho and Troach agreed to. In hostage-recovery missions, my group and I would be the only ones entering enemy territory, so all we had to think about was getting the captives out. This flew in the face of that; we’d be leading six into enemy territory and still had to return with everyone safe.
“Next up is me, then. We good?”
Troach picked up a piece of charcoal and drew a square on a stone pillar in a position where everyone could see.
“This is where we are now. Our camp. No, the palace.”
I looked up with surprise. By her declaration, from this very moment, this cold, bleak plaza filled with stone pillars was no longer a refuge where the people of a lost kingdom would band together, but the center of a new nation.
It seemed I wasn’t the only one who felt it. Everyone’s expressions shifted, and I could physically sense the mood sharpen.
Troach, perhaps realizing the weight of the words she’d spoken, chuckled as though recoiling from them. “Well, we still don’t have a single throne, though. Anyway, the only thing we have in our kingdom right now is this one room—a palace, but only in name. And…”
Troach drew a straight horizontal line below the square.
“…here’s the Great Fracture. This direction would be south.”
It wasn’t until later on that I asked, but Million Dungeon had compass directions just like Earth. They used six cardinal points: east, west, south, north, up, and down. Pathfinding was conducted by way of northpole stars, which always pointed north. (This wasn’t the North Star as I knew it from Earth, but rather a tiny star fragment in the shape of an arrow that you could walk around with.)
After adding an X on either side of the square, as well as two short lines on the outside of it, Troach turned back to look at us.
“To the east of the palace is a mountain of rubble. West is a thick wall, and at a glance, we won’t be able to get past either of these. There’s an actual passage leading north. Meaning our best shortcut would be to blaze a trail in that direction.”
Mizuho widened her eyes. “I’m surprised. When did you have time to scout all that out?”
“I took a peek around sunup… Look, I’m a high-and-mighty Landmaker now, too, right?” Troach said, seeming embarrassed and looking away. “A-anyway! It’s easy. We just go into the northern passage, find what we need, and get out. That’s it. Right?”
After a breath, I nodded. “Yeah—should be simple.”
It looked like Mizuho and Troach had each done what they’d needed to while I was busy making grave-looking faces. It was pretty different from how I’d done things until now, but…maybe it would be best to learn a little more from the way they did things. They were the ones who knew about this world, after all—not me.
“We’ll follow Troach’s recon intel and explore north of the kingdom.”
After I said that, Troach gave me a happy-looking grin.
“Anything else? Nothing? Last chance! All right!” Mizuho said, clapping her hands together. “The Round Table is thus concluded! Please gather in the north area of the palace as soon as you’ve finished your preparations!”