“Of course, once people have experienced cheap, abundant wheat harvested by machines they got practically for free, it could be a tough sell to get them to turn off the Ukemochi System combines and go back to paying normal prices for normally grown wheat.”

  “Well, crap!”

  Even so, there wasn’t much we could do. The relevant international organizations, Sayama’s team, and all others involved would need to hold discussions before deciding whether to increase production numbers.

  “Anyway,” I continued, “you said ‘for starters’ earlier, right? What else did Ambrose want?”

  “He said he was looking for more variety.”

  “Variety?”

  “He was hoping they could expand beyond just wheat.”

  “Oh boy...”

  They do say that man does not live on bread alone, but I’m pretty sure that’s not what he’s talking about. Nor does it sound like he’s simply interested in other varieties of grain, like barley or rye.

  “So, like, vegetables or something? If we’re talking staple foods, corn would be pretty tough, and we can forget about potatoes...”

  “True enough,” Miyoshi agreed. “Corn harvesters seem like pretty elaborate devices, and even if we managed to dungeonize root vegetables, they’d probably end up respawning somewhere else once they’re harvested.”

  “We have the know-how to create harvesting machines for rice and wheat, but I dunno about veggies... Fruit might be a possibility, but is the FAO even willing to fork over a development budget in the first place?”

  Because the Ukemochi System allowed for the infinite harvesting of crops, one machine per dungeon was sufficient in most cases, except when large quantities of food were needed in a very short time span. Ultimately, there wasn’t enough demand for specialized Ukemochi machines for them to be worth mass-producing. In fact, if multiple machines were put into use at the same location, they might well obliterate the profits of any existing producers in the area.

  Manufacturers didn’t set up production lines for products that weren’t being sold in mass numbers, so every Ukemochi combine was more or less handmade. It wasn’t all that different from one-off or bespoke products, which ended up being rather expensive due to the inclusion of development costs in the price. Wheat and rice combines were relatively cheap, since the manufacturers already had the know-how, but still...

  Miyoshi shook her head.

  “The UN budget is approved every two years, isn’t it? I seriously doubt they’ll have anything left to allocate to the Ukemochi System. It pretty much came out of nowhere.”

  I frowned.

  “But there’s no way a multinational organization like that would stoop to relying on privately owned companies to— Uh, you know what? Never mind. I could see it happening.”

  The UN had always had some pretty tight coffers. It was a well-known fact that the United States had been cutting back on its contributions under the pretense of wasteful spending, but there were plenty of other countries with deferred or defaulted payments—in fact, a mere seventy percent of member nations had paid in full.

  Of course, I’ve got some qualms about a system that uses a set scale of assessments with no way to know in advance what the total budget will end up being. If nothing else, I feel like voting power for approving the General Assembly’s budget should be weighted on the same scale as the assessments.

  Many individual agencies within the UN were financed via “voluntary contributions,” which were not included in the regular budget, and the FAO was among them. In fact, the total budget for these agencies was actually 1.5 times greater than the UN’s general budget. Though these voluntary contributions were normally provided by individual nations, there probably wouldn’t be any issue with private companies contributing as well. Money was money, after all.

  “Well, Ambrose is pals with Nathan, and they’re ‘birds of a feather,’ according to Silkie,” Miyoshi pointed out, quoting Nathan’s assistant. “They probably just don’t pay much attention to budget stuff.”

  “Nathan was a pretty big spender when it came to the whole twenty-first floor incident, though.”

  “That was a different level of spending. It fell more along the lines of ‘mildly irresponsible,’ really. Ah, it must be the assistant’s lot to suffer.”

  I couldn’t help but burst out laughing. Researchers who had never had to worry about budgets before often tended to ignore the money aspect of their work entirely.

  “Besides,” she added, “It’d be super annoying if there were strings attached to the funding, wouldn’t it?”

  Ah, the ol’ “we provided the funding for development, so we get the rights to the product” school of thinking. I mean, it makes sense on some levels, but it would certainly be a pain in the ass to constantly adjust things every time someone decided to butt in and ask for more tweaks. This isn’t even our main line of work! (Don’t ask what our main line of work is.)

  At any rate, there was no way we could develop anything new if we weren’t given a clear target to aim for.

  “Well, for starters, can you ask what specifically he’s hoping to grow?”

  “Will do.”

  Taking my coffee cup from Miyoshi, I sat down on the living room couch, sipping my coffee as I glanced out the window. The clear blue sky outside looked like it was captured in a picture frame. Miyoshi had turned on the TV, and it was playing footage from a camera on the island of Enoshima.

  “It sure is summer, huh?” Miyoshi murmured.

  “Yeah... Y’know, when was the last time we went to the beach, anyway?”

  “I’m pretty sure it was back when we did the pretend Shadow over Innsmouth thing at the beach in Wakasa, right?”

  “Oh, yeah... That was one hell of a fiasco...”

  With support from Asha, Miyoshi had decided to go absolutely berserk and pulled a massive prank on me in a remote fishing village on Wakasa Bay, under the guise of a “birthday surprise”—though it went far, far beyond that. For some reason it felt like there was still something real lurking in the shadows of it all, but Miyoshi and I had both agreed to pretend it never happened. Otherwise it would just haunt us constantly, like some kind of existential boogeyman.

  After all that, I wonder if the Jain family is actually still using that hotel building...

  Seeing my vacant yet somehow accusing stare, Miyoshi cleared her throat emphatically.

  “So do we wanna go somewhere this year?” I asked.

  “For example?”

  “I dunno... Hot springs, maybe?”

  “Isn’t that more of a winter vacation thing?”

  “Hot springs are pretty nice in the summer too.”

  “Maybe, but they’re also dangerous.”

  “Dangerous? How?”

  “I mean, you never know—if we hop on a train that takes us through all that hot springs steam, there might end up being a murder on board!”

  “Ah, yes. A classic murder mystery trope.” Smiling weakly at Miyoshi’s over-the-top scenario, I glanced casually over at the TV, and a thought suddenly came to me. “Hey, why don’t we check out the Côte d’Azur? That’s a classic summer destination.”

  Supposedly there was a song called “Winter Riviera,” but the resorts of the Côte d’Azur, also known as the French Riviera, really seemed more suited for extended summer vacations.

  “When did you become a French citizen, Kei? Besides, I’m pretty sure our travel ban is still in full effect...”

  I wonder when they’ll finally lift that for us? Not for a good while, I’ll bet.

  “Well, we don’t necessarily need to physically travel,” I began.

  “Huh? Wait, you don’t mean—”

  The appearance of the dungeons had caused dramatic changes to the world. It went without saying that D-Factors were the greatest cause of those changes, and were greatly beneficial to us as well. However, since they could do practically anything, modern-day society wasn’t quite prepared to fully accept them. In the end, we’d decided to gradually expand the use of D-Factors, though it had taken a huge effort on our part to convince Ms. Maker to go along with the plan—which was a story for another time.

  However, every rule has its exceptions. And there I was—perhaps the only man in the world that could be considered such an exception.

  “Your last attempt to teleport outside of the dungeons was a complete failure, wasn’t it?”

  I hadn’t told another soul about this power. Miyoshi and I were the only ones who knew.

  At a time when cross-cultural communication had already begun and societal structures were still in disarray, if people knew that a privileged individual like myself existed, they would basically turn him into a walking target—especially for the media.

  “I’m not gonna teleport,” I grumbled.

  “Oh? What’s the plan, then...?”

  Every floor of a dungeon was an environment created in a separate space using D-Factors. In other words, if we put our minds to it, we could create a copy of the Côte d’Azur right here whenever we wanted to. Probably.

  “Heh heh heh... Behold, the power of the cornucopia!” I announced with every ounce of drama I could muster, then snapped my fingers. At that moment, the scenery around us—

  “H-Huh...?”

  —most decidedly did not change into the French Riviera.

  Rosary, who had been preening herself on a nearby beam, cocked her head quizzically as if wondering what the hell I was doing, then let out a little chirp and swooped down onto my keyboard.

  After a while, I heard a buzz coming from my cell phone.

  “Hmm?”

  I looked down and saw a text written on the screen: “Insufficient D-Factors.”

  “An error message? Really?”

  “Wow, you sure did try, Kei, but that was super anticlimactic.”

  “Sh-Shut it!”

  Giggling, Miyoshi raised her coffee cup in a mock toast to me.

  “Damn. Guess it only works inside a dungeon after all...”

  The ability to use D-Factors in the outside world might’ve already started spreading, but apparently there weren’t nearly enough of them to change our entire environment with a snap of the fingers.

  “We just don’t have the minimum required quantity of D-Factors to effect significant changes outside of the dungeons,” Miyoshi said with a shrug.

  “Well, that works out, honestly. We don’t exactly want things getting too miraculous too fast out here. Okay, let’s hit up Yokohama—nope, that’s not gonna work. Let’s head over to the first floor of Yoyogi, find a quiet corner, and restart our little French Riviera project down there!”

  “You’re awfully hung up on that place. Wouldn’t somewhere in the Caribbean give off even more of a tropical resort vibe?”

  “Honestly, I’m scared of the sharks down there.”

  After all, both the creator’s mental image and some kind of collective unconscious influenced the creation of new environments. If I built the Caribbean, the sharks would come.

  “I can’t think of the Caribbean without thinking of Jaws, y’know.”

  “Oh, Kei...”

  “Wh-What?”

  Looking at me like I was some poor pitiful child, Miyoshi adopted the tone of a teacher educating a student.

  “Amity Island is supposed to be on the east coast of the United States, and Jaws was filmed at Martha’s Vineyard—that’s the North Atlantic. People go that far north to escape the summer heat, not revel in it.”

  “Huh? Really? I thought most shark attacks happened in Florida?” Florida ranked number one in shark attacks in the United States, blowing the second place state, Hawaii, out of the water. The former regularly had about four times as many attacks as the latter.

  “Kei... You do know that even Miami is literally on the Atlantic coast, right?”

  I blinked in amazement.

  “For real? Cuba and the Bahamas are right there, though. And isn’t the tip of Florida in the Caribbean?”

  Miyoshi shook her head.

  “The Bahamas are in the Atlantic Ocean too. The Caribbean Sea is south of Cuba.”

  “Wow... I thought Cuba was smack-dab in the middle...”

  I mean, the capital of Cuba, Havana, is on the north coast of Cuba, but they say it’s in the Caribbean, don’t they? Though now that I think about it, The Old Man and the Sea takes place in Cuba, and the titular old man sets off into the Gulf of Mexico from there. Havana is supposed to be the largest city in the Caribbean, but since it’s on Cuba’s northern coast, I guess it technically faces the Gulf?

  “Besides, with your stats, you could easily outrun any random sharks that might show up, couldn’t you?”

  “What do I look like, some kind of water strider?”

  Though really, all you have to do to walk on water is make sure to take a step with your left foot before your right one sinks in, then take another step with your right foot before your left one sinks, and so on and so forth. It’s that simple.

  Miyoshi grinned.

  “There are quite a few papers out there that analyze the basilisk lizard’s ability to run across water from a fluid dynamics perspective. One of them was even published in Nature magazine back in 1996.”

  “Man, I really underestimated how many weirdo researchers are out there...”

  “You could at least call them hobbyists. Besides, you of all people have no right to judge them, Kei.” She gave me a pointed stare, then continued. “Anyway, according to the papers, human beings should be able to run across water if they can move at thirty meters per second.”

  With an AGI of 200, I get the sense I could dash a hundred meters in two seconds, so thirty meters per second seems doable. Though I bet there are some other tricks to it, like how to lift your legs properly. I rubbed my chin.

  “Hmm...”

  “Oh, one more thing—the Mediterranean is actually a hot spot for sharks. It has over fifty species living in it.”

  “Are you serious?” The European coast never really gave me the impression of being particularly shark-infested...

  “The vast majority of them are out in the open ocean, and they tend to stay far away from coastal areas, apparently. According to leading researchers, blue sharks are only sighted occasionally, and only a few specimens of the deadly great white shark are left in the Adriatic.”

  “So they’re pretty much on the brink of extinction, then?”

  Miyoshi nodded.

  “That’s what some people say.”

  “That’s...kind of depressing.” My brow furrowed. Is this when a requiem for the dying is supposed to start playing?

  “If I think about it too hard, I won’t be able to get it out of my head, which kind of sucks...” She sighed. “At this point, why don’t we just keep it simple and do something like Enoshima?”

  “Why go out of our way to generate our own location if it’s just gonna be Enoshima?”

  “No, I mean the real Enoshima. The jellyfish at the New Enoshima Aquarium are really cute!”

  I had to admit, the jellyfish show they put on using projection mapping was pretty gorgeous. Unfortunately, though, there was a bit of an issue.

  “Well, take a gander over yonder,” I said, motioning to the TV with my head.

  The screen showed a view of Katase Higashihama Beach, taken from the weather reporting camera on Enoshima—and it didn’t look pretty.

  “Ack...”

  Forget land, sky, and sea—all we could see was people, people, and more people. Truly the Soylent Green of beaches. (I know that didn’t even make any sense.)

  Enoshima would probably be fun to visit with a few classmates as a teenager. It would probably also be great for families with small children to create a few lasting summer memories. However, I’d be highly uncomfortable calling it a good vacation spot for the average adult.

  “It’s such a nice, quiet beach during the offseason too...” I muttered.

  “I don’t see the point of visiting Enoshima during the offseason,” Miyoshi countered.

  “To eat Enoshima-don?”

  “I hear they don’t even use Enoshima-sourced turban shells for it anymore...”

  “They do say there’s still a major shortage of whitebait too,” I admitted.

  “Oh, you know what? You can become a Dragon Knight of Light there!”

  “Huh? And what, pray tell, might that be, Lady Miyoshi?”

  According to her, there was an immersive role-playing game called “Enoshima Treasure: Dragon Knights of Light and Darkness” in which you collected various hints hidden in various locations around Fujisawa until you finally located the Crest of Light, which served as proof that you were a Dragon Knight of Light. It was sponsored by both the City of Fujisawa and the Tourism Association. They really did think of all kinds of clever offseason events sometimes, like the Hanatouro lantern festival in Kyoto’s Higashiyama Ward.

  “Well, leaving the offseason chatter aside, let’s go ahead and pay a visit to Yoyogi. Don’t forget your swimsuit.”

  “Ah, the whole ‘tune in next time for more fan service’ bit, right?”

  I might’ve been thinking some sort of rude comment about curves or lack thereof, but under no circumstances was I going to say it. Not if I wanted to have any hope of maintaining peace in the world—them’s the rules.

  ***

  “Hey, Haru? What the heck are we doing out here, again?”

  “It’s our summer training regimen.”

  “Doesn’t the Spring-Summer Fashion Week start next month? Is it really safe for you to be doing this? If you get injured before you go to New York, your life will pretty much be over!”

  “I don’t wanna hear it from you, Ryoko—Little Miss My-Schedule-Is-Packed-with-Movie-and-TV-Show-Filming!”

  With that, Haruka smashed another slime’s core and started heading back to the dungeon entrance.

  Ryoko groaned.

  “This sucks. We should’ve stopped by Yoshimura’s place first and borrowed one of the Arthurs...”

  No sooner had she said that, though, than all of the slimes crawling around the area suddenly froze in place—then vanished into thin air.