Chapter 6: History

Sehei was sitting through a history lesson.

Of course, that was a metaphorical expression; to be precise, he was borrowing a room in Nao’s workplace, the

Central Directorate General, facing a staff member from the Ministry of Special Disaster Countermeasures—

commonly known as the Dungeon Ministry—and one of Koichiro’s secretaries, filling in the information gap from

when he was transferred to another world.

“The birth of a supernatural disaster structure, commonly known as a dungeon, is accompanied by an earthquake.

Unlike normal earthquakes, these do not have an epicenter such as the friction of continental plates, but instead

propagate outwards from the dungeon that has emerged. Therefore, there is no advance warning or time to prepare

between the occurrence and arrival, and depending on the location and intensity, it can cause significant damage…”

The person mainly speaking was a Dungeon Ministry staff member, a young-looking woman who had given him a

business card with the name Mio Hakushi.

The content she was discussing was something that would be covered when obtaining an Explorer’s license, and

Sehei had already previewed the outline online.

Originally, the Ministry of Special Disaster Countermeasures—the so-called Dungeon Ministry—was urgently

organized as a direct subordinate of the Cabinet Office in the early days of the dungeon’s appearance, but it is now a

regular ministry.

Under the Dungeon Ministry, there are Regional Management Bureaus, and under them, there are branches established for each dungeon gate.

Although there is an international organization for dungeon countermeasures, due to the circumstances of its establishment, the dungeon countermeasures organizations established in each country have a strong spirit of independence and remain in a position as mutual aid organizations without coercive power.

“…Based on the above, as part of dungeon disaster countermeasures, we widely recruit personnel to conduct this investigation, and thus, supernatural disaster structure investigators, or Explorers, were born…”

Explorers must hold a qualification established by the state, but they are by no means civil servants.

Related occupations that are civil servants include branch staff who belong to local governments as special disaster prevention civil servants, but they have a unique legal status because they perform special duties on the premise of cooperation with the Dungeon Ministry.

Like other local civil servants, they are operated with the budget of the local government, but since some of their duties are under the jurisdiction of the “Ministry of Special Disaster Countermeasures,” friction occurs in some areas, but that is omitted here.

It should be noted that the branch manager of each branch is a staff member dispatched from the Dungeon Ministry, that is, a bureaucrat.

“This might be a bit off-topic, but is the Strategic Self-Defense Force related to the appearance of dungeons?”

The one who answered Sehei’s question was not Hakushi, but the other person, Rin Higuchi, Koichiro’s secretary.

She was here as a representative of the busy Koichiro.

“I will answer that. First, while the dungeon disaster was occurring and causing confusion in various places, a missile landed near Kanto.”

“Huh?”

“Due to various circumstances, we cannot officially name it, but it is probably one of those you imagined.”

“Ah, I see. Why would they fire a missile at such a time?”

“Unknown.”

“Is that even possible???”

“Since that nation has been wiped out by the dungeon disaster.”

“oh.”

“We might find out something if we investigate the ruins submerged in the encroached area, but it’s not worth the cost.”

In areas around gates connected to dungeons and in areas where the flooding of monsters from dungeons has been left unattended, skills can be used in the same way as inside the dungeon.

This area is called the Encroachment Zone.

“Well, the missile has already fallen, and there’s no one to pursue, so it can’t be helped, right? So, the sense of crisis increased and the Self-Defense Forces were reorganized?”

Incidentally, there was also a dispute when deciding on the name Strategic Self-Defense Force, and the original proposal of the National Defense Force was rejected, emphasizing that it was an organization solely for self-defense.

And Sehei, who was told about this by Koichiro at a later date, felt that it was very likely that a left-wing political party was involved in that process.

“As far as Explorers are mainly concerned, the only impact is that there is a Self-Defense Forces exploration team, so I don’t think it will have much of an effect.”

“I see. Thank you. Shall we get back to the topic?”

Hakushi, prompted by Sehei, resumed her lecture.

“…So, with the birth of dungeons and explorers, there were more and more things that could not be covered by conventional laws and regulations, so the Supernatural Disaster Structure Special Measures Act, the so-called Dungeon Special Measures Act, was enacted. You will each have to check the full text for yourselves, but I will pick up and introduce the parts that are particularly relevant to everyday exploration…”

An example is as follows.

Supernatural Disaster Structure Special Measures Act (Article 9)

Article 1: The purpose of this article is to suppress criminal acts within the supernatural disaster structure and to ensure the safety of investigators.

Article 2: Within a supernatural disaster structure, investigators are permitted to launch a preemptive attack for self-defense without warning against those who intentionally attempt to make contact without mutual consent.

Article 3: However, this does not apply in situations where it is impossible to avoid approaching, such as at a head-on encounter.

Inside the dungeon, the corpses disappear after a certain period of time.

The phenomenon commonly called being eaten extends to the corpses of living things and their belongings.

Therefore, even if you commit murder in the dungeon, you can easily destroy the evidence.

This law was enacted to deal with such crimes and to handle the weapons used by Explorers, in other words, matters related to the Firearm and Sword Control Law.

Even now that the Dungeon Ministry has become a regular ministry, it is still a special measures law because the discussions are so complicated that they do not move forward, so the status quo is maintained.

On the internet, there are some voices praising the prime minister who compiled this article at the time of the dungeon disaster.

Now, as an aside.

Well, there is one clear purpose for Sehei to be taking this history lesson now.

That is to obtain the Explorer qualification.

Even if he has returned from another world and has isolated combat power, even if he is a classmate of the Chief Cabinet Secretary, even if he is the brother of the Central Directorate General—in short, a high-ranking official of the Dungeon Ministry—he cannot ignore the regular procedures stipulated by law.

This is especially true when it comes to Explorers, which to the general public means that a familiar individual possesses military force.

In this way, he will obtain the Explorer qualification and appear on Tier Ryugasaki’s stream.

Here, I must explain about Explorers again.

If we talk in terms of economic structure, Explorers are miners.

They are locally hired by the operating company called the state and sweat in the mine called the dungeon.

It is also a comparison between acquiring fuel for a new era, magic stones, and acquiring fuel for an old era, coal.

The difference is the incentive based on the results, that is, the more results you produce, the more you can earn.

Some people view the dungeon as a farm and the Explorers as tenant farmers.

From a defense and disaster prevention perspective, in order to prevent dungeon disasters such as the flooding of monsters, it is necessary to regularly exterminate monsters—commonly called thinning out—and some people say that this is the main task of Explorers.

The treatment of such Explorers varies greatly depending on the country.

The international dungeon countermeasures organization has issued a request to treat them as valuable human resources who are confronting the unprecedented crisis of dungeons for mankind, but as mentioned earlier, it has no coercive power, so it is left to the judgment of the local authorities.

Some countries—mostly small countries—quickly protected and heavily supported Explorers, and in one fell swoop escaped from being a developing country.

The opposite was also true, and there were also countries that treated Explorers roughly and could not survive the dungeon disaster.

And behind that, there was the shadow of a great power.

Compared to continuous support for capital injection and industrial development, the opportunity to increase national power even without resources or education is significant.

Major powers aimed to expand their own power by providing dungeon development know-how to the nations under them.

As a result, some countries flourished and some perished.

Due to the influence of such power games of major powers, the living area of mankind has definitely shrunk.

Within Japan, the northern part of Hokkaido is swallowed up by the Encroachment Zone.

This is simply a lack of resources.

It’s natural because it’s the first time the world has faced it, but at this time, there was still no know-how to deal with dungeon disasters, and the development of domestic laws was not in time.

The earlier missile landing also spurred this on.

In the midst of such confusion, each person moved as much as possible in their respective positions, and as a result, it can be said that it was only the northern part of Hokkaido.

Among the topics related to dungeons in Japan, the recapture of Hokkaido is always ranked high in terms of attention.

No one could stop that expectation from turning to Sehei.

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