Interlude [The Sleepless Woman and the College Student]
I was born in a town surrounded by mountains. It was a desolate place, as if forgotten by the world. I, the daughter of the Abukuma family, who had been farmers for generations, was born there. In hopes of a life blessed by the heavens, I was named Yuki.
Soon after I was born, a dungeon appeared in the town. It suddenly protruded into the rice fields, and many adults entered it, never to return. Naturally, that area was immediately declared off-limits, and the fertile land our Abukuma family had tended for generations was never to be returned to us. Since my parents were already working ordinary jobs by the time I was old enough to understand, I didn’t really feel the impact.
Life in my hometown ended abruptly when I entered elementary school. It became uninhabitable due to the overflow of monsters from the dungeon entrance. This phenomenon, called the Dungeon Overflow, occurs when there are too many monsters in the dungeon. In other words, my town failed to thin out the monsters and mismanaged the dungeon.
“Are you going to Grandma’s? What about school?”
“I’ll go from Grandma’s.”
I still remember having such a casual conversation with my mother amidst the sirens blaring through the town. I also remember seeing small dinosaur-like monsters running around the school route from the window of my father’s light truck.
“There’s something over there.”
“We’ve come this far… Yuki, as long as you’re on Mom’s lap, you’ll be okay.”
“Yeah!”
Held tightly on my mother’s lap, we headed to my grandmother’s town, which was also a lonely place. Surrounded by mountains and living among rice paddies, it looked like it hadn’t changed in appearance for a hundred years. However, what was different from where we used to live was… there was no dungeon in the town, but there was a reinforced concrete wall encircling the residential area.
Since the Dungeon Incident, this wall, said to have been built with the town’s full effort, had performed its role perfectly, keeping the monsters that roamed the wilderness at bay. Of course, it was also thanks to the efforts of the adults who stood guard every night, but the presence or absence of the wall was significant. People who had been driven away by monsters elsewhere had been flocking to this town before and after we arrived.
As people gathered, the importance of the town as a base also changed. Before we knew it, the Self-Defense Forces began to station here, and with government funding for wall maintenance, the town officially formed a vigilante group… Thus, as safety was reinforced and more people heard about it, even more people came. When I first moved here, there were only twenty classmates, but by the time I was in the second grade, there were nearly fifty.
“Do you know Kuma? Kei-chan’s dad is in the vigilante group and fights outside.”
“Fighting?”
“Yeah, fighting dinosaurs and wild boars outside, protecting the workers.”
“Workers? The teacher said they were burying utility poles in the ground, right?”
“Yeah, that’s right. They should have just built them in the ground from the beginning.”
As we talked about such things, the children who had just arrived in this town seemed to feel the appeal of adults fighting monsters somehow. The boys in the class would wave sticks and play vigilante, or they’d talk about acquiring skills when they grew up and defeating all the enemies.
But as parents began attending the funerals of classmates’ families again and again, that frivolous atmosphere naturally faded away. It was as if the existence of humans fighting monsters had become taboo, as it was no longer a topic at home or at school. Everyone was unwittingly reminded… that adults fighting outside weren’t heroes or anything, but just expendable beings consumed for the survival of the community.
Finally, the country that had fully understood the dungeon in the capital region formed a dungeon management association for its control. Even after launching the optimistic advertisement “You too can become an adventurer”, the situation did not change. No, it might be said that it had even worsened. Our town had become a refugee camp, accepting people beyond its capacity. People who had missed out on jobs rushed to become adventurers… and some of them never returned to the town.
Nowadays, what is considered essential equipment like weapons, armor, and tools, as well as the electric lights in the dungeon and the internet, were almost nonexistent. Amateurs armed with kitchen knives and scrap materials entered the dungeon in their everyday clothes, getting injured and dying as a matter of course. The dungeon management association tried to address the high mortality rate of these adventurers, but to no avail.
It was considered normal for the situation to be as it was. Energetic young people or those with sports experience were all employed by the town’s militia for its defense. Those who had to become adventurers in our region at that time were the elderly, the sick, and those who didn’t fit in with group activities.
“I don’t think there’s anyone in Yuki’s class who wants to become an adventurer, right?”
“Nope.”
“If a boy ever says he wants to become an adventurer, I’ll secretly tell the teacher.”
“Okay.”
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I remember having such conversations with my father when I was in upper elementary school. By that time, it seemed that the militia had already accumulated enough know-how, as there were hardly any reports of members dying. However, undoubtedly, there were still casualties among the adventurers. It seemed that there was a policy within the school’s parent-teacher association not to let children become adventurers under any circumstances. If a child mentioned wanting to become an adventurer even slightly, their parents were immediately called in for a three-way conference.
Even from a child’s perspective, it seemed that adults had no intention of cooperating with the country’s policies from the beginning. At a time when there were easily over ten confirmed dungeons in our region, the country only established dungeon management associations in just two of them. Even if monsters were culled in those two places, it would be pointless if they overflowed from elsewhere. It would be no wonder if it were said that the country had no intention of managing it. Looking back now, it felt like the friction between the country, which was preoccupied with maintaining the major cities, and the regions that had to survive through self-help efforts had already begun.
By the time I entered junior high school, the town had changed completely. It had risen from being called a town to a city, additional walls were built outside the existing ones, and there were more residential areas with huge commercial facilities, along with corresponding expanses of farmland. The number of people moving in increased every year, and in the newly developed sections built outside the original town, bland apartment buildings erected by the government stood in rows, where many people lived.
It’s said that there used to be over a hundred cities and towns in our region, but by that time, only five cities and several towns remained. While the news sometimes talked about how complete dungeon management had been achieved near Tokyo… in the regions, it was uncertain how many dungeons existed within the prefecture, and adults finally seemed to have fully accepted that the peaceful days before the calamity would never return.
In this world where emergencies had become the new normal, adventurers were no longer the erratic figures they used to be. Adventurers began to form parties centered around those with skills, not only exploring dungeons but also taking on roles in transporting goods between cities and gathering resources. Despite calling them skills, it was an exaggeration; they were a mixed bag. Some had skills useful in combat, but many had skills that were of no use whatsoever. Still, they were valued as individuals who fit into the new era of the calamity, gradually being entrusted with important roles.
It was the same not only for adventurers but also for the vigilantes who protected the city. People with skills, who were initially treated as “those who can do a little strange things,” gradually found themselves at the center of attention. Just like adventurers within the vigilantes, regardless of the strength of their power, they were respected simply for being skillful.
What fueled this atmosphere was the birth of a child between a young couple, both skilled individuals, who was born with the skill of physical enhancement. The perception that “children of skilled couples are born with skills” quickly emerged, and marriages were arranged almost ignoring the will of the individuals.
Looking back, everyone must have been anxious. When they realized that the everyday life they thought would return someday would never come back, they must have wanted something to cling to instead of the traditions they couldn’t protect, instead of the gods who wouldn’t help. And I, as a middle school student, didn’t think much of the faint faith in skilled individuals that became the receptacle for that, nor the accompanying violation of human rights. Perhaps I even thought it was only natural if it was for the sake of everyone in the city.
The consequence of such arrogance came to me some time later.
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