Chapter 260

[Ministry of Dungeons — Dungeon Adventurer Initiative Review Committee]

Many young, promising individuals from different ministries had been transferred to the Ministry of Dungeons that had been newly established in Kasumigaseki. There were several reasons for these transfers. First, the Vice-Minister was a woman in her forties. Second, the main goal of the Ministry was to prevent the Monster Stampede from happening in ten years. And third, young minds were flexible and more likely to adapt and understand the unprecedented phenomenon of dungeons. Thus, most section chiefs were in their thirties, and none of the directors-general were older than forty-five.

After successfully handling the Olympics, the next mission of the Ministry of Dungeons was to prepare a revision of the dungeon adventurer initiative that would accompany the constitutional reform. Members of Dungeon Busters had not been invited to sit on that review committee. The current initiative was temporary and relied heavily on practical examinations. That was why the opinion of civilian adventurers, and those of Dungeon Busters and Ezoe Kazuhiko in particular, had been critical.

If the opinions of a single person were reflected in the revision, however, it would call the integrity of the whole system into question. As such, the members of the review committee had agreed to build regulations from scratch without relying on outside opinions.

“I must once again propose that we reconsider the question of the remuneration of adventurers. At first, it was necessary to attract new prospective adventurers, so the buying price was set to a hundred yen per gram, but many adventurers are starting to earn over a hundred million yen a year. The energy industry also hopes the price of magic stones will drop further so that energy can be sold even more cheaply.”

“Lowering a buying price that has already been set is likely to have an adverse effect on adventurers’ morale. Although they are earning more than a hundred million yen a year, we have to remember that time inside the dungeons is 144 times faster than time above ground. Even with a price set at a hundred yen per gram, energy prices will be low enough. The rest is up to the efforts of individual companies.”

“There is also a limit to the number of adventurers we can employ. Ezoe-shi has brought up a limit of around three thousand people, which seems like a likely number. Please have a look at this.”

A chart was projected on the screen. It showed the total number of adventurers as well as the number of reservable spots for the dungeons that had been opened to the public—Sapporo, Yokohama, Funabashi, Kanazawa, and Hiroshima.

“As of now, adventurers are being registered as parties. When a team of miners makes a reservation, they are given a time slot of one aboveground hour. Soon, we’ll also be able to open the dungeons of Sendai, Nagoya, Hakata, and Miyakonojo, which will bring the number of accessible dungeons to nine. If they are open twelve hours a day, from 8 a.m. to 8 p.m., we can offer slots to up to seven hundred fifty-six teams per week. There are a few more adventurers in total if we add busters, but even when Shinjuku, Shishibone, and Osaka are eventually opened, we won’t be able to offer spots to more than a thousand teams. These teams could gather around forty-five thousand tons of black magic stone, but it will be far from enough teams if they need to mine for red magic stones that produce crude oil as well. In that situation, lowering the price would be an aberration.”

After exchanging opinions on the price of magic stones, the committee then discussed ways to deter adventurers from committing crimes. The only possibility to increase the number of adventurers was to allow several teams of miners to enter the dungeons during the same time slot. However, this would also increase the risk of criminal offenses. If a Legend Rare character card were to appear, a bloodbath could very easily ensue.

The committee wanted more adventurers, but they also wanted to prevent crimes. The discussion became more and more disorderly as diplomats looked for a way to solve this dilemma.

“Hmm... Guys?”

The one who had just raised his hand was Isaac Roland, who had recently arrived from Gamerica. He had stayed in his laboratory in Tsukuba until the very last minute and come to the meeting still wearing a lab coat.

“I have a feeling you’re all overcomplicating this. Why not just use the Jointly Sealed Covenant? If we have them all pledge not to kill another human being inside the dungeons, the issue would be easily solved. Monsters aren’t humans, so it shouldn’t prevent them from doing their job either.”

“We have discussed this possibility already. Some have raised concerns that using this item to constrain people would be a violation of human rights. The UN has ruled that this item was to only be used to prohibit adventurers from bringing dungeon items to the surface, but there are still vehement complaints from human rights organizations. Going any further would be difficult...”

“What nonsense. Companies also transfer or order around employees regardless of their consent, and it’s a given that employees have to listen to their bosses. If they’re not willing to sign the covenant, they’d still have the option to give up on being adventurers. They’ll earn millions of dollars every year. They should suck it up a little.”

Isaac’s words would have been perfectly acceptable in Gamerica, where individualism was king. However, Japan was a country that valued collectives over individuals. Responsibilities were also often taken up by groups rather than individuals. Some leftist groups were criticizing Urabe, saying that his administration was totalitarian and that he acted like a literal Nazi.

“If this law impacted every Japanese citizen, I’d also think it was problematic. However, it would be restricted to civilian adventurers and take effect exclusively inside the dungeons,” Isaac continued. “Putting shackles on them from the get-go is another way to prevent crime. Politicians just need to sway public opinion, and everything will be fine. I’ve been thinking this for a while, but the Japanese government tends to neglect these kinds of tactics too often.”