[Brezil — Boa Vista Outskirts]
I first met that girl in the basement of an abandoned building in the slums of Caracas. I was intrigued by her blue hair, as I’d never seen anything like it.
“Live however you like,” she had told me.
“You... What did you make me drink?” I asked. I stood up, groaning.
“This,” she answered simply, showing me a little bottle filled with a red liquid.
I had been hit violently on the back of my head and pushed down a flight of stairs. The person who had attacked me was a kid from the slums, one who had just been discharged from my hospital a few days prior. He had come with other kids and ganged up on me, hoping to steal whatever meager possessions I had, before throwing me down the stairs that led to this basement.
The feeling that welled up in my chest as I rolled down the stairs wasn’t anger but sadness. Helping a sick child was the natural thing to do as a doctor. However, as a result of my actions, I had been attacked and was on the verge of dying. I had fractures everywhere, perhaps even on my skull.
And yet, that strange girl had made me drink some sort of liquid, and I felt completely fine.
“What in the world is this...?”
“This is a High Potion. You can get more of these there,” she said, pointing to the back of the room.
It was a weird room. The basement was barely lit, the wall itself seeming to be glowing, but I could still see every corner. A single knob was on the wall the girl had been pointing at. A door?
“Where am I?” I asked.
“We are on Floor 1 of a dungeon, inside the Safety Zone. I just appeared as well, so I don’t know much more.”
“A dungeon...”
I walked to the door and reached for the knob.
“If you touch this knob, the Dungeon System will grant you the ability to check your status,” the girl said from behind me. “Once that happens, you can’t turn back anymore. If you want to run away, now is—”
I shook my head, cutting her off. Those kids were probably still up there, and I was extremely interested in this medicine—this High Potion—she had talked about. I was still confused, but my instincts were screaming at me. If I reached for that knob, the door to a new world would open.
“I want to change this country... No, the world.”
I grabbed the knob and suddenly felt like something was flowing into me.
＊ ＊ ＊
The man wearing clown makeup opened his eyes. The rumbling engine—characteristic of old trucks—and the monotone colors around him had made him doze off for a short while. He straightened his posture and drank some water from a plastic bottle.
“Boss, we’ve passed the Uraricoera River. We’re eighty kilometers away from Boa Vista,” said the driver to Joker, who sat in the passenger seat.
BR-174, the road that linked Venisuela and Brezil, was a two-way road with two lanes. However, not a single car was coming from the opposite direction. The city Joker and his men were going to, Boa Vista, was located roughly two hundred and twenty kilometers away from the border, but there were barely any buildings in between. The only scenery around the BR-174 were vast grasslands, extending as far as the eye could see. Every few dozen kilometers, some sort of restaurant could be seen on the side of the road, but besides these, you could only spot trees, prairie, and reddish, barren land.
“I see... Hey, did I...? Did I say anything?”
“What?”
“Nah, never mind.”
Joker ignored his subordinate, who currently looked very puzzled, and glanced at the scenery outside. He was once again reminded of how vast Brezil was. In the two hundred and twenty kilometers that separated Boa Vista from the border—more or less the distance from Tokyo to Shizuoka in Japan—there were almost no buildings whatsoever, only vast plains all around. The truck was leisurely going through this no-man’s-land that was as big as the Kantō Plain.
“No need to rush. The Gamericans are probably staring at us with their satellites. Let them look,” Joker said before lighting the cigarette he held between his teeth.
He narrowed his eyes at the smoke before once again turning his sight to the outside. The fight at the border had ended in an overwhelming victory for his side. However, the police and the state army were sure to be waiting in Boa Vista. There was a high chance the fighting would evolve into urban warfare, which meant leaving it to monsters alone would be a bit difficult as they might not be able to differentiate between civilians and soldiers.
“Should I have monsters surround the city and take down the resistance with C-Rankers...?”
The truck stopped right as Boa Vista was about to appear on the horizon. To move further south on the BR-174, one had to cross the Cauamé River. However, the bridge had been destroyed.
“Boss, what do we do?”
“We’ll abandon the vehicles here and gather new supplies in Boa Vista, I guess...”
Joker stepped out of the truck and stretched. Each side of the road was covered by trees, so snipers weren’t a threat at the moment. After checking that all of his men had exited the vehicles, Joker squinted, looking into the distance. A barricade had been put up across the river, and soldiers, guns in hand, were awaiting them. They had taken down the bridge and were planning to attack while Joker’s troops were crossing. This was the most basic of basics when it came to war tactics, but sadly for them, they were up against the wrong opponent. Fighting a regular army made up of normal people with such tactics would probably have worked, but it was far from being enough against Joker’s Legion.
“I could just materialize some monsters here, but since we have an audience, I’ll take the chance to show off what the Demon King can do.”
Joker and his men looked up at the sky. He threw down his cigarette and took two bazookas out of his Magic Pouch.
“I’ll open the way. You guys follow me. Hya ha ha... You’re in for a surprise, Gamerican fuckers. Behold the power of a Species Limit Breaker!”
Joker went off, a bazooka resting on each shoulder. In the blink of an eye, his speed had surpassed anything a human was capable of. He ran at over eighty kilometers per hour and leaped once he arrived at the edge of the broken bridge. He intended to cross the distance to the other shore—almost a hundred meters—in one go.