Shinozaki Dungeon Busters: Volume 2

1. Auflage 2021
ISBN: 978-1-7183-7700-4
Verlag: J-Novel Club
Format: EPUB
Kopierschutz: Adobe DRM (»Systemvoraussetzungen)

E-Book, Englisch, Band 2, 1 Seiten

Reihe: Dungeon Busters

One fateful day, Ezoe Kazuhiko stepped foot inside the dungeon that appeared inside his yard and ended up triggering the Dungeon Outbreak Phenomenon. Together with the companions he's gathered under his new company, Dungeon Busters Inc., he successfully clears Sapporo Dungeon. Within its deepest parts, he discovers...reliefs confirming the existence of an entity behind the emergences?! As humankind celebrates its first ever victory, Ezoe decides where to take the company going forward and cooperates with the Japanese government in pushing the adventurer initiative ever further.

At the same time, the successive appearance of even more dungeons forces other countries around the world to decide exactly what it is that they will be doing about the dungeons. How will the major powers of Gamerica and Sina move? Change is coming, and fast!

The world continues plunging into even further chaos in the second volume of this dungeon-delving epic with overwhelming realism!

Autoren/Hrsg.

Shinozaki, Toma

Weitere Mitwirkende

SenriGAN

Taishi

Leseproben

Chapter 1: First Dungeon Clear

[January 2020 — Addresses by Each Country’s Heads of State]

The president of the United States of Gamerica, the world’s greatest economic and military power, was expected to think not only of the interests of his own country, but those of the entire world. However, the history of Gamerica acting in a global leadership position actually was not that long. Specifically, this was something that had begun only after World War II in the mid-twentieth century and had not lasted that far into the twenty-first.

At the start of the twentieth century, Gamerica still carried itself largely along the lines of the Monroe Doctrine, a policy which shunned intervention in the affairs of other countries. It was only during the latter half of the twentieth century during the Cold War that Gamerica effectively came to head the Western world. When the Cold War ended and significant progress was made in shale gas extraction technology, the US’s position started gradually crumbling away. Then in 2017, the man called a “real estate mogul,” Ronald Howard, was elected president upon a platform of returning to the Monroe Doctrine.

“My fellow Gamericans, I wish you a happy New Year. I am currently speaking to you from the White House after canceling my end-of-year vacation. That’s right, I canceled it just to deal with the Dungeon Outbreak Phenomenon that we’ve been seeing since the latter half of last year. As your president, I am always thinking of you and have your best interests at heart.”

On January 1, the very first day of the brand new year, the White House was filled to bursting with reporters. At the end of last year, President Howard had posted on social media that he had a big proclamation to make, with the government releasing official confirmation soon after.

“It’s been almost two years since I promised that I would make Gamerica great again. And in these two years, I’ve made that happen. We’ve fought enemies from outside and from within Gamerica and won every single battle. We’ve combated fake news and triumphed. We’ve done a deep clean of the illegal immigrants who threatened the integrity of our society and built a wall, a great wall, to stop any more of them from coming over from Mejicanos. Sina was exporting deflation and stealing labor from other countries, but we taught them a harsh lesson, a lesson they will not forget. And now, Gamerica has returned to being a world power. However...”

Ronald Howard almost always started his speeches tooting his own horn. Then he would wait for applause before continuing. Such was his style. This time, however, he dove straight into a contradictory conjunction without pause.

“However, Gamerica is now under a great threat, the greatest threat we’ve ever had since the founding of our country. These mysterious caves called dungeons are everywhere, and we have no way of stopping them. We’re sending in our finest, but the investigation is not making headway. Trust me, folks. Gamerica is currently under attack. Some call it a punishment from God. Some call it the work of the Devil. But I promise you, we will show no mercy—no mercy!—to anyone who threatens Gamerica, even if it is the Devil!”

After tapping his podium forcefully with his right index finger three times to punctuate his point, President Howard continued. “Many of you folks might be feeling uneasy at the start of this new year. Some of you might be feeling sad or worried. As I’m sure you’ve heard, Private First Class Thomas Clancy lost his life in Los Angeles Dungeon. He stayed behind to buy time for his fellow soldiers to escape and faced the hordes of monsters with nothing but his fists. If it wasn’t for his bravery, many more lives would have been lost. Private Daniel Chan lost his life at the end of last year, suffering from the heavy wounds he took facing two monsters at the same time in Chicago Dungeon. The brave men and women of the Army, the Navy, and the Air Force are all fighting with their lives on the line. Folks, I promise you we will win. Even if it’s the Devil, we will win. But in order to do so, we need our soldiers.”

Here, President Howard paused briefly to take a sip of water. Then he appeared to shore up his resolve and turned to look straight into the camera once again.

“Currently, Gamerica has over two hundred thousand troops stationed all over the world. More than fifty thousand are in Japan and Reich each. These are honorable men and women who have helped maintain the peace of the world. However, Gamerica is now facing the biggest threat in the history of the world. We know that many of our allies—including Japan—have had dungeons appear within their borders. However, have appeared in our country since the end of July last year, and we have reason to believe that there will be more. The first priority of the Gamerican military is to protect Gamerican citizens. We don’t want to do this, and it sucks, but we can’t afford to baby other countries any longer.”

Up went President Howard’s right index finger, thrust high into the sky.

“As I always say, GAMERICA FIRST! What that means is that defending ourselves takes priority. Within the coming six months, we will be pulling back nearly all of our forces currently stationed overseas, be it Army, Navy, Air Force, or Marine. Here are the specific numbers that we are calling home: from Japan, 2,000 Army, 12,000 Air Force, and 20,000 Marines; from Reich, 20,000 Army, 12,000 Air Force, and 1,200 Marines; from Woori, 16,000 Army and 8,000 Air Force. I repeat: we are pulling back all of our armed service members, even from countries I did not just mention. Folks, our troops are for protecting our land. This just makes sense, and we are only returning to what makes sense.”

This speech, which would later be referred to as the Howard Doctrine, was the moment that defined Gamerica’s complete return to Monroe’s foreign policy and marked a crucial turning point in world history. Every country that was affected by this pronouncement was left scrambling about in a rush at the start of the new year.

That said, the effect of the Howard Doctrine on Reich, which was now a leader in its own right within the European sphere and had established largely cordial relations with all its neighbors, was rather mild. Similarly, the effect on Japan was also relatively diluted thanks to several reasons, such as being an island country, the continued stationing of the twenty thousand members of the Gamerican Navy, and the gradual building up of the JSDF that had been taking place during the six consecutive years the Urabe administration had remained in power.

It was the Republic of Woori that was caught the most off-guard and suffered the greatest shock of all.

* * *

The nineteenth president of the Republic of Woori, President Park Jae-An, found himself chairing a convening of the National Security Council first thing in the new year. The Howard Doctrine was effectively a breaking of the US-Woorian Mutual Defense Treaty. As things stood, there would only be 250 US Navy soldiers remaining on the entire Korian peninsula in six months.

Director Cheong of the Office of National Security turned to the president with a grim look on his face. “Mr. President, President Howard’s proclamation places our country in a serious national security crisis. Although we have seen the emergence of only two dungeons in our country as of now, there is no guarantee that more won’t follow. Furthermore, the Kingdom of Ko’s silence at a time like this is very worrying. We have received intel that suggests they have also suffered at least one dungeon emergence, but no movement has been observed from their forces on the 38th parallel north. Once the Gamerican forces retreat fully, there is a very real possibility of the outbreak of a second Korian War. Should we not get in touch with the Gamerican side and convince them not to go through with this policy?”

President Park nodded slowly, but his heart was in a different place. He in fact thought the sustained Gamerican presence within Woori a deep-rooted evil. He had tolerated the Mutual Defense Treaty as a necessary evil from a national security perspective—since there was no telling when the Kingdom of Ko might come knocking—but if they were going to leave on their own accord, then he sure wasn’t going to stop them. In fact, this was a golden opportunity. And sadly, the Director of the Office of National Security was failing to see that.

“If Gamerica is withdrawing, then we’ll need to explore alternative solutions to maintain national security. We could even further our ceasefire status with Ko to a peace treaty and officially enter into the process of a peaceful reunification of the North and the South. In other words, we could aim for a Commonwealth Democratic Republic of Koria.”

The words of the president prompted the minister of unification to leap to his feet. “I agree fully, Mr. President! It seems clear that the US-Woorian Mutual Defense Treaty is already damaged beyond repair. What can a mere 250 Gamerican Navy soldiers do anyways? We should officially break the treaty and approach Ko with inter-Koria dialogue. General Secretary Kim’s conditions were the adoption of a ‘one country, two systems’ policy with combined foreign policy and military and the retreat of Gamerican forces. The first condition is what we ourselves wish for and are working towards, whereas the latter condition is now being fulfilled without us having to lift a finger. Naturally, our Democratic...