The Archmage’s Destruction Strategy - Chapter 48

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This chapter was translated by Lunox Team. To support us and help keep this series going, visit our website: LunoxScans.com
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#048. Helper

Tokyo, the capital of Japan.

At Mount Fuji, which could be called the symbol of that place, there is a special location that holds special memories for any Japanese-born Awakened.

The Temple of Awakening.

That place, where the Awakening Priestess once known by the name Pandora had established herself, was once a famous spot in Tokyo that drew massive crowds of people who wanted to become Awakened, but now it had become a place that countless people visited for entirely different reasons.

Tokyo Dungeon 1.

The place where aspiring Awakened once received awakening abilities by drawing magical artifacts from sacred boxes had now become Japan’s largest dungeon sought by countless adventurers.

And naturally, Tokyo’s hotels and lodging facilities that originally accommodated awakening hopefuls from across the nation were now rapidly transforming into facilities for adventurers.

Due to the black rain, obtaining food through farming was impossible.

However, if you went to dungeons, you could obtain food.

But even the Tokyo Dungeon, which had the largest scale among all dungeons throughout Japan, couldn’t provide enough food to feed the entire population of a city with over ten million people.

Even combining all the harvest sites secured on each of the 52 cleared layers could only secure enough food to sustain a population of about 5 million people.

Therefore, the Japan Awakened Union, now called the Adventurer’s Guild, was pouring all their strength into somehow conquering even a few more layers of the Tokyo Dungeon.

“Did you hear? There was a group riot in Shinjuku?”

The woman holding a tablet said.

After D-day, with the electricity supply cut off, almost no one used smartphones or tablets anymore.

However, the headquarters of the ‘Goddess’s Guidance’ clan where she was located was one of only five raid clans in Japan and was classified as a special facility that could receive priority electricity supply from the government, so charging tablets and smartphones was possible.

Of course, since the communication network was paralyzed, having a tablet didn’t mean she could play games or watch news, but her tablet contained thousands of manga books downloaded before D-day, so she always spent her time reading manga whenever she had free time.

“The population is over ten million, but the food produced is at most half that level even when squeezed to the limit, so it can’t be helped.”

“Right. If we weren’t adventurers, we might have been mixed in with that crowd protesting for food too.”

Sipping the tea placed on her desk, she said.

It was by no means high-quality cheap stuff, but she would pour hot water over the same tea bag multiple times until clear water came out, brewing the tea completely.

In the current situation where all tea plants had burned to death due to the black rain, tea was a very hard-to-obtain luxury item.

The fact that she brewed old tea bags multiple times didn’t mean the clan she belonged to was poor.

It was her own form of atonement for the rest of the people who had no choice but to participate in protests due to hunger.

“What a strange taste you have. Even though you could get new tea anytime you want, you live so frugally like a miser.”

“Hiroshi. I won’t demand frugality or restraint from you or other clan members. That would be beyond my authority as clan master. But I’d appreciate it if you didn’t criticize what I do. I know very well that what I’m doing is half-hearted hypocrisy, since I can’t abandon the habit of enjoying the luxury of tea.”

Having said that, she put down her tablet and picked up the documents on her desk.

They contained an easy-to-understand summary of the preparation status for a new raid to conquer the 53rd layer, the next layer of the Tokyo Dungeon.

“The supplies remaining at the 10th Supply Camp on the 50th layer seem a bit insufficient. It looks like we’ll need one more resupply for a perfect conquest.”

“What scale?”

“I’d like to take about 10,000 people if possible, but protecting that many people while moving to the 10th camp would be impossible. Should we go with about 3,000 this time?”

“Then about 500 will come back this time too.”

Since teleportation devices that return to the dungeon entrance through instant movement, like the one Sung-jun had used, only existed on the deepest floors of dungeons that no one had reached, dungeon conquest was basically a battle against supplies.

The supplies that large conquest groups consisting of 100 to 200 Awakened consumed daily.

Since it was nearly impossible for each individual to move from the 1st to 53rd floor relying only on personal supplies, clans with raid authority conducted large-scale supply transport operations using civilians rather than Awakened.

To create base camps that could supply materials every 5 layers, and serve as footholds to gradually descend further down.

Of course, since harvest sites that could be used as supplies existed throughout the dungeon, they could use the strategy of procuring daily necessities within the dungeon if they wanted, but no adventurer wanted to conquer dungeons that way.

In current Japan, adventurers with awakening abilities were literally treated as a ‘special race.’

A profession that guaranteed an incomparable life just by entering dungeons.

A profession that could enjoy a full life like before D-day while others saved insufficient food and clutched their hungry stomachs.

A profession that could comfortably obtain rewards without taking risks, since they were essential not only for conquests to secure new harvest sites but also for defending already secured harvest sites.

That was what the adventurer profession was in current Japan.

‘We really should have invested all our strength early on to break through somehow…’

The black rain and the phenomenon of crops dying black across the nation immediately caused massive social chaos.

Along with the existence of mysterious caves called ‘dungeons’ that appeared throughout the nation.

Mysterious regions where crops that humans could eat grew, though the principle was unknown.

It was both a beacon of hope for Japanese people who were only waiting for starvation, and a fatal trap that scattered Japan’s entire Awakened forces in all directions.

‘Send Awakened to our regional dungeon too!’

Citizens who obtained information that edible food could be obtained inside dungeons immediately requested the Japan Awakened Union to dispatch Awakened, and the union gave requests to Awakened after assessing the scale and difficulty of each dungeon according to such citizen demands.

Even civilians without awakening abilities who couldn’t fight Corrosion Entities could bring out food from inside dungeons if Awakened eliminated the dangers first.

In the early days when the economic system based on dungeons was beginning to establish itself, a very hopeful atmosphere was created among the Japanese people.

Because even though the quantity wasn’t sufficient, they could obtain food by entering dungeons, and they thought the insufficient quantity would gradually increase as the number of cleared layers increased.

However, as the adventurers called conquest groups went deeper into dungeons, the Japanese government began to gradually lose Awakened, who were precious irreplaceable forces.

In a situation where they knew they had to accept sacrifices to conquer deeper layers, but no one wanted to become that ‘sacrifice.’

The patience of citizens who had been enduring hardships believing only in the hope that things would improve someday was gradually reaching its limit.

‘If only we had Shirasaki-san at least.’

Among Japan’s adventurers, Shirasaki Miyu’s name was quite widely known.

This was because among Japan’s Awakened with all sorts of extraordinary abilities, she was the only Awakened who used ‘magic’ through a Grimoire.

However, the reason the Guild Master of the Goddess’s Guidance clan regretted Shirasaki Miyu’s absence wasn’t simply because of the powerful magic she possessed.

It was because the Awakened specialized in ‘utility’ abilities, which were most needed in Japan’s current Awakened forces, was precisely Shirasaki Miyu.

But since Shirasaki Miyu’s whereabouts had been unknown since her departure record to South Korea before D-day, Shindo Ayaka, the clan master of the Goddess’s Guidance clan, had been continuously searching for her whereabouts since D-day.

With the hope that she might have returned to Japan without her knowledge.

But she was already convinced.

That it was impossible for Shirasaki Miyu, who was in South Korea on the current Earth, to cross the sea and return to the Japanese archipelago.

It was three days after Sung-jun’s group cleared the dungeon that she heard the news that an adventurer had appeared who cleared the 50th layer, the deepest layer of the Nagano Dungeon.

“They cleared the 50th layer of the Nagano Dungeon? And with just three people?”

For her, the most surprising point wasn’t that the party that cleared the dungeon consisted of only three people.

If they were high-level Awakened, it wouldn’t be impossible to hunt dungeon bosses alone, let alone with three people.

What truly surprised her was the fact that the party that cleared the Nagano Dungeon had cleared the dungeon in just two weeks with a single entry.

The meaning of clearing such a deep dungeon in one go without any supplies was virtually the same as meaning that one of them possessed a mysterious ability to solve supply problems.

“Use every means available – motorcycles, trucks, helicopters – to deliver this to the Guild Master in Nagano. Tell them to somehow hold onto those three people until I arrive!”

Having said that, she opened the window behind her desk and jumped down, as if even the time to go down the stairs was precious.

Then she began sprinting through the streets at tremendous speed.

Until the shouts of the clan member who stuck their head out of the window she had jumped from reached her ears.

“Nagano is the other way!”

***

Unfortunately for Shindo Ayaka, the time she asked to capture Sung-jun’s group was already after Sung-jun’s group had left Nagano.

However, since Shindo Ayaka had clan members competent enough to compensate for her mistake, she was able to receive a message left by a clan member from the Guild Master in Nagano.

“Since the target’s purpose is estimated to be dungeon clearing, simultaneous instructions have been sent to Guild Masters in nearby Dungeon Towns. If they try to conquer nearby dungeons, they are estimated to be in one of the Dungeon Towns in Toyama, Utsunomiya, or Tagasaki.”

‘Thank you, Kaito-kun.’

The message was sent by Huyutsuki Kaito, Shindo Ayaka’s aide and sub-clan master.

With his brilliant mind handling most internal and external clan affairs, he immediately understood her intention upon receiving the command from the clan master.

Not only that, he requested all nearby Dungeon Towns to use the excuse that new adventurers they’d never seen before would need to wait several days for dungeon conquest registration procedures if they visited.

Thanks to this, Sung-jun’s group was stuck in Tagasaki City, a Dungeon Town on the way from Nagano to Tokyo.

If they had tried to hold only Sung-jun’s group, Sung-jun might have noticed, but since the Guild Master stopped all new adventurers from entering dungeons following Kaito’s instructions, Sung-jun simply perceived it as procedures being different depending on the city.

In fact, if this had been Japan before D-day, everything could have been resolved with a single phone call, but the problem was that this was after D-day.

A situation where not only communication but also fuel supply for transportation was controlled unless it was special cases like food transport, literally requiring ‘running’ to visit each city.

After brief consideration, Shindo Ayaka decided to visit Tagasaki City first among the three Dungeon Towns Huyutsuki Kaito had sent her.

This was because she thought that if Sung-jun’s group was truly competent enough to conquer the 50th layer of the Nagano Dungeon with just three people, they would likely target the closest super-large dungeons, Osaka Dungeon 2 or Tokyo Dungeon 1, as their final destination.

And as she expected, Sung-jun’s group was waiting at the Adventurer’s Guild in Tagasaki Dungeon Town for the dungeon registration procedures to finish, with their feet held by the Guild Master.

“Excuse me, Master. I have something to discuss with these people, so could you please step out for a moment?”

To the young woman who entered the Guild Master’s room where Sung-jun’s group was without even knocking, the Guild Master bowed and took a respectful attitude as if facing a superior.

Then he went outside and locked the door so no one could enter.

As if he wouldn’t let anyone leave the room until the conversation inside was finished.

And after a while, Shindo Ayaka, who seemed reluctant to show her face and had been taking deep breaths by the open window for quite some time, finally sat down across from the sofa where Sung-jun’s group was sitting with a calm expression, as if her breathing had finally settled.

“I’m Shindo Ayaka, clan master of ‘Goddess’s Guidance’ active in Tokyo Dungeon 1. I heard there were people who cleared the Nagano Dungeon, so I took the liberty of coming to find you. May I have a moment to talk?”

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This chapter was translated by Lunox Team. To support us and help keep this series going, visit our website: LunoxScans.com
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