chapter2 · 031-ep31
Episode 31: The Ones Who Weren't Called, and the State of the World
Night.
An old multi-level parking garage, a little way out from the city.
Behind a commercial complex that had closed for the day, the place saw its share of cars by day, but at night the human presence thinned out fast.
A dying fluorescent tube dropped white light onto the concrete floor.
Somewhere far off, cars ran.
And in the middle of it, Natori Saku stood alone by a pillar.
His expression thin, same as on the expedition.
A face that let no emotion be read.
In his hand, his personal smartphone.
On the screen, a call display with no name shown.
What came through it was a processed voice.
『...Did you secure the achievement.』
The voice on the other end asked that.
Natori answered briefly.
"Yes. There was some suspicion, though."
『From whom.』
"The on-site commander."
『Did he press it.』
"Not on the spot. It was right after a fight — the return took priority."
『Then it's fine.』
The voice judged it that easily.
Natori said nothing more either.
In fact, there had been no problem.
At least, for now.
That forest-type dungeon.
Natori leaving his post mid-battle with over ten Wood Wolves was, by expedition-team discipline, no praiseworthy act.
The vanguard's defense specialist stepping out of formation.
That was, by rights, not something to do without reporting.
Which is exactly why the on-site commander, Takamiya, noticed.
And pressed him on it, briefly.
Natori answered that he had judged it necessary.
Not a lie.
But not all of it, either.
Natori's reason for leaving his post was to fulfill an achievement condition.
Step away from the position he was meant to hold.
And still bring the fight to its end without collapse.
Think about it normally, and it deserves no praise.
But the conditions displayed in the achievements field do not always follow field common sense.
So Natori took it.
『And the reward.』
"Confirmed."
『A standard reward.』
"No."
Natori dropped his eyes to his own Status screen.
The achievement he'd just cleared was still displayed there.
"It was a World-First Reward."
For the briefest moment, silence fell on the other end.
『The contents.』
"A skill. Details to follow."
『Understood.』
The voice answered briefly.
Standard rewards.
That was what they already called them, among themselves.
The base reward granted when you clear an achievement.
In most cases, it appears as a rise in stats.
Strength, Endurance, Agility, Magic.
Which stats rise depends on the achievement's content.
The amount isn't fixed, either.
A low-difficulty achievement nudges the related stat up a sliver.
A high-difficulty one can stretch multiple stats.
A means of raising the stats themselves, separate from leveling up.
That alone held ample value.
But separately from that, there was a reward displayed only to the first person to fulfill a condition.
——The World-First Reward.
Natori and his people had already noticed its existence.
Though you'd never know it just from staring at your achievements field.
You have to clear one to know.
And unless you're the very first, you can't even see that display.
From the second achiever onward, what's displayed is the standard reward only.
『This past month, our numbers have grown considerably.』
The voice said.
『The ones who weren't called.』
Natori listened in silence.
Most of the people in their organization were ones the national Awakener Development Program never called.
They awakened.
But the country never reached out.
People who never declared themselves Awakeners.
People screened out over past conduct.
People flagged as dangerous.
The reasons all differed.
But they had one thing in common.
They had been left outside the frame the country built.
That feeling.
『"Development" sounds nice enough.』
The voice went on.
『But the moment there are those who get called and those who don't, it's selection.』
Natori didn't answer.
The voice on the other end was quiet.
But behind it lay a cold heat.
『From here on, that gap only widens.』
"..."
『We have to show the ones who weren't called that they still have a road to grow along.』
"Are the achievements for that?"
『They are.』
A short reply.
Natori scrolled through his own achievements field on the Status screen.
Achievement after achievement.
Marked cleared.
And the rewards actually gained.
Not just killing monsters and raising levels.
Fulfill a condition, and your power grows by another route.
Knowing that or not changes an Awakener's growth speed enormously.
『As I thought — achievements are the shortcut to growth.』
"Yes."
On the other end, the voice dropped a little lower.
『The problem is, we may not be the only ones who've noticed.』
The achievements field.
The strange list every Awakener can view.
Anyone who notices there are rewards in it will probe for the conditions.
Some will write it off as coincidence.
But among them will be those who realize their own growth isn't mere leveling up.
Before the country systematizes it.
Before it's folded into an institution.
Take what can be taken.
Stretch power as far as it stretches.
That was their policy.
『Keep moving.』
"Understood."
The call cut off.
Quiet returned to the parking garage.
Natori pocketed the phone.
And as if nothing had happened, he left the dark garage behind.
Sixty-one days since the Gates were first confirmed.
Forty days since the Awakener Development Program's pilot run began.
And one week since Ren had first joined a dungeon expedition.
Through it all, society had kept changing, little by little.
Not the kind of change where a city collapses overnight like in the movies.
A duller, more real kind of change.
Awakener crime increasing.
People slipping into thinly watched Gates on their own.
Dungeon-sourced goods trading for serious money in the real world.
Awakeners attacking Awakeners for XP.
And now: per government figures, the number of registered Awakeners in Japan stood at 2,846,319.
About 2.3% of Japan's population.
Simple arithmetic: roughly 1 in 43 people.
On numbers alone, still not a majority of society.
But they could no longer be called rare, either.
Especially among the young, and around Gate areas, the Awakener ratio ran high.
At some schools, a single class had several Awakeners in it.
And that was only the registered count.
Counting unregistered Awakeners, the real figure was believed to pass four million.
Gates confirmed or reported domestically already numbered in the thousands.
Not all of them became survey targets, though.
The same Gate reported by multiple people.
Ones that naturally vanished shortly after appearing.
Misidentifications.
Ones closed out with a perimeter check alone.
And ones too dangerous for entry to be permitted at all.
Count all of those, and the raw number balloons.
So the country broadly sorted Gates into two types.
Stable Gates, and unstable Gates.
A stable Gate is one whose shape and surrounding-environment anomalies stayed within standards over a set period.
An unstable Gate has heavy fluctuation in its outline — strong noise showing up on nearby devices, or readings swinging in a short time.
What judged that:
Outline fluctuation via high-sensitivity cameras.
Temperature change via infrared cameras.
Magnetic-field disturbance via magnetometers.
Noise entering communication devices.
Edge-position variance via laser ranging.
Stack up the anomalies measurable with modern instruments like those, and only what stays within standards for a set period is treated as a stable Gate.
Unstable Gates, conversely, were off-limits as a rule.
No case of a Gate vanishing while someone was inside had been confirmed — at least not in Japan.
But that doesn't mean safe.
It might just mean nobody has confirmed one yet.
Which is exactly why the country limited surveys and expeditions to stable Gates.
The stable Gates under continued government monitoring now: 342.
Of those, the key-monitoring Gates with standing security: 76.
The rest were managed by hook or by crook — restricted-zone designations, simple fencing, surveillance cameras, patrol security, combined.
Gates that appear in city areas get sealed off relatively fast.
All the more where foot traffic is heavy.
Police, municipalities, and state-certified Awakeners go in — and if needed, riot units or dedicated security squads get deployed too.
But Gates don't care about human convenience.
They appear without warning in the mountains, abandoned factories, riverbanks, private land, harbor facilities, disused underpasses — places surveillance struggles to reach.
Watching every one of those around the clock was next to impossible.
And closing one doesn't end it.
In the past two months alone, newly confirmed or reported Gates also ran into the thousands.
Most were unstable Gates, natural disappearances, misidentifications, or ones closed out with a perimeter check — but even so, new stable Gates keep ticking up.
While the country brings one under management, the next Gate turns up somewhere else.
That was the situation.
Awakener-related incidents were up, too.
Awakener-related cases confirmed in the past month: 312.
Roughly 1.7 times the month before.
Contents: assault, battery, robbery, extortion, trespassing into Gate perimeter zones, illegal betting matches, and Awakener-on-Awakener attacks.
The incidents known as Awakener hunting were among them.
The country, however, wasn't publicizing them at scale.
Not hiding them.
Announcements were made.
Statistics released.
But incident details, skill contents, concrete methods — almost all withheld.
To prevent copycats.
To prevent rubberneckers forcing their way into Gates.
To keep Awakener ability data out of criminal organizations' hands.
And more than anything, to avoid fanning social anxiety beyond need.
The entryways to crime weren't brazenly posted on the open SNS either.
Police, telecoms, and the platforms themselves all keep sharp eyes out for blatant recruitment wording.
So what gets used are more closed channels.
Invite-only anonymous chats, messengers that keep no history, voice servers inside online games, boards disguised as marketplaces for dungeon-sourced goods.
It wasn't that the country was doing nothing.
If anything, it had moved fast.
At the National Police Agency, an Awakener-related case response office.
At every prefectural police, Awakener response units.
At the Cabinet Secretariat, a cross-ministry Gate/Awakener countermeasures liaison office.
The Ministry of Justice renovated part of an existing correctional facility and began trial operation of a dedicated penal facility for Awakeners.
The Self-Defense Forces were moving too.
Though not out front.
Routine domestic security use of the SDF is heavy, legally and politically.
So their role was limited to Gate-disaster readiness, transport, communications, evacuation support, outer-perimeter watch on high-risk Gates, and training and research for worst-case scenarios.
First response, at all times, meant the police, the municipalities, and the country's specialist departments.
Still not enough.
The rate of increase was faster.
So the country had given up, early on, on keeping all Awakeners away from the Gates.
Ban it, and some will still go in.
Some will get dragged into criminal organizations.
If so — make them take, at minimum, the basic coursework.
Let them build experience.
The Awakener Development Program was, in part, a system for exactly that.
And one week after Ren first accompanied an expedition —
the government announced the Awakener Development Program would roll out in sequence across the nation's major cities.
The stated aims: safety education and basic training.
Protection of the Awakeners themselves.
Prevention of Gate accidents.
Prevention of criminal victimization.
In reality, though — not only that.
Registration. Monitoring. Statistical collection on Levels, Jobs, and Skills. Preventing leaks to criminal organizations. Identifying candidates for future public forces.
Those meanings were, of course, included as well.
With the national rollout, manpower instantly ran short.
Even from the Kanto-region pilot program, some of the instructors and staff were being sent around to support local launches.
As a result, the Intermediate program Ren and the others attended would be cut back, from twice a week to once.
The country widened the system.
So that, in a nation where Awakeners live, as many people as possible can live safely.
But widen a system, and gaps open up.
Crimes that would have been stopped at once now take a little longer to find.
Crises of people that would have been spotted at once now slip by, just a little.
And there are those waiting on that slight delay.
The Awakeners the Program called.
The Awakeners it didn't.
Both, in the same way, were trying to grow strong in a world with Gates.
But where that power was headed was entirely different.
Standing in the same world, like parallel lines that will never cross.
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And with that, Chapter Two (complete).
From the next episode, we head into Chapter Three ‼️
Also, as a bonus, I'd be happy if you followed and cheered me on with a ★ (lol)
⬆️ (I'm absolutely not forcing you, okay!?!?)
⬇️ Please give this new work of mine a look too 🙇
『How Learning Magic in Another World Took Me from High School Dropout Moving Part-Timer to Head of a Young Lady's Guard』