chapter05 · 136-ep136
Episode 129: A Dangerous Flag
"All right, then my next stream shall be my second Q&A chatting stream, desu wa ne!"
Precisely because the world was in turmoil, it was important to stream as usual.
About an hour after deciding that, Karin came up with her next stream's content and enthusiastically began composing an announcement for social media.
"This will let me interact more with viewers who must be anxious about various things, and I can ask whether they wish to watch dungeon streams under the circumstances while I am at it... Yes, an excellent choice, if I do say so myself!"
She'd planned to ask Mitsuki for advice if she got stuck, but she'd managed to think of something good herself.
(Perhaps I have leveled up a little as a streamer, not merely as an Elegant explorer!)
Karin posted the announcement. Since she'd invited questions directly in the replies, separate from anonymous questions, she checked the reactions before long.
"...Eh?"
Looking down at her phone, Karin let out a startled noise.
Thousands of reposts and likes within minutes were normal for her by now (though they still made her heart race every time)... but the number of replies was visibly abnormal.
It was far more than could be explained by her invitation for questions.
Even as Karin froze for a moment, the number kept climbing past the hundreds.
"Eh, wh-what is this!?"
She hurriedly opened the replies, only to be shocked again.
【Karin ojou-sama, aren't you going to Arakawa Dungeon!?】
【Help us, Karin ojou-sama! Blow everything away like you always do, desu wa!】
【Have they already asked you to go, maybe!?】
【We asked the Dungeon Bureau account, but they haven't announced anything!】
【Karin ojou-sama can surely conquer the abyss and stop the collapse!】
【Hey, I get how you feel, but calm down a little!】
【Ojou-sama, Arakawa Dungeon is too dangerous, so you don't have to force yourself to go, desu wa yo!】
Rather than ordinary questions, many replies expected Karin to resolve the terrorist incident currently gripping the world.
For an instant, she thought this was just another round of the usual "Karin ojou-sama is the strongest!" jokes.
But there were far too many to dismiss as jokes, and some mentioned checking with the Dungeon Bureau account. When Karin hurriedly looked around, she discovered that multiple people really HAD been asking the Dungeon Bureau, guild, and police accounts whether Karin would be deployed. Quite a lot of them, in fact.
Across the whole conversation, far more people were trying to restrain them; the people pleading for Karin's help seemed to be only a tiny fraction. But Karin's channel had a staggering number of subscribers.
As a result, a considerable number of people appeared to have begun strangely deifying her, and many were asking the authorities to deploy Karin outside her remit instead of relying on clans and the military accustomed to working with them.
(Wh-what is all this...!? ...Ah! C-could THIS be what Mafuyu meant when she said she was worried everyone would start expecting me to solve absolutely every incident!? Th-this really is rather bad, desu wa!?)
In the past, during major earthquakes and other disasters, inquiries demanding that "the top clans be sent in right now!" had flooded various offices before the scale of the damage or the necessary personnel were even known, interfering with their work.
Public awareness had since largely calmed that problem... but this time the expected scale of the damage combined with Karin's coincidentally solving several recent incidents seemed to have whipped people into a frenzy. Some were apparently even calling the authorities, not just posting replies.
Karin was grateful that people trusted her so much as an Elegant explorer, and of course she intended to give her all if there was anything she could do... But these voices must not interfere with the authorities, who were surely turning to people far stronger than her. And viewers arguing among themselves was hardly conducive to enjoying her stream.
So—
"I-I must call on everyone to calm down at once!"
Karin hurriedly posted a plea for calm. One post couldn't reach everyone, though... so she decided to hold the chatting stream specifically to explain the situation and make that appeal again.
※
"...I half expected this, but she isn't going to rush into the abyss of her own accord. She doesn't realize that she stands a cut above the other country-toppling explorers, and she has absolutely no desire to make a name for herself off this disaster."
In a room in a building in a regional city, Shinobu Nekoyashiki looked down at her tablet and murmured.
Using a dungeon-terrorist organization—one of the invasion sabotage force's fronts—she had unleashed one of her research achievements on the world: artificial dungeon collapses. On the screen was Karin's social-media post.
It informed people that the authorities and the truly powerful must already be taking action, so she couldn't presumptuously interfere. As ever, it was a deranged post displaying no awareness whatsoever of how exceptional she herself was.
"Apart from your warped idea of what's normal, how very sensible of you. But that doesn't suit me."
Shinobu Nekoyashiki narrowed her eyes at Karin's behavior.
"No matter what she says, Japan will have no choice but to rely on Karin Yamada in the end... But I arranged the second collapse in the African Federation, and even asked our homeland to work on drawing Sharifa Nefertiti away from Japan on the day of the predicted collapse. The dungeon-collapse attacks will inevitably throw other countries into chaos and weaken them, but if our actual target, Karin Yamada, somehow doesn't go to Arakawa Dungeon, that would be disastrous... I'd better give her a little 'push' with that video I prepared, just in case."
So that she could crush Karin Yamada at Arakawa Dungeon's deepest point before the girl grew any stronger.
No sooner had she said it than Nekoyashiki operated her tablet with a malicious smile. Almost simultaneously with Karin beginning her stream, she ordered a subordinate to post a certain video to the dungeon-terrorist account, whose owners were shielded from identification by various illicit technologies and operations.
※
【This Is Too Bad】 Thread on Artificial Dungeon Collapses Part 732 (Overflow Thread) 【Seriously Bad】
301 Passing-by Anon
Hey, hey, hey, hey! Japan is the next target of the dungeon-collapse terrorists, and it's THAT Arakawa Dungeon!? For real!? It's right in Tokyo, AND it's where the 'Arakawa Dungeon tragedy' happened!?
302 Passing-by Anon
The one where eighteen front-line explorers went missing at once back then... Who knows what would come out if that dungeon collapsed? And if the cave-in extended well past the three-hundred-meter radius next to that major river, the flooding alone could be horrific, monsters or no monsters
303 Passing-by Anon
And the terrorists say we have to destroy the dungeon core to stop it!? Reaching the very back of abyssal-class Arakawa Dungeon is basically impossible mode!
304 Passing-by Anon
The previous collapses were relatively far from cities, but this one is malicious as hell... Was Japan their real target all along...?
305 Passing-by Anon
Forget their target—are these collapses really artificial? Some people think they have a precognition unique skill
306 Passing-by Anon
It's possible But abyssal-class collapses extending FAR beyond the three-hundred-meter construction-prohibited radius are unprecedented, and now there've been two in a row. Precognition's looking less and less likely...
307 Passing-by Anon
But isn't an artificial dungeon collapse even more far-fetched? It's like claiming artificial earthquakes exist Maybe there's some trick to that terrorists' prediction account...
308 Passing-by Anon
That might work for America alone, but they called the African Federation collapse exactly right with the whole world watching... We can't be optimistic anymore
309 Passing-by Anon
Slight tangent about the predictions, but why hasn't that terrorist account been taken down? Its subscriber count is insane
310 Passing-by Anon
Because then figuring out which new account is real would be a pain in the ass Look around the posting sites They're full of copycats predicting dungeon collapses → Video list URL
311 Passing-by Anon
Huh!?
312 Passing-by Anon
No way... Wait, it's true!
313 Passing-by Anon
Are there THAT many idiots?
314 Passing-by Anon
There are plenty in Japan alone, so imagine the whole world Some accounts even went to the trouble of copying the original's multiple languages. Unreal
315 Passing-by Anon
It's the easiest genre for getting views right now ()... With idiot copycats cropping up everywhere, the world's decided it's safer to leave the real account up and monitor it
316 Passing-by Anon
Seriously...? But can't they identify the terrorists from that?
317 Passing-by Anon
By any normal standard they should be able to... If the entire world's hunting them and there's still no word, that tells you plenty
318 Passing-by Anon
Who the hell ARE these people...? Well, I guess hiding an account's owner must be child's play if they can cause artificial dungeon collapses
319 Passing-by Anon
Back to the point, artificial dungeon collapses are too dangerous to even joke about Endangered species like dungeon terrorists couldn't pull that off, or conceal their account like that. Someone HAS to be backing them
320 Passing-by Anon
Normally it'd be impossible no matter who's backing them
3 21 Passing-by Anon
Well, we just saw the impossible—a giant corporation hiding an entire dungeon... If someone like that were operating somewhere in the world, maybe?
322 Passing-by Anon
That's on a different scale from using a unique skill(?) to make artificially enhanced variants You'd need at least an entire country's resources Maybe dungeon superpower Raviristan, which was suspected of sponsoring terrorists in the past...
323 Passing-by Anon
The country with the 'Primordial Pit'?
324 Passing-by Anon
It's where dungeons were first observed in the world, so it gets special treatment in fiction, but can it really do fictional shit in real life...?
3 25 Passing-by Anon
Even Dungeon Alive treats it as a holy site, but that's fiction Then again fictional shit keeps happening in real life. After Inukai Industries, I wouldn't be surprised if Raviristan had even more ridiculous technology or unique-skill users hidden away! (I'd still be surprised)
326 Passing-by Anon
Setting their backers aside, if they can really cause artificial collapses, doesn't their demand seem off? They're doing something straight out of fiction, yet all they want is for countries to promote research on erasing dungeons and close them... You can call it ideology, but the demands don't seem to match the magnitude of what they're capable of
327 Passing-by Anon
Like those anti-nu○lear groups, their goal's to weaken other countries That's why people have long suspected dungeon terrorists (anti-dungeon organizations) are backed by Raviristan or other countries with old-fashioned expansionist ambitions
328 Passing-by Anon
A nation's dungeons—their number and quality—directly affect its strength through item resources and explorer levels Closing dungeons and encouraging research into eliminating them is exactly what a country that wants to lower everyone else's level before invading would want
329 Passing-by Anon
Ohh, that's why people always said invading countries supported dungeon terrorists
330 Passing-by Anon
But if so, why take such a roundabout approach instead of collapsing dungeons directly to crush their enemies?
331 Passing-by Anon
There must be limits to what they can do If they could do anything they wanted, they wouldn't give Japan ten days' warning
332 Passing-by Anon
In fact, these artificial collapses apparently still fall within the worldwide statistics for how often collapses occur and where
333 Passing-by Anon
So the leading theory is that they're not causing collapses freely from nothing; they're altering the size and dungeon of collapses that would've occurred naturally, within certain limits Only two have happened, though, so it's still just a hypothesis
334 Passing-by Anon
That's plenty scary enough... It's like being able to change a typhoon's route or an earthquake's epicenter AND boost its power
335 Passing-by Anon
We don't even know what causes dungeon collapses, so a theory about manipulating their locations and scale is already incomprehensible
336 Passing-by Anon
We actually have a pretty good idea of the cause A force containing roughly the energy of a minor earthquake—possibly mana—directly damages the real dungeon core, which they say exists in a separate spacetime, interfering with the dungeon's maintenance and causing a collapse And for a long time, people have theorized that destroying the dungeon core WE can interact with ahead of time might vent that pressure and prevent the collapse Dungeon collapses have been researched worldwide for decades (Sorry, splitting this up because it's long)
337 Passing-by Anon
But no one knows where that 'minor earthquake's worth of energy' comes from (another dimension, maybe?), and signs of an ordinary collapse can only be observed seconds before it happens. There was a lot of evidence for the theory about destroying the core at the right time, but no way to test it
338 Passing-by Anon
With these abyssal-class collapses, maybe because the energy is so much greater than usual, they've apparently been able to detect warning signs hours beforehand. Combined with the terrorists' announcement, they can finally test it. As the news keeps saying
339 Passing-by Anon
Whoa, an actual expert!
340 Passing-by Anon
I wondered why so many people, government included, believed the terrorists about destroying the core, but it comes from real research
341 Passing-by Anon
Wait, the REAL dungeon core is supposed to be in another dimension!? No wonder breaking the one here doesn't matter I'd wondered why cores exist if destroying one doesn't erase the dungeon and it just comes back over time. Could they be a safety device to prevent collapses?
342 Passing-by Anon
That's too convenient... Except dungeons let signals through underground so we can stream, and monsters can't leave them. They ARE oddly convenient for humans sometimes
343 Passing-by Anon
Detecting signs even a few hours beforehand is good news, though. Means they can't surprise us with these abyssal-class collapses
344 Passing-by Anon
Yeah But being able to detect them so differently from ordinary collapses lends credence to the 'artificial' part... Along with the cave-in area exceeding three hundred meters
345 Passing-by Anon
Yeah, that part's weird At this point they're probably artificial for real
346 Passing-by Anon
Come to think of it, every thread is in an uproar, but people are surprisingly calm about the possibility of artificial collapses
347 Passing-by Anon
Well... once you examine the facts, you have to accept it, and we've seen one unbelievable thing after another lately... We've built up some tolerance
348 Passing-by Anon
A wild ojou-sama, Fist-Fuck Ojou-sama, Genocide Ojou-sama, the fourteen-year-old ordinary-girl Queen's arrival, Kisaragi Dungeon, Crusher Yamada, a hidden dungeon, Ojou-sama...
349 Passing-by Anon
Literally all of those are Karin ojou-sama-related lmao
350 Passing-by Anon
If Karin ojou-sama hadn't smashed Japan's common sense in advance with her antics, I think the panic would be even worse
351 Passing-by Anon
Karin ojou-sama was sent from Dungeon Alive's world to acclimate humanity to the impossible...?
352 Passing-by Anon
Vaccination Ojou-sama!
353 Passing-by Anon
Apart from how ridiculous she is, her insane strength is part of why I can hang around this backwater forum feeling a little safer If things get bad, our guardian-deity ojou-sama might somehow save the day Might be normalcy bias, though
354 Passing-by Anon
I get it Her dumbass strength and genuinely good heart are reassuring But people are sensitive about that subject right now, so maybe don't bring it up Could start a fight in the thread
355 Passing-by Anon
Huh? Why? Did something happen? Now that you mention it, her name has been weirdly absent until now
356 Passing-by Anon
There's an ongoing uproar People are arguing everywhere between 'send Ojou-sama to conquer Arakawa Dungeon' and 'however monstrous an explorer she is, sending a minor into such a dangerous and infamous abyssal dungeon is wrong'
357 Passing-by Anon
Oh...
358 Passing-by Anon
That's a hell of a mess!
359 Passing-by Anon
The government's gonna have a hard time making decisions...
360 Passing-by Anon
But honestly, isn't Ojou-sama the only one who can handle this? Do we even have a choice? Sharie-sama is... well, you know, technically a fourteen-year-old girl even smaller than Karin ojou-sama(?)...
361 Passing-by Anon
You're really stumbling over your words!
362 Passing-by Anon
Even setting the fourteen-year-old thing aside, the only forces who can plausibly resolve this are an ACTUAL minor or an ostensibly minor foreign head of state!
363 Passing-by Anon
This is a colossal pain in the ass lol No, not funny
364 Passing-by Anon
Most people, especially those Ojou-sama saved in Shibuya or the Inukai incident, agree that 'we can't make Ojou-sama shoulder something this huge and risk her life'... But the situation's so extreme that there'll always be people pleading for her to help
3 65 Passing-by Anon
I honestly understand both sides Part of me expects Ojou-sama could reach the back of the abyss after everything we've seen; another part thinks this emergency in Arakawa Dungeon is too dangerous, period
366 Passing-by Anon
What does Karin ojou-sama herself think about it?
367 Passing-by Anon
She absolutely still thinks she's just an ordinary explorer ↓ Karin ojou-sama's posts: 'G-good people? Of course this is an emergency, and if it comes to it I shall naturally fight Elegantly as an explorer, but surely the police, clans, and Self-Defense Forces, who have people much stronger than me, are responding properly, desu no yo?' 'I am deeply honored that you trust me as an Elegant explorer like Setsuna-sama, but unless I happen to be on-site when a dungeon collapses, I, still inexperienced, must not push my way in and get in the way, desu no!' She's explaining more or less the same thing on-stream right now!
368 Passing-by Anon
You've gotta be kidding...
3 69 Passing-by Anon
I was worried even Ojou-sama might be feeling pressured this time... But this is a more fundamental problem???????? (I mean, the pleas for help have shaken her, but WHAT she's shaken about...)
370 Passing-by Anon
Wow! What a sensible, good girl! (eyes rolled back)
371 Passing-by Anon
As usual, apart from thinking there are stronger people everywhere like in an anime, she's saying something completely reasonable!
372 Passing-by Anon
She's so reasonable it feels wrong... Is she an impostor?
373 Passing-by Anon
Is that REALLY reasonable...? (looks at her complete conviction that there are tons of stronger people)
374 Passing-by Anon
Ojou-sama has always had a strong sense of decency about things like this! She only SEEMS crazy because she has no common sense!
375 Passing-by Anon
Ever since suppressing the Shibuya collapse, she's put Elegance first and shown no hunger for fame at all, that fake ojou-sama...
376 Passing-by Anon
How is someone this sweet so lacking in common sense...
377 Passing-by Anon
Well, her brain...
378 Passing-by Anon
That made me laugh, but if this is how Ojou-sama sees herself, won't the government have trouble asking her to destroy the core...? Can they even ask?
379 Passing-by Anon
But if the artificial abyssal-class collapses and warnings are real, there's honestly nobody else who can deal with them...
380 Passing-by Anon
True, but this situation is so irregular, and the site is Arakawa Dungeon of all places... However Ojou-sama Ojou-sama may be, I can't irresponsibly tell her to go stop it. Too ominous
381 Passing-by Anon
Fair
382 Passing-by Anon
And apparently things around the African Federation are getting tense amid the collapses. Karin ojou-sama would very likely have to go solo
383 Passing-by Anon
For real? I was on Team 'Karin ojou-sama, save us' thinking she'd have Sharie-sama with her, but that changes things
384 Passing-by Anon
(They're just naturally proceeding as though Sharie-sama = the Dungeon Queen...)
385 Passing-by Anon
Then let's give up on preventing the collapse and have Karin ojou-sama kill all the monsters that pour out! That's what America and Africa did!
386 Passing-by Anon
Going by those first two cases, doing that in a city would be rough Even the Elegatling guns might not be enough for the monsters I saw in the American footage...
387 Passing-by Anon
And as people said earlier, once the collapse happens, flooding could be terrible Property values and other impacts would be huge too. If that happens, I worry people might blame Karin ojou-sama, the one thought most capable of stopping it, for not entering the abyss
388 Passing-by Anon
Surely nobody would blame her for not going to the deepest abyss... Or maybe they would, given her rampage on its first floor and the expected scale of the damage...
389 Passing-by Anon
But once again, the government can't easily decide to entrust the conquest of the abyss to a minor either Unless Karin ojou-sama actively volunteers
390 Passing-by Anon
Maybe they'll just have to tell her the truth about her strength and get her to volunteer...?
391 Passing-by Anon
The government's probably considering that, but couldn't it destroy her motivation and lead to a fatal mistake down there...?
392 Passing-by Anon
That sounds horribly plausible lol No, this is no laughing matter Bet the government's tearing its hair out right now
393 Passing-by Anon
And crushing Karin ojou-sama's dream before asking her to do an incredibly dangerous job would be cruel...
394 Passing-by Anon
This is starting to sound like that story about writing a giant-monster movie set in pre-dungeon Japan, where the question isn't 'how do we defeat it?' but 'how do we get the Self-Defense Forces deployed?'...
395 Passing-by Anon
More to the point, even if Ojou-sama went wild on the abyss's first floor, conquering an unseen abyss all the way to its end is too much to ask. We shouldn't rely on her this time Arakawa Dungeon supposedly has several unusual traits apart from its infamy, and the worst is that it randomly generates bosses. Scouting won't work
396 Passing-by Anon
Huh? Arakawa Dungeon has randomly generated bosses!?
397 Passing-by Anon
Sorry, I'm a noob, but what does that even mean...? It sounds incredibly ominous
398 Passing-by Anon
It's been fifteen years since the Arakawa Dungeon tragedy; I guess a lot of people don't know the details Random boss generation means the boss that spawns changes regularly, and Arakawa is especially nasty because it spawns a different boss EVERY DAY
399 Passing-by Anon
There are limits to the boss varieties, though The difficulty was high, but so were the material rewards. That was why they asked eighteen top explorers at the time to carefully study boss varieties and spawn patterns, to make conquests a little easier
400 Passing-by Anon
I'd always thought eighteen level-2000-plus explorers tackling it at once fifteen years ago was some formation. So THAT'S why
401 Passing-by Anon
And if the boss changes daily, you can't scout, discover a tough one, make a new <Divine Artisan> weapon, and come back another day... So every attempt's basically a blind run, and the abyss is undoubtedly the same. Nightmare difficulty
402 Passing-by Anon
What? Isn't that dungeon absolute trash...?
403 Passing-by Anon
The definitive trash dungeon That's why people in the know are saying it'd be too dangerous even for Karin ojou-sama Scouting's almost pointless = she'd have to reach the end of the abyss basically blind
404 Passing-by Anon
No wonder explorers who've watched Karin ojou-sama's rampages oppose it
405 Passing-by Anon
And it's under attack by artificial dungeon collapse terrorists on top of everything... Going in would be terrifying. Personally, even if the damage is awful, fighting the monsters afterward would be plenty this time Sorry, Tokyo. In that sense, it might be good that Karin ojou-sama doesn't know her strength. At least she won't feel cornered into thinking 'I HAVE to reach the deepest abyss...'
406 Passing-by Anon
If Arakawa collapses, between the direct damage and plunging prices of all nearby real estate, the total economic loss could be monstrous... But Karin ojou-sama's safety comes first. Even if she does something, defending after the collapse is the safer call
407 Passing-by Anon
Ojou-sama's explaining things on-stream right now. We can't silence every plea for help, but I hope Team 'Save Us' calms down enough to discuss it rationally
408 Passing-by Anon
It actually looks like she might settle them down Things have been so out of the ordinary that Team 'Save Us' is starting to get confused by Karin ojou-sama's crazy statements lmao
409 Passing-by Anon
You're right lol
410 Passing-by Anon
Karin ojou-sama can't lie, and she genuinely believes loads of people are stronger than her, so she's oddly persuasive lol (Whether they're stronger than her or not, Sharie-sama DID show up)
411 Passing-by Anon
I was on edge expecting her to say something outrageous and cause even more chaos, but it looks like this might end relatively calmly. What a relief, desu wa!
412 Passing-by Anon
Karin ojou-sama... You really have grown as a streamer... The government's next move could still change everything and the pleas won't disappear, but at least we might avoid the worst: panicked public opinion more or less forcing her into the abyss
413 Passing-by Anon
S-sorry to interrupt when things are looking up... But isn't this... bad? → URL
414 Passing-by Anon
Eh
415 Passing-by Anon
Huh!? What's this!?
416 Passing-by Anon
The terrorists posted some insane videoooooo!?
417 Passing-by Anon
No no no no! What are they thinking!? Do they WANT to die!?
418 Passing-by Anon
Wait, DO NOT show Karin ojou-sama this or things will get ugly!
419 Passing-by Anon
Too late → Ojou-sama's stream URL
420 Passing-by Anon
AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAH!?
421 Passing-by Anon
Who the fuck posted the video in her chat!?
422 Passing-by Anon
Eek...!?
423 Passing-by Anon
It's over... (for the terrorists)
424 Passing-by Anon
Oh man, those terrorists are dead...
425 Passing-by Anon
Also, didn't Ojou-sama just say something insane!?
426 Passing-by Anon
Is Ojou-sama serious!? She didn't just lose her cool because she's furious!? If she declares something like that, we'll NEVER calm things down!?
427 Passing-by Anon
Of COURSE Ojou-sama's stream couldn't end peacefully!
――――――――――――――――――――――――――――
The details of the stream will come next time.
Incidentally, I may explain this again later, but much of the research surrounding dungeon cores has long been based on information that top-tier explorers, including country-toppling ones, occasionally passed on to their governments. If anything, governments trust it even more than the general public does, desu wa.