chapter01 · 012-ep12

Episode 12: "The Death Rate"

The rookie in the statistics division was the first to spot the anomaly. The last person to stop doubting it was Makabe Toshinori, an investigator who'd been there eighteen years.

The Dungeon Agency Safety Statistics Division. A department that compiled and classified explorer death and injury reports, then put them into an annual white paper. Nothing glamorous about it. Inside the agency, people privately called it the "condolences division." Makabe had spent eighteen years there reading about people's deaths. An estimated forty thousand death reports had passed before his eyes. He'd written most of the current cause-of-death classification codes himself. "C-3: combat deaths due to delayed retreat." "D-1: cascading accidents caused by falls." "E-2: improper knot-tying." The ways explorers died had hardly changed in eighteen years.

So when they did change, he could tell.

"Makabe-san. No matter how many times I run the numbers, this is what I get."

The line graph the rookie brought him showed that last month's death and injury rate for the mid-tier bracket—C- to B-rank—was down thirty percent from the same month a year ago.

"It's a tallying error," Makabe said. Eighteen years of experience told him so. Even in a year when equipment standards changed, this number only moved five percent. Thirty percent was impossible.

He spent three days confirming the impossible. No revision to equipment standards. No new medicines approved. No major new strategy discovered. Dungeon activity was actually higher than normal. Only the death and injury rate was dropping, with no apparent reason.

Numbers always have a reason. That was Makabe's religion.

He dug into the records of the people who hadn't died—the piles of survival cases and near-miss reports. On the fourth night, he found the same phrases appearing again and again in the free-text fields.

"Withdrew before engaging, following the retreat criteria I learned on a stream."

"As the course taught, I set my heels down first when fatigued. I did not fall."

"Having practiced a slipped knot, I escaped with one hand."

Seventh Branch: four-person C-rank party. Nearly caught in a pincer attack at the middle layers; retreated immediately using "the criteria from lesson fourteen of Shin's course," all four survived. Second Branch: solo B-rank. Fell and was left dangling, dominant arm injured—undid the knot with one hand and returned on his own. At the end of that report, he'd written, "Honestly, without that course, I think I'd have been counted under C-3."

An explorer in the field knew one of the classification codes Makabe had made. And he'd written that he hadn't ended up in it.

Makabe counted. Survival and near-miss cases from the past month whose free-text fields contained "course" or "Shin": 117. Death cases containing the same words under the same conditions—zero.

Correlation isn't causation. That was another of Makabe's articles of faith. So he gave up his weekend and watched every archive of the course at home, from the first through the latest, without fast-forwarding. By the time he finished, he realized the notes in front of him no longer sounded like one of his reports. They weren't words written after someone died. They were words to hand someone before they did.

On Monday morning, he wrote his report.

"On the Sharp Decline in Mid-Tier Explorer Deaths and Injuries (Cause Analysis)." Its conclusion read: "This course has, for the first time, provided systematic preventive education addressing the three leading categories of death our agency has spent eighteen years classifying—delayed retreat, falls, and improper knot-tying. There is nothing novel in its content. It simply teaches, before death, what we have been writing down afterward. Until now, no one has done that."

His section chief looked sour. "You're planning to put some entertainment stream in an official agency document?"

"It's not an entertainment stream." Makabe adjusted his glasses. "By the numbers, this is public health. It's the same kind of phenomenon as epidemics declining when a water supply is put in place."

At the end of the report, he proposed a new classification code. "P-1: prevention through education." For the first time, a man who'd spent eighteen years classifying only deaths had devised a category for the living.

◇

"Good evening, this is Shin. If anyone's new, here's the usual: this is a course for beginners. No flashy techniques. No talk about the strongest gear. It's dull. Probably shockingly dull. —Lesson twenty-six: 'How to take a break.'"

【Dull again today】

【That dull stuff got my squad home alive last week】

"The conclusion up front: you take a break before you get tired. A break you take after you're exhausted isn't recovery; it's first aid. On a day you're diving deeper than the third layer, sit down once every forty minutes, even if you don't feel tired. Sit and count your light, your pulse, and your remaining medicine. ...Yes, the usual three things. I'll say it as many times as it takes. That's what fundamentals are."

Once the main lesson ended, I had a long message ready that had come through the platform that day. Its sender was a thirty-two-year-old male C-rank explorer. I'd gotten his permission to read it aloud.

"Uh, one letter before we finish. ...It starts, 'Sensei, you don't know my name or my face.' Let me read it."

"Last week, I was caught in a collapse in the middle layers. Light, pulse, remaining medicine. The moment I was missing two of the three things Sensei tells us to check, I heard your voice in my head. 'If you're missing two, turn back without fighting.' I didn't hesitate. When I was so tired I couldn't lift my feet, I walked heel-first like you taught us. I descended the last vertical shaft on a slipped knot. The colleague who used to laugh and call your course 'dull' climbed down the rope I'd tied, too."

【Hey】

【Is this real?】

【Stop flooding the chat. Let him read】

"We all came home. Yesterday, I was able to tell my daughter 'I'm home' on her birthday. Your course got me back alive. I just had to tell you that."

...I thought I'd read it all the way to the end.

Apparently I hadn't. It wasn't until the comment section went quiet that I realized my voice had stopped halfway through.

That's strange, I thought. I hadn't even cried on the night a student of mine became number one in the world.

But when I thought about it, this was a first. I'd heard "I got stronger" from five people. More than half of that was down to their own talent. But "I came home alive"—this was the first letter I'd ever received about the work I'd spent twenty years doing.

"...Sorry. Um."

I took off my glasses, then put them back on.

"...I'm glad I did this job."

That was all I could manage.

【Sensei...】

【Don't cry. You'll make me cry too】

【That letter took twenty years to reach him】

【S-Sensei...! Me too! I'm alive because of you, too...!】

【Not you too, Hina-chan】

"...Okay. That's enough getting weepy. A preview of next time. We'll do 'How to draw a map.' Getting lost doesn't begin when you lose your way. It begins the moment you stop keeping a record."

【A map lesson from the man who "just gave him a map"】

【This is going to be legendary, I can feel it】

That night, a clip titled "Shin-Sensei Is Lost for Words for the First Time" swept around the world. As the views rose, reports of safe returns began to collect under it, one after another. I made it home using the retreat criteria. I didn't fall, either. Everyone in my squad curls their toes inside their shoes before a dive—

Statistics before they became numbers were piling up where anyone could see them.

◇

That same week. Clan Genbu, headquarters medical wing.

A nineteen-year-old rising star whom the training department had been promoting as "the next Kenjo" lay in intensive care. He'd delayed his decision to retreat in the middle layers, then fallen while fighting. Dominant arm and ribs injured; four months to recover. —In the Dungeon Agency's classification, a combination of C-3 and D-1. He'd survived by sheer luck.

"There was no problem with the training curriculum. It was an error in judgment on his part, and—"

The head of training couldn't finish his report.

"Two last month." Togakushi Gen's voice was lower than a shout. "Three the month before. This month, an ace candidate. ...Why is our training producing nothing but accidents?"

The department head couldn't answer. The answer had been sitting for some time in the pile of documents on the chairman's desk: the research team's complete record of that course. The more Togakushi read, the more it became a catalog of everything Genbu had spent eight years cutting out of its training wing.

And that night, in a corner of the internet, someone placed two graphs side by side. The accident rate among viewers of the course, falling steadily. The accident reports from Genbu's training department, rising steadily.

The arrow of comparison began, quietly, to point at Togakushi Gen.