Suzume's laptop screen glowed in the darkness of her studio apartment. She'd been at this for six hours now, empty coffee cups forming a defensive line around her keyboard.
The search bar read: "dungeon destabilization incidents Japan 2020-2025"
About 7,000 results.
She clicked through another forum post, this one from a survivor of the Osaka incident two years ago.
"Day 3 they told our families we were probably dead. Day 5 they held a memorial service. I crawled out on Day 7 missing an arm and they acted surprised I was alive. Guild didn't even cover my medical bills."
Another tab showed the official Dungeon Management Bureau statistics. Neat graphs and percentages that turned tragedy into data points. "Destabilization events: 0.003% occurrence rate." Such a small number...
Until you or someone you knew was part of it.
Suzume rubbed her eyes and clicked on a video link. Some MeTuber with too much energy explaining dungeon mechanics to his audience.
"Okay chat, so when we say a dungeon 'destabilizes,' what we mean is the System basically has a seizure, right? Like, imagine you're playing a level 10 area in your favorite RPG and suddenly the game spawns a level 90 raid boss. That's destabilization!"
The guy pulled up some crude animations.
"So normally, a C-rank dungeon has C-rank monsters. Makes sense, yeah? But when it destabilizes—" The animation showed cute slimes suddenly replaced by massive demons. "The System can pull monsters from ANY rank. We're talking D-rank dungeons suddenly spawning S-rank dragons. It's completely random and completely fucked."
[That's what happened to Akane. D-rank slimes became... whatever those things were.]
She opened another tab. The Bureau's official stance on rescue operations.
"In the event of portal destabilization, standard protocol dictates a 7-day waiting period before mounting recovery efforts. This ensures the safety of rescue personnel and prevents additional casualties."
Seven days. Akane survived ten and nobody even tried to look for her until the dungeons stabilized.
Suzume found more forum posts. More survivors.
"Took them three weeks to send anyone. By then I'd eaten my own boots."
"My party leader bled out on Day 4. Rescue team said they came 'as soon as it was safe.'"
"Lost two fingers to frostbite waiting. Guild terminated my contract for 'failure to complete assigned dungeon.'"
Every story had the same pattern. Portal destabilizes. Players get trapped. Everyone waits for it to "stabilize." Some live. Most don't.
And the ones who survive? They get nothing. No compensation. No support. Often fired for failing their mission.
[This is insane.]
She searched for "fastest dungeon rescue response time Japan" and found exactly what she expected. The record was eight days, and that was only because the trapped Player was the son of a Diet member.
Everyone else just had to wait and hope.
Her phone buzzed. A text from her mother asking if she'd eaten dinner. Suzume ignored it and kept scrolling.
A knock at her door made her jump.
"Delivery!"
She hadn't ordered anything. Suzume crept to the door and peered through the peephole. Just a delivery guy with a small package.
"I didn't order—"
"Says Aoi Suzume? From the university bookstore?"
Oh. Right. Her anatomy textbook. She'd forgotten about normal life things.
"Oh. Y-Yes, that's me."
"Perfect. Please, sign here..."
A short while later, she was back at her desk with a new textbook that was absolutely going unopened.
More horror stories filled her screen. Nobody seemed to have much good to say about the rescuers or the Association. And yet, nothing changed.
[Destabilization events: 0.003% occurrence rate. I'm guessing that's why nothing's really been done about this. Cause these destabilizations barely happen. So, there's not much cause for a commotion.]
She thought so. But, upon further analysis...
[Wait, what?]
The numbers changed.
Newer results showed the occurrence rate was 0.02%. No, 0.1%.
The newest findings Suzume could find showed...
[1%.] She blinked. [One out of every one hundred dungeons ends up being unstable.]
Again, she wondered why there wasn't much talk about this, and then realized what was probably happening.
[Right, there are varying degrees of destabilization. The harshest, worst cases are like Akane's, where a D-Rank dungeon can end up producing A or even S-Rank monsters. But, most of the time, what happens is less intense. D-Rank producing C-Rank monsters, for example. Not just that, but destabilization can sometimes make dungeons easier as well.]
If you spot this story on Amazon, know that it has been stolen. Report the violation.
The data made more sense now. Most destabilizations were minor inconveniences. Players adapted, cleared the dungeon anyway, collected their loot. Only the worst cases made the news.
Only the worst cases killed people.
Suzume closed her laptop. Her eyes burned from staring at the screen, and the coffee had stopped working hours ago. She needed sleep. Classes tomorrow. Normal life.
[Nothing I can do about it anyway.]
---
Three days later, Suzume sat in the back row of her organic chemistry lecture, earbuds in, taking notes on molecular structures while a Player livestream played on her phone.
"—absolutely demolished him! Did you see that combo?" The streamer, a Fighter-class Player named Koji, shadowboxed at his camera. "That's what happens when you bring 25 Strength to an MMA match!"
The chat exploded with hype. Suzume minimized the stream and searched for the fight highlights.
The video showed two men in a ring, both shirtless, both Fighter-class Players. The ref called start and they circled each other like predators. Then one threw a punch that cracked like thunder. His opponent flew back six feet, crashing into the cage wall.
[Jesus.]
She remembered reading about the early System tests. When awakening first started happening, scientists ran experiments. They found that an awakened Player with just 5 points in Strength could match an unawakened, professional heavyweight boxer.
These guys probably had five times that. That was a huge part of why awakening was such a big deal.
[These people are gods, basically.]
The winner raised his arms as medics checked on his unconscious opponent. The crowd roared. This was peak entertainment now. Superhuman gladiators beating each other bloody for prize money and sponsorships.
Her professor droned on about carbon bonds. Suzume kept watching streams.
---
A week passed. Then two.
Suzume walked through Tokyo, groceries in one hand, phone in the other. Another dungeon stream played through her earbuds.
"Okay chat, we're approaching the boss room. Remember to subscribe if you want to see me solo this bad boy!"
She crossed the street at the scramble crossing. The streamer on her phone charged into battle against some kind of rock elemental. His party backed him up with spells and arrows. Standard formation. Professional execution.
Nobody was getting trapped today.
[Good for them.]
She turned down a side street toward her apartment. On her phone, the party celebrated their victory, already counting their loot shares.
"—when we return, more on the Kurokawa case. Is Japan's Player governance system fundamentally broken? Our panel discusses after—"
Suzume changed the channel. She'd heard enough debates about Player politics. Everyone had opinions. Nobody had solutions.
---
Her instant ramen finished cooking.
She brought it to her desk where three textbooks lay open. Finals were coming up. She needed to focus on her actual life, not the Player world she'd never be part of.
But her phone was right there. And someone had just started streaming a high-level dungeon run.
Just background noise while she studied. That's all.
---
Two weeks before finals, sirens woke her at 3 AM.
Suzume stumbled to her window and looked down at the street. Red and blue lights painted the buildings. Not fire trucks or ambulances—Player Response vehicles.
She grabbed her phone and checked social media.
"OUTBREAK IN MEGURO DISTRICT. STAY INDOORS."
"just saw an actual orc wtf wtf wtf"
"Third one this month. System's breaking down fr"
An outbreak.
Each dungeon had a barrier preventing monsters, but not humans, from going in or out. When a dungeon's barrier failed and monsters spilled into the real world, this was another form of instability, though the Bureau classified it differently.
She found a stream from someone brave or stupid enough to film from their balcony.
Orcs stumbled through the streets below, confused and aggressive. They smashed car windows, overturned vending machines, chased anyone too slow to flee.
Then the Players arrived.
They dropped from transport vehicles in full gear. A tank-class Player in gleaming armor drew the orcs' attention while damage dealers flanked from the sides. A mage on a nearby rooftop rained fire from above.
It was over in minutes.
The orcs fell one by one, dissolving into sparkles of light that the System reabsorbed. The Players high-fived, already discussing loot distribution.
"See that, chat?" one of them called to a hovering drone camera. "That's how Silverlight Guild handles business! Outbreak response in under ten minutes!"
The crowd that had gathered cheered. Someone started chanting the guild's name.
Suzume watched the Player wave to his fans, basking in the attention.
[But you wouldn't dive into one of those dungeons to save someone, right?]
The stream continued but she closed the app. Finals. She had finals to study for.
---
The next morning, evidence of the outbreak was already gone. City crews had replaced the broken glass, removed the destroyed vending machines, pressure-washed orc blood from the pavement.
Like it never happened.
Suzume walked to campus through streets that smelled faintly of industrial cleaner. Her earbuds played yesterday's dungeon highlights, a compilation of the best kills, the closest calls, the biggest loot drops.
In the early days, people had panicked about outbreaks. Called for dungeons to be destroyed, for the System to be somehow rejected. But, aside from these things being impossible to do, the money was too good.
The entertainment too addictive.
The power too seductive.
So they adapted. Outbreak response teams. Monster insurance. Dungeon futures trading.
Everything except actually rescuing the people trapped inside when things went wrong.
Her phone buzzed. A text from her study group asking if she'd finished the practice problems. Normal life intruding on her Player obsession.
[Right. I'm not part of that world.]
She typed back that she'd have them done by tonight. A lie, but a necessary one.
Behind her, someone screamed.
Suzume turned to see people running from a side street. Her phone immediately lit up with notifications.
"ANOTHER OUTBREAK—SHIBUYA STATION"
"That's two in two days holy shit"
"My train's delayed bc of fucking goblins I hate this city"
She should run. Get to safety like everyone else.
Instead, she walked toward the screaming.
Not because she was brave. Not because she could help. But because she needed to see.
Goblins poured from a destabilized E-rank portal in the subway entrance. Weak monsters, barely threats to 95% of armed Players. But to civilians, they were death on stubby legs.
Suzume stood at the corner, watching chaos unfold. Goblins scattered in all directions, chittering in their crude language, waving rusty weapons at terrified commuters.
Where were the Players? The response teams?
A goblin noticed her. It grinned, showing rows of needle teeth, and charged.
Suzume didn't move. Couldn't move. Her legs had forgotten how.
The goblin raised its corroded blade—
Lightning split the air. The goblin convulsed and collapsed, smoke rising from its corpse.
"You okay?" A Player in designer gear lowered his staff, not even breathing hard. "You should evacuate. We've got this."
More Players arrived, casual as shoppers at a sale. They carved through goblins with practiced ease, some streaming the whole thing, others posing for photos between kills.
"Thanks for watching, everyone! Remember, Tempest Guild keeps you safe!"
Suzume finally found her voice.
"How long until you responded?"
"Hm?" The mage looked confused. Not at the question, more so at the fact that she was still existing in his general vicinity. "Maybe... fifteen minutes? Pretty good time for morning rush hour."
"And if someone was trapped in that dungeon? When it destabilized?"
His expression cooled.
"That's not our department. We do outbreak response."
"Right... Not your department."
She turned and walked away.
The city behind her rang with battle cries and victory cheers. Players doing what they did best. Killing monsters, earning fame, collecting rewards.
Everything except saving the people who needed it most.
Suzume put her earbuds back in and pulled up another stream. A high-level party preparing to tackle an S-rank dungeon. The thumbnail promised "INSANE LOOT???" and "NEAR DEATH EXPERIENCE!!!"
She kept walking, letting the sounds of pre-dungeon hype drown out the real chaos behind her.
Finals were in two weeks. She had studying to do.
But first, she needed to get home and pretend none of this mattered to her.
After all, she was just an ordinary university student.
