D-Genesis: Three Years after the Dungeons Appeared Volume 4 (eBook)
250 Seiten
Publishdrive (Verlag)
978-1-7183-5146-2 (ISBN)
Three months have passed since Keigo 'Kei' Yoshimura and Miyoshi started living the good life, but are their fortunes a gift or a loan? And if so, from whom? They may be on the path to finding out when the appearance of the Wandering Manor on the first floor of Yoyogi Dungeon leads to information about a missing person of interest. Meanwhile D-Powers, LLC, hosts a press conference set to shake the foundations of society. Kei gets his rock-paper-scissors game on. Will Kei and Miyoshi's crafty capitalism save the world, or destroy it? All this, and dungeon cults too!
Three months have passed since Keigo "e;Kei"e; Yoshimura and Miyoshi started living the good life, but are their fortunes a gift or a loan? And if so, from whom? They may be on the path to finding out when the appearance of the Wandering Manor on the first floor of Yoyogi Dungeon leads to information about a missing person of interest. Meanwhile D-Powers, LLC, hosts a press conference set to shake the foundations of society. Kei gets his rock-paper-scissors game on. Will Kei and Miyoshi's crafty capitalism save the world, or destroy it? All this, and dungeon cults too!
Chapter 05: D-Powers, LLC
December 29, 2018 (Saturday)
Yoyogi-Hachiman, Office
“I’m so sorry!”
After we got back from Comiket, we found Naruse waiting for us outside the entryway to our office. What’s more, she suddenly started apologizing!
“Hold on!” Miyoshi interrupted. “Thank you for the, er, thought, but we don’t even know what this is about.”
“Oh, right! You see...” Naruse launched into her explanation of the problem that had arisen last night.
Apparently, our woes started with a media interview request.
“At first, it was just a request to talk to the explorer whose commercial license was tied to the skill orb auctions.”
The Dungeon Management Section had responded with a simple “Unable to accommodate your request,” but that hadn’t stopped more inquiries from pouring in without end.
“But then several days ago, the requests stopped altogether.”
Their communications manager, relieved, assumed the media had finally gotten the message, but it was late last night, just before leaving, that they learned the world wasn’t so kind.
“Usually, the requests would come to the Dungeon Management Section’s public relations division,” Naruse explained. “But this time, it came straight from the MIC through one of the directors at the JDA.”
The MIC—or the Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communications—was the agency overseeing broadcasts and communications in Japan. Someone in the media having connections there they could leverage with the JDA wasn’t unlikely, but what really shocked us was that not only had the JDA agreed to set up a press conference with D-Powers, but spread word as if it already had!
“You signed us up for...”
“...a press conference?!”
Dumbfounded, Miyoshi and I spoke almost in unison, then turned to look at one another.
“Miyoshi, what the heck did you do to that Himuro guy?”
“What? Come on, that’s got nothing to do with this! He was after Saito, remember?”
“I dunno,” I mused. “He did have your ID number and our address in his notebook.”
“Aaaargh,” Miyoshi groaned.
What had probably happened was that Saito had been used as the lure, while the one they were really fishing for was her “coach.” Still, where the heck had Himuro gotten Miyoshi’s commercial license ID and our address from?
“Naruse,” I said after a pause. “What’s up with JDA security?”
Taking the opportunity, I decided to bring up our previous apprehensions about the leak of information on the D-Card verifiers and Miyoshi’s commercial license.
Seeming concerned, Naruse promised to look into it.
“By the way,” I continued, “this ‘director’...”
“That would be Executive Director Mizuho,” Naruse answered sheepishly.
Ah, that old codger! Still, I couldn’t deny that the ability to compel others to comply with whatever completely absurd request popped into his head and have them brush it off as just “Mizuho being Mizuho” was a formidable power.
“Before he came to the JDA, was Mizuho with the MIC?” I asked.
“Apparently he worked for the Ministry of Posts and Telecommunications before it was dissolved into the MIC and the Postal Services Agency. It’s possible he still has connections there.”
“That explains it. He must have wanted to look big for one of his old cronies.”
“It certainly seems believable.”
To Mizuho, the request to get in touch with D-Powers might as well have been word from God. Thus, in the midst of his discussion with his MIC connection, the press conference had transformed from a mere suggestion into a reality.
Still, he couldn’t just arbitrarily set the date and time. If it wasn’t a day we could make, Mizuho would be forced to eat crow.
“So you’re here to confirm a date?”
“That’s right,” Naruse said. “I’m so sorry.”
“I dunno. Seems like a pain. Maybe we just ignore it.”
We could always let Mizuho fall on his face.
“I’m not sure I’d recommend that,” Naruse responded. “Executive Director Mizuho has been known to hold grudges.”
“Ah, he does seem like the type,” Miyoshi commented.
Come on, Miyoshi! What’s up with the peanut-gallery act? You’ve got skin in the game too!
“Kei, think. What’s the media after? A juicy scoop like the figures behind the orb auctions, right?”
“Yeah. That does seem like their most probable target.”
Recently, dungeons didn’t exactly feel like front-page news. Even with Evans Dungeon’s recent capture, news outlets had hardly touched on familiar topics like the strategies used on its monsters or new inventions derived from its drops.
At the heart of this phenomenon was likely the fact that dungeon footage was often gruesome, if you could get your hands on it at all. It was hard to sell a story without visuals—a picture was worth a thousand words.
The JDA being bombarded with requests for the footage of the Wandering Manor that Naruse had uploaded the other day was proof of how desperate networks were for something they could air.
But if a picture were worth a thousand words, the kind of words that could almost close that gap would be ones indicating cold, hard cash—like the eye-popping prices attached to skill orb auctions.
“Plus there’s Heaven’s Leaks,” I noted.
“What? That’s not on us! We just offer a proxy domain service.”
“The request came through the MIC. They manage electronic communications across the country. You don’t think they could tie the site to us if they wanted?”
“This is an invasion of privacy!” Miyoshi protested.
“Relax. I just said, ‘if they wanted.’ But even then, the most they could get would be the server and domain holder info. They wouldn’t be able to prove who was actually doing the translations. I’m sure we could weasel our way out of that.”
“You sure? You’re not exactly Mr. Silver-Tongued.”
“Ha ha, well, I am the honest type! Better to leave the sneaky stuff up to you!”
“What’s that supposed to mean? You’re saying that like I’m some kind of villain!”
“Ah, hey, come on! It’s just that you’re so good at—”
“So good at what?”
Seeing Miyoshi’s bloodthirsty grin, I decided to throw in the towel and shifted my gaze away.
After she was done showing me who was boss, Miyoshi turned to Naruse.
“Naruse, the press conference request was just for ‘D-Powers,’ right?”
“That’s right,” Naruse answered. “Why?”
A mischievous smile spread across Miyoshi’s face.
“Heh heh heh. Kei, why don’t we give them what they want? We’ll have them dancing in the palm of our hand.”
You really do sound like a villain!
“What do you mean by that?”
“Duh! Could we have asked for a better PR opportunity?”
“PR?”
“They asked for ‘D-Powers.’ They didn’t say whether that was the party or the company.”
I was beginning to get it. We’d turn the situation around, and make all the journalists who had gathered for the scoop on D-Powers’ orb auctions play the main role in our new company’s advertising campaign. The D-Powers who had collected and run the sales for the orbs was D-Powers, the party. They would be a legally distinct entity from D-Powers, LLC, the dungeon-services comp—
“Wait a minute. You mean you used that stupid name for our company application too?”
“You’ve got a lot to learn about business, Kei. It’s all about consistency.”
“Well, thanks to you, we’re consistently stuck with these dumb names.”
Despite having fun with Miyoshi’s wording, I could see the benefits of recognizability, so maybe my own ideas didn’t consist of anything better.
“But even if the media cover the conference, they don’t actually have to run the story. You sure this is a good idea?”
“Oh, we’ll give them something to run,” Miyoshi declared with an air of self-satisfaction. “We can be pretty outrageous, after all!”
At that last comment, Naruse nodded a bit too vigorously.
Before I knew it, we were going through with the press conference under the name of our mid-registration limited liability company, working out presentation details and a date.
“Can we bring up the verifier?” I asked.
“Of course. That’s a company product. Same with the status-measuring device. I don’t want to leave any wiggle room for them to try to claim dungeon taxes on it.”
“By the way, Naruse, what happened with all of that?”
“Ah, I almost forgot!” Naruse clapped her hands together. “I ran your request by Saiga yesterday.”
Yesterday we’d done our own legwork too. We’d left Asha to recover from her curry pilgrimage, postponing sightseeing until the afternoon, and gone to visit Midori at Tokiwa Lab.
Tokiwa Lab, Edogawa...
| Erscheint lt. Verlag | 22.9.2023 |
|---|---|
| Reihe/Serie | D-Genesis: Three Years after the Dungeons Appeared | D-Genesis: Three Years after the Dungeons Appeared |
| Illustrationen | Kono tsuranori |
| Übersetzer | Kono tsuranori |
| Sprache | englisch |
| Themenwelt | Literatur ► Fantasy / Science Fiction ► Fantasy |
| Schlagworte | adult protagonists • Dungeons • Light Novel • Military • Science Fiction • Slice of Life |
| ISBN-10 | 1-7183-5146-1 / 1718351461 |
| ISBN-13 | 978-1-7183-5146-2 / 9781718351462 |
| Informationen gemäß Produktsicherheitsverordnung (GPSR) | |
| Haben Sie eine Frage zum Produkt? |
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