D-Genesis: Three Years after the Dungeons Appeared Volume 5 (eBook)

Kono tsuranori (Autor)

eBook Download: EPUB

2024
250 Seiten
J-Novel Club (Verlag)
978-1-7183-5148-6 (ISBN)

Infos

Enter the Phantom! Keigo and Miyoshi encounter new friends, new foes, and new financial woes. Following their momentous press conference and the announcement of their dungeon boot camp, D-Powers begins attracting attention from across the globe. To preserve Keigo's anonymity, Miyoshi suggests donning a certain costume for some undercover explorer work. Plus, could one of D-Powers' new recruits be a diamond in the rough? Does a heart of gold beat beneath Keigo's aloof exterior? New discoveries regarding the dungeons' mechanics and origins continue to pile up. Whoever this Phantom is, he won't stop until his undead foes draw their last unbreath!

Textauszug

Chapter 06: The Phantom

January 8, 2019 (Tuesday)
Yoyogi-Hachiman, Office

“So you see, coach, you gotta help me out!”

“Whaa?”

Saito had shown up unannounced at our office looking like she had some kind of urgent news, but it turned out she’d come to request assistance because she’d have to head down to the tenth floor!

I couldn’t exactly claim to be uninvolved—she had agreed because she’d been caught escaping the Wandering Manor with us—but “Help me out”? What exactly am I supposed to do?

“Why not keep watch? You know, trail her group from behind? We could also work to pump up Saito’s stats in advance,” Miyoshi suggested.

“Pump up her stats...” I crossed my arms. “Hmm...”

The problem was I’d spent most of Saito’s remaining SP before Christmas last year. She might have gained a bit since then, but it probably wasn’t enough to make a substantial difference.

The last time I’d adjusted her stats, the readout had looked like this:

Name: Ryoko Saito
SP: 0.23
HP: 34.90
MP: 60.50
STR: [-] 10 [+]
VIT: [-] 16 [+]
INT: [-] 30 [+]
AGI: [-] 25 [+]
DEX: [-] 50 [+]
LUC: [-] 12 [+]

At a glance, they seemed like decent enough stats to carry her through the tenth floor. However, her main weapon was a bow. Its matchup against the hordes of the tenth floor left something to be desired.

Hey, Miyoshi, what do you think? I asked over party telepathy.

If she runs out of arrows or any monster gets close, it’s game over.

Her STR—strength—was only that of your average adult man.

I hadn’t invested any of her points into VIT, so her HP was on the low side as well. If she were surrounded by monsters on the tenth floor, it’d be game over indeed—no continues, no resets.

We could let her hold infinite arrows with a storage-style orb, or up her INT and equip her with some offensive magic, or assign one of the hellhounds to her, or just go all in on raising her STR and VIT and give her a mace or something. Miyoshi offered rapid-fire suggestions.

Hmm... That all sounded nice, but she hardly had any SP left to work with.

“Saito, do you have your D-Card?”

“Yep.”

“There’s something I want to check. Could I have you party up with me for a moment, and then stand on that measurement disc?”

“Okay.”

After forming a party with Saito using her D-Card, I had Miyoshi operate the SMD while I discreetly opened Making.

Name: Ryoko Saito
SP: 4.19
HP: 35.00
MP: 62.80
STR: [-] 10 [+]
VIT: [-] 16 [+]
INT: [-] 31 [+]
AGI: [-] 26 [+]
DEX: [-] 53 [+]
LUC: [-] 12 [+]

It looked like she had gained nine points of SP since I’d last distributed her stats, with half going naturally into DEX (dexterity), AGI (agility), and INT (intelligence).

The results Miyoshi recorded using the SMD were the same.

“How many times have you dived since we last measured your stats?”

“Let’s see... Three times?”

Three times... That would mean an average of around 150 slimes per dive.

“You’ve really put in the effort. Your stats have gone up quite a bit.”

“Naturally. I have to try to keep up with Haru, after all.” Saito smirked.

Yeah, Mitsurugi’s training regimen can be a little overzealous.

“So, how much time do you have before the shoot?” I asked.

“I have other filming I can’t miss on the thirteenth, so we’ll probably be heading to the dungeon a day or two after that. I’ve got prep work for a TV show coming up at the end of the month, and I was told the pilot footage would take around three days to shoot, so if we don’t get in soon, I won’t make it.”

“Not great. That only gives us about...five days for training, including today.”

“Wait, slow down. You aren’t suggesting five whole days of training, are you?! What about lessons? Rehearsals?! I’ve still got other things scheduled!”

“Can’t you cancel?”

“I could, but... Ugh, I’m going to get a reputation for being a flake. And here I am, so cute, wasting all my good looks just to get a rep for being a pain-in-the ass diva.”

As much as I hated to admit it, truth be told I couldn’t disagree that she was cute...at least a little.

Kei, in the meantime, let’s pair her with one of the Arthurs. We can figure out the rest of our plan from there.

Kind of last-minute planning, huh?

Right? And I thought that was supposed to be your specialty!

You know, I’ve been meaning to bring this up for a while, but I feel like you’ve got some wrong ideas about me...

“Still though, three days of shooting. This isn’t really my area, but doesn’t your manager have to join you too?” I asked.

“Ah, that’s all right. I worked that out. They don’t need to know.”

Apparently she would be taking vacation during the shooting days, just as she had when doing her dungeon training with Mitsurugi. Her manager didn’t have a D-Card in the first place, so they couldn’t join her even if they’d wanted to.

“Great! It’s like the start of an unofficial boot camp!” Miyoshi chimed in. “Should we invite Mitsurugi too?”

“Unfortunately she’s busy getting ready for an event in NY,” Saito explained. “Unlike me, she never cuts out on appointments.”

“‘NY’?” Miyoshi and I repeated.

“What is it?” I asked.

“Kei, I’m surprised you haven’t heard of it! It’s a city in America originally called New Amsterdam,” Miyoshi explained.

According to Miyoshi, control had switched from the Dutch to the British, at which point it had been renamed New York, but at some point, it had also come back under Dutch control and spent a year as New Orange.

“I know that! I’m asking what the event is!”

“Hm? It’s the 2019 fall-winter New York Fashion Week. It starts next month on the seventh,” Saito answered.

“Fashion Week? What’s Mitsurugi doing there? Isn’t she signed with a studio or something?”

“Ah! About that! Around the middle of December, she had an awakening! ‘I feel like I’ve got all this zeal!’ she said.”

“‘Zeal’?”

What, has she unlocked an extra move per turn or something?(1)

“Wait, didn’t she tell you when we were out at Tokyo Midtown?”

Come to think of it, she did say something strange at the time. I think it was “I’ll consider it a Christmas present.”

Kei, her DEX was up to 70. She probably sensed something had changed. Miyoshi signaled me over telepathy.

Ah, yeah, I responded. That’s probably it.

“I saw one of her lessons around that time. She was practically glowing. She had, like, an aura. Like, ‘aaaah.’” Saito moved her hands in an arc in front of her face and mimicked choir singing.

“What is that?” I asked, stifling a laugh.

“An aura! That’s what it felt like, anyway. So at that point, they said they had nothing left to teach her, so henceforth she could just rely on her own intuition and experience.”

“‘Intuition’?”

“You know, like, for what to wear and how to show it off and that stuff. Anyway, the timing happened to work out, so some bigwig watching her lesson arranged a brand deal for Fashion Week.”

Just like that? Must be a pretty formidable bigwig.

“But...don’t people usually say Japanese models are too short for the international scene? No offense.”

Mitsurugi was on the tall side for a woman at a little over 170 centimeters, but that didn’t hold a candle to the giants storming international runways. I’d heard even 180 centimeters wasn’t uncommon among the models for major collections.

“That’s starting to change,” Saito explained. “Besides, while 171 centimeters might be on the short end, more and more actresses are making the jump into modeling work too, so there are plenty around 173 centimeters or so.”

“’S that so?”

“Plus, they’re trying to diversify a bit. You know, after all that bad press about models being too thin and too one-size and that stuff.”

“Yeah...”

If they took that line of thinking too far, they might wind up with selection processes that had nothing to do with models’ abilities at all, but... That’s a problem for another time.

“There are people calling Gisele Bündchen the last true supermodel, you know,” Saito added.

“Well, in the meantime, it sounds like a good deal for Mitsurugi!” I replied.

“Yeah! Be sure to offer her your congratulations before she takes off for the event!”

“Will do! By the way, when does she get back?”

Saito promptly rattled off scheduling details. “She’s heading out at the end of the month, but if she does the whole Fashion Week tour, she’d be in London...

Produkt-Details

• Erscheint lt. Verlag: 26.1.2024
• Reihe/Serie: D-Genesis: Three Years after the Dungeons Appeared
• Reihe/Serie: 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 • Light Novel • Science Fiction • Slice of Life
• ISBN-10: 1-7183-5148-8 / 1718351488
• ISBN-13: 978-1-7183-5148-6 / 9781718351486