The Level-Up Junkie Picks His Future

I love grinding levels.

I mean — love it.

Of all the things you can do in a video game — especially the RPG genre — my favourite has always been levelling up the characters.

Don't get me wrong, I enjoy the story and the boss fights too. But more than any of that, I love the simple, repetitive grind of XP-farming — the kind of work most people would call a chore.

There's not much point digging for a deep reason behind that, but if I had to give one, it'd be that the system of "levels" is uniformly fair to everyone.

No talent-based inequality. Put in the experience, your level will go up; you will get stronger by exactly that much. Effort always pays off — it's a kind system.

—When I was in primary school, my dream was to swim at the Olympics.

I went to a swim club for it, I trained, I entered every competition I could. I even won the small local meets a few times. But the moment I stepped up to a bigger stage, my placings collapsed. There were a lot of kids out there faster than me.

Even allowing for being born late in the school year — younger than most of my cohort — and small for my age, there was something there I just couldn't paper over: a flat, brutal gap in talent.

It's not like the kids beating me weren't training. They were training as hard as I was. Probably harder. I knew that.

It just turns out that talent gaps are cruel. That's all.

It was, more or less, the first real defeat of my life.

And so, in the winter of sixth grade, just before middle school, I quit the swimming I'd been doing since kindergarten —

— okay, but it's not like that broke me, or made me into the kind of teenager who hates the world for being unfair. It's not actually a serious story.

It's just that, in some small way, this is part of why I got hooked on grinding levels.

To be honest, even this probably isn't the real reason. Maybe there isn't one to begin with.

I think it started with Drgn Qu*st. I got hooked on the story, ran into a boss I couldn't beat, ground out levels until I outclassed it, and discovered the ridiculous joy of casually flattening an enemy that had walled me an hour earlier.

Eventually it stopped being about the bosses. Levelling itself became the high. The way adults take cigarettes or alcohol or gambling for their daily little kick — I started taking level-ups the same way. A coping habit, basically.

Level up. Brain dumps happy chemicals. Level up. Brain dumps happy chemicals. Level up. Brain dumps happy chemicals —

And so it came to pass that I, Samejima Takeo, became a fully certified level-up addict.

Look, anyone who's into RPGs probably gets it. It's a common-enough condition.

It's just that, in my case, the dosage was a little high.

In the third year of middle school, when I was supposed to be picking what to do with my future, I sat there genuinely wondering whether there wasn't some way I could make money grinding levels in games. Don't work, just level up — that, no joke, was my honest desire.

Realistically, it wasn't happening. If I'd just liked games in general, then maybe — you know, talent permitting — I could've aimed for pro e-sports, or being a let's-play streamer. There were paths for that.

But what I love, what I love so badly I'd marry it, is level grinding.

A video of someone slaying mobs forever just to grind XP…

What do you think? Demand for that — anyone want to watch it?

…No. Right? Even on the one-in-a-trillion chance it went viral, viewers would get bored fast. Living off it, no chance.

So that meant I'd be drafted into the future I dreaded — taking some job I didn't want at some company I didn't want, enduring the boss's harassment with dead eyes, sold off as cheap labour for the rest of my life. Just like the masses of corporate-slave salarymen out there. (Personal bias.)

No no no no NO. I will not.

In the winter of my third year of middle school, I was full-on despairing about my life — and then, like a god reaching down a hand, the turning point came.

Worldwide, no less.

"Excuse the interruption, viewers."

You know that solemn template they use when a late-night variety show suddenly cuts to breaking news. The anchor put on her serious face; behind her, you could see TV-station staff sprinting around the studio in a panic.

At first they reported it as a series of simultaneous "subsidence incidents" at multiple sites in Tokyo — sinkholes opening up in roads, parks, and inside train stations.

That alone would be unusual, but not exactly worth wall-to-wall coverage. Yet within minutes, then ten, then twenty, fresh information started flooding in, and the world started to lose its mind.

The sinkholes weren't just in Tokyo.

They had opened up almost simultaneously in urban centres across Japan — and not only Japan, but in cities all over the world.

Plainly, this was no accident.

What on earth was happening?

Was this some kind of globally synchronised terrorist attack?

The first thing to answer the questions and fears everyone was now asking wasn't TV. It was social media.

The "holes" had been reported the moment they appeared, and police had cordoned off the perimeters — but a number of people had been swept into the holes by the cave-ins themselves.

A few of those people had managed to climb back out — and they started uploading photos and videos of what they'd seen down inside.

The uploads came pouring in: from people of every nationality, every age, every gender. And what they showed was, frankly, jaw-dropping.

Inside the holes were vast caverns and ruins. Near each entrance stood a black obelisk and a glowing magic circle. There was footage of moving puppy-sized water-jellies and of small-statured humanoid figures — about the height of a younger primary-schooler — charging at the cameramen with naked killing intent on their faces.

And the most striking shots of all: photos and videos uploaded by people who had touched the black obelisk.

They showed something like a hologram display floating in the air, with entries on it labelled 【Level】, 【HP】, 【Skill】.

The internet, predictably, lost its mind.

"The hell is this? Some game ad?"

"Same kind of pics and vids are coming in from all over the world."

"Looks too real for an ad. Game promo??"

"Bruh, if this is marketing then somebody spent way too much money."

"News in other countries is starting to run the same footage. Internet alone, sure, but at this scale there's no way it's a game or movie ad."

"So this stuff is REAL?"

"Hold up — Shinjuku Station basement lololol of course there's a labyrinth under Shinjuku lmaoooo"

"Bro the short ones?? I watched the video and got the SHIVERS, the killing intent in their faces is no joke!!"

"I think those are slimes and goblins??"

"Right. I have achieved full understanding. This is what they call a Dungeon. No mistake."

"World over notice"

"Nah this is the world finally STARTING."

"Dungeons! Levels! Skills! Fantasy is HEEEERE!!w"

"Earth has been patched."

"At last my time as a hero hath come… Anyway, off to the dungeon."

I was doing the same as everyone else — trawling SNS for information.

Pulling all of it together, I understood.

Earth, apparently, had been invaded by fantasy.

"…Okay. I'm going."

The instant I saw the photos and videos of someone's "status" up on social media, my mind was made up. I grabbed the wooden practice sword I'd bought on the school trip in primary school, walked out of my second-floor room, and headed downstairs.

— And as I made for the front door, my father stepped out of the living room and blocked my path.

"Takeo. Where do you think you're going?"

The question came from a man who could've been the dictionary illustration for "old-school stubborn dad" — my father, Samejima Gendou.

I answered with the face of a samurai who has made up his mind.

"Honoured Father… I am, as of this hour, departing for the Dungeon."

"Oh? And do what, when you arrive?"

"Naturally — as a son of the Empire of Japan, I shall to battle."

"I see, I see."

He seemed to accept it.

Then — to battle!!

I tried to stride proudly past my honoured father — and his hand landed pat on my shoulder, and —

"WHAT IN THE BLAZES ARE YOU SAYING, BOY!!"

"GUBAAAH!?"

— with a bellow worthy of some manga sea-captain, my honoured father sent me airborne.

●○●

On the day Dungeons appeared all over the world, my honoured father kept me locked down in the house. I didn't make it outside.

Whatever, I figured at the time — I'd just go tomorrow. But come the next day, every Dungeon that had appeared in Japan had been cordoned off by — not just the police, but the Self-Defense Forces themselves.

I obviously couldn't punch my way through an SDF cordon to charge into a Dungeon. So I sat at home, devouring every fresh fact about "Dungeons" as it came in, fingers crossed for the day they'd be opened to civilians.

But, in defiance of my hopes, the official line was tilting toward sealing them off entirely.

There were, to be fair, several serious reasons.

One: inside Dungeons, firearms inexplicably lose effectiveness.

Two: Dungeons are layered into multiple floors, and the deeper you descend, the dramatically stronger the monsters become.

Three: even soldiers from the kind of countries that you'd assume could handle anything — Country A, Country C, take your pick — were sent in, aimed for the lower floors, and got driven back without a fight to speak of.

So, in short, the governments of the world classified Dungeons as Dangerous.

But people like me, smitten with the very idea of a Dungeon, did not. Public opinion (well — part of it) was loudly insisting humanity should be charting and exploiting this new frontier. Their counter-arguments to the governments rested on a few hard facts that had been established:

One: monsters cannot leave Dungeons. Even if you forcibly drag one out, it dissolves within tens of seconds.

Two: there are valuable resources to be mined inside Dungeons.

Three: the supernatural abilities people gain inside — 【Levels】, 【Skills】, all of it — do not function on the surface.

Monsters can't get out.

Which means: Dungeons are not, in fact, an existential threat to humanity.

And the thing the world's governments were probably most afraid of — the social-order risk of suddenly having people running around with 【Levels】 and 【Skills】 — also went out the window: those abilities don't work topside. Safe.

Even so, governments worldwide couldn't pivot fast enough to adapt to the sudden existence of Dungeons, and most of them held a cautious line.

But.

Whether the Dungeons themselves grew impatient watching every government dither (probably not, but you never know), it wasn't long before two items recovered from inside the Dungeons came along to give public opinion a proper shove.

The first: a power generator that ran on magic stones — the official term, not slang; that word was confirmed by the Appraisal (Kantei) skill — which monsters drop without fail when killed.

The second: a magic-powered communication device.

Both items were extremely simple in construction, easy to replicate, easy to mass-produce. The generator was wildly more efficient than thermal or nuclear plants; the comm device worked anywhere, including underground and between the Dungeon interior and the surface world.

With the discovery of these two items, demand for magic stones in human society shot through the roof.

So high that the soldiers each country could field weren't enough manpower to harvest the stones the world now wanted.

Which inevitably meant: governments had to open the Dungeons to civilians, to make up the shortfall.

A mere ten months after Dungeons first appeared worldwide.

Legislation moved at speed everywhere; people who descended into Dungeons to bring magic stones and other resources back to the surface were officially recognised in society as Explorers.

…With one caveat.

In Japan, at least, sending minors into mortal danger was a bridge no one wanted to cross. You couldn't get an Explorer's license until you reached the legal age of adulthood — eighteen.

But that was it. My future was decided.

In real life. In the actual world. The fantasy job I'd dreamed of — make a living just by grinding levels — had been born. And not a game character's level. Your own. Tell me any video-game lover wouldn't be hyped about that?!

Okay, fair, technically the actual job is "harvest Dungeon resources, sell them on the surface for profit", so it's not just grinding levels — but that's part of the fun.

Either way: my mission was clear.

I'd turn eighteen after I graduated high school. (Graduation ceremony, March 1; my birthday, March 17.)

A small lag, but more or less, I decided I'd become an Explorer immediately upon graduating.

I went to inform my parents.

"Honoured Father. Honoured Mother."

"…Whenever you call us by those names, son, the news that follows is rarely good. What is it?"

"I'm not going to university! When I graduate high school I'm becoming an Explorer!!"

"I see. Denied. Go to university. Get a job."

My honoured father did not so much as blink before squashing it. But I had anticipated this. Don't underestimate my resolve.

"Father — I refuse to be denied!"

"WHADDID YOU SAY, BOY!? What in heaven's name are you on about, Takeo!!"

He slammed the table — don! — but his bluster didn't move me. I leaned in, in fact, and went on threat— ah, no, persuading my parents.

"If I can't become an Explorer, I will absolutely not take a job!! If I can't be an Explorer I'll be a NEET!! I will not work a day in my life!! I will gnaw your shins!! I will gnaw the shins right off your shins!! Once I clamp on I am not letting go until I die!!"

"Y-you scoundrel…!!"

To his own son. 'You scoundrel.'

I mean — fair, I get it, given what I just said. But that's exactly why this is leverage…!

"My, dear — no, I refuse. Looking after this child for life? Absolutely not."

Honoured Mother, with covering fire (?). The look she shot her actual son in the process was withering...!!

But it seemed even my honoured father paused at this.

"Hrrrnn…!!"

I bore down on his furrowed brow. It was now one of two things, I told him: either I become an Explorer, or you spend the rest of your life supporting your NEET son.

And in the end, even my honoured father couldn't stomach the latter.

"…Fine. Have it your way. Do as you please. But I will not lift a finger to help. Anything you need, you save up and buy yourself."

He folded.

And so it was settled: upon graduating high school, I would become an Explorer. This was during my first year of high school.

I spent the rest of high school burning all my youth at part-time jobs to fund the Explorer kit.

And so, in what felt like a blink, the months and years passed, I graduated, and the day to become an Explorer arrived —