Vol 1 Chapter 3 – The Establishment of the Hunter System【Vol 1 – Expelled from the Clan, NTR’d, and Then Reality Became the Game 】

Before long, government-sanctioned “Hunter Systems” were established worldwide.

The long-held belief that monsters couldn’t leave a Dungeon had been shattered. It turned out that once a Dungeon’s energy level crossed a certain threshold, monsters would spill out — into the real world.

Nobody knew the full reason. But shallow-level monsters seemed to breed easily. As their numbers grew, the Dungeon’s energy level would rise — and for the monsters in the deeper layers, an overcrowded, high-energy Dungeon might simply become unbearable.

The working theory was that deep-layer monsters, driven to aggression, would attack the shallow-layer ones — and the chaos that followed is what sent them flooding to the surface.

The monsters that poured out were all kinds. It would’ve been manageable if only the weaker shallow-layer types showed up — but deep-layer monsters came through too.

Armies mobilized aboveground, but the fighting was brutal. Deep-layer monsters in particular tended to be highly intelligent, blindingly fast, and devastatingly strong — putting them down was an ordeal.

The heavy losses forced everyone to start thinking of solutions.

The first idea was to seal off the Dungeons. They tried collapsing them with explosives, but it didn’t work. Something about the physics inside a Dungeon made firearms useless — and even massive detonations left the structure completely unscathed. Destroying them was simply impossible.

Physically sealing them in concrete didn’t work either. For starters, concrete wouldn’t set inside a Dungeon. And while it did harden on the outside — giving the impression of a proper seal — the energy levels would eventually spike, and the monsters inside would smash through the thick walls and emerge anyway.

The renewed aboveground battles claimed countless lives, soldiers included.

The solution that finally won out was a practical one: keep the Dungeon’s energy levels from climbing by continuously culling the relatively weak shallow-layer monsters.

It was considered the safest available approach. And culling those shallow-layer monsters became the core job of Hunters.

The government-sanctioned Hunter Association was established to oversee them, all of which operated under the framework of the “Hunter System.”

In Japan alone, there were around two hundred Dungeons. Hunter Associations sprang up across the country to manage them. Energy levels were monitored, and whenever a Dungeon turned dangerous, Hunters were dispatched there first to bring the shallow-layer population down.

At first, just handling the shallow layers was all most Hunters could manage — but as they leveled up and grew stronger, they began pushing deeper, bit by bit.

The deeper you went, the stronger the monsters — but the more experience points you earned from taking them down.

In practice, no matter how many shallow-layer monsters you killed, the experience trickled in slowly, and leveling up took forever. But deep-layer monsters? Take one down, and you’d be racking up experience fast, climbing levels at a pace that actually meant something.

It also became clear that deep-layer monsters frequently dropped treasure chests when killed — roughly a five percent chance per kill. Nobody could explain why.

Treasure chests came in three tiers: gold, silver, and bronze. Gold chests had a 100% chance of containing something; silver, 10%; bronze, a measly 0.1%.

Gold Chest: 100% — always contains an item

Silver Chest: 10% — one-in-ten shot

Bronze Chest: 0.1% — almost always empty

A gold chest was a guaranteed reward. A bronze chest was practically a joke.

Contents fell into three categories: equipment, tamed monsters, and treasure.

Equipment and tamed monsters could be used in combat — but only by the person who had opened the chest.

Equipment (owner-use only)

Tamed Monster (owner-use only)

Treasure (non-combat)

Aside from the treasure category, the whole system was remarkably close to that game.

The wealthy snapped up chests brought back by Hunters, stockpiled equipment and tamed monsters, and shot straight to the front lines — making names for themselves almost overnight.

I let out a long breath, watching the TV.

“Seriously?” I muttered. “Even here — even in the real world — it’s just like back then all over again.”

Effort, ingenuity — in the end, none of it meant anything when money was sitting on the other side of the scale. That’s what I believed.

But… I didn’t know anything yet.

That a meeting with a tamed monster was about to change everything for me.