Capital Accumulation

The rocks hurled at the wall vanished into its surface, swallowed whole.

Yet the first wave of explorers had still not returned.

No one knew what had become of them inside, whether they were alive or dead.

But their disappearance did nothing to dampen the ardor of other adventure-seekers. More people paired up and set off for that world.

This time, before they departed, the Federal Government equipped each of them with high-grade weapons, ample provisions, and an array of protective gear.

The "gate" remained open for only a single day, and after these individuals passed through, it sealed shut once more, exactly as expected.

Having learned from the previous experience, the public no longer grew restless. They watched in silence, biding their time until the "gate" next swung open.

True to their hopes, on the seventeenth day, the gate opened.

Someone had returned.

The returnee was from the first batch.

He was covered in wounds, yet he brought back invaluable intelligence about the other world.

It was a primitive realm untouched by human pollution.

It teemed with terrifying monsters—the smallest stood as tall as two or three men, and the largest loomed like mountains.

Human weapons proved utterly futile against them. They devoured humans—no, they devoured everything. Some not only preyed on other species but also on their own kind. Humans barely sufficed to fill the gaps between their teeth.

He recounted his experiences to the Federal Government.

The moment he stepped into that world, he lost contact with his companions.

The door on the wall was a portal that scattered each entrant to a different location.

He had been transported to a valley nestled between mountains and a river. He wandered for a long time, covering great distances, but never found his companions.

All his fully automated high-tech instruments failed the instant he entered. Communications devices were useless, sensors and scanners were useless too, and even the most primitive compass he carried had gone haywire.

The only things that worked were a camera and a gun.

During nearly two months there, he encountered many monsters: monkeys with a dozen eyes, wild boars with horns as tall as a two-story building, and giant serpents with countless legs...

Fortunately, the colossal beasts looked down on him as too insignificant to bother eating. The lethal ones were the smaller carnivores that often fell prey to the giants.

In this world of megafauna, humans were like newborn infants, greeted only by death.

That he managed to escape was pure luck.

But what he brought back wasn't just horror from the other world.

There was also: wealth.

Abundant mineral resources, precious gold, jade, and silver, and boundless fertile land—these were things the Federal Government's rulers, the plutocrats, could never bear to miss.

Was that a primitive world riddled with monsters and danger?

No!

To the plutocrats, it was a kingdom of wealth yet to be conquered, a warm bed ready to nourish the rapid accumulation of their family capital.

So what if there were colossi? No matter how massive, they weren't made of steel or impervious to blades. The Federal Government's elite troops could surely crush them.

Thus, that world got its name—"Threshold."

Next came the complete sealing of the Threshold's vicinity by the plutocrats, using the danger as a pretext to order everyone else to stay away.

The Federation's sole purpose was to monopolize all the treasures within the Threshold, since much of the jewelry mined from there would later be sold at exorbitant prices to the common folk.