The Cost of Risking Your Life? (3)

If you asked which country welcomed the most foreign Hunters, everyone would undoubtedly say the United States.

Hunters came to America dreaming of a twenty-first-century American Dream.

In the past, these Hunters had a wide variety of dungeons to challenge across the country.

But as time passed, people learned how to clear dungeons.

And once the concept of ‘pacification’ became widely known, everything changed.

Of America’s 51 states, only 14 had been fully cleared—that is, fully pacified—but people and capital flowed into those states.

Unless a dungeon produced a unique by-product, the cost of obtaining similar dungeon by-products differed enormously between pacified states and those that weren’t.

The value of California’s western coastal region, dubbed ‘Hunter Valley’ for its large number of high-value dungeons, was beyond measure.

On the other hand, some regions saw little benefit from the dungeon economy, like Florida, where large numbers of Gates were scattered across hard-to-reach areas such as the Everglades, and which had yet to be pacified.

“Hawaii is right in the middle.”...