What do you think?
Rate this book
Modern Dungeon Capture Starting with Broken Skills (light novel) #1
Modern Dungeon Capture Starting with Broken Skills (Light Novel) Vol. 1
From Corporate Drone to Dungeon Explorer!Monster-filled dungeons have recently appeared in our world. When average office worker Mizuki Ryousuke gets transferred to the Japanese countryside, by the time he gets there, the office is gone and a dungeon's sitting in its place! He finds a number of odd things when he ventures inside, like a fairy about to be eaten by goblins and a mysterious skill book that allows him to turn skills--even overpowered ones--into cards so he can use them at will! Rumors of Mizuki and his broken skills spread, and requests for him to hunt down rare items in other dungeons pour in. Where will Mizuki's new career take him next?
- GenresLight NovelFantasyManga
286 pages, Kindle Edition
Published September 21, 2023
66 people are currently reading
42 people want to read
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 10 of 10 reviews
September 13, 2025
Thoroughly Modern Mizuki's Omori Dungeon Capture Caper
After a steady diet of Sword Art Online, Is It Wrong... in a Dungeon? and The Hidden Dungeon Only I Can Enter, this book was paradoxically familiar ground while being totally different.
It had the dungeon clearing tropes I've come to love, from stat screens displaying imaginative skills to boss monsters and buxom lady adventurers in love with the protagonist. But brand new was having a dungeon appear in our modern 21st century world, where government bureaucrats, the police, and entrepreneurial business tycoons all want a piece of the action.
Our hero Mizuki is no hero, just a low-level investment banker who turns up in the right place at the right time, though he didn't see it that way at first. He steps trepidatiously into the Omori branch of Showa Securities to clock into his job. But his office is currently transforming into a dungeon. Those darn things have a habit of turning up in the darndest of places.
I loved those opening chapters of Mizuki in the dungeon, especially the pivotal event of meeting Kessie the naked fairy whose bare bottom brightens the cover and certainly sold copies of this book (including mine). The white dragon and his peculiar treasures (batteries not included) were a welcome upending of dragon cliches and won me over. I really wanted to explore this dungeon, which was so like yet unlike those in other dungeon-based light novels and anime.
Modern Problems. But then the book's gimmick of being set in our real world began to work against it. Yeah, it's true that should a dungeon suddenly appear in our real world the military would secure it and the government set about regulating who can enter it. Mizuki tangled up in red tape getting his adventurer's license and the police inspecting the weapons and restricting how many bullets were taken into the dungeon began to erode the fun and fantasy. I yearned to go back to those purely escapist worlds of Aincrad and Orario.
I bet any average Japanese guy like me who knows a fair bit about games, manga, and anime already has a fair idea of what a party of adventurers setting off to clear a dungeon would look like. ... But now, here in modern-day Japan, watching a real working party of adventurers handle a dungeon clearing was nothing like in the fantasy stories (p. 182). Or as Mizuki later observes, "You all seem more like special forces than adventurers" (p. 184).
The REA dungeon-clearing team Mizuki is coerced into joining hails from the UK and is led by 16-year-old Carol Middleton. Except for Carol, the team shuns swords and magic and carries assault rifles. The REA team isn't well described, besides Kevin the obligatory gay guy who hasn't invested in an Auto-Translate skill so flirts and propositions Mizuki in English, to the Japanese-speaking Mizuki's befuddlement. Then there's a guy referred to several times as the "Black." Instead of just giving him a name, the writer and/or translator turned an adjective into a capitalized proper noun.
Shinobu I See You--and Carol Too! Yes, 16-year-old Carol and 17-year-old Shinobu are lusting after the 26-year-old adventurer and erstwhile investment banker. It's not as sordid as it sounds in the story's context, as Mizuki rebuffs their advances and would really rather be home with Kessie watching How About Thursday? But yes, a big deal is made of Mizuki having seen both girls naked, though neither time was sexual in nature and in fact both were life-and-death events of violence and danger.
I suspected the racy scenes were included at the publisher's request to spice up the book (Airship/Seven Seas does have a reputation, after all). They felt tacked on as they came and went and added little to the narrative. And both were PG-rated swipes from that infamous Goblin Slayer episode. I was asking myself why goblins or an electric ogre would find a human girl so alluring? I mean, human guys don't lust after lady goblins and ogres, do they? I guess it's akin to King Kong stripping Fay Wray. It's the audience that wants to see this, not the monsters. It was said of ogres, "they love human meat" (p. 191), so maybe the ogre stripping Carol was only like our skinning a chicken before chowing down? No, I don't think so either.
What's important to note is these scenes are PG and while Mizuki boasts that he saw everything between Carol's legs when she kicked the ogre, no descriptive details are ever given on anything beyond rounded and pert butts. Heck, even Kessie on the very first illustration page of the book is robbed of her nipples to keep it safely within the 15+ guardrails.
Kessie is the breakout character of the book and won my admiration for her fast adjustment from dreary dungeon to modern Japan. She flits around Mizuki's apartment eating junk food, watching TV, and surfing YouTube. Kessie and Mizuki reminded me so much of Jeannie and Major Tony Nelson from I Dream of Jeannie, and if that relationship with its accompanying hilarity and hijinks were moved to the fore the series could be a winner. But alas, I think Yuuki Kimikawa is moving in a different direction, as he sets up the next book with that scary, mysterious, and highly skilled neighbor Heath asking Mizuki for help hacking into the American Department of Defense.
As much as I enjoyed this opening volume of the series (up to its fourth as of this writing), I don't think I'll be back for more. I was glad to meet everyone and share in this adventure, but I'm okay with saying goodbye and good luck. When I'm reading light novels, I'm an unabashed escapist and want my fantasy unclouded by the cares and concerns of the real world. Or as Al Stewart sang it so well 50 years ago, "I've got no use for the tricks of modern times / They tangle all my thoughts like ivy."
After a steady diet of Sword Art Online, Is It Wrong... in a Dungeon? and The Hidden Dungeon Only I Can Enter, this book was paradoxically familiar ground while being totally different.
It had the dungeon clearing tropes I've come to love, from stat screens displaying imaginative skills to boss monsters and buxom lady adventurers in love with the protagonist. But brand new was having a dungeon appear in our modern 21st century world, where government bureaucrats, the police, and entrepreneurial business tycoons all want a piece of the action.
Our hero Mizuki is no hero, just a low-level investment banker who turns up in the right place at the right time, though he didn't see it that way at first. He steps trepidatiously into the Omori branch of Showa Securities to clock into his job. But his office is currently transforming into a dungeon. Those darn things have a habit of turning up in the darndest of places.
I loved those opening chapters of Mizuki in the dungeon, especially the pivotal event of meeting Kessie the naked fairy whose bare bottom brightens the cover and certainly sold copies of this book (including mine). The white dragon and his peculiar treasures (batteries not included) were a welcome upending of dragon cliches and won me over. I really wanted to explore this dungeon, which was so like yet unlike those in other dungeon-based light novels and anime.
Modern Problems. But then the book's gimmick of being set in our real world began to work against it. Yeah, it's true that should a dungeon suddenly appear in our real world the military would secure it and the government set about regulating who can enter it. Mizuki tangled up in red tape getting his adventurer's license and the police inspecting the weapons and restricting how many bullets were taken into the dungeon began to erode the fun and fantasy. I yearned to go back to those purely escapist worlds of Aincrad and Orario.
I bet any average Japanese guy like me who knows a fair bit about games, manga, and anime already has a fair idea of what a party of adventurers setting off to clear a dungeon would look like. ... But now, here in modern-day Japan, watching a real working party of adventurers handle a dungeon clearing was nothing like in the fantasy stories (p. 182). Or as Mizuki later observes, "You all seem more like special forces than adventurers" (p. 184).
The REA dungeon-clearing team Mizuki is coerced into joining hails from the UK and is led by 16-year-old Carol Middleton. Except for Carol, the team shuns swords and magic and carries assault rifles. The REA team isn't well described, besides Kevin the obligatory gay guy who hasn't invested in an Auto-Translate skill so flirts and propositions Mizuki in English, to the Japanese-speaking Mizuki's befuddlement. Then there's a guy referred to several times as the "Black." Instead of just giving him a name, the writer and/or translator turned an adjective into a capitalized proper noun.
Shinobu I See You--and Carol Too! Yes, 16-year-old Carol and 17-year-old Shinobu are lusting after the 26-year-old adventurer and erstwhile investment banker. It's not as sordid as it sounds in the story's context, as Mizuki rebuffs their advances and would really rather be home with Kessie watching How About Thursday? But yes, a big deal is made of Mizuki having seen both girls naked, though neither time was sexual in nature and in fact both were life-and-death events of violence and danger.
I suspected the racy scenes were included at the publisher's request to spice up the book (Airship/Seven Seas does have a reputation, after all). They felt tacked on as they came and went and added little to the narrative. And both were PG-rated swipes from that infamous Goblin Slayer episode. I was asking myself why goblins or an electric ogre would find a human girl so alluring? I mean, human guys don't lust after lady goblins and ogres, do they? I guess it's akin to King Kong stripping Fay Wray. It's the audience that wants to see this, not the monsters. It was said of ogres, "they love human meat" (p. 191), so maybe the ogre stripping Carol was only like our skinning a chicken before chowing down? No, I don't think so either.
What's important to note is these scenes are PG and while Mizuki boasts that he saw everything between Carol's legs when she kicked the ogre, no descriptive details are ever given on anything beyond rounded and pert butts. Heck, even Kessie on the very first illustration page of the book is robbed of her nipples to keep it safely within the 15+ guardrails.
Kessie is the breakout character of the book and won my admiration for her fast adjustment from dreary dungeon to modern Japan. She flits around Mizuki's apartment eating junk food, watching TV, and surfing YouTube. Kessie and Mizuki reminded me so much of Jeannie and Major Tony Nelson from I Dream of Jeannie, and if that relationship with its accompanying hilarity and hijinks were moved to the fore the series could be a winner. But alas, I think Yuuki Kimikawa is moving in a different direction, as he sets up the next book with that scary, mysterious, and highly skilled neighbor Heath asking Mizuki for help hacking into the American Department of Defense.
As much as I enjoyed this opening volume of the series (up to its fourth as of this writing), I don't think I'll be back for more. I was glad to meet everyone and share in this adventure, but I'm okay with saying goodbye and good luck. When I'm reading light novels, I'm an unabashed escapist and want my fantasy unclouded by the cares and concerns of the real world. Or as Al Stewart sang it so well 50 years ago, "I've got no use for the tricks of modern times / They tangle all my thoughts like ivy."
November 30, 2025
This book has a genuinely fascinating premise and worldbuilding, but everything else falls apart. The characters are paper-thin, the narrative is stuffed with pointless padding, and the story relies heavily on contrived situations that place underage girls in sexualized danger just so the protagonist can swoop in and save them.
Instead of exploring its political, social, and global implications — easily the strongest part of the setting — the book focuses on tired tropes, awkward fanservice, and scenes that undermine every female character’s competence, agency, and dignity. Even the supposedly brilliant and super powerful girls are reduced to plot devices whose only function is to validate the protagonist.
The writing is flat, the protagonist is shockingly obtuse, and the overall execution wastes an idea that could have been excellent in more capable hands.
I won’t be continuing the series.
Instead of exploring its political, social, and global implications — easily the strongest part of the setting — the book focuses on tired tropes, awkward fanservice, and scenes that undermine every female character’s competence, agency, and dignity. Even the supposedly brilliant and super powerful girls are reduced to plot devices whose only function is to validate the protagonist.
The writing is flat, the protagonist is shockingly obtuse, and the overall execution wastes an idea that could have been excellent in more capable hands.
I won’t be continuing the series.
March 27, 2026
Mizuki is a normal financial advisor who's new job posting has seen swallowed up my a mystical dungeon. And, at first, he gets trapped there. And rescues a tiny fairie, Kessie.
After negotiating with a dragon he escapes, only to get the ability to see his status screen and a rare artifact, the Skill Book.
After applying to be a adventurer, he's pestered by a youtuber who wants to go into the dungeons. He turns her down, she goes in on her own, so he heads in to save her. And ends up on video.
The fame from THAT leads to a corporation basically blackmailing him to lead a team into the new dungeon, including the pretty Carol who decides she likes him.
3 out of 5. Entertaining yet pretty standard.
After negotiating with a dragon he escapes, only to get the ability to see his status screen and a rare artifact, the Skill Book.
After applying to be a adventurer, he's pestered by a youtuber who wants to go into the dungeons. He turns her down, she goes in on her own, so he heads in to save her. And ends up on video.
The fame from THAT leads to a corporation basically blackmailing him to lead a team into the new dungeon, including the pretty Carol who decides she likes him.
3 out of 5. Entertaining yet pretty standard.
November 24, 2024
not good
This was a terrible book, I only finished it because I paid for it. Why were all the girls 16 and having romantic thoughts for a 28 year old. The random near porn pics of described 16 year olds is disturbing. I will not read anymore in the series, the field could have easily been 20 and that issue would haven’t even been a thing.
This was a terrible book, I only finished it because I paid for it. Why were all the girls 16 and having romantic thoughts for a 28 year old. The random near porn pics of described 16 year olds is disturbing. I will not read anymore in the series, the field could have easily been 20 and that issue would haven’t even been a thing.
January 26, 2026
While this had obvious culture differences, the age of several female characters, the big issue is the doormat of a main character. He goes along with whatever is presented with absolutely no backbone. He does nothing to drive the story in any way. I made it halfway before quitting. This is a funny idea wasted with cliche tropes that have been run into the ground long ago.
May 5, 2026
The author has poor taste in jokes and creates a terrible narrative for his main character who thinks irrationally about having sex with minors. It was funny once but it kept repeating. I'm not sure why I finished it.
March 28, 2026
Really good story but the MC is such a baby. The story really is good and I wish there was more. Sad to see it end on book 3.
April 2, 2026
The audiobook narrator brought it to life.
July 10, 2024
There were a lot of quite funny bits in this, and the protagonist actually has some depth. The highschool girls throwing themselves at the protagonist made me more than a little uncomfortable, but that's okay because it made the protagonist uncomfortable, too. I tend to like these books that are about applying a seemingly irrelevant set of skills cultivated in a specialized occupation to a fantasy setting. Looking forward to seeing where this series goes.
January 20, 2025
Great book!
Displaying 1 - 10 of 10 reviews