Agreed on that. But regarding specifically situation in ch 13, their livelihood means nothing and if it matters their livelihood is bad.
It is clearly stated that the boss gets ever more stronger and basically they were cultivating a bomb that would take even more lives if the town grew.
Basically speaking they don't owe anything to the mad merchant or the town which basically was creating a nuclear bomb with the timer. Initially the information about dungeons getting stronger and boss monster doing the rampage was a known fact and despite that they decided to create it.
Isn't all prosperity built on the back of such risk? A little over a million years ago, our hominid ancestors had a choice to make: Do they continue to fear the fire and retreat to their caves when the storms set the prairie alight? Or do they take the risk and bring the fire into their sacred places where they eat, sleep, and raise the next generation of hunters and gatherers? Our ancestors took the fire, and today it still kills tens of thousands of us globally every year. Yet, the discovery of fire saved many more; Warmth prevented hypothermia, cooking expanded nutrition and reduced disease, light staved the beasts and illuminated the pitfalls. Here we are, no longer freezing in caves, no longer hungry, no longer fearing even hungrier beasts. It wasn't foresight a million years ahead, but a mere moment of insight that yielded unimaginable benefits to us now.
In the modern age, the nukes will drop one day. But this, too, we will overcome. And when the radioactive winter passes, the solar system is our oyster, with the secrets of the wider galaxy laid bare to us thereafter. It might take millennia still, but humans have always chosen progress over fear, for better or worse. In simple terms, the lives saved long surpassed the lives lost simply because we learned after every tragedy - not unilaterally and not permanently, but we still did it. Yes, in this story, the dungeons are not merely a local threat but a global one; still, they're also filled with useful resources that push humanity forward into a new age, free of starvation, disease, and ignorance, all while they get better at controlling this dangerous resource to maximize benefit and minimize damage. Countless generations will assess and reassess the issue, and perhaps one day the dungeons will be no issue at all, easy to close or open with little effort. Say, I think a well-placed thermonuclear device might do the trick...
