DanMachi: How did my dungeon turn into a Soulslike game?

Fixed the error where the character Ryuulu was being called Vicen — it won't happen again.

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The state of the city over this past year was more or less what Isagi had guessed.

The [Heroes] and guards who had come as reinforcements had swept out the Monsters that once infested the place, then rebuilt the fortress city. After that, ringing the great pit that led down into the Dungeon — right about where the Central Park he knew so well would one day stand — they raised a circle of towering walls.

Which meant the entire Dungeon had been sealed off behind stone.

What Isagi never expected, though, was that the one directing all of it was also a certain [Hero] who had come back up out of the Dungeon. And in a sense, someone he could almost call an "acquaintance."

The [Empress] of the Amazon race.

"Hah?"

Listening to Ryuulu talk, Isagi began to realize that this "past" of a thousand years ago had, in fact, unfolded rather differently from the way he had pictured it.

Though when he thought it over, that made sense.

According to the guesses he and Riveria and the other girls had pieced together before —

Albert and his companions must have pushed their expedition down into the deep levels of the Dungeon, somewhere between the sixtieth and sixty-first floors. Something happened there, and it drove Celdia, the saint of the Elf race in that age, to unleash the magic that froze time itself.

Every [Hero] and Spirit who had marched with them stayed behind forever in that tomb called the Thousand-Azure Ice Garden.

And so.

Afterward the malice of the Spirits gathered together and gave birth to the Corrupted Spirit.

While the [Heroes] remained in the Thousand-Azure Ice Garden all that time, guarding Ais — until the Zeus Familia found her and carried her back to the surface.

But put that way, several problems fell out of the story.

First.

Where had Albert gone?

Was he inside the Thousand-Azure Ice Garden too?

If the great [Hero] had met and fought the Black Dragon in the deep levels of the Dungeon, wounded it, and the Black Dragon had then fled out of the Dungeon — while Albert and his companions, for whatever reason, stayed behind forever in the Thousand-Azure Ice Garden — then his own earlier theory fell apart.

Because why would the Black Dragon, having escaped the Dungeon, do no fighting in Orario at all and simply flee straight north?

And then conveniently be caught by some Great Spirit who seized the chance to seal it in the Dragon Valley?

The logic in the middle — the story line, rather — didn't hold together.

At best you could say it slid by well enough as a fairy tale or a hero's saga. As something that had actually happened, never.

And there was more.

One more question neither he nor Riveria could make sense of: why would Albert have taken Ais down into the Dungeon at all?

If the girl really was the great [Hero]'s daughter, then bringing her into the Dungeon — into the deep levels, no less — had to have a reason behind it.

Because whichever way you looked at it —

Ais had been eight years old back then. There was no chance she'd been some unbelievably powerful monster of a fighter, was there?

And after the blonde girl "woke" from the ice and received Loki's [Falna], she really had been nothing more than a Lv.1 adventurer. Her combat technique far outstripped anyone at her level, sure, but her physical stats were about the same as theirs.

Which made it even clearer that Ais couldn't possibly have been any sort of powerhouse in the ancient era.

Otherwise what — armed with technique alone, with an ordinary person's body, she was supposed to trade blows with a Monster like the Black Dragon?

Impossible.

After all, even the Martial Gods, working with nothing but a normal human body, could only manage a decent back-and-forth against an adventurer of roughly Lv.4. Against a Lv.5 they'd already be in serious trouble.

Technique only meant something when the raw numbers weren't too far apart.

So many questions.

All of them came surging up out of his mind at once.

At the very least, one of them had just been answered. The [Empress] of the Amazon race was here on the surface — which explained why she'd ended up as the final BOSS of the bottom floor instead of resting in the Thousand-Azure Ice Garden.

Well then. Time to go meet her.

"Remember, once we're face to face, you call her Lady Queen."

For some reason, when Ryuulu spoke of the [Empress], a rather timid look crossed her face.

It was a complicated one, at that.

Like there was more she ought to say, words hovering on her tongue, before she finally gave up on saying any of it.

Which probably meant this [Empress] had a personality that was a little… special.

Isagi was braced for it. Among the Amazons, an idiot like Tiona counted as a rare specimen of normalcy.

Ryuulu — who looked practically identical to Ryuu-senpai — started down from the high wall.

And now.

This fortress city, the ancestor of "Orario," had recovered a little of the shape it once had.

Crude wooden houses rose and fell in uneven rows, with no plan to any of it. Almost all of it had been thrown up by the people living here on their own initiative, enough to give Isagi the odd illusion that he'd wandered back into Rivira, that little adventurers' town.

Just as he'd imagined it would be.

[Heroes] and soldiers had gathered here from every corner of the world, and out of that grew a whole population of people providing support behind the lines, who began settling in.

Merchants, farmers, blacksmiths, physicians, priests and nuns —

Of course, none of the gods worshipped in the ancient era actually existed. But even so, as objects of faith they still gave the people of this age a little comfort and a little hope.

Ryuulu was plainly held in high regard throughout the city.

She was no [Hero], but as a bard she had walked the nations of the continent, and so she knew the customs and character of a great many places.

"Everyone comes from somewhere different, speaks differently, keeps their own customs and their own faith — so there's always friction—"

At times like that, Ryuulu wasn't only the translator. She handled the mediation too. In a certain sense it wouldn't be wrong to call her the heart of this fortress city.

"That's pretty impressive."

"But it isn't any real help."

In the end, standing guard here meant fighting Monsters.

And when the powerful ones came swarming up out of the bottom of that vast pit, every last thing depended on the [Heroes] and the soldiers.

"All right, this is the place. Go on in by yourself. Lady Queen shouldn't dislike you—"

She narrowed her eyes.

Isagi genuinely felt that Ryuulu, right now, was Ryuu-senpai down to the last detail.

She looked him over with complete seriousness, even reaching out a small hand to pinch his arm — she couldn't get a proper grip, clearly because she had no strength in her fingers — and apparently that was how she confirmed the [Empress] definitely wouldn't dislike him.

Well.

Amazon women's tastes were easy enough to guess.

Handsome and strong: that was their dream man. Crude and simple to the absolute extreme.

Except.

The house in front of him was thoroughly ordinary, which caught Isagi off guard.

Because from everything he knew about Amazon women, they leaned toward lavish, oversized residences — much like the Ishtar Familia of his own time, who favored palaces and grand manors and other ostentatious architecture.

And here stood a plain little wooden hut.

Even in a fortress city like this one, with the [Empress]'s power, getting hold of a decent house shouldn't have been difficult.

Isagi was certain she was strong — extremely strong — because he'd tested it himself, several times over. Lv.8 to Lv.9 at the very least.

Someone like that.

Turn her loose out there, and even in this ancient era, wiping a nation off the map single-handed would be a casual afternoon's work.

With that thought in mind, Isagi stepped forward and pushed open the door.

And met her again at last — the Amazon [Empress], whose very name the legends had erased, leaving behind only scattered fragments of record.

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