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

The [Empress]… no, the Lady Queen, seemed to be asleep.

The moment Isagi stepped through the door, he saw the woman sprawled across the bed, not even bothering with a blanket, snoring away.

The sight struck him as familiar and strange at the same time.

Familiar, because Tiona did exactly this at home. Especially after a big meal — the Amazon girl liked to flop straight onto the living room couch and snore, which was precisely what this Amazon [Empress] was doing right now.

Strange, because —

even though he had already met her once down in the Dungeon,

the real thing seemed even more beautiful than the "final BOSS" the Dungeon had cooked up.

Her figure was long and slender, like a willow leaning over a riverbank, delicate enough to give the illusion she might topple at any moment. Her features carried almost nothing that could be called makeup — it was pure, natural perfection with nothing left to add, a beauty that would not have lost out even next to a goddess.

That waterfall of jet-black hair was far longer than when he had seen her in the Dungeon. It no longer stopped at her waist; it nearly spilled onto the floor.

Even now, mouth hanging wide open, white teeth showing, snoring loudly, she somehow failed to ruin her own beauty.

This was probably what people meant when they said a beautiful person looks beautiful no matter what they do.

The [Empress] showed no sign of waking.

She slept on. Her clothes were the same as most Amazon women wore — perfectly ordinary, a chest wrap that covered very little, a gauzy skirt so sheer it was essentially transparent, and beneath it a pair of brightly colored fitted shorts that left her long, healthy legs half hidden and half revealed.

Just as Isagi was wondering whether he ought to wait in the room a while, the sound of a chair scraping across the floor came from one side.

He turned toward it.

And froze, in the thin, dim light of the autumn sun coming through the window.

Ais?

No, this had to be…

Aria. Ais's mother.

Identical. Completely, utterly identical — this was exactly what the blonde girl would look like grown up. Except that the gentle warmth surfacing in those golden eyes was something Ais would never have shown.

There was also a very particular air about her. The distinctive presence of a "Great Spirit," perhaps?

No, wait.

Wasn't Albert Waldstein down in the deep levels? Why was Aria here?

And for that matter, including the [Empress] — they were his companions, so why had they come back up from the Dungeon to the city?

A whole crowd of questions surged up again, but Isagi knew he'd have his answers soon enough.

"Hello."

The blonde woman smiled, and no, that was not an expression a girl could have managed.

"I'm Aria. Ryuulu mentioned you to me — the [Hero] from outside. Thank you for helping our city —"

"I'm glad you made it out of the great pit. We're short on hands over here…"

Her voice was soft and low.

Aria spoke like a gentle breeze, and she spoke in an orderly, organized way — which honestly threw Isagi off a little. Every Spirit he had ever met (Yufi, for instance), and every Spirit recorded in the old stories, tended to be the "innocent" sort.

Or you could just call them idiots and be done with it.

They had the charm of an earnest fresh graduate stepping into the world for the first time.

But then again, perhaps Aria simply had far more contact with other people.

She explained quickly. They had indeed been traveling with the great [Hero] Albert Waldstein, but before the descent into the deep levels, the party had "split in two."

The group led by the [Empress] and Aria had chosen to return to the surface.

The reason was simple enough.

"So that we wouldn't all die down there."

Painfully realistic.

Exploring the Dungeon was necessary — standing guard here forever solved nothing. But did exploring guarantee results?

Of course not.

So they had to hedge. Albert Waldstein and the Elf Saintess Celdia's group went down to the deep levels, while Aria and the [Empress] and the rest returned to the city.

Because no matter how things went, this place needed a hero, and it needed a Great Spirit standing watch.

Isagi listened to her lay out the whole chain of events,

nodding along, thinking that the "truth" always turned out to be so plain and so ordinary.

Just as Aria said.

They had no way of knowing that gods would one day descend to the lower world, no way of knowing that adventurers blessed with the [Falna] would one day crush the Monsters back inside the Dungeon entirely — and even build a lid over it as a symbol of "victory," Babel.

And so,

they simply staked their lives on an exploration into the unknown.

All the while keeping the spark alive, making sure this fortress city never fell, making sure the Monsters never again spread across the world and brought about the sort of apocalypse it had once seen.

Isagi talked with her for a long while.

Mostly about Albert Waldstein and the others — until the conversation was about to turn to "Ais."

By his own reckoning,

Ais right now should be eight years old, and she should have gone down to the deep levels with Albert Waldstein's party.

So was she really Aria's child?

But right as he was about to ask, a loud, boisterous racket erupted beside him.

"We're screwed!"

The Amazon Empress, who had been snoring away a heartbeat earlier, shot upright and scrambled off the bed at blistering speed.

"Something's happening, Aria! Let's go!!"

"Can you handle it alone?"

"Probably…"

"Then —"

The woman tilted her head slightly, wearing the sweet, mischievous look of a young girl.

"Take this gentleman with you, Lady Queen."

"Works for me!"

All Isagi felt was an enormous force clamping onto his arm, followed by a sticky, teasing voice in his ear — "Ooh, you're pretty solid~" — and then a certain Amazon Empress had already dragged him out of the room and broken into a full sprint.

Huh?!

What in the world was going on?!!

The last thing in his field of vision was Aria standing in front of the wooden cabin, waving at him and seemingly saying something, her figure shrinking further and further away.

Only then did Isagi realize it.

The Empress was hauling him straight out of the city.

She ran fast. Terrifyingly fast. The scenery on either side stretched into thin streaks, and in what felt like a blink she leapt high and cleared the towering city wall outright, dropped into a crouch on landing, then sprang up again like a rabbit — accompanied by a raucous "Whoooo!" — and shot off toward the horizon.

In his daze, all Isagi could make out in the distance was a stretch of deep blue sea.

And very soon,

that sea was right in front of him.

They had arrived. Isagi's mouth twitched as he took in the town built along the edge of the great lake, and realized this was Melen, the port town of a thousand years ago.

The reason they had come was simple, too.

The Empress possessed a peculiar "skill" that let her foresee incoming Monster attacks in her dreams.

"Here it comes."

Hands on her hips, the woman stood atop a small rise, gazing out at the sea not far off.

And as her words fell,

the calm water heaved upward, and out of it rose a colossal thing nearly a hundred meters tall —

____

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