Two days later.
I was standing in front of the mansion's main gate.
It was a three-story estate—old and dignified in its construction, with nothing particularly flashy about it.
"So this is the Zenzera family's main residence."
The Zenzera family was the oldest noble house in Heizen.
You could say the accumulated history of the Zenzera family was the history of Heizen itself, and that wouldn't be an exaggeration.
That's what the witch had told me, in brief.
When I spoke to the guard at the main gate, they let me right in without fuss.
A maid guided me to a corner room on the second floor. "Please wait here."
It reminded me of the mansions in Hydrangea's noble district.
Probably a reception room for visitors.
Chairs and a table. A landscape painting on the wall. A vase and an armored knight statue for decoration.
High-end but not gaudy. A nicely balanced room.
I sat in a chair and waited.
"…………"
Dagaa was quiet.
No doubt playing some card game inside my head again.
With the male saint, the blue vampire empress, and the tentacles—what a motley crew.
Especially the empress. A historic criminal who apparently brought down an empire.
Why is that kind of stuff living inside my head?
Daga is good at games. Particularly card games — absurdly good.
She's been going by the name Queen and building quite the reputation in those circles.
Well, in moderation, at least.
I'm a little worried she might end up toes-deep in underground gambling or something.
She worships crabs and all.
Come to think of it, this world does have a few card games.
But the only board games around are those weird ones you play with shields or something.
Shield board or moon board or whatever they're called.
There are dice, and some dice-gambling-type stuff exists too.
I know Heizen has a casino.
Minors can get into some of those, but I've never actually been.
Board games, huh.
In my past life, I remember a college friend who got totally hooked on a figure-based board game.
He blew most of his part-time job income on those figures.
"...Games, huh."
It suddenly came to mind — back in my past life, there was a game I used to be really into. A dungeon-creation game.
The one I played the most involved placing things down.
Place corridors. Place rooms. Place monsters. Place traps and treasures.
Defeat the adventurers who come visiting, and you earn DP.
DP stood for Dungeon Points.
The amount of DP you earned changed based on the number and quality of adventurers.
The goal was to grow the dungeon bigger and deeper.
"...I never thought I'd actually be doing this for real."
I let out a bitter smile. But this wasn't a game.
This was reality in a world where people lived and died.
"............"
A thought struck me out of nowhere. Was it because I had memories from my past life?
Was I looking at this world through a gamer's lens, somewhere deep down?
Was I really planted firmly on the ground, walking steadily through this world?
The maid called to say they'd been waiting for me, and I headed to the third-floor reception room.
No good. No good. Get it together and focus on what's in front of you.
A pod and a cup were already set on the reception room table, and no one sat behind the desk.
Instead, a woman was seated on a white sofa.
Long golden hair loosely curled and draped, with round animal ears poking through.
Blue eyes that shone like the surface of clear water.
Her features were refined and striking, yet there was still a trace of youth about her.
She wore a blue cape over a flowing white dress.
Light attire, but she was probably using the finest quality fabric without a shred of restraint.
Like this mansion itself — not flashy, but unmistakably expensive and dignified.
And above all, she had two tanuki tails growing from her.
She was a tanuki-person.
The fox-woman witch had a tanuki friend. Seiran Zen-Zella — current head of the Zen-Zella family.
She apparently had various entanglements with my uncle as well.
Come to think of it, Uncle was apparently called "Storm" in this city or something.
"Storm," my uncle... Yeah, sure.
"—This isn't our first meeting, is it?"
She closed her eyes, brought the cup to her lips, then glanced at me as she spoke.
"No, it isn't. Allow me to properly introduce myself. I'm Wof."
"I am Seiran Zen-Zella."
"Giiza."
The woman in butler's attire standing diagonally behind the sofa greeted me.
Giiza was born from a single strike of the Sword Goddess's daughter — but she had no connection to Laada and the others.
She was Seiran's bodyguard.
"I've heard from the witch that you have important business. Sit down."
Following her invitation, I settled onto the blue sofa across from her.
Giiza took the pot and poured tea into my cup.
A faintly sweet scent, yet one that conveyed surprising depth.
High-quality tea leaves, definitely.
"Yes. There's a lot of information, and I don't know how much Seiran already knows. So even if any of it sounds familiar, I'll go through it all as-is."
"That works. Don't mind at all."
"Yes. So first, Heizen is what's called a surface-type dungeon. I received a quest from the will of Heizen's dungeon to deal with an anomaly."
"…Go on."
"The quest was completed. At that time, I made a proposal to the will of Heizen's dungeon. In fact, that's part of why I nearly fell to my death. I suggested that Heizen build a regular dungeon. The will of Heizen's dungeon agreed, but said if it could do that, it would've done so long ago — and instead asked me to actually create one."
"……A regular dungeon? In Heizen?"
"Yes. A dungeon with subterranean floors, like any other."
"And you're saying to build one in Heizen?"
"Yes. The will of Heizen's dungeon will fully cooperate as well."
"………………"
"So, well, I figured the proper thing to do was to first get approval from both families. Your cooperation would be very appreciated."
"……Hmph, you really are Sturm's nephew, aren't you."
She set down her cup. Wait, what did she just say?
"Huh?"
"Of course we'll cooperate. The will of Heizen's dungeon is Heizen itself. The Pons are merely proxies. There's no way we wouldn't comply."
"Oh, thank you."
Good. That went smoothly.
Seiran raised her cup to her lips.
"I knew Heizen was a dungeon, and I understood the danger. The Forest Wave, too. Wof, nephew of Sturm — do you know why Forest Waves occur?"
"An EVENT?"
"That theory did exist, yes. But the truth is, it's because it's a dungeon."
"...?"
"A dungeon has a set total number of monsters, determined by its scale."
"Is that so?"
"Normally, they're spread across each floor, so you don't really notice how many there are."
Because they're distributed, huh.
"With surface-type dungeons, the wider the area, the larger the total monster count. But if all those monsters appeared at once, Heizen would be destroyed."
"...Wait. So the Forest Wave is just the full number of monsters that Heizen is supposed to have — all appearing at once?"
If that were true — if the full monster count had actually shown up — Heizen would already be gone.
"Normally, the will of the Heizen dungeon keeps them suppressed. But when it reaches its limit — that's the Forest Wave."
"We'd better do something about it, then."
"That's why, once floors are created underground, the monsters get dispersed."
"And that would bring the Forest Wave under control."
One way or another, those monsters were a pretty hefty source of income, weren't they?
Seiran's expression was complicated.
"It would reduce them quite a bit. But it's still far better than Heizen being destroyed."
Fair enough. If it were destroyed, there'd be nothing left to gain.
All the same, this made it clear that Heizen was facing a crisis — a gradual one, but a crisis nonetheless.
After that, I devoted myself entirely to being a sounding board for all the complaints Seiran had been bottling up about the witch.
She vented to her heart's content, and all I could do was keep quiet and smile wryly.
It wasn't slander or badmouthing — just a thorough rundown of all the ways the witch had made her suffer.
If it were something completely baseless, I might have interjected... but since it was all true, there wasn't much I could say.
Sorry I couldn't put in a word for you, I apologized silently in my head.
Once she finished, I sipped the tea Giiza had brewed for me and let out a breath.
Thanks for listening. Oh, right. I'd forgotten to ask her something important.
"Um, there's one thing I'd like to ask of you."
"What is it?"
"Crab... would you be able to tell the Gauro family's Poor Man's Club about the dungeon? He's, well, not exactly easy for me to talk to."
"Oh, is that so? Sure, no problem. I'll be seeing them soon, so I'll mention it then."
"I'd appreciate that."
Good. That way the Gauros would hear about it too.
Speaking of the Gauros, I wondered how Araya was doing.
"Oh, right. I almost forgot to mention this too. Sturm's nephew. Watch out for the Jinryu remnants."
"The Jinryu remnants?"
"They bear a grudge against the witch and have hostility toward you as her disciple."
"Ah... so they're like the Barrow remnants?"
Seiran nodded slightly.
The people who had supported the Barrow faction without knowing its true face had been let off scot-free.
Giving up that amnesty of their own accord — that was very Barrow faction of them.
"Um, if we run into them and they attack, would it be all right to just wipe them out?"
I didn't want to take any prisoners. That was my roundabout way of saying it.
There was no need to show mercy or leniency to people like that.
Leaving them alive would only bring trouble.
Seiran seemed to sense my resolute attitude and gave me a helpless look.
"Fine, do as you please."
"Understood."
As long as they didn't attack, there was no problem.
In that case, I wouldn't do anything.
But people like that never knew their place.
On the way back from the Zenzera main residence...
Just to be safe, I had Danger Discernment deployed — and sure enough, several red dots lit up.
Already, huh. Now then, where would they make their move?