Chapter 38: The North Main Street
Huh?
Sensing the overwhelming malice radiating from the monsters, Yumesaki found himself a bit bewildered. He couldn't quite comprehend why this massive group of creatures was targeting him so aggressively.
Furthermore, the Dungeon itself felt incredibly strange.
However, within a split second, the realization suddenly dawned on him.
The Dungeon wasn't targeting him as an individual; it was targeting a god. Every time a deity dared to step foot inside the Dungeon, it would trigger a massive structural revolt.
In the original story, Hestia had entered the Dungeon once, which immediately caused a massive outbreak.
As for himself, he had previously swallowed the God of Death and effectively taken over that divine mantle.
To many entities, Yumesaki was fundamentally recognized as the God of Death.
He hadn't anticipated that the Dungeon would actually perceive him as a genuine deity as well, instantly painting a massive target on his back.
Well, this was quite a situation...
Fine, if it wants to target me, then let it.
Yumesaki turned around and spoke calmly to Esdeath and the other two. "Clean up these monsters, then come find me outside."
The moment the words left his mouth, he activated his Teleportation Magic and vanished from the Dungeon in the blink of an eye.
The rampaging monsters instantly shifted their frenzied gazes onto Esdeath and the others.
Esdeath looked at the massive wall of hostile creatures pressing toward them, and a cruel, bloodthirsty smile naturally spread across her face.
This was absolutely perfect.
...
Meanwhile, after shifting out of the Dungeon using his Teleportation Magic, Yumesaki materialized directly on a rooftop somewhere within the Labyrinth City, Orario.
Peering down from his elevated vantage point, he noted that the entire city was encircled by a massive, robust defensive wall. The outer ring featured significantly taller architectures, while the buildings grew progressively shorter the closer they got to the urban center.
Right at the absolute core stood the Tower of Babel.
The city's interior was divided into eight distinct districts by eight massive main streets that radiated outward from the central plaza like spokes on a wheel, with the Guild managing the entire layout from the center.
After scanning the layout a few times, Yumesaki made his way down to the Northwest Main Street.
This massive avenue was widely known as the Adventurer's Quarter, housing the Guild Headquarters alongside countless weapon shops, item parlors, bars, and various other establishments essential to an adventurer's daily life.
However, Yumesaki's intended destination wasn't here. He was heading for the North Main Street, which ran right alongside the northwest district.
Although the North Main Street wasn't quite as bustling as the adventurer's strip, it still featured a decent number of merchants operating open-air stalls along the sidewalks.
For instance, Hestia worked right around here. She had famously caused the food stall she worked at to blow sky-high due to her sheer clumsiness while handling a Magic Stone igniter, earning herself the notorious nickname "North Street's Calamity" among the locals.
Yumesaki scanned the area and very quickly spotted Hestia, who was currently busy selling Jagamarukun.
Anyone familiar with the original lore knew that Hestia had descended to the Lower World six months before the main story kicked off, initially mooching off her close friend, Hephaestus. However, while staying at Hephaestus's place, she did nothing but laze around all day, making zero effort to recruit a Familia or even find a job.
Ultimately, three months before the timeline began, she was kicked out of the house by Hephaestus. That was when she started working part-time, eventually landing a gig frying Jagamarukun.
In the original story, the fried Jagamarukun prepared by Hestia actually received remarkably high praise from many customers.
Yumesaki was curious to see just how delicious Hestia's fried Jagamarukun actually was, which was precisely why he had dropped by for a taste test.
"Give me two fried Jagamarukun, please."
"Just a moment!"
Hestia replied without even lifting her head, her hands entirely occupied with flipping the food in the fryer.
It didn't take long for the snacks to finish cooking. Hestia wrapped them up neatly and handed them over to Yumesaki.
"Here's your fried Jagamarukun, and... oh my gosh..."
The moment her eyes landed on Yumesaki, Hestia froze completely in place. "I don't recall ever seeing your face up in the Upper World. Are you perhaps a deity who just recently descended to the Lower World as well?"
As a true goddess, Hestia could tell at a single glance that Yumesaki carried the unmistakable presence of the God of Death.
Yet, she had absolutely no memory of encountering this specific God of Death back in the celestial realm.
Yumesaki wasn't surprised at all that Hestia could read his identity; after all, even the Dungeon itself had flagged him as a god, so it was only natural that Hestia could see it too.
As for why Hestia had never seen him before, wasn't that completely normal?
It would actually be weirder if she had.
"You can think of me as a minor god who rarely ever stepped out of his own house, so it's perfectly normal that Lady Hestia hasn't run into me before."
Yumesaki spoke with a perfectly calm demeanor, having no intention of revealing that he actually hailed from an entirely different universe.
Instead, he casually handed a solid piece of gold over to Hestia before accepting the wrapped snacks.
"I've only just arrived, so I haven't had a chance to exchange my currency yet. Is it alright if I pay with this gold?"
"Oh, absolutely!"
Hestia felt a sudden rush of pleasant surprise. She hurriedly snatched the gold piece, turning it over in her hands a few times before blinking in confusion. "Huh? This doesn't look like the kind of gold we have up in the Upper World."
"Yes, that's right. It's just ordinary gold."
Yumesaki's eyes shifted slightly. From Hestia's casual remark, he could basically infer that the gold from the Upper World and the gold found in the mortal realm possessed distinct differences. As for what exactly those differences were, Yumesaki hadn't the faintest clue.
Since he wasn't actually a deity from their Upper World anyway, he simply gave a vague, noncommittal response.
Fortunately, Hestia didn't read too deeply into the matter. She happily tucked the gold piece away, smiling broadly. "This gold piece of yours is worth a massive amount of fried Jagamarukun. I don't even have enough pocket change to give you proper change right now."
"Tell you what, how about I cover your daily fried Jagamarukun for an entire year? Would that work for you?"
Noticing the subtle, pleading look gleaming in the goddess's eyes, Yumesaki lifted one of the fried snacks and took a clean bite.
His eyes instantly lit up.
She truly lived up to her title as the Goddess of the Hearth; her culinary skills when it came to frying up Jagamarukun were miles ahead of any ordinary cook.
"Deal."
Yumesaki agreed without a second thought. "Your Jagamarukun is perfectly crispy on the outside and wonderfully soft on the inside. It's incredibly delicious, so I accept your terms."
Hestia instantly puffed out her chest, lifting her chin with immense pride. "Hehe, I am the Goddess of the Hearth, after all! A simple task like frying up Jagamarukun could never pose a challenge to me!"
"By the way, since you've only just descended to the Lower World, you probably haven't found a proper place to stay yet, right? If you'd like, I can offer you a place to crash at my spot for the night."
She felt that since she had accepted such a generous amount of gold from him, offering a roof to a newly descended junior and putting him up for the night was simply the proper, responsible thing for a senior goddess to do.
"No need."
Yumesaki waved his hand dismissively. If his memory served him right, ever since Hestia had been booted out by her close friend, she had been taking shelter inside the basement of an abandoned, run-down church.
It would be another fifteen days before the main timeline kicked off, which was when she would actively recruit the male protagonist, Bell Cranel, to join her Familia.
Judging by her current offer to take him in, it seemed the male protagonist hadn't crossed paths with her just yet.
Otherwise, Hestia certainly wouldn't be inviting another man over to disrupt the cozy, two-person world she shared with Bell.
Therefore, faced with Hestia's invitation, Yumesaki declined firmly.
"Even though I've only just arrived in the Lower World, I'm not short on funds. I can easily find a decent inn to stay at."
"Huh?!"
Hestia stared at him, completely utterly flabbergasted. Why was it that when she descended to the Lower World, she ended up so dirt-poor it was practically pathetic, whereas this guy arrived completely loaded with cash?
Wasn't this disparity a little too unfair?
If the guy had brought down official gold from the Upper World, she could at least wrap her head around it, but the issue was that the gold he used to pay her was just ordinary, run-of-the-mill gold.
She couldn't for the life of her figure out where on earth he had obtained that kind of gold.
Yumesaki had no intention of sticking around to explain things. After exchanging a few more casual remarks with Hestia, he took his fried snacks and strolled away.
The primary reason was that Hestia still had a business to run, and he didn't want to hold her up from her work for too long.
Besides, he was highly eager to explore this fantasy city, wanting to see just how prosperous and lively the famous Labyrinth City truly was.
After bidding farewell to Hestia, Yumesaki picked up a few more interesting local snacks along the North Main Street, munching on them happily as he enjoyed a leisurely stroll.
Granted, Yumesaki had already traveled through a couple of alternate universes before this, but those worlds had been overwhelmingly dominated by ordinary humans.
Even though Fairy Tail was a fantasy realm filled with swords and sorcery, the variety of intelligent species there was remarkably sparse.
Aside from humans, there were only dragons.
Furthermore, since the vast majority of those dragons had been completely wiped out by the Black Dragon, Acnologia, the only faces Yumesaki ever ran into were human ones.
Akame ga Kill had been pretty much the exact same story.
Humans held absolute dominance over the world's societies, while the Danger Beasts were entirely relegated to deep, rugged mountain ranges.
That world didn't even possess proper magic.
If he hadn't known beforehand that the world was completely disconnected from Earth, it barely even qualified to be called a fantasy realm in his book.
But the world of DanMachi was an entirely different story.
This was a pure, unadulterated fantasy universe. There was magic, there were adventurers, there were literal gods walking the earth... and most importantly, alongside humans, this world was fully populated by dwarves, prums, elves, beastmen, and various other demi-human races.
An immense melting pot of diverse cultures and races had converged together to build the grand metropolis of Orario.
As Yumesaki walked down the broad avenue, he looked up to see adventurers gathered in small, tight-knit parties. Humans and elves walked side by side in perfect harmony, while beastmen and dwarves shared casual conversations on the move.
Some carried knives, others slung broadswords across their backs or carried heavy bows, and there were even quite a few mages clutching intricate staves as they traveled down the street.
Coupled with the surrounding architecture which exuded a deeply exotic aesthetic flare.
Yumesaki couldn't help but let out a quiet sigh of genuine admiration. "Now this is what you call a proper fantasy world."
Before he realized it, Yumesaki found his footsteps leading him right back onto the main Adventurer's Quarter.
The density of adventurers crowding this particular strip was significantly higher.
It was here that Yumesaki spotted a massive storefront belonging to the Hephaestus Familia.
As the most industrious and wealthy crafting faction within all of Orario, their commercial outlet was remarkably massive, with rows upon rows of finely crafted weapons proudly displayed inside the windows.
However, to put it bluntly, these weapons weren't actually any better than the Imperial Arms he had encountered before.
Considering this world literally had actual gods walking around, the fact that their forged armaments couldn't even outperform Imperial Arms felt somewhat underwhelming.
What invited even more criticism, however, was the concept of Magic Swords in this universe.
A Magic Sword was a specialized weapon whose output wasn't dictated by the wielder's personal level or Mana capacity; even a complete non-adventurer could pick one up and unleash its full power.
Of course, a Magic Sword didn't strictly have to be a sword; it could easily take the shape of a dagger or even a battleaxe.
The term "Magic Sword" was simply used as a convenient blanket label.
The core mechanic behind a Magic Sword was that it functioned as a weapon capable of casting pre-stored magic spells. While that sounded perfectly fine on paper, the fatal flaw of the Magic Swords in this world was that they carried a strict usage limit—once that threshold was reached, the weapon would shatter into pieces.
Naturally, there were exceptions to this rule.
Among the various classifications, there existed a highly specialized type known as the Unbreakable Magic Sword.
True to its name, this specific variant carried no usage limitations and would never break from over-exertion.
Instead of drawing upon energy stored within the weapon itself, an Unbreakable Magic Sword tapped directly into the wielder's personal Mana pool. Because of this mechanic, its destructive output was entirely tethered to the user's current level and magical capacity.
Simply put, a Level 1 adventurer had absolutely no way of unleashing a Level 2 tier spell through an Unbreakable Magic Sword.
Consequently, despite how exceptionally rare and valuable they were, most ordinary adventurers found them to be incredibly impractical.
This was especially true for low-level adventurers.
After all, the entire reason low-level combatants saved up to buy a Magic Sword in the first place was to unleash a devastating magical strike that vastly exceeded their current power tier.
In a life-or-death crisis, a standard Magic Sword—which required zero personal energy expenditure and could replicate the high-tier spell of an advanced mage—was exactly the kind of trump card they needed.
As for the drawback of the weapon breaking after it ran out of charges, that meant absolutely nothing when compared to saving one's own life.
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