Part 9: Osaka’s Auntie Builds a Hot Spring
Chapter 37: Umeda Dungeon Creation Magic
Translated by Zzonkedd
Edited by Gumihou & Onionpi
“By hot spring, do you mean a spring that wells up water that’s hotter than usual?” It would seem that Natalia had never been to a proper hot spring bath before.
“I used to enjoy taking baths with hot water akin to a hot spring in my previous world. Well, the water itself doesn’t necessarily have to be from a natural spring. As long as it’s a large bath with lots of hot water, that’s good enough for me.”
“Won’t you need a crazy amount of hot water for an underground bath? There is water thirteen floors below the surface but it’s all contaminated water. Cooking water had to be brought down from the surface, right?”
For the moment, the underground water was only used for washing up. The water they used for cooking Okonomiyaki were all drawn from surface wells and springs and were carried underground by employees regularly.
“Well, from what I can see, ya. Though it’s not good for drinking, it’s good enough to make a hot spring with.”
Haruna raised her right hand and chanted, “Hotel New Awaji~ ♪ [6]”
For some reason, the chant was more like a song, or a commercial jingle. In fact, considering Haruna’s age and the type of commercials at her time, the jingles were most prevalent from the 1980s onwards. One could imagine this jingle being played in the background of a typical domestic home in Japan. By the way, the Hotel New Awaji is a chain of hotels in Japan, with Awaji Island being the largest island within the warm inland sea of Seto. It is famous for its hot spring!
The next thing Natalia knew, hot water splashed onto her face. “Pfuh! You! What was that for?!”
“Ah, sorry, sorry. I don’t get to use this often, so I overpowered it a bit.”
“That’s right, since you barely get hurt you don’t really need your healing magic, huh… Oh, now that I think about it, my body feels kind of warm… Also, this water tastes kind of salty and smells a bit like blood…”
“There! That should be the iron content, ya na. That means it’s water from a hot spring! I’m right, wa!”
This time, Haruna licked the water from her own hand.
“Wow! Cough, it went down the wrong pipe! But, it’s definitely hot spring water! Don’t you get it? This is real hot spring water! Rather than Awaji Island hot spring, it feels more like spring water from Arima, wa. If we can get loads of this out, we can make an actual hot spring!”
“No, no, no, no, no! Wait, wait a minute! We’re still missing a whole bunch of other things, you know?!” Natalia held up both hands to shield herself from Haruna’s gushing enthusiasm. “The project this time is completely different from developing a new recipe, you know? It needs a completely different line of thought, kind of like, like building a stone bridge.”
“Stone bridge? Ah, are you talking about the Ishibashi? I guess it’s true that the Ishibashi stations lines split off one way to Takarazuka and the other to Minoh, na.”
[石橋 = Stone Bridge = Ishibashi, some punny jokes is going on here that got lost in translation, lol]Natalia did her best to control the urge to claw her hair out, “I’ll get straight to the point without any tsukkomi jokes, alright? First, even if you have hot water, you still need a place to put it. Do you know what’s behind [Haru-chan]? Rocks, all solid rocks. We have nowhere to expand!”
Natalia was right.
“Fufufu, But, you know, naa. I have a way, wa. Let’s go to the dungeon first and give it a try.”
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The two ladies made their way to the Level 13 floor from the office.
As Natalia had said, what’s behind [Haru-chan] was a solid wall of soil and rocks.
“In the past, someone must have made these dungeons using magic, ya. I have a feeling that we could use magic or some other method to extend the dungeons now.”
“There’s no way such a ridiculous magic exists — wait, it’s you we’re talking about so nothing is impossible…”
“I do have that kind of magic.” That’s right, listed under Haruna’s [Magic Skills], there was one very suspicious sounding skill called the Umeda Dungeon Building Magic.
By the way, Umeda is the centre of the Kita area in Osaka.
Since there are multiple subway lines on the JR Tokaido line and private railways such as Hankyu and Hanshin, many people from Kyoto and Kobe would stop here first when they come to Osaka. This place has the biggest concentration of people in Osaka.
In addition to stations, the Umeda Underground is connected by several underground shopping malls, which, unhelpfully, have different names for each subway station and line. As a result, it is so hard to find your way around[2] that even Japanese people often get lost.
Moreover, aside from malls, the underground is also connected to major department stores as well as large office buildings, which make it even more confusing.
To make it even worse, the Umeda underground paths often split into three-forks, making it difficult for people to even trace back their footsteps and try other ways. As a result, the Umeda underground shopping centre is often called The Umeda Dungeon[3].
“Are you serious? Even the Maou (Demon King) can’t make a dungeon with magic and you can…?”
“Well, I don’t think I can make anything as big as that, which is why I am now pacing around to measure the right amount of space to make one hot spring. It beats having to dig holes. Not that I know anything about that, of course.”
In Osaka, when someone is talking about something they’re not sure of or did not want to take responsibility for, they would add ‘Not that I know anything about it, of course’ at the end of their sentence.
Once she was done pacing around, Haruna chanted her magic, followed by an enthusiastic, “Saa, go forth and extend the dungeon!”
A powerful white light slammed into the bedrock and Natalia had to close her eyes against the glare.
“Oh, it’s white. I see, so it’s the Whity Umeda, ya na!”
Whity Umeda is the name of the underground shopping mall in Umeda. It’s called Whity Umeda because the idea was to create an image of a ‘White-Coloured Town’ with white lights, white floors and white walls.
“I have no idea what you’re talking about but it’s really dazzling!”
Eventually, the light faded and Haruna felt her eyes slowly adjust back to the darkness of the dungeon again.
Before her eyes was a large space.
Beyond that, as far as the eyes could see were pathways that split and forked away into the darkness.
“Eh? Did it really turn into the Umeda underground shopping mall?”
From what they could see, there was no end to the newly created shopping mall dungeon.
“Hey, should we check it out…?”
Natalia tugged at Haruna’s clothes nervously.
— An hour later
Natalia, exhausted by the walk and doing her best to maintain her composure as they returned to the starting point, was cursing under her breath. “I’ve never seen a dungeon of this scale… What the heck is a five-forked road?! There are just way too many forks and roads!”
They couldn’t actually find their way to the end of the maze dungeon and could only give up and make their way back to the original starting point. Even after an hour of exploring, they could not get a good grasp of the scale of the dungeon they had just been to.
“This power might be too strong… I feel like I’d just walked all the way from Umeda to Yodoyabashi…”
Even Haruna felt a little awed by her own magic.
“Let’s just use this front bit for the hot spring. As for the rest of these entrances, let’s just cover it up with rocks and wall it away forever…”
As per Natalia’s suggestion, the Entrance to the Umeda Dungeon was boarded up and never spoken of again.
[Gumihou: Lol, Haruna, what have you done!!]
[1] Hotel New Awaji is a commercial jingle, lol. It’s first mentioned in Chapter 6 when Haruna rescued a solo Adventurer.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fr-U3KhiGmA
Actually, I imagine Haruna sang the jingle at 0.44
[2] Apparently, it’s true that the area below Umeda is really called ‘The World’s Largest Dungeon’. Now I want to go there. I’ve only ever stopped by the surface area to switch trains.
https://www.tsunagujapan.com/a-complete-guide-to-osaka-and-umeda-stations-for-foreign-travelers/
[3] The Umeda Dungeon – Here’s a youtube walkthrough (with strategy map) for The Dungeon. By the way, it’s over 40 min long…
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bvgteq-Zwxk
