Haizen

Haizen (貿易都市ハイゼン, "Trade City Haizen") is a major free port and neutral trade hub situated on the shore of Lake Riv, ringed by a wall of rocky mountains that form a crater. Because it cannot easily be reached by land — it is described as a landlocked island — its trade flows by water, making it an important maritime relay point where goods, people, and contraband arrive from every country, region, and even from beyond the continent. This openness earns it a reputation as a city of freedom, where legal and illegal enterprise mix freely, most spectacularly at the Full Moon Bazaar (フルムーンバザー), a half-yearly night market held under the full moon whose stalls are said to number ten times the usual.

Unlike other cities, Haizen has no ordinary dungeon within or around it; instead it faces the vast Haizen Great Forest (ハイゼン大森林), a treasure-trove of dungeon monsters lying west across the Haizen Plains (ハイゼン平原). Because monsters killed there leave no corpse or equipment, explorers who hunt the forest are locally called not ‘explorers’ but ‘Conquerors’ (討伐者). Each summer, hunters from across the continent gather to face the Forest Wave (フォレストウェーブ), a periodic surge of the forest's monsters toward the city — a deadly event that is also central to Haizen's economy.

The city is dominated, openly and in the shadows, by three great houses — Jinryu, Zenzera, and Gouro — who serve as the three chairmen of Haizen's merchant guild and who back its three great Conqueror clans (the Jinryu Familia, the Zenzera-Riv Order, and the Gouro Subjugation Corps). By city law, every shop and trading house must belong to one of the three houses, and criminal organizations are likewise woven into the city council. Haizen's greatest secret, hidden beneath a white townhouse that was Wof's uncle's second hideout, is a concealed dungeon 'Junkyard' — confirmation that the surrounding forest and plains are dungeon terrain — a secret whose exposure could shatter the balance of the three houses and collapse the city.

The full truth, revealed through the dungeon-spirit's mouthpiece Narcissus, is that Haizen itself is a four-layer above-ground dungeon: the first layer is the trade city, the second the Haizen Plains, the third the Haizen Great Forest, and the deepest fourth layer the cursed 'Forbidden Land.' Recognizing Wof's past record of resolving a dungeon anomaly and his standing as one of Haizen's strongest fighters, the dungeon's will personally commissions him to resolve a new anomaly rooted in the Forbidden Land, turning the city into the stage for an extended arc of the story.