I cocked my head. “A way to get there without breathing?”
It wasn’t turning into an undead, was it?!
Just kidding—I knew he wouldn’t say that. Incidentally, I didn’t actually need to breathe. I could get to the dungeon with no problem, but I had to maintain the act or people would get suspicious. Not only that, but I was now planning to bring the three unconscious adventurers with me too, so I needed to figure out how to get around them drowning. You might argue that they couldn’t complain if they did die, given what they’d tried to do to me, but I had no intention of being that cruel.
No intention yet, anyway. Depending on the circumstances, that option was still on the table.
“No, there’s no method for doing that,” Diego said. “But there is a way to breathe underwater. Take a look at this.”
He retrieved a small, long glass pipe the width of a person’s ring finger from a shelf. At first I thought it was stained, but upon closer inspection, it was just that it had minute, densely packed magical symbols engraved onto the exterior...no, they were on the interior of the pipe. It was obviously a...
“Is that a magical tool?” I asked.
“Close, but not quite. It’s a cursed one.”
“What...?” I’d been about to touch it, but I jerked my hand back, afraid that it would stick to me.
Diego laughed. “It’s fine. Cursed tools come in all kinds. The curse on this one isn’t the usual sort, you see.”
“Are you sure?”
“I wouldn’t be so casual about holding it if I were lying, would I?”
“True...”
That said, just because someone else could hold it without a problem didn’t mean it wouldn’t curse me. After all, my mask hadn’t stuck to Rina’s face when she’d had it, though maybe that was just because it would be inert unless someone tried to put it on. Still, that was proof there were cursed items that didn’t activate unless you did a specific action.
Of course, I knew that Diego had no reason to bring me an item like that.
“So this’ll let me breathe underwater?” I asked.
“Yes. Don’t get me wrong, though—it’s still a curse. Make sure you don’t attach it while you’re on land, or you’ll suffocate.”
“Oh, so it’s one of those...”
It was quite common for cursed objects to give the wielder some benefit in exchange for taking something away—for example, offering an extreme improvement in your vision in exchange for removing your ability to hear, or vice versa. You could use the former to scout over long distances, and the latter to receive verbal messages. They could even be useful for blocking out your vision or hearing, if you needed to do that.
Cursed items weren’t in ready circulation in Maalt, so nobody really used them, but people who did showed up once in a blue moon in other towns, so knowing about them was indispensable. I felt I should revise my impressions of Ariana—the people here likely used them quite often. After all, this city had curse vendors like Diego—though he called his shop a general store.
I was worried about my ability to use this pipe. Despite having some knowledge about cursed objects, I had little practical experience with them. These things were a matter of time and practice, though. I’d never figure out the trick unless I tried it.
Not that the glass pipe would have any effect on me in the first place...
“By the way, how much is one of these?” I asked.
“Five gold.”
“That much...? I don’t suppose you could give me a discount...”
“I already am—haggling with you would be a pain. Five gold’s basically at cost. You can check at other curse vendors, if you’d like. The biggest rip-off I’ve personally seen is a place selling them for fifty gold.”
“Five gold it is, then. I’ll take four.” I retrieved my coin pouch from my breast pocket and handed the money to Diego.
“Huh. Are you sure? You don’t want to test them out first?”
“I’ve got no reason to distrust you. If there’s a problem with them, I’ll just bring them back... You’ll replace them, right?”
“That’s not normally a service I provide, but I’ll do it for you. I don’t get the impression you’d break them intentionally and come complaining to me about it.”
“Do you get people like that often...?”
“More often than you’d think. Curse vendors tend to have a few screws loose—not that I’m one to talk. Even harassing rival stores isn’t unheard of.”
“Oh, so it’s not the customers, but others in the same profession...”
I got the impression this was a pretty dog-eat-dog world. Given how there were people selling a five gold product for fifty, maybe I wasn’t too far off. Although from another perspective, maybe they thought Diego was a business rival who was selling their product at one-tenth the value...
“Just for reference, how much do these usually go for?” I asked.
“These? Twelve or thirteen gold, generally speaking.”
“You gave me a pretty big discount, then.”
“I did, so you’d best be grateful.”
“Of course I am.”
“In that case, mind hearing out a request of mine?”
Diego’s delivery was so smooth that I almost missed it, even though I’d been expecting something like that. He wouldn’t have given me such a large discount for nothing, after all, and he’d practically said himself that curse vendors were a crafty lot. Still, it wouldn’t cost me anything to listen.
“I can hear you out, but I won’t make any promises about accepting,” I warned.
“That’s enough for me. It’s not anything momentous, anyway—just a simple request. You’ll be delving into the Dungeon of the Sea God’s Daughters with this lot, won’t you?”
“Yeah.”
“Have you heard what the dungeon’s particular trait is?”
“I...haven’t, no. I was going to look into it later.”
“Well, it’s pretty common knowledge, but cursed objects tend to turn up pretty easily there. Much more frequently than other dungeons, in fact.”
Like magical items, cursed items were a common product of dungeons. You rarely saw them in the ones around Maalt—Yaaran’s dungeons in general tended to have low numbers, actually—but they were definitely out there. It didn’t take much imagination to surmise that there were probably dungeons on the other side of the coin.
That explained another thing too. “Is that why Lucaris has so many curse vendors?”
“Sure is. But as for my request—if you come across any cursed items, could you bring them to me?”
“For free...?”
“Of course not. If I see anything I want, I’ll pay you for it.”
“Does that even count as a request? It sounds like a regular business deal—and one that’s nothing but beneficial for me, at that.”
“Will you accept, then?”
I couldn’t see a trace of deception in Diego’s smile. There was probably something he wasn’t saying, but it didn’t seem like it was anything that was going to affect me negatively. That being the case, I figured it’d be fine.
“All right. I accept.”