“They look paler than sheets...” Diego remarked.
It was the next morning, and I was in Diego’s shop in the residential quarter. Since we’d be dungeon delving today, preparations needed to be made. I’d finished my own back at my lodgings, but had come to help Niedz, Lukas, and Gahedd with theirs.
The trio had discussed the matter with Diego yesterday and had decided they would be staying at his store for a while. Naturally, they would be paying rent—albeit less than what they would’ve paid at an inn. In exchange, they’d also be helping Diego with his store. It seemed the curse vendor was doing his best to support the adventuring trio in his own way.
Either way, when I’d mentioned preparations, I hadn’t meant anything particularly grand, since we’d already gathered all the necessary tools and medicines yesterday. While they would’ve been easy to carry around in my magic pouch, our end goal here was to set Niedz and his friends up for independence, so I’d had them select what they needed for themselves and pack it into their knapsacks or waist pouches. Sorting one’s own equipment out daily was an indispensable skill for adventurers.
The optimal thing would have been purchasing a magic pouch of their own and cramming as many contingency plans into it as possible, but that was gated behind a high asking price. It had taken me several years of saving just to buy a small magic pouch, and if it hadn’t been for the eccentric generosity of a certain vampire hunter, I’d still be using that instead of the high-end one I was using now. Such lucky windfalls didn’t exactly grow on trees.
You could’ve argued that I had been unusually lucky, in that sense, but I figured that was balanced out by getting eaten by a dragon and stalked by a vampire hunter.
“You can’t blame them,” I said, shrugging. “I’m sure they’ve been dungeon delving before, but the Dungeon of the Sea God’s Daughters is another thing entirely. I can attest to how nerve-racking it can be to enter an unfamiliar dungeon.”
Diego nodded. “I guess the dungeon’s reputation doesn’t help either,” he said. “We have a few others around Lucaris, but the story goes that this dungeon’s the reason the city was built here in the first place.”
“Yeah? Why’s that? Are the resources you can extract from it really that worthwhile?” I knew sea spirit herbs could fetch a sizable pile of copper, but they weren’t exactly the kind of gold mine that would motivate the founding of an entire city.
“No, it’s not the resources. Long ago, the people who founded Lucaris passed by here after escaping a big war in the east,” Diego explained. “That’s when they heard voices coming from the sea, in the direction of the dungeon. The voices told them that if they built a port town here and braved the dungeon’s depths, they would prosper.”
“I feel like I’ve heard a lot of similar-sounding myths...”
“Can’t argue there,” Diego conceded. “Still, the reality is that the city’s here now, and the Dungeon of the Sea God’s Daughters is out there. As for how it got its name, it’s because of how beautiful the voices sounded. The settlers who heard them became convinced that they belonged to the daughters of the sea god who had made the dungeon their home.”
“That makes sense,” I said. “Explains why it’s plural.”
“So there you have it—the legend of how Lucaris was founded. Thanks to that, most see the dungeon as something bordering on sacred—enough that we have an annual festival dedicated to the sea god, where prayers are offered to the dungeon. Next one’s not for half a year, though. Anyway, my point is that the people here believe that the city’s prosperity is thanks to the Dungeon of the Sea God’s Daughters, so it holds a special place in their minds.”
“I didn’t think Niedz and his friends were particularly devout, though,” I remarked.
“That’s true. But then again... Deep down, their type tends to be believers in something, right?”
“What about you? Do you believe?”
“I’m... Let’s say I’m not particularly pious.”
“Didn’t you serve at a temple for the God of Appraisal?”
“I think the God of Appraisal would actually be pleased with my outlook. The philosophy there is that, since there is great value in the physical world, we’re encouraged to evaluate things using our own judgment, rather than spend all our time in dedicated prayer or whatnot.”
That made a great deal of sense, now that I thought about it. The act of appraisal was rooted in the tangible rather than the unseen—gods, deities, and the like. It seemed the God of Appraisal was more concerned with the congregation evaluating what was before their eyes. Given that that would also include a god, if one happened to show up, it wasn’t even a contradictory philosophy for a religion to hold. Still, it did make the God of Appraisal rather unique, as deities went.
“If only those three could be as pragmatic about it as you,” I remarked. “Maybe it’d put a bit of color back into their expressions. Should I go over and encourage them a bit, do you think?”
Diego nodded. “That’s probably a good idea.”
I walked over and put my hand on Niedz’s shoulder. “Niedz.”
He flinched and turned. “Oh,” he said. “It’s just you.”
“We’re the only ones in the store. Who else could it have been?” I shook my head. “You look pretty nervous.”
“I-I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“And for all those nerves, your armor’s loose. Come on, tighten it up a bit. You too, Gahedd, Lukas.”
The trio hurriedly began checking over their armor. They’d bought it using the coin I’d given them, and while everything was secondhand, it was as decent quality as my budget had allowed for. Definitely an upgrade from what they had been wearing previously.
To be fair, though, that was a really low bar to clear. Their old armor had been so battered that I’d wondered how they were still alive, and when I’d asked, they’d said the last time they’d taken it in for maintenance had been over a year ago. That wouldn’t have been so bad if they’d cared for it themselves, but I highly doubted that was the case. At least that seemed to have been less out of laziness and more because they simply hadn’t known the proper maintenance methods. Knowing how to care for one’s armor was a basic among basics, but an unexpectedly large percentage of adventurers couldn’t manage it.