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“Got the feeling things might’ve gotten hairy if we’d missed that opportunity,” Capitan said.
“I’ve heard that it can grow its scales back in under a minute,” Diego added. “We didn’t really have a choice.”
If that was the case, I supposed I didn’t have any reason to complain. Still, Diego knowing that was one thing, but had Capitan just sensed it? That was impressive.
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“Heh. There’s the treasure chest,” Capitan said cheerily.
No matter what dungeon you were in, defeating the monster in the boss chamber would always cause a treasure chest to appear. But despite the name, it didn’t always come in the shape of a box. Just as often, the item would be bundled in cloth, inside a simple pot—or if you were unlucky, wrapped in jagged, twisted metal.
What was inside the container could be just as varied, ranging from very helpful to completely useless. Still, as you’d expect, the former was much more common from boss rooms, especially when compared to the junk magic items you tended to pick up throughout the dungeon.
The sheer variety of loot seemed almost endless. Sometimes you’d get simple raw materials, while other times you’d find a magic item with such complex internal mechanisms that modern technology couldn’t replicate it. The deeper you went into the dungeon, the better the reward was—a phenomenon attributed to the fact that the objects were fabricated by the dungeon’s mana. From what I’d heard, it wasn’t unusual for things like powerful magic swords to start showing up when you delved deep enough.
If you were extremely lucky, you could come across such items on higher levels, but I suspected that wasn’t why Capitan was so excited.
“Let’s hope it’s sea spirit herbs,” I remarked.
He nodded in response. That was what he’d come here for, after all. If we picked them up here and now, we could leave this place behind, and he could spend the rest of his time helping me train. I’d be taking time away from his usual job as a hunter, but he’d set that aside for quite a while due to the sea spirit herbs anyway, and his apprentices would be able to handle his duties back in the village while he was gone.
I planned on paying him for his time too, but I knew he’d probably refuse. Still, my point was that the sooner we found the sea spirit herbs, the better.
“There are no records of this boss ever dropping sea spirit herbs,” Diego said apologetically.
Ignoring Capitan and me, who were feeling rather dejected by the news, Lukas piped up. “L-Let’s open it already!” he said, approaching it. Despite how exhausted he must’ve been from the fight, he had a twinkle in his eye.
For the record, the treasure chest was in the form of a barnacle-encrusted octopus pot with a wooden lid, fastened in place by some manner of string.
Hmm. Promising, at first glance, but would it live up to our expectations?
Lukas undid the string and opened the lid, revealing...
“A...wooden tag?” Lukas said incredulously. “What is this thing?” In his hand was, true to his words, an object that looked like nothing more than a chunk of wood.
Diego, however, seemed to think otherwise. “Oh? That’s a pretty good find.”
“What’s so good about it?” I asked.
Diego took the wooden tag from Lukas. “Look. See how there are fine patterns etched into the surface?”
Now that I was examining it up close, I could indeed see what he was talking about. Nevertheless... “What about them?” I asked. “Do they have artistic value or something?”
“No, nothing like that. This...”—here, he paused slightly for effect—“is a cursed item.”
Lukas, Gahedd, and Niedz immediately began to back away.
Chuckling, Diego continued. “That being said, it’s nothing to be afraid of. On its own, it does nothing whatsoever. But if you combine it with the weapons you can find in this dungeon, it can grant them special attributes or effects.”
“You don’t say? That sounds pretty useful.”
“Yes. The only drawback is that it only works with weapons from this dungeon. And since weapons can only be found in treasure chests from the middle strata and lower, it might be rather useless to us. We won’t even know its effects unless we can try it out, or wait until I get back to land so I can check its pattern against a reference book.”
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“It does seem pretty complex,” I agreed. “Are these markings what give cursed items their power?”
“Not necessarily,” Diego said. “Some have no patterns at all. You’d have to ask a scholar specializing in curses to get a more thorough explanation, though. They can distinguish them from regular magical items with special barriers that don’t allow cursed objects through—not that some cursed items don’t prove to be exceptions from time to time. Honestly, even the definition of what constitutes a ‘cursed item’ is vague. Aside from the ones that are already well-documented, it’s always a difficult task to draw the distinction.”
Lorraine had said something along those lines too. She wasn’t a curse specialist by any means, but all mana-related phenomena were her wheelhouse. Yaaran didn’t have much in the way of cursed items, so she hadn’t put much effort into researching them, but I was sure that if she’d focused on it, she’d match a specialist’s level of knowledge in no time.
Hmm... Maybe I should have brought her along. She was probably quite pleased to stay right where she was, though, with how much she had to be learning from Gharb and my old man. By the time I returned to Hathara, the gap between us would probably be even wider. What a scary thought.
“Discuss it all you’d like, but do it when we’re back in town,” Capitan interrupted.
“We’re going back?” I asked. “Already?”
“Once we reach the middle levels, yes,” he confirmed. “From what I understand, there’s a special teleportation device there.”
“Teleportation device?” I repeated. “That’s rare.” Ordinarily, those were only found at the deeper levels of a dungeon. Modern technology hadn’t gotten to a point where it could replicate them either. The Water Moon Dungeon had one as well, but that too was a rare exception.
“Yes. It’ll make this a lot easier,” Capitan said. “I’ve even heard that once you’ve used it, you can skip straight to the middle levels from the entrance during future delves. That’s why I figure it should be our goal for today. I don’t think Niedz and the others have much left in them anyway.”
I saw that he was right; the trio were breathing heavily, clearly exhausted. They wouldn’t be able to manage much more exploring.
“All right,” I said. “That’s where we’ll finish, then. Niedz, Lukas, Gahedd—hang in there a little longer. We’re almost done for the day.”
The trio, despite their obvious fatigue, nodded very emphatically.