“So, think you can figure out what that wooden tag does?” I asked Diego.
After the delve, we’d returned to his house, which we’d decided to use as our base of operations. Capitan had rented his own room in an inn, but was currently in the process of packing his things and moving them here.
We’d decided to headquarter ourselves at Diego’s because we had partied together for the duration of the dungeon delves, and because we shared the common goal of training Niedz and his friends. In simple terms, it would just make things a whole lot easier if we were all in the same place. There’d be no need to go to the trouble of getting messages to each other across the city. Fortunately, Diego had a few spare rooms left over, so there weren’t any space issues.
Currently, the curse vendor was poring over a bulky reference book, looking between it and the wooden tag on the table beside it as he grumbled to himself. I was curious if he’d made any progress, but...
“It’s no use,” he answered, throwing his hands up. “I have no idea. The pattern’s not in the book. It resembles the ones for ‘barrier’ and ‘anchoring,’ but the details are different.”
“So there’s no way to check what it does?” I asked.
“Pretty much. We’ve no way of knowing unless we can get our hands on a dungeon weapon. And depending upon the effect, we might not be able to figure it out even then.”
“What do you mean?”
“I’ll give you an example. One of these wooden tags can grant increased endurance. But if you bestow that effect onto a weapon, nothing visibly changes, right? In those cases, you’ve no way of knowing what to even begin testing to figure out what it does.”
“Ah, I see what you mean. You’d probably eventually notice that the weapon seems particularly durable, though.”
“There you have it. The endurance tag would be simple, since it’s been discovered before and is in the book—someone must’ve gone through the exact process you described, then tested it thoroughly. But that’s the product of repeated study. Here, look at all these pages in the back.”
Diego held out the reference tome, flipping through the pages until he revealed a long list of recorded patterns with the same words next to them: “effect unknown.” There were other comments too, descriptions of suspected effects and behavior exhibited under certain conditions, but none of the information seemed certain. Evidently, we’d found another wooden tag that would go into this list.
“Still, there’s always the chance that its effect will be obvious once it’s bestowed,” Diego remarked optimistically.
“Oh? What kinds of effects might it have in that case?” I asked.
He thought about it for a moment. “It could change the weapon’s color, for one thing,” he said. “There are quite a few cursed objects that alter color or pattern. Almost too many, in fact—there are still some that definitely haven’t been discovered yet. Here, look at this section.”
Diego flipped to a series of pages with illustrations of weapons before and after the tag alterations. Some simply changed color, while others adopted flame patterns, polka dots, or became etched with entire works of art. He was right about the amount of variation, but it all seemed rather useless, in my opinion. I had no desire to deck myself out in flashy designs; all black was good enough for me.
I did get worried that my skull mask and robe made me look too much like a villain sometimes, but I was hardly in a minority among adventurers. A lot of us went with dark colors. Part of that was simply because they hid wear and tear better—after all, no matter how well you cared for your arms and armor, a certain amount of degradation was unavoidable. Hence, if you could conceal it, all the better.
If you looked shabby, you ran the risk of leaving your client with a bad impression, which could lead to them giving you an equally bad evaluation for the commission. That was why it was common for skilled adventurers to dress rather plainly, while newbies preferred flashier getups. Not that there weren’t exceptions—some extremely famous adventurers dressed in a way that made their identities obvious even at a glance, since that could invite more commissions—not to mention ward off anyone who might’ve wanted to pick a fight, among other benefits.
“I imagine the prices attached to those effects aren’t all that high, right?” I asked.
“Yes,” Diego confirmed. “After all, you could simply have your weapon painted instead. A tag enchantment is slightly more convenient, since the color will never chip, but that’s a rather unimportant consideration. And needless to say, tags with unknown effects barely sell for anything, given the chance of getting something dangerous.”
“Ah, right. Cursed objects. Makes sense that there’d be negative effects too.”
“Indeed. Stamina reduction, mana reduction, headaches, and stomachaches, just to name a few. Just plain old curses. With all the trouble it takes to get your hands on a dungeon weapon, who’d want to enchant it with something like that?”
“You’ve got that right. But I guess without a weapon from the dungeon, we’ll never know to begin with, huh?”
“We might come across a weapon or two while we’re delving that we can test it on. The chance of finding items like that increases in the middle strata and lower. The best odds are at the bottom, of course, but I doubt we’re strong enough to handle the monsters down there.”
“Just for reference, how strong do you think you’d need to be?”
“You’d need three or more Gold-classes, I suspect.”
“Ah. Definitely not doable for us, then.”
Both Capitan and I were Bronze-class, while Diego was probably good enough to be called Silver-class—not that it made a difference in this regard. Well, Capitan could probably make it to Gold-class if he went for it, honestly.
It didn’t matter, though, since we didn’t need to delve that deep. There was no point in dwelling on it any further.