The two stopped before a particularly dilapidated stone hut. Dried and fresh, damp seaweed hung tangled all over its exterior. The fishy stench grew even stronger, making even the black-haired wizard who had led the way frown.
"@4#￥."
The black-haired wizard rapidly chanted an incantation. With a rustling sound, a mass of black insects resembling sea spiders crawled out from beneath his robes and swarmed toward the hut.
Moments later, the swarm receded like the tide, and someone shoved the seaweed-covered hut's door open from inside with a bang.
A thin figure emerged from the hut.
He looked like a middle-aged man in his forties, of average build, with gray-green eyes. He seemed to have just been hauled out of the water, his hair plastered to his head in clumps.
His appearance made the fishy reek in the air much stronger.
Dago noticed organs resembling fish gills on both sides of the man's cheeks, opening and closing faintly.
His skin was equally damp, yet large patches of it had ulcerated, as though from years of soaking in water.
"Chuck!"
The black-haired wizard called the man's name. His lips moved, as though he were communicating something to him privately.
Finally, he tossed two potion bottles filled with pink liquid at the man's feet and said coldly, "Think carefully. Besides me, there isn't another wizard in all of Windrest Harbor willing to provide you with a suppressant for sea poison disease."
Then, as though deliberately explaining things to Dago, the black-haired wizard turned and said quietly, "People like him, born from unions between Sea Folk and humans, have a tremendous innate flaw in their bloodlines. Their bodies keep ulcerating until they die."
"We were interested in their bloodlines in the early days and captured a batch for research. Unfortunately, after spending vast