The one wonderful thing about technologically enlightened societies that have inverted supply and demand was that resources were almost always available.

  Of course, people died when that presumption shattered, such as in an emergency, but the short of it is that I could almost certainly now get about two or three days of calories whenever I needed.

  That was the wonder of flour. Of bread.

  Of course, my body was and would likely always be a child's body, so after baking and eating bread, I got to sleep.

  Although it was a surprisingly difficult environment to survive in, this world was convenient in various ways.

  There was little wind thanks to the dense forest, so the embers of my first flame survived long enough for me to reuse them. There was enough abundant dry wood for me to have all the fire I needed.

  And the wood was so very dry, even a kid like me didn't have too much trouble starting a fire.

  Though, things might get difficult if it ever rained, so I promised to look for a better home once my basic needs were met.

  I had bark gruel and bread, but while that could keep me going, I'd eventually start to suffer malnutrition. Luckily, my body always reincarnated with perfect health, so I could go weeks on a poor diet before it'd catch up to me, but a child's body made survival challenging even when I was healthy.

  I'd rather avoid the side effects of malnutrition, if I could.

  And so, after cooking up a light breakfast of bread, I got to work.

  Though I wanted to explore this forest more, it had no apparent nutrients, whereas the technologically enlightened world had everything I needed. I would therefore live in the forest but work in the city.

  ***

  Going through the portal, I had three jobs for the day: find alternative revenue sources, explore the city, and collect more bottles.

  It was pure luck that I'd managed the first one.

  Since the dungeon's purpose was for people to get Skills, whatever those were, I didn't think anything of how crowded it was closer to the portal, or what all the various people might be doing.

  They were just trying to get Skills.

  By pure chance, a couple people went through the portal before I did, and on the other side, went over to the kiosk that seemed to watch over the park.

  There, they handed something over, and got something in return.

  Money.

  Or so I'd guess. It wasn't coins like what I'd earned the prior day, but it seemed like a paper currency to me.

  I didn't want to call attention to myself, but I very much wanted to know what the small group had traded to earn money, so I ran over to get a closer look.

  The person working at the kiosk stared blankly at me for a moment, and I almost ran away, but then they showed me a small crystal.

  Ah. It was the crystals those squirrels had turned into when they died.

  That made sense. They seemed to be a form of fuel, and fuel was like a societal lifeblood for technologically enlightened civilizations. Regardless of its value, there was no way such a society would simply throw it away, unless it was simply too inefficient to use.

  But that man had used it.

  It seemed I had a job waiting for me in the Lost too.

  If I were an ordinary person, I would hesitate to trust the man's word that the dungeon prevented people from dying... but I'd be reincarnated either way. If anything, it'd be good to know if my immortality trumped the dungeon's or not.

  It'd be annoying to start over again, but I'd only spent a few days in this world anyway. Sure, if I died, my next life might be nightmarish... but there was no guarantee this one wouldn't shape that way too.

  After all, for all I knew, this world was on the verge of something akin to global thermonuclear warfare, and would soon end in a fiery holocaust. I could probably survive an irradiated hellscape, but the main point is that things could always get way worse.

  On the other hand, if he was telling the truth... nobody had more experience dying than me. It was a system I could take full advantage of.

  ***

  Still, I had no weapons aside from rocks, and so I gathered bottles for now, all the while searching for a proper armament to hunt with.

  Once I had enough bottles, I returned to the store, my de facto first employer and business partner. The same shopkeeper was running things.

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  It wasn't empty, but the small group of teenagers didn't interact with me, so it might as well have been.

  I turned the bottles in, and searched for things I'd need.

  Ideally, I'd be able to get some long term nutritional sources, like salt, cooking oils, perhaps a form of protein.

  However, I couldn't be sure about any of the items for sale. Not even their prices.

  Still, I found a bunch of tin cans that had various images on them, and chose one that seemed to contain fish. If I had to be precise, it had some kind of liquid and some kind of organic-feeling solid inside.

  Then I grabbed a pocket knife. It was the kind that you could manually pull the blade out, where it locked into place.

  Hopefully, I had enough for both. If I didn't, I wasn't sure which to prioritize.

  The shopkeeper once more stared down at the coins I'd offered and the items I'd requested, before taking the former and bagging up the latter.

  Free bags were another wondrous convenience of technology. These were cheap, thin, and made of artificial materials, but they were useful all the same.

  My trade complete, I left to go back through the portal.

  First, I trudged all the way back to my makeshift camp. There was no shelter, but it had a firepit, some clay bowls, and a bit of spare firewood ready, not to mention my flour.

  A world without insects was wondrous too. I didn't have to worry about protecting my food.

  Then I used the knife to open the tin.

  It wasn't a very sharp knife, and I didn't have the proper tools to sharpen it, but it'd work for now.

  The contents really were tiny fish!

  Though they were likely safe to eat as they were, I decided not to take any unnecessary chances, and cooked them along with some flatbread. A slightly larger nearby stone served as my stove, though it was a lot of work cleaning and preparing it.

  I didn't have any cooking utensils, so I just made do with what I did have.

  The store had a few, but unless that guy was ripping me off really badly, I assumed a few recycled bottles weren't enough for them.

  My knife worked for now.

  ***

  After I'd eaten lunch, I returned to the portal with my pocket knife in hand.

  I wasn't going to use it right away, though.

  For now, I studied how other people did things.

  The people crowded around the portal seemed to be focused on socializing, perhaps taking a break or coordinating their efforts. I couldn't understand a word they said though, so who knows.

  They wandered off, sometimes alone or sometimes in small groups, but rarely very far from the portal, just in search of a local animal.

  Some people picked whatever they found first, while others were more choosy.

  And then they meticulously planned the creature's assault, right in front of it, before unfairly and ruthlessly hunting it. For the most part, these weren't fair fights. The hunters took full advantage of the animals' docile natures, as well as predicting and using their various reactions against the poor creatures.

  Of course, they were as hunters usually are.

  I didn't plan on being any different.

  'Huh, but... nobody's dying...'

  I'd hoped to observe proof that death wasn't serious here, but... it seemed real mortals aren't as cavalier about death as real immortals are.

  Or that man lied to me.

  Well, I'd just avoid dying too.

  I'd hunted in my past lives, after all. It'd be easier with a sling, but a knife would work just fine.

  ***

  I made a mistake.

  Feeling confident I could reproduce the efforts of all the seasoned hunters on my own, I went deep in the woods, and aggressed a young deer.

  It seriously let me stab it right in the eye, but it moved enough that my blade didn't go in all the way, instead going at an angle and bouncing off of its skull.

  Then it pushed me back.

  Fortunately, I managed to keep a grip on my sole weapon.

  Unfortunately, I stumbled and fell unto my back.

  I did not manage a second attack. Instead, it charged me, and slammed both its hooves down on my face.

  It was not a painless death. It hurt quite a bit, so I understood very well why people avoided dying in this place.

  However, the man had been honest with me.

  After feeling my skull cave in, I suddenly found myself back beside the portal, on my feet and holding a bloodied knife. I had no injuries to speak of.

  Even though I was used to returning to life after death, this was still somewhat new to me. All my memories were perfectly intact, and I arrived at a known location. This sort of cheap immortality was leagues better than my own.

  Although I wondered if there was a limit, I felt emboldened even more, and returned to the deer.

  I died a few more times in much the same way, but it did not recover between each of my deaths. It didn't even seem to recognize me as the source of its injuries, patiently allowing me the first strike each time.

  If it hadn't, I'd have been doomed against it. An immortal such as myself, turned helpless prey to a single deer.

  But instead, I overcame it with naught but stubborn determination.

  I learned that I was only revived with whatever I had with me, so a few times, I had no choice but to return to it to find my bloodstained knife, or once, to pull it out of the creature.

  An act, by the way, it didn't appreciate. That time, I died without landing any extra hits, though it was bleeding out of an extra wound for my trouble, so it wasn't a total waste.

  With no possibility for me to lose, my victory was assured.

  I collected the small crystal shard the deer had become after its death.

  Of course, since I'd witnessed others clean themselves up between hunts, I did the same, returning to the nearest stream to wash myself and my weapon, making sure to dry the latter on my robes.

  But then I eagerly ran out the portal to trade the crystal in.

  ***

  Although I wasn't sure of exact numbers, selling two sets of bottles gave me an idea of which coin was the bigger denomination.

  Assuming the shopkeeper hadn't taken advantage of my ignorance, of course.

  Eight bottles earned me four big coins and four small ones.

  Nine bottles instead got five big coins and two small ones.

  With that assumption, a small coin was a fifth of a big coin, and therefore each bottle was worth three small coins.

  The crystal shard I'd earned got me two big coins.

  It took a couple hours to earn, so it wasn't a big improvement in terms of pay, but there were seemingly endless animals I could hunt, whereas finding discarded bottles was entirely up to luck.

  I'd keep opportunistically gathering them, but hunting would become a far more stable source of income.

  Though, the cheap knife I used probably wouldn't last.

  Since squirrels seemed easier to kill, I went back to hunt one of them, but...

  I only got one big coin from the shard I got from that. One big coin, and my robes were torn up even more in the process.

  The person who took it pointed at a sign on the outside of the kiosk when he saw my disappointed reaction, but I could understand neither him nor the sign.

  I did learn that going through the portal healed all the scratches the squirrel left behind. I wondered why that woman had bothered to heal me.

  If simply going through a portal could heal all wounds... either this world's medical technology was remarkable, given I didn't see anybody coming for the sake of healing injuries, or there was some catch.