"So, why's that outsider girl helping that adventurer girl out, anyway?"

  "They look like a couple of sisters going hiking. It's pretty adorable."

  "They don't look anything like sisters though."

  "That guy, the grumpy guild officer, he said the younger girl's name was Kid."

  "Are you sure he's not just calling her a kid? He calls everyone a kid."

  "No, really. He said..."

  The various would-be adventurers gossiped during their break as they watched the small outsider girl they'd grown accustomed to leave with what they understood was a ranked adventurer.

  Although Kid, as she'd come to be called, had no idea about any of this, barely able to half-understand their conversations, she eventually acquired a small and strange fandom.

  Photographing other people's children was an easy way to get beaten up in this country, not just by the parents but by all sorts of busybodies.

  So, the greater world outside those who came to the dungeon had no idea what she looked like, but record nevertheless existed of a small girl who regularly went to the country's lowest rated beginner's dungeon.

  There was no immense popularity, although a few people who were curious about outsiders did come to try and spot the girl, careful not to get in trouble in the process.

  After all, the Lost was full of such busybodies, and stalking a child was a serious offense.

  Though this had no direct impact on the girl's life, the existence of a barefoot girl who had reportedly hunted harder than most adventurers could imagine... did slowly stir a fire against how the government handled outsiders and dungeon natives in general.

  A very slow fire.

  ***

  "We're not going to explore past the mountains either?" I asked, curiously.

  "No, I'm afraid not. We'd need mountaineering gear, permits which would almost certainly exclude you, and beginner dungeons are rated safe for violence, not getting stuck in the mountains."

  "They're not?"

  "Nope. Don't go out there. I can't believe anyone let you in here without... well, I guess explaining things would be difficult, wouldn't it?"

  Cierri ironically explained things after that.

  Of course, her explanation cost part of a scroll that, even now, was a sizable chunk of a whole weekend's labor to get, so the difficulty was very evident to me.

  While beginner dungeons were safe from violence, even self-inflicted violence, meaning someone did always have a gruesome out by forcing the resurrection effect to respawn themselves, it was very possible to become injured enough to make such a thing impossible, yet not so injured as to force a respawn.

  Broken limbs didn't cause a respawn, nor did becoming trapped somewhere.

  And people did not respawn from starvation.

  The world apparently didn't even acknowledge starvation as a concept. Needing to eat was apparently alien to it, and so it was as though the dungeon viewed someone starving to death as a metamorphosis rather than actual death.

  Of course, in my case, it never ends in death anyway, so the worst will just be moving on to a whole different world if I got stuck. Therefore, while I'd certainly try to be careful, I wasn't especially frightened by the possibility.

  Nevertheless, I nodded along when she tried to get me to promise I'd never do anything so dangerous.

  ***

  Weeks turned to months.

  I'd gradually gotten the hang of speaking the local language, and learned a lot about the local culture.

  The country I'd arrived in, or at least the one on the Terra side of things, was simply the Empire. The language was just imperial.

  Enjoying this book? Seek out the original to ensure the author gets credit.

  This is sort of how most places get named.

  It's kind of how I got named too, in this world and many others.

  They inherit a common descriptive word, and occasionally the name outlasts the original word, spreading beyond its reach in space or time, often both.

  But in this world, there was only ever one Empire, and that Empire is the Empire. The word and name became synonymous.

  Of course, there are plenty of other countries too, but I didn't learn much about them.

  After all, she expected that I was in school, the compulsory education all imperial children receive, and that I'd learn such things there, sooner or later.

  Her reaction to the western plains was about the same as the eastern desert.

  She thought it was interesting, but outside the scope of our mapping project... which meant that we were going to stick to just mapping the forest.

  I wondered what the point of mapping out a single wooded area so thoroughly was, but she said having reliable maps could allow people to go further out while practicing without fear of getting lost, and therefore use the dungeon more efficiently.

  Getting lost was the only real danger in a beginner dungeon anyway. That and getting stuck.

  After I'd earned a few paychecks, I eventually saved up enough that buying a crossbow became feasible.

  The crossbow itself was 28,000, and the various supplies I needed to maintain it properly practically tripled the price.

  String and wax for the string were obvious fees, but basic materials and woodworking tools to make my own arrows added quite a bit. Replacement parts in case it got damaged added even more.

  Pretty much a whole 144,000 paycheck gradually vanished so I could hunt more efficiently, and importantly, guarantee that I could service the weapons I'd bought myself.

  Of course, I also got a slingshot for squirrels, a more durable pocket knife that cost fifty times as much as the cheap ones I'd been using and breaking, sharpening tools, and even a tent and stuff to sleep on.

  I pretty much moved into the cave at that point.

  ***

  And once months turned into seasons, the mapping project eventually concluded.

  Of course, the Lost stayed the same year round. It turned out to be such a convenient place.

  But Terra, or at least the Empire, was starting to get quite cold. I could no longer get away with just the robe, but I didn't want to change outfits just yet, so I just added to it with boots and a coat, wearing the latter only to leave the dungeon.

  It was a common problem, so people set up a whole coat area near the entrance. I didn't use it though. When Cierri asked where my coat was one time, I just told her I put it someplace safe.

  The mapping project went on for fifteen weeks in total.

  Although I spent a pretty sizable chunk already, I'd earned over a million in total.

  Since I'd already survived off of a thousand a week, I could take a twenty year vacation if I wanted to. Well, if I'd kept it all, anyway.

  That was actually the plan.

  After saying farewell for the last time, I went to hibernate in my new cave home.

  Among the tools I'd purchased included various devices that took those crystal shards, which I'd discovered were mana shards, as energy.

  Nothing special, but they seriously helped out a lot: some lights, a little cooker, a water purifier, a small clock I could wear around my wrist, and a really cheap version of the tablet that Cierri had used.

  My tablet was literally just a writing tablet, using light instead of wax, but it was still pretty handy.

  Most of my money went to food though.

  I stockpiled a ton of it in the cave.

  After that, it was time to become someone else.

  I cut my hair short, and dyed it with the local plants, the green turning my hair a dark brown that more or less looked like a common imperial color.

  I also put my robe away, and instead wore a close approximation to what was proper imperial fashion.

  I also avoided human contact for several months, relying on my stockpiles of food to survive.

  Of course, I didn't just waste them.

  I made arrows, even slowly cutting down a whole tree to do so. It was work that a child's body was ill fit for, but I was in no rush, and the wood didn't decay no matter how long it took me to process it all.

  'What a convenient world.'

  I used my sling with rocks and ball bearings to hunt squirrels, while I got ready to go to war with the deer.

  Alas, even armed as I was, I couldn't quite take a deer down in one shot. At least, not all the time.

  Fortunately, I didn't have to, because I could just shoot down at them from the trees.

  It made them quite angry, but these were pretty thick and durable trees. I'd had first hand experience at how much work taking even one down was. I'm pretty sure it injured itself more than the tree in the attempt.

  With all this work, did I get a huge pay raise?

  Not really.

  I could hunt for longer if I wanted, but I went from about a shard every other hour to just a shard an hour.

  Only, now I was using shards for my own purposes, so an eight hour day of hunting meant about seven or so shards.

  I'd gone from 1000 a week to 2400 a week.

  It was sizable, but it was still a pittance compared to 1500 an hour.

  Of course, I'd wanted to vanish, so I held off on selling those for a while.

  Over the weeks, I'd stockpiled enough food to last me a year or so. It was more expensive, closer to 2500 a week, but also more nutritious. Naturally, it wasn't something that could last forever.

  But it had also just been a single two week paycheck.

  I figured I might be able to improve my situation enough to afford it before it ran out.

  Plus, thanks to the dungeon's oddities, it was all perfectly preserved in my cave home.

  ***

  I also spent this time studying how the forest even functioned.

  After all, given enough time, eventually branches should fall. I'd even cut down a whole tree!

  As far as I could tell, the animals handled breaking things down in a way that was very strange to what I was used to.

  They'd randomly step on branches to break them, seemingly without any plan or thought to do so, and then eat any parts small enough.

  Since they never went toward the mountains, my home was safe from them.

  Trees, for their part, very slowly regenerated.

  They didn't grow. In fact, I'm not sure they regenerated except after the parts that were lost were destroyed, whether in fire or by the animals' extremely slow destruction.

  They just returned to how they were before they were damaged.

  Although I'd bought a few seeds, I held no hope whatsoever that they'd grow in a world like this, so I didn't even plant them.