Although gaining another Skill could be extremely valuable, it didn't sound like the chances of it happening were very good.
So I declined to enroll in the tournament.
Van even offered to let me have a complete bye and just challenge the tournament's victor as the dungeon's boss, but I declined that too.
In fact, I mostly avoided the matches altogether.
I had a few reasons, like not wanting to call even more attention to myself, as well as a general distaste for relying on weapons provided by the tournament officials instead of using something that was actually mine.
But Lilac was the biggest reason.
It seemed likely to me that she'd have encountered violence in her past, and I didn't see any benefit in having her watch more of it.
Fortunately, even though they were a bit more prepared running this tournament than they were with the last one, there wasn't exactly a stadium for the fights to the point that they'd demand our attention.
We could just hang out far enough away, and we might hear the sounds of fighting, but we wouldn't see anything.
So that's what we did.
I'm not sure what benefit it served the guild for us to do so, but they didn't seem to mind us doing so, or perhaps they were just too busy with the tournament to complain.
***
Hero194: There's another tournament today.
VendingMachine: Yeah, the guild announced it a while ago.
Hero194: They did?
Indigo997: Did you just find out by going there?
Hero194: Um... well...
OutsiderFan71: Is Kid attending it?
Hero194: I'm not sure?
Hero194: I don't see her in the featherweight division...
Popcorn5: I don't think she is.
Popcorn5: She's over here playing... chess?
Popcorn5: With the kid she, uh... kidnapped earlier...
***
Some people came to watch us play.
Well, I assumed they came for a break from the tournament, and since we happened to be playing board games, they decided to see what we were doing.
Unfortunately, I only had one board, so even if the guild hoped I might entertain them, I couldn't really do so.
But fortunately, even with people gathered, Lilac's focus on the game kept her from getting too anxious, although she did try to hide behind me a bit.
Although it wasn't necessarily good that she was still so anxious, she was definitely slowly improving, so I rewarded her progress by ruffling her hair a bit and patting her on the back here and there.
The guild had brought food just like they'd promised.
Actually, I didn't recognize the people who were cooking, and when I snooped around the guild's internal messages between games, I found out they'd hired people to cater for the event.
Apparently, the guild would cover the costs of food for its members, as well as for anyone who makes it past the preliminaries.
But since I was already being paid in new plants by coming here, and since I hadn't helped at all with running the tournament, I tried paying anyway.
"Ah, you don't need to do that, miss Kid. You and your guests are covered."
Support creative writers by reading their stories on Royal Road, not stolen versions.
But they didn't let me.
Well... I wasn't sure how much the seeds actually went for. The amount they gave me was seemed an awful lot for a 'sample,' but seeds weren't very expensive in general.
All the seeds I'd gotten for my garden so far cost me around 4000 in total, and the biggest cost was that buying radish seeds alone was less efficient than buying a variety pack that had everything I wanted to plant.
Of course, aglaophotis and moly were adventurer plants, so it was possible their price was ten or even a hundred times the usual. I couldn't find any details with my phone. Every merchant that actually had it just said to call them for a quote.
'Maybe I'll have to try doing that, although I doubt they'd take a kid seriously...'
Even Savi wasn't sure.
But anyway, I could figure out how much three free meals were worth. Honestly, the caterers were charging about two to three times as much as it'd cost to make myself, but either way, it wasn't an awful lot compared to how much I'd have gotten paid to be here, if they'd paid me in imperial money rather than seeds.
So I wasn't too bothered by it.
The one major downside of the Azure Dragons was that since they were more of a passion project than a real business, they usually didn't ever directly pay their adventurers for doing things like this.
It was pretty much the most dangerous sort of guild for me to interact with, but since I didn't have a choice, I just had to accept it. Besides, it seemed like even the ones that were all business would have difficulty viewing a dungeon boss as just another number, so I was already doomed from the moment I'd inherited the role from Kazzim..
With that sort of thinking in mind, I tried to convince Lilac to choose what she wanted to eat, but even after showing her what each menu item represented...
"I-I'll, u-um... have wh-whatever you have..."
'Well... I can't force her to decide everything...'
I chose meat and cheese on bread, along with a side of narrowly sliced potatoes that were salted and lightly coated in vinegar, so that's what she got too.
***
Popcorn5: Okay, yeah, those two are really adorable together.
Hero194: They are? Ugh... I'm stuck in the tournament bracket, so I can't go watch...
OutsiderFan71: What's happening???
Popcorn5: Nothing special, she's just... how do I explain this...
RedOwl: I'm not sure what they were saying, but when they ordered food, Kid took the time to show her each item for sale, and even got out her phone for the ones that weren't already made.
Popcorn5: There's that, but she also has been patting the lavender girl's head like an older sister diligently trying to make her shy little sister feel more comfortable.
OutsiderFan71: More comfortable?
Popcorn5: There are a lot of people here.
Popcorn5: I don't really blame her for being shy.
OutsiderFan71: Do you think they'd let that artist guy draw it...?
***
"Did you watch the tournament at all, kiddo?"
Van finally got a chance to speak with Kid again, but only after everything was over and done with. He was the guild liaison with Kid, but also in charge of the dungeon as a whole.
Which meant overseeing the tournament had been his job.
"No. I didn't want Lilac to watch."
"Ah..."
He hadn't thought of that.
Being an adventurer, it was valuable to become desensitized to violence.
An adventurer who froze up could get others killed. Even getting nauseous at the sight of gore could be a problem for A rankers, since they were expected to provide disaster support.
So he just understood these tournaments, where people relied on the dungeon's beginner effect to go all out and fight to the death with one another, as just preparation for the grim but inevitable real thing.
But Lilac wasn't an adventurer. Kid had insisted that she shouldn't be, and he fully agreed with her assessment.
Moreover, as a former goblin slave, it was likely she'd already seen more violence firsthand than anyone ever deserved to.
"Right... good call. You're free to come back tomorrow, even if you just hang out with Lilac and Savi again, but you don't have to if it's too much of a walk."
"I don't have to?"
"No. You're free to do so, but it'll just be the main tournament. We're recording it, so you can always watch it later on your phone."
"I see..."
He had to remind himself that Kid really did live two hours away from the portal.
Of course, that was the distance with them walking. He could probably clear it in a fraction of the time, but they didn't have movement Skills like he did.
Theoretically, he could buy her and Lilac both hoverboards or some other way of traveling faster, but he knew she wouldn't appreciate receiving such a gift.
If he'd never gotten her a phone, perhaps he could've lied about the price at least, although keeping her ignorant about the world just so he could shower her with gifts seemed like a twisted arrangement that wasn't worth serious consideration.
But as it stood, even if he drummed up some excuse to make her accept such a gift, he doubted she would ever feel comfortable actually using it.
'She avoided using her crossbow just because it might break. There's no way she'd risk breaking even a lower end hoverboard.'
But maybe she someday would get one all on her own, if he found a way to raise her living standards high enough.
***
I declined to attend the rest of the tournament.
Primarily, I didn't want to overwhelm Lilac.
Some exposure to crowds was a good way to slowly unwind her anxieties about them, but overexposure could just make her even more afraid.
Of course, it was also a pretty far walk in general.
If they'd offered further compensation beyond food, it'd be worth considering, but I was eager to start planting the dungeon seeds I'd gotten.
Since I'd had a few days to prepare, I already had a few pots waiting for them.
Naturally, I tried a few variations.
One just had some Terran soil and fertilizer. The second and third both used the hybrid fertilizer and some Lost soil. I ground up a mana shard to add to the third batch, which was what distinguished it from the second.
The rate both plants grew at depended on the dungeon's mana quality.
Since this was the first time they've been grown in the Lost, nobody could guess how long it might take for them to even sprout.
On Terra, even getting them to sprout in the first place required a Skill, so there wasn't even an upper limit to how long I'd have to wait...