Dalus had done what he could to help the girl.

  Ironically, he was so seldom stationed at the Lost that he was a natural bad choice for being her, what... sponsor? Informal caretaker?

  It's not like he wanted to wash his hands of her after that, but he was, like so many other adults, busy.

  Still, his plan seemed to work.

  The next time he got to the Lost, he asked about the girl, and found out that she'd in fact stopped dying, so his mission was a success.

  If she was from an abusive family, if she had trouble in her personal life, if she was just depressed and used the dungeon as an outlet... he'd probably never know.

  Or so he thought, anyway.

  But it wasn't like she stopped showing up. Even though she'd stopped hunting, or at least dying in the process, she kept showing up every day, and not just to play tour guide for the dungeon mapper.

  So that odd normality eventually convinced him it was an alright outcome. At least, as good as he could hope for.

  ***

  Cierri, on the other hand, got to know the girl quite well.

  And yet there was always an odd distance. It was like the girl was a phantom. She has her thoughts and opinions, but no real identity.

  Gradually, kid went from a title to a name. From kid to Kid.

  There was the chance her name really was Kid, or that it was something that simply translated to Kid. The girl was simple and honest enough to make that seem believable.

  But it was almost like she didn't have a name, and merely adopted the first one that had been given to her.

  Among the adventurer's detailed notes on the girl and her native language, she mused about the possibility she had been a natural denizen of the Lost.

  It would, at least, explain her casual willingness to simply die over and over again, if she had in fact grown up in a world where death wasn't final.

  It raised the question of why Kid always respawned by the portal, as adventurers, or well, as would-be-adventurers did... but then again, when she pried a bit into the girl's sparse backstory, she found out something interesting.

  The small outsider girl hadn't begun to respawn there until she met Dalus, who took her through the portal.

  'Perhaps that reset her spawn location?'

  Of course, this was all conjecture, but it was basically understood that enemies, be they wildlife or otherwise, also respawned in beginner dungeons.

  Its effect wasn't tailor-made for guests.

  Rather, they were themselves outsiders, coming in to take advantage of and plunder the world's natural resources. In this case, the natural resource of safety from death.

  If this girl were a native, she'd have a strong case to some measure of ownership rights over the dungeon. At the very least, whatever guild was managing it would have to heed her opinion on things.

  However, Kid herself refused to elaborate whether she was or not, despite all of Cierri's attempts to probe that information from her. Of course, it was tactless to simply ask outright.

  After all, if the hunch was true, that'd make her and everyone else who came to the Lost invaders. Who would just trust an invader like that?

  Cierri couldn't blame the kid for being wary, regardless of which dungeon she was from.

  ***

  "Here you go. It's two weeks of pay," Cierri said, handing me a small note-sized paper at the end of our second weekend together.

  I couldn't read everything, but the number was obvious.

  I'd made a hundred and forty-four thousand in two weekends of work.

  Just for comparison's sake, in the month or so I'd been alive in this world prior to the weekend job, not counting the off-the-table bonus I received upfront, I made about four thousand and change.

  Just for further comparison's sake, I made seventy two times as much doing this as I did hunting.

  That was an insane pay raise.

  This narrative has been unlawfully taken from Royal Road. If you see it on Amazon, please report it.

  I could take off work for a whole year and probably survive, as long as food prices generally stayed the same.

  "Wait... why is it this much?"

  At a thousand an hour, we walked about 24 hours across the whole weekend, spending about half our time walking. For two weekends of labor, that should be 48,000, not 144,000.

  "Oh! You must still be learning arithmetic. Here, I'll show you a breakdown."

  It was interesting seeing how she wrote out the numbers on that handheld device of hers, which seemed to be an exceptionally advanced tablet, using magic and light rather than wax.

  "See? Forty-eight hours a week over two weeks at 1500 an hour is 144,000."

  "But we only worked twenty-four hours a week, and I thought it was 1000 an hour?"

  "Well, yes. I was pretty surprised you could keep up with me, but that's just the standard in this business. We were going to pay 1000 an hour, but since you did a better job than expected, I had them raise it to 1500. Honestly, that's the most we can pay a Skill-less guide on a low paying job like this one."

  'This is low paying?'

  I was thoroughly baffled, but although I was starting to learn the local language, it wasn't like I knew anyone I could simply ask.

  I had no choice but to accept it.

  "Do you know how to cash a check?"

  I shook my head.

  "C'mon, I'll show you."

  Naturally, I felt uncomfortable extorting overtime out of my boss for something that I assumed was common knowledge, but she was as pushy as ever, and didn't take no for an answer.

  ***

  The convenience store owner watched as his strangest regular came in, for once ushered by an adult.

  The two girls looked nothing alike, so he didn't have much hope that this was the girl's mother, unless it was a foster mother or something like that.

  "So, you can go to a bank, but the easiest place is right here."

  He marveled as the small robed girl seemed to listen, and found himself asking, "Wait, she can understand you?"

  "Hmm... probably not yet. I'm using a translation spell," the woman answered, leaving him to marvel even more at her nonchalance.

  Those scrolls weren't cheap. He wished he could use them, but reality said no.

  Pretty much only adventuring guilds, who got them through convoluted deals, and hospitals, which relied on government stipends, could use such expensive things. After all, only a few dozen people in the whole country could even make them.

  An ordinary social worker or foster parent wouldn't be able to even dream of such a thing. Perhaps as a once off thing, like for special occasions, but that was it.

  This meant the woman was an adventurer, probably from the nearby dungeon.

  "Just hand him the check, and say you'd like cash and a receipt."

  The small girl pitter-pattered her way over, making him wonder why two adults had just accepted the fact she went around barefoot all the time.

  'Ah... well, I guess she is an outsider...'

  "Cash and a receipt," the girl said in an accent he'd never heard before, handing over a check.

  It wasn't a small amount either.

  The woman winked at him as he glanced at her, wondering why she sent this girl to his store to pick up that much money.

  'Seriously, even a bank would demand twenty-four hours for this kind of thing.'

  But it was hard to tell the girl no, especially since she probably wouldn't understand him anyway.

  He begrudgingly took the check to the back to get some money out of the store safe.

  ***

  I wondered why the man looked so upset.

  At first, I thought it was because I asked for a receipt, making it a bit harder to scam me... but then I remembered he was the same guy who'd sold me things for cheaper than they really were when I first arrived.

  'Maybe I really am supposed to go to a bank for this,' I mused, though upon recollection, I had seen him exchange paper for paper in the past.

  I'd assume it was merely changing denominations, but perhaps he'd done this service before too, and I'd just never realized it.

  As I wondered how much it'd cost, he handed me both a bunch of notes and a receipt. The receipt was pretty complicated, so I just counted the notes.

  He'd given me fourteen that each said 10,000, and four that said 1,000.

  So it was a free service?

  Maybe that's why he was annoyed.

  ***

  Cierri tried buying me something to put the money in, but I refused and slipped away.

  Still, she was fundamentally right.

  While I liked my robe, it was long overdue to find something more normal to wear.

  By this point, I'd gotten accustomed to the local fashions, and had even found a place that sold them more cheaply than most. It seemed to be a second-hand shop, but that was good enough for me.

  Still, 144,000 would vanish in an instant if I splurged, so I just bought the bare minimum.

  A couple pairs of pants, a couple shirts, and a loose hooded jacket. A few pairs of socks and some cheap shoes too, not to mention cheap gloves. They even had some backpacks, so I got one that seemed cheap but sturdy.

  Altogether, it was marked about 60,000, but for some reason, the shopkeeper only took half of it.

  I could barely understand his explanation as he repeated, "half off."

  The next weekend, Cierri told me that it had been on sale, and said I should look out for sale tags or discount signs, but... I'm pretty sure I hadn't seen any.

  Of course, I hadn't mentioned what I bought. I continued wearing my robes, though I did get some cheap sewing supplies to fix it up a bit, since it wasn't like I could do much else between weekends anyway.

  There wasn't even a point in me manually mapping the Lost anymore, since our walks got me more acquainted with it than I would have been otherwise, and while I could manage hiking, frankly, even I wanted a break from it after doing so much every weekend.

  The biggest upgrade, though, was that I finally got a cooking pot and pan set.

  And that was just my first payday.

  'Not that I can be sure how many of these I'll get though...'

  ***

  "A whole desert," Cierri remarked in wonder as she stared at the rocky wasteland before her.

  We'd finally reached the eastern border of the forest in our mapping efforts. Well, it was more like her mapping efforts, while I mostly just watched and followed.

  I gave a nod in response.

  "If you go in, everything tries to attack you though. We're only safe to about this far."

  I showed her the border between forest and desert, finally doing something to truly earn my pay.

  Of course, I'd shown her around to nearby streams from time to time as she walked, but she was the one who found them more often than me, so that felt more like helping out than actually working.

  "Fascinating. If it weren't so far out, it could make for a high level training ground... well, actually, we could use the whole dungeon as a sort of survival march."

  I fretted a bit as she actually walked into the desert, but she hopped back before any of the local wildlife could reach her.

  "My, and aren't they aggressive, too? We'll have to stop the map at the border, and mark it as requiring further research."

  "Further research?"

  "Yes. Well, it'll probably be years before that happens, but maybe someday."