Since it had apparently become a rule that people had to keep monitoring devices on them in the Lost, it was almost understandable that they wanted to monitor me too.
Of course, they wanted me to keep my phone with me wherever I went, not just in the Lost, so they were definitely still just doing it to keep tabs on me in particular.
But it wasn't too bad, at least.
For now.
***
My experiments with the plants gave near-immediate results, but results that would stretch out the research for months, or possibly years.
I chose radishes, a low calorie plant that was easy enough to grow, according to my research on the materials available through the phone I'd been given.
They wouldn't fill me up or anything. They probably weren't even worth the effort it'd take to grow them.
But the pots with Terran soil sprouted in only a few days, proving that I could just grow things that way.
It'd be a tremendous amount of work, but I could probably get a cart or something to speed it up.
Though... if I had to rely on Terra for gardening supplies, it was probably just cheaper to continue buying food directly.
It'd be a different story if I could produce enough fertilizer myself, but so far, the Lost seemed completely inarable.
And that's why, despite the initial success, it proved to be a very slow problem with no immediate solutions.
It was a lot of work, but I gradually set up two compost sites, both using materials from the Lost. Leaves, sticks, a bit of charcoal, local water, and so on.
One was Lost-only, but the other, I added a bit of fertilizer I got from Terra.
Not wanting to carry it all the way, I splurged on a small hand cart.
My savings were dwindling rapidly, but I was also earning more than ever before, discounting those days I spent following that girl while she mapped out the whole forest, so it didn't seem like a huge problem.
***
'Hadn't he already seen me hunt?'
Nevertheless, I obliged.
It turned out he wanted to see how I hunted in the Lost, not in the Red Forest, so I got out my old crossbow and made sure it was ready to use.
"They got annoyed with me for dying so much, so I usually climb in a tree and shoot them," I explained.
Then I did it to a poor deer we found, collecting the shard afterward.
I tried to give him a 25-coin as half the reward, since he helped find it, but he refused. "No, that's fine. I forced you to hunt it instead of the ones at the other dungeon, so if anything, I should probably pay you for wasting your time."
"That's fine."
"Still... I guess you can't just climb a tree over there once you find something, but you've got good aim. Surely you'd be able to shoot them before they reach you."
"Yeah, probably."
"And even if it survived, you're pretty sharp. You should have enough time to switch to your spear."
"Hmmm... I guess so..."
"So... what I'm asking is... how come you never bring it hunting? The crossbow, I mean."
"If it breaks, I can't afford a new one."
"I see... but isn't that true here too?"
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"Yes, but I avoid fights that I could lose here. I can't do that there. It could break by accident, and it'd set me back by two to four weeks if it did, or maybe even more."
"Ah... oh, right. You know, you're an honorary member of the Azure Dragons. We have equipment insurance policies. They're a good deal, even for probationary members, and since you're an honorary member, you'd probably be able to skip all that and get the same rate as a full member from day one."
Insurance was a funny form of gambling where the gamblers pretend they're eliminating risk rather than trying to profit off of it, but the house still always won in the end.
If a casino didn't guarantee its own victory, it was doomed. The cutthroat practices these organizations often did varied greatly from world to world, but since it spawned from basic evolutionary principles, their need to take advantage of their players was practically a universal constant.
Exceptions probably existed, but that made them exceptional.
Still, he was trying to push it on me. Maybe I'd gotten too much of a free ride with them thus far.
My desire to avoid debt stemmed from a desire to avoid conflict and attachment, not to keep accounts even and fair. If I had to be scammed a bit, it was just another survival expense.
At the very least, insurance also couldn't be obviously more expensive than simply being frugal and saving up, or else it also wouldn't survive.
Con artists were a social tight wire act, no matter how they did it.
"Sure, I'll consider it."
***
It turned out to be remarkably benevolent.
I'd have to pay a measly 560 a month. It wasn't nothing, but it was very affordable.
That'd give me a policy worth 56,000 toward repairing or replacing my crossbow and any related equipment.
Furthermore, the money remained mine until I cashed it out. Whatever was paid in even accrued some interest, and I could withdraw it too if I wanted, though I'd only get my current balance.
It was like a bank account that doubled as an insurance policy.
"How do you... make money from this?"
"Huh? We don't. It operates at a loss, actually, not that that'd ever be your fault, but some of the seniors abuse it a lot."
'Well... that's just ordinary corruption, though...'
He continued.
"The whole guild's basically like that. Most of its income comes from branding deals and other investments. It's basically a passion project, so none of the seniors care if it makes money, only that it keeps operating. If it was ever in the red, they'd probably just cover its expenses."
'Ah...'
High ranking adventurers made a lot of money.
Being a B rank meant a cushy job. They weren't rich by objective standards, but try telling that to people who barely got by.
Being an A rank meant a bit of real wealth. Multiple houses, luxury travel, and even personal assistants were common at that level.
Legally, there were a bunch of S ranks like me who weren't actually better than A ranks. S just meant we defied ordinary standards. Someone who couldn't ever die was automatically an S rank, since with the right precautions, I could go into any dungeon and be pretty much fine.
But there were also true S ranks, people above A ranks. They could be insanely rich. Some of the richest people in the world were S rank adventurers.
There weren't many of them, and they didn't usually rely on guilds, though.
So the Azure Dragons comprised a bunch of A ranks in their senior membership, and promising juniors who usually ranked below them.
Actually, my phone had member rankings. Suon was a B rank, but there were a few C ranks.
They didn't formally bring in lower than that, listing a couple D and E ranks as perspective members.
Ironically, this meant I was the highest ranking member, but in practice, I was probably their least competent one.
Anyway, I got the insurance policy, and also set up a bank account.
Since I had no way of cutting ties with the guild, it at least let me help out in a small way, because while they gave their members a cut of the interest they earned, the guild kept a small amount for operational costs.
It was a way I could repay them for everything they did, even though I barely had any money of my own.
Suon showed me how to deposit and withdraw money, both at the kiosk outside the portal, and various automated machines throughout the city.
'Though I could have just looked it up myself...'
***
The insurance policy guaranteed the first payout. The only downside to invoking it was that it meant they'd review your rates or potentially charge an upfront deposit to continue using it.
But it wasn't like I'd have to pay them back right away or anything.
I disliked debt, but it at least served as a one-time safety net that let me bring my crossbow to the Red Forest without worrying about it breaking.
Well... I still worried that it would. I still wasn't very comfortable relying on an insurance policy.
But it became worth it to at least try and see.
If it remained profitable, I could just replace it myself. If not, then I'd stop doing it, and eventually pay off the loss over the next two years instead of immediately.
I had all the time this world would allow me to have, anyway. Two years was nothing.
And so, I tried hunting with the crossbow, using my spear as an unwieldy sidearm.
Having a sword would be better, but... swords weren't great against animals anyway...
It worked well.
As usual, the green, almost leaf-like inhabitants were far less durable.
One managed to survive the first shot, and limped away instead of pursuing the fight, so while they were very dumb, they weren't totally suicidal.
After reloading, which was always a huge effort in itself with my skinny arms, I chased its blood trail to finish it off.
The blood was odd, by the way.
They had blood, or something like it, that was green rather than red. If it were red, it'd perhaps be hard to follow amidst the red plants and orange-red soil, so the fact it was green helped make it stand out.
But it also stood out because it very slowly burned once it was exposed to the air.
I thought it might help cauterize the wound, but the blue flame took forever to consume the green blood, and was only very slightly warmer than the air around it.
I really wanted to try gathering some, but I didn't have the proper equipment for that, and besides, when the corpse evaporated upon death, it took nearly all the blood still inside its body with it.
The odd light I'd seen with every death was probably just trace amounts of blood being exposed during the whole process... or maybe another strange reaction.
Well, for now, I filed it away on my phone under possible future experiments.