6. Cutting Down Trees Starts with Stripping the Bark

In short, when it comes to gravel, the more you have in the early stages, the better—there’s no such thing as too much. Even if you have to throw away everything else, you must always keep at least one slot in your backpack for gravel.

Unfortunately, it seemed that Su You’s luck had run out after finding three pieces of gravel in a row earlier. No matter how hard she searched over the next minute, all she could find were leaves and twigs scattered on the ground.

Still, this was more or less what she expected, so Su You didn’t feel too disappointed.

But while she was rummaging for gravel, she didn’t find any, but instead stumbled upon something that made her extremely nervous and anxious…

“What’s this…” What appeared before Su You was a beast’s paw print, nearly twice the size of her own hand. Just from its size, it was easy to guess that it belonged to a large animal.

However, judging by how faded the print was, Su You could tell that the beast had left some time ago—the mark was no longer very clear.

In addition, there were some tiny tracks next to the large paw print that confirmed her guess.

These smaller tracks were left by small animals. Since wild animals have a keen sense of smell, if the large beast had only just left, its lingering scent would have kept smaller creatures far away—let alone leave tracks right next to its own.

So these traces were enough to prove that the owner of the big paw print had been gone for a while—long enough for its scent to fade away.

Still, even if the beast hadn’t left, Su You didn’t need to be too afraid. She had a blessing from the system that reduced any creature’s desire to attack her.

In other words, as long as she didn’t provoke any wild animals, she was basically perfectly safe.

“Let’s hope I don’t run into it…” Even though she was protected, it was still best not to encounter the beast at all—otherwise, it might interfere with her plans.

After analyzing the situation, Su You calmed down and went back to what she was doing.

She took two pieces of wood from her backpack, added a freshly gathered piece of stone, and put them all into the workbench.

【Craft stone axe with wood*2 and stone*1?】

【Crafting: Axe. Estimated time: 120 seconds】

…

While the axe was being made, Su You spent the two minutes gathering some more branches nearby. When the time was up, she stopped and took her very first stone axe from the workbench.

【Stone Axe】

Category: Tool

Quality: Common

Attack: +1 (Attack Damage: 5)

Durability: 100/100

Description: A standard axe, suitable for chopping trees. Can also be used as a weapon to deal a certain amount of damage.

…

In the tool panel, “Attack: +1” means that this tool adds 1 extra damage when gathering resources.

For example, if a tree has 10 “HP,” using the stone axe means you need to chop it ten times, dealing 1 damage per hit. When the tree’s HP drops to zero, it becomes collectible resources.

Later in the game, you can craft better axes from higher-grade ores.

For instance, a copper axe made from copper ore has “Attack: +2,” which means a tree with 10 HP only takes five swings to chop down.

Even though the copper axe’s attack is only one point higher, it cuts your workload in half and greatly improves your resource-gathering efficiency. That’s the advantage of mining resource points mentioned earlier.

As for the “Attack Damage: 5” stat, that refers to how much damage the axe deals when used as a weapon.

Su You weighed the axe in her hand, walked up to a round tree, found a comfortable stance and angle, and swung the axe at the tree. However, after that first swing, the tree’s HP—originally “10”—remained unchanged.

To an observer, Su You’s swing looked powerful, but in reality, it was all bark and no bite. The axe barely scratched the tree’s surface—well, maybe that’s an exaggeration. The bark did come off a little, and even fell to the ground.

But Su You didn’t seem to mind—in fact, her first swing wasn’t really meant to chop down the tree.

Once she got the hang of it, Su You’s swings became faster and more practiced. In just a few moves, she managed to strip the bark off the round tree.

Looking at the now-bare tree, Su You adjusted her angle and started chopping again.

*Thunk—*

With a dull sound, the battered tree’s HP finally dropped to 9/10.

After nine more swings, Su You finished chopping down the tree and began collecting her spoils.

【Obtained wood*2】

【Obtained bark*3】

【Obtained shredded bark*13】

Now, to explain why she stripped the bark before chopping the tree—it’s not that she had any special hobby, but because the amount of bark you get from chopping is random, and that random number can be zero.

Anyone who’s ever had to rely on luck knows what that means. Su You avoided it whenever she could.

But if you strip the bark manually, the number you get is still random, but the minimum is 1, not 0.

Bark isn’t used for much in the game, but the few uses it does have are very important.

For example, right now, Su You needed bark because it’s a material for upgrading her backpack in the early game.

Her current backpack was level 0. To upgrade to level 1, she needed “String*5, Bark*10.” After upgrading, her backpack would have ten slots.

Doubling the number of slots not only meant she could carry more, but also that she could progress much faster.

She wouldn’t have to agonize over what to keep, what to throw away, or how much to collect without overfilling her pack. For someone with a hoarding habit, having to throw something away was pure torture.

Su You’s luck wasn’t bad this time—she got three pieces of bark from a single tree, which meant she’d only need to chop down seven more trees at most to upgrade her backpack.

Since her backpack was already full (String*10, Gravel*2, Wood*5, Red Berries*50, Branches*13), she couldn’t fit any more bark or shredded bark. So, she put the 13 branches and 13 pieces of shredded bark together, then stored the bark in her backpack.

With that done, Su You went back to stripping and chopping more trees.

Thanks to her gaming experience, Su You knew that round trees, according to reliable data, yielded the most bark when stripped manually.”

“Here’s a fluent, natural English translation of your text: