Chapter 116: Poaching Talent

Su You bought a total of five skill manuals, each costing ten silver coins, so that was fifty silver coins spent right away.

Aside from sewing and carpentry, the other three manuals were for fishing, melee combat, and basic defense.

...

Up to now, Su You had bought everything she needed and could buy.

Seeds cost about 4 silver coins, cotton and soft cloth 90 silver, beast hides and feathers 39 silver, monster drops 83 silver, tools 12 silver, and the five skill manuals 45 silver (Buguo bargained 5 silver off the price)...

All together, she’d spent a total of 273 silver coins.

Since Yun Li and the others hadn’t yet paid her for the daggers she sold, Su You didn’t need to pay anything herself... In fact, not only did she not need to pay, Yun Li actually owed her 14 gold coins and 57 silver coins.

After getting the money, Su You called Lyle over to help move the goods. When Lyle came, he happened to bring Lake with him, who had just finished mining stone.

Looking at the piles of materials, Lyle was glad he’d had the foresight not to come empty-handed—he’d brought the wooden cart along.

Even so, with the cart, they still had to make three trips to move everything.

It wasn’t that the quantities were huge, but there were just too many different kinds of items. The cart only had ten slots and couldn’t fit everything at once.

While they were moving things, Uncle Feng kept staring at Buguo. Buguo wasn’t intimidated at all and stared right back, like two stubborn kids having a contest.

“Lord Su, this little girl is really something. So young and already so sharp-tongued. Who knows how many merchants will fail to make a perfect deal in your territory in the future...” Uncle Feng felt a bit embarrassed to keep staring at Buguo, so after a while, he looked away and sighed.

Su You smiled and shook her head slightly. “You misunderstand—Buguo isn’t a resident of Sunset Territory.”

“She’s not from your territory?” Uncle Feng was surprised, and a little delighted.

He glanced at Buguo, then at Su You, not quite understanding their relationship, but he didn’t doubt Su You’s words.

After all, Su You had no reason to lie. Whether Buguo was a local or not didn’t affect the deals that had already been made.

He didn’t think there was anything wrong with Su You bringing in ‘outside help’ to assist with bargaining. Trading isn’t a competition—there are no rules saying only your own people can help you haggle.

But now that he knew Buguo wasn’t a resident of Sunset Territory, an idea popped into Uncle Feng’s mind.

He turned to look at Yun Li, only to find Yun Li was looking at him too. Their eyes met, and both instantly understood what the other was thinking.

“Since Buguo isn’t one of Lord Su’s people, I suppose you wouldn’t mind if I tried to poach her?” Yun Li smiled. Though he sounded like he was joking, there was a hint of seriousness in his tone.

Su You replied casually, “Buguo isn’t from my territory. She’s free to go wherever she likes. How could you call that poaching?”

She wasn’t actually worried about Yun Li stealing Buguo away, because she knew Buguo wouldn’t go with him—at least not right now. After all, she still had unfinished business with that priest.

And if the priest’s matter was settled, Buguo would be even less likely to go with Yun Li. After being tricked twice already, there’s no way she’d trust a stranger so easily a third time.

“Here are fifty silver coins, as a reward for helping sell the daggers.” Ignoring Buguo’s stunned expression, Su You shoved the already-prepared pouch of coins into her hand.

Before Buguo could react, Su You handed her a second, smaller pouch.

The first pouch was the reward for selling the daggers; the second was for helping haggle down the prices while shopping.

After giving both pouches to Buguo, Su You patted her on the head and left the post station, leaving the space to those who wanted to poach talent, and the one about to be poached.

...

Since she’d left the post station, Su You didn’t know what happened inside. In any case, she hadn’t gone far when, before she could even instruct Lyle and the others on where to put the materials, she saw a small figure dash out of the post station.

After leaving, Buguo had originally planned to head straight back to the city where the priest was, but after hesitating, she came over to Su You, apologized, and said goodbye.

Whether it was to leave a good impression or for some other reason, when Buguo came to say goodbye, Su You casually took a piece of berry-roasted meat from her warehouse and handed it to her.

But Buguo didn’t accept it.

“Thank you... The three silver coins and those coppers you gave me are more than enough for plenty of food... I’m leaving now.” The three silver coins were the amount in the second pouch Su You had given her.

To avoid the silver being too conspicuous, Su You had added some copper coins to the pouch—twenty or thirty at most, but enough to buy snacks along the way.

“Take care. And what I said before still stands—you’re always welcome back, anytime.”

Buguo didn’t reply. She just hugged her bundle tightly and left the territory at a run.

Her departure happened to be seen by Dolly, who was coming out of the sewing shop. Dolly was curious about the little girl, but she had more important things to discuss with Su You.

“Miss Lord! My sewing skill has reached the beginner level!”

Su You turned to look at her, and her already good mood from recent gains got even better at Dolly’s news.

However, after sharing the good news, Dolly looked a bit down... Although her sewing skill had reached beginner level, her repair skill was still stuck at the beginner bottleneck.

“Unfortunately, my repair skill still hasn’t improved...”

“Skill improvement was never something that could be achieved overnight... Actually, I’m even happier that you improved your sewing skill today.” Su You wasn’t just trying to comfort her.

Of course, if Dolly had improved her repair skill, that would have been great, but for Su You, the only immediate benefit would be repairing the Fire Demon Armor. There were still a few days before the dark creatures attacked.

Even if the attack started and Dolly hadn’t leveled up, it wouldn’t be a problem—Su You had plenty of alternatives.

(End of chapter)"

"117. Scrap Heap

But upgrading her sewing skills didn’t just mean Dolly had gained a new ability—it also meant she could now craft many sewing recipes she hadn’t been able to make before.

And it just so happened that Su You had recently bought a large batch of materials suitable for sewing, like cotton, soft cloth, animal hides, and so on…

“Since your sewing skill has leveled up, I’ll leave all these materials for you to handle,” Su You said, pointing at the piles of fabric and cotton scattered on the ground.

Dolly had never refused anything Su You asked of her, so she immediately crouched down, inspecting the materials as she asked what Su You wanted her to make with them.

“What do you want to make? Though it might take me a few more days to get started… I just leveled up, so I’m still not very skilled yet. If I use such good materials right away, I might waste them. Let me practice for a couple of days first before using this batch.” Dolly stroked the soft cloth, the excellent texture making her reluctant to let go.

“If you’re not confident, you can practice with burlap first,” Su You said. She hadn’t intended for Dolly to use the good materials right away anyway. She’d bought this batch of cotton and cloth mainly to make pillows, quilts, and everyday clothing.

“Mm, I should practice with burlap first… Huh? What’s this?” Dolly looked at the booklet that had been shoved into her hands, momentarily stunned. But when she saw the big characters on the cover—“Basic Sewing Study Manual”—she realized what it was.

She’d seen similar manuals before, though not for sewing, but for repairers.

“I originally bought this for you to learn sewing skills. Now that you’ve already leveled up, it’s not as useful, but if you run into any problems while making things, it might still help.”

Although she’d leveled up, Dolly hadn’t done so through the system’s learning process, so she was bound to have missed some details. So, while the manual wasn’t hugely useful, it could still help a bit.

Since she’d already handed out the sewing manual, Su You also gave the carpentry manual to Lyle, and then handed the basic defense manual to Lake.

Combat skills and life skills are different. Learning life skills depends heavily on talent, but while talent is important for combat skills too, hard work matters even more.

And not all skills require talent—for example, defense skills don’t. So the basic defense skill manual is a universal skill that anyone can learn. There’s no such thing as not being able to learn it—only not wanting to, or not putting in the effort.

Unfortunately, the merchant caravan only had one copy of the basic defense manual, or Su You would have bought more.

“Lake, you learn it first. Once you’re done, pass it to Lyle, and then finally to Doya.” The reason Doya was last was because she was a ranged fighter and generally less likely to be attacked.

But just because she was rarely attacked didn’t mean she shouldn’t learn it. The more you know, the better. It just wasn’t as urgent—Lyle and Lake, being melee fighters, needed to learn it first.

“Got it. I’ll learn the skill as soon as possible,” Lyle and Lake said, almost in unison.

…

With everything distributed, Su You started dealing with the remaining materials and prepared for another round of construction.

Before handling the materials, Su You decided to expand the territory’s warehouse space. Otherwise, there simply wouldn’t be enough room for all this stuff.

There were two ways to increase warehouse space: build another warehouse, or upgrade the existing one. Both took time, so Su You quickly made a few wooden chests to store things temporarily.

Unlike before, this time Su You placed the chests inside Residential House 4.

Actually, a warehouse didn’t have to be a purpose-built building. You could also turn an empty room into a “warehouse” by filling it with chests. In a way, that counted as a warehouse too.

However, this kind of warehouse wasn’t recognized by the system—it was a workaround players used by exploiting the game’s mechanics.

Although you couldn’t upgrade it, you could fit quite a few chests in a normal building, so even without upgrades, the storage capacity wasn’t less than a real warehouse.

…But this method was only good for the early stages. Later on, you’d still need proper warehouses. Too many chests made it hard to find things, you couldn’t keep food fresh, and the stacking limit didn’t change—so items took up even more space.

Su You cleared out all the basic furniture from Residential House 4 and arranged the chests in a U-shape. Except for the corners, which were left empty so the chests could be opened, she managed to fit ten chests in total.

With each chest holding twenty slots, that made two hundred slots altogether.

At the same time, Su You built Warehouse 2 behind Warehouse 1, and also built Residential Houses 5 and 6 next to House 4.

With these three buildings finished, half of Su You’s stockpile of wood was instantly gone. She still had plenty of stone, though, since Lake had just brought back a batch—more than enough for her needs.

“By the way, I set up a lumberyard near where you’re mining stone. If you chop any wood, you can store it there,” Su You said, suddenly remembering, and turned to tell the two brothers.

Lyle acknowledged, and also told Su You that he’d finished turning over all the soil in the fields.

Hearing this, Su You immediately pulled out a pile of wooden fences and gates from the workbench—these were all materials for building basic farmland.

To build basic farmland, she also needed a large amount of ash.

Each plot of basic farmland required 20 ash. She wanted to build six more plots, to make a total of ten including the four she already had, so she needed 120 ash.

But she only had 19 ash left, leftovers from the last time she built farmland. She didn’t even have enough for one plot, let alone six.

It looked like she was short by a lot, but ash was actually a very easy material to get.

Su You went over to the central fire and opened its information panel. On the second page, labeled “Scrap Heap,” she found a huge pile of ash and charcoal.

The central fire, at its core, was just a fire burning—so it was perfectly normal to have ash and charcoal left over after burning.

(End of chapter)"

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