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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