Chapter 118: Balanced Arrows

All the waste produced from burning is automatically collected here. The waste pile has space for ten slots; you can’t manually put items in—it only stores the residue left after burning.

Once it’s full, any extra residue is automatically destroyed by the system. So, if you want charcoal or ash, you have to collect it in time.

【Obtained Charcoal x187】

【Obtained Ash x598】

...

Since Su You hadn’t cleared out the waste before, when she checked this time, nearly five days and nights’ worth of burned residue had completely filled the waste pile.

The charcoal (stack limit 50) took up four slots, while the ash (stack limit 100) filled the remaining six.

With all this ash, Su You immediately finished placing the remaining six basic farmland plots.

Building basic farmland takes two hours, which means in a while, Su You would be able to plant crops on all six plots.

While waiting for the farmland to finish, Su You used about five planks to build another “matchbox.”

Building a “matchbox” doesn’t require any construction time—or rather, it’s so short, just a dozen seconds or so, that a bare-bones house quickly appeared on her territory.

Here, a “matchbox” isn’t literally a box for matches, but a plain, square building with no decorations.

The name “matchbox” is something players came up with; in the construction list, its real name is “Custom Empty House.”

Not only does the Custom Empty House have no exterior decorations, but the inside is just as bare—like an unfinished apartment, completely empty.

The size of the Custom Empty House is up to you: the more materials you invest, the bigger the space, and the longer it takes to build... But even if you build an empty house as big as a stadium, it only takes a few minutes at most.

Su You built this Custom Empty House for a similar reason as the previous Residential House 4—except the former was used as a “warehouse,” and this one would be a “workshop.”

While the Custom Empty House has many advantages—short build time, low material cost—it also has a clear drawback: when your territory has Custom Empty Houses, prosperity decreases.

The more Custom Empty Houses you build and the more space they take up, the more prosperity drops. And the decrease isn’t a fixed value—it increases linearly.

For example, building one Custom Empty House might lower prosperity by ten points, but building two of the same size could lower it by thirty, and three could drop it by eighty or even a hundred... That’s why Su You hadn’t built any before—she needed to upgrade her territory and couldn’t afford the prosperity loss.

But now it didn’t matter as much. She was still eager to upgrade, but even after building a Custom Empty House, her territory’s prosperity was still above fifty—enough to upgrade to a large camp. What she lacked now wasn’t prosperity, but population.

...

After the Custom Empty House was built, Su You opened the territory info panel—sure enough, prosperity had dropped by five points.

She’d had nearly sixty, and now there were only fifty-four left... But Su You had expected this, so she wasn’t surprised. As long as it didn’t drop below fifty and affect upgrades, it was fine.

After checking the info, Su You took out her hammer and recycled all the workbenches near the territory’s heartfire, instantly freeing up a lot of space.

She moved these workbenches into the Custom Empty House: the basic workbench on the left, the furnace on the other side.

Since wooden chests can’t be recycled, Su You built a few more inside the matchbox to store raw materials and workbench outputs.

Once everything was set up, Su You brought out the materials she’d bought earlier.

The cotton and soft cloth had already been sent to the tailor shop—she kept only a small reserve here. The animal hides were the same, mostly stored at Dolly’s tailor shop.

As for feathers and ore, Su You used the feathers to make balanced arrows. Balanced arrows are basically arrows with added fletching.

The original arrows had no fletching; while usable, their balance was much worse.

Feathers came in stacks of fifty-one. Su You bought about two and a half stacks, and since one feather could make two balanced arrows, she had enough materials for about 250 balanced arrows.

She used two stacks of feathers to make stone balanced arrows, leaving half a stack for later—she planned to use those to make copper balanced arrows.

Once the first batch of stone balanced arrows was done, Su You put down her tools and checked their stats—

【Stone Balanced Arrow】(Consumes: Wood x2, Stone x1, Feather x5; can craft 10–12 arrows)

Type: Weapon

Quality: Common

Stats: Attack (10), Armor Penetration (6%), Attack Range (+1), Accuracy (+1%)

Description: Stone arrows with fletching. Can be used as ammo for bows or arrow towers. Has greater range, faster attack speed, and higher armor penetration than ordinary arrows. Improved balance increases accuracy.

The original stone arrows, without fletching, only had [Attack (10), Armor Penetration (5%)], but just by adding fletching, the stats improved noticeably.

Naturally, Su You intended to give all these balanced arrows to Duoya, since she was the territory’s only archer.

After handing the arrows to Duoya, Su You also gave her some animal teeth for making intermediate traps.

With these supplies, Duoya took her red maple bow (which Su You had made for her earlier) and left the territory for some “rehabilitation training” in the forest.

...

...

Since she’d bought so many things, Su You didn’t go out at all today.

But she didn’t feel bored. Building a few structures or crafting some items made the time fly by—she barely had a moment to spare.

After finishing the balanced arrows, she went right back to processing materials: smelting sand into glass, making quill pens from charcoal and feathers, smelting iron ore into ingots...

(End of chapter)"

"119. Buying Food

Once the materials were finished, it was time to continue developing the territory...

Although the territory had already been renovated once yesterday, just as Yun Li had commented about Sunset Territory, there were still far too many buildings missing.

Su You planned to gradually fill in these gaps, but building up a territory isn’t something that can be accomplished overnight. It’s like creating a work of art—you can only finish a part each day, and only after days and months of steady effort will you finally achieve a perfect result.

Today, in addition to the previous ones, Su You planned to construct three more buildings: the Lord’s Manor, the Training Ground, and a Well.

The Lord’s Manor had been mentioned before. It wasn’t just a residence for the lord; it also had other special functions. For example, she could issue announcements, adjust taxes, and modify territory policies from the manor. Without it, Su You wouldn’t be able to perform any of these administrative actions.

Building the Lord’s Manor required quite a few materials, but after several days of stockpiling, Su You had finally gathered enough.

10 planks, 10 stone slabs, 10 marble bricks, 20 glass panes, and 10 pieces of fabric (or soft cloth)—these were the required materials.

Since soft cloth was more precious, Su You naturally chose to use synthetic fiber fabric for the construction.

As for glass, the synthesis path was: 1 sand = 1 glass shard, 3 glass shards = 1 glass pane, so 20 glass panes actually meant 60 units of sand.

Although the caravan didn’t have much sand, they did have at least 60 units. Su You used this batch to fire the glass shards, then combined them at the workbench into glass panes.

As for the planks, stone slabs, and marble bricks, there wasn’t much to say—these were familiar materials she’d used many times before. She had a good stockpile of each, so she didn’t even need to synthesize them and could just use the finished products directly.

[Consume Plank x10, Stone Slab x10, Marble Brick x10, Glass x20, Fabric x10 to build the Lord’s Manor?]

[Building Lord’s Manor. Estimated time: 12 hours.]

Twelve hours—that meant it would be finished around midnight tonight.

Su You placed the Lord’s Manor at the end of the main road running through the center of the territory—in other words, the territory gate, the central fire, and the Lord’s Manor formed a straight line.

After placing the Lord’s Manor, Su You began preparing materials for the next building.

The next building was the Training Ground, which, as the name suggests, was for training the NPCs’ combat abilities.

The training ground had targets, dummies, and sandbags, allowing combat personnel to practice their skills to their hearts’ content.

While it was possible to train skills without a training ground, practicing inside one provided bonuses: faster speed, higher efficiency, less time required, and it even increased the daily cap on skill proficiency gained from non-combat practice.

The materials for the training ground were similar to other buildings: a certain number of planks, stone bricks, and marble bricks.

[Consume Plank x5, Stone Brick x10, Marble Brick x5 to build the Training Ground?]

[Building Training Ground. Estimated time: 300 minutes.]

Su You placed the training ground behind the tavern, near the city gate.

The previously built empty house was placed behind the tailor shop, close to both the tailor and the warehouse, making it convenient for accessing materials—a pretty suitable location.

...

The third building, and the last one Su You planned to construct for now, was the Well.

The purpose of the well was obvious: to make it easier to fetch water. The key point here was that water from the well was safe to drink directly, even without boiling, and wouldn’t cause any negative status effects.

On top of that, the well’s water was renewable and refreshed quickly.

Wild water sources were different. While they did refresh, the rate was extremely slow and they could be affected by disasters—like drought (drying up) or acid rain (pollution).

Building next to a water source was partly for convenience, but that was only in the early stages when resources for a well weren’t available. Once the conditions were met, it was always best to build a well as soon as possible.

The materials for building a well were a bit unusual. While other buildings mainly required wood and stone, the well needed tools—specifically, two tools: a pickaxe and a shovel.

Moreover, wells could be upgraded. Upgrading increased both the maximum water capacity and the refresh rate. Upgrades also required pickaxes and shovels, plus a few other materials.

The difference was that a level-1 well required stone pickaxes and shovels, while a level-2 well needed copper versions.

Su You happened to have some old stone pickaxes and shovels in her warehouse, so she took them out.

According to her plan, she was going to dig two wells for now: Well 1 would be placed near the farmland for irrigation, and Well 2 would be next to the training ground, behind Residential House 1, for the daily use of the territory’s residents.

[Consume Stone Pickaxe x2, Stone Shovel x1, Stone x10 to build a Well?]

[Building Well. Estimated time: 120 minutes.]

...

...

After a few hours of rest, Yun Li and the rest of the caravan were feeling refreshed.

While their spirits were restored, their bodies were facing a new problem—one related to food.

After such a long rest, everyone was getting hungry, but few people were actually eating.

It wasn’t because they didn’t have any food. On the contrary, they’d stockpiled a fair amount. The problem was, all they had left were dry, tough grain biscuits.

These biscuits were cheap and filling, but they tasted awful, had a bad texture, and if you ate too quickly, they could even get stuck in your throat.

Previously, they had no choice—there hadn’t been any territories or cities along the way where they could resupply. But now that they’d finally arrived at a territory, there was no way they wanted to keep gnawing on those biscuits.

“Captain, did the lord here say if they’re selling any food?” someone asked, rubbing their loudly growling stomach. Looking at the rock-hard biscuit in their hand, their appetite instantly vanished.

Yun Li felt much the same. Looking at the dry rations, she had no appetite either. She wasn’t some pampered young lady, but it had been a long time since she’d had it this “rough.”

(End of chapter)"

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