Chapter 131: Upgrading the Backpack

Su You: What? What just happened? Did I miss some major plot development?

Just as Su You was starting to feel a bit lost, Yousen finally spoke up.

“Um... Lord, I wanted to ask you—within the territory, is there someone with short hair, really skilled with a bow...”

Yousen had only gotten halfway through his question, but Su You already guessed who he was talking about.

Short hair, uses a bow—who else could it be but Duoya?

...So, could it be that Yousen likes Duoya, and that’s why he’s so eager to stay in the territory?

Su You didn’t know, didn’t really understand, and as a child, she found this plot twist a bit unusual and hadn’t quite processed it yet.

After hearing Yousen’s words, Su You, who was just over two hundred months old, had a rather complicated expression.

“You must be talking about Duoya. She is indeed one of the people in the territory.”

Yousen’s eyes lit up, and he quickly thanked Su You... The more he acted like this, the more convinced Su You became that her guess was right.

“There aren’t any rules against that in the territory, but I hope this won’t affect your work here.” Su You wasn’t Duoya, and she couldn’t see how much affection one NPC had for another, nor did she really care about NPC romances.

Even though, as the lord, she technically had the authority, she wasn’t about to make decisions for NPCs about their love lives.

But while she supported their freedom to fall in love, she didn’t want it to affect the NPCs’ loyalty to the territory.

In other words: Office romance? OK! Let it affect your work? NO!!!

Some people might think Su You was overthinking it—what’s the big deal if NPCs fall in love? It wouldn’t have any real impact. But only Su You knew that, in the past, when players tried to force NPC couples together, it led to decreased affection, lower loyalty, and sometimes even NPCs leaving the territory. There were even cases where an NPC, unable to get what they wanted, ended up blowing up the territory...

It might sound bizarre, but in a game with maxed-out realism and freedom, anything was possible.

Of course, these situations were rare and only happened if you really pushed your luck.

And as for the territory explosion incident, it was later debunked—the truth was that an NPC had mistaken (fake) explosives for a gift and given them to their crush, and, well...

Both NPCs were fine in the end, since the explosives were fake—just for show, no real power—but when your attempt to woo someone almost blows them up, it’s obvious things aren’t going to work out.

After that player posted about it on the forum, the story got twisted into: “Shocking! NPC blows up territory after being rejected!”

After hearing Su You’s words, Yousen nodded, then spoke seriously, as if making a promise: “I understand, my lord. Don’t worry... I’m not—”

“Alright, no need to explain. As long as you know what you’re doing.” Su You didn’t care for these kinds of promises, especially since it had nothing to do with her. Yousen didn’t need to make any guarantees to her—unless he was promising to devote himself to the territory’s development in the future...

But as things stood, if Yousen really was here for Duoya, he didn’t seem like the type to cause trouble, so Su You wasn’t particularly worried.

“Alright, get back to work. Good luck, kid—I have high hopes for you.” Su You didn’t specify what she meant by that, and after saying it, she left.

Su You headed to the warehouse, because she’d just seen Lake pushing a wooden cart back. Lake’s return meant he’d probably finished mining marble and copper ore.

After Warehouse 2 was built, Su You had switched the bounty board’s linked storage from a wooden box to Warehouse 2.

So she went to Warehouse 2 to collect the marble and copper ore, then took the materials to the workshop to finish the items she hadn’t been able to make yesterday due to a lack of materials.

Su You had two things to craft: copper balanced arrows, and her own backpack (upgrade).

The recipe for copper balanced arrows was: wood*2, copper ingot*1, feathers*5. It was the same as the stone balanced arrow recipe, just swapping stone for copper.

The materials and output were the same—each batch produced 10 to 12 arrows.

Su You had half a batch left from before, which was 25 feathers, so she used wood*10, copper ingot*5, feathers*25 to make 50 to 60 copper balanced arrows.

After putting the materials on the workbench, Su You started preparing the materials for the backpack upgrade.

The initial backpack was level 0, with only five slots. She’d previously used string and bark to upgrade it to level 1, doubling its space from five to ten slots.

Upgrading to level 2 was different—it required a lot more materials: advanced string, cloth (or soft fabric), some copper ingots, and beast teeth.

The reason for so many materials was that backpack space had a huge impact on game progress, so each upgrade required materials worth several times more than the previous level.

Su You had always wanted to go exploring, but hadn’t taken action. Partly because she needed to build up the territory (with the dark creatures’ attack looming), but also because of the backpack’s limitations.

The backpack was too small to carry much, so Su You felt that even if she went exploring, she wouldn’t be able to bring much back, which made her reluctant to go.

She took out the required materials and opened her backpack.

[Consume advanced string*10, cloth*5, copper ingot*2, beast teeth*5 to upgrade backpack to level 2?]

As before, when upgrading the backpack, the backpack interface closed automatically. When Su You opened it again, the space had doubled from ten to twenty slots.

Excluding level 0, the backpack had ten levels in total. Each level increased the number of slots, and starting from level 3 or 5, each upgrade also brought other changes.

For example, at level 3, the stacking limit increased to 100. Except for special items like tools, weapons, and equipment, all other materials could be stacked up to 100 per slot.

And since a level 3 backpack had 50 slots, it was basically like carrying a level 1 warehouse with you.

A level 5 backpack had 100 slots, with the same stacking limit of 100, but it also unlocked a feature called “auto-absorb”—which, as the name suggests, worked like a magnet to automatically pick up dropped items within a certain range.

This feature could be toggled on and off, and you could even filter which types of items would be auto-picked up."