Chapter 155: Potatoes Are Ready

Although he wanted to become a mage through his own efforts, he knew how difficult that would be. So, he pinned his hopes on that magic rune book that could directly turn someone into a mage.

But if he wanted to exchange for the magic rune book, he needed contribution points.

As soon as Yue finished speaking, Su You had already disappeared from the tavern.

Lyle and Lake didn’t know what the “contribution points” Su You mentioned were. They wanted to ask, but they still had wounds to treat, and Su You was tired and had gone to rest. So, they could only wait until tomorrow to ask.

Afterwards, Yue finished treating their wounds, and the three of them each went home, letting exhaustion wrap around them as they quickly fell into a deep sleep.

……

……

A restless night passed. Everyone slept soundly, simply because they were truly tired and worn out. But in another sense, they didn’t sleep well, since they all remembered there was still a tough battle to fight that night.

Su You was, as always, the first to wake up, as if she hadn’t stayed up late at all the night before.

The first thing she did after getting up was to repair all the stone walls back to full durability.

There were many ways to repair stone walls. Su You didn’t use the most material-efficient method, but rather the simplest one—she just opened the stone wall’s information panel and directly spent the required materials to repair it.

Since it was a stone wall, the repair material was naturally stone.

After spending some stone to fully restore all the walls, Su You went outside her territory to collect all the loot dropped by the dark creatures from the previous day.

Most of the dark creatures had died in the pits inside the territory, so there was quite a bit of loot in those pits as well. Su You collected everything and put it in her backpack.

After cleaning up the area, she walked a lap around the edge of her territory. When she reached a certain corner, she saw a section of stone wall with a missing chunk.

She patched up the wall as usual, and then, less than three meters from the wall, she found a few copper coins—probably dropped by a dark creature.

Dark creatures didn’t just spawn at the front gate; they could appear from any direction around the territory and launch sneak attacks.

However, the number of dark creatures attacking from non-front directions was usually small—rarely more than two at the same spot.

Su You had long since placed arrow towers all around the territory, and had activated their auto-attack mode before the dark creatures attacked. So, these dark creatures naturally became easy targets for the towers.

After making a full circuit, Su You had used up a stack and a half of stone from her backpack, but she’d also collected quite a few copper coins and other loot.

“Lord!” Yousen came running over, both hands clenched as if holding something, excitement written all over his face.

“Look!”

He didn’t keep her in suspense. Once he reached Su You, he stretched out his hands and opened his palms, revealing a round potato.

Seeing the potato, Su You immediately understood why Yousen was so happy—the potatoes in the fields were ready for harvest!

As a bit of a foodie, Su You’s mind instantly filled with potato recipes—

Potato pancakes, baked potatoes, fried potatoes, mashed potatoes, French fries… There were so many dishes you could make with just potatoes alone.

And if you added berries, meat, and the three kinds of wild vegetables she’d collected earlier, there would be even more options!

Potato stew, stir-fried potatoes with meat, berry potato chips, vegetable potato pancakes…

“Are the potatoes ready?” Su You cleared her mind of recipes and asked again, just to confirm.

Ever since Yousen had arrived, Su You hadn’t paid much attention to the fields. She only remembered that she’d planted the potatoes around noon on the seventh day, so it had been less than three days since then… But the normal growth cycle for potatoes was five days. Even with the Harmony effect, it only reduced the time by ten hours.

By normal timing, the potatoes shouldn’t have been ready today. But Su You had just given Yousen a big batch of growth-accelerating fertilizer…

“Yes!” When it came to his specialty—farming—Yousen chattered on excitedly. Su You didn’t catch all the details, but she got two main points:

First, the potatoes were indeed ready, with a yield of about 150.

Second, although the fertilizer helped, the potatoes should have needed another two hours to mature. Yousen had used his own abilities to make them ripen a few hours early.

“Great. Plant more potatoes in the freed-up fields. Take the harvested potatoes to the tavern and give them to Meck—he’ll pay you.” Of course, the money wasn’t coming from Meck personally, but from the tavern’s funds.

The tavern hadn’t been open long, but it had only been taking in money, not spending it, so it had accumulated a decent amount. Su You herself also had money, so she didn’t plan to touch the tavern’s funds for now; they’d be used only for buying ingredients and paying wages.

“Yes, ma’am.” With the main news delivered, Yousen still didn’t leave. He pointed toward the creek near the fields, his expression turning a bit odd. “Lord, there’s something I wanted to mention. It might just be my imagination, but I keep feeling like there’s something alive in that creek.”

If it had only happened once or twice, he wouldn’t have thought much of it. But Yousen had heard the sound of something splashing in the water several times now.

Yet, whenever he looked in the direction of the sound, there was nothing there.

This had happened four or five times already—he could hear it, but never see anything.

“What time of day did you hear it? Morning, afternoon, or night?” Su You frowned. Her good mood from the potato harvest was already fading.

Day after day… Would things ever calm down for her?

Couldn’t she just have a few peaceful days?!

The dark creature attacks weren’t even over yet!

“All of the above. The first time was in the morning when I was watering the fields. The second and third times were in the afternoon when I was checking the crops. I even heard it once at night, just after dinner.”

Su You: “……” Great.

For now, Su You couldn’t think of anything in particular that matched this situation. Plus, this data-driven world was a bit different from the original game, so she couldn’t rule out the possibility of a new event.

“For now, stay away from the creek. Use water from the well instead—I’ll build another one if needed.”

(End of chapter)"

"156. Devour

“All right, my lord, don’t worry. I’ll remind the others as well.” Even though he was the only one who usually went near that area, there was always a chance someone else might wander over to check on the crops and run into trouble.

Su You nodded, but after a moment’s thought, she realized that wasn’t enough. In the end, she decided to go to the fields with Yousen.

After leading her there, Yousen planted the potatoes, and once he was done, he loaded up a cart with potatoes and headed off to the tavern.

Su You, meanwhile, checked the stream. As expected, she found nothing out of the ordinary. Then she took out a pile of fences and enclosed the stream.

Technically, the way she’d marked out her territory, the stream was already within her domain, and usually nothing strange would spawn inside the territory… unless the game mechanics had changed, or this odd thing had been there from the very beginning.

But right now, she clearly didn’t have the time or ability to explore the stream, so this would have to wait until after the dark creatures’ attack was over—and until Yue became a novice mage.

With a water mage around, exploring areas with water—especially places almost entirely made up of water—would be a breeze.

…

After finishing all this, Su You went to the quest board, opened up the territory information panel, and upgraded the territory to “Advanced Camp”…

At this point, there were less than twelve hours left on the countdown for the territory upgrade timed quest.

[Congratulations! Sunset Territory has met the upgrade requirements and has been successfully upgraded to Advanced Camp. The upgrade reward has been delivered to the chest in the quest hall.]

There’s even a reward chest?

Looks like there’ll be a reward every time the territory levels up from now on… Su You thought, just as another notification popped up.

[Timed Quest “Develop the Territory” completed. Please submit the quest at the quest board.]

Su You paused, then opened the quest board. She saw that although she hadn’t submitted the quest called “Develop the Territory,” the countdown timer had already stopped… After a few seconds, the timer disappeared completely.

[Develop the Territory] (Completed, ready to submit)

Issuer: Unknown

Quest Objective: Upgrade the territory to Large Camp (1/1)

Quest Reward: Unknown, Territory Reputation

Quest Limit: 120 hours

Failure Penalty: Territory Prosperity -10, Territory Reputation -10, Potential Value Decreased

…

So does that mean for timed quests, as long as you meet the requirements, the countdown stops, and you can submit the quest whenever you want?

Su You wasn’t entirely sure, but for now, the timer really had stopped.

This actually made her hesitate—she’d been rushing to finish the quest, but now she wondered if she should submit it right away.

“I think there were similar timed quests before…” But they weren’t issued by the system, or at least not under the system’s name.

She used to have a good relationship with the elves, so she often received exclusive quests from them, many of which were also timed.

While doing those timed quests, Su You had noticed a pattern: a new timed quest wouldn’t appear until the previous one was submitted.

No one had really paid attention to this refresh mechanic before, and Su You herself only remembered it after thinking about it for a long time.

“Forget it, I’ll hold off on submitting for now.” Since the timer was gone, she wasn’t worried about failing the quest.

But if her guess was right, and the quest board’s timed quests only refresh after the previous one is submitted, then holding off was actually the better choice.

Because the quest board forced you to accept quests, and who knew what weird task the next timed quest would be?

Before leaving the quest board, Su You double-checked the quest to make sure the timer was really gone, and only then did she feel safe enough to go do other things.

By “other things,” she really just meant restocking the arrows she’d used up last night, delivering a potato recipe to Meike, and then sorting through her backpack to see if any of the dark creatures had dropped anything useful…

…

…

Daytime passed quickly. With the combat strength of the previous wave of dark creatures as a reference, Su You spent the day repairing and further strengthening the territory’s defenses.

This time, she reinforced the defenses by adding another ring of stone walls. Now, if the dark creatures wanted to break in, they’d have to destroy the durability of two layers of stone walls before they could get inside.

While the defenses were stronger, it had used up a lot of stone—there were now less than two stacks left in the warehouse.

No one else in the territory had gone out all day—those who could fight were saving their strength for tonight’s dark creature attack, and those who couldn’t fight didn’t dare go out at a time like this.

After all, once the dark creature invasion event was triggered, dark creatures would spawn around the territory 24 hours a day—not just at night. The only difference was the number, their combat strength, and whether or not they would attack proactively.

And so, Sunset Territory faced the second wave of dark creature attacks for the day. As long as they could defend against this one, the event would be over, and the next dark creature invasion wouldn’t happen for at least several dozen days.

Once again, night fell, and everything was shrouded in darkness. Up to this point, the situation was exactly the same as it had been in the early hours of the morning.

With experience from the first attack, everyone was much calmer facing this new horde of dark creatures—even Su You. But what really put her at ease was that she immediately spotted the elite monster in the center of the dark creature swarm.

She didn’t even need to check the stats to know this was clearly a combat-type elite monster. Otherwise, it would have hidden itself instead of standing out in a “center of attention” position.

Still, Su You had to check, since she needed to know its details to plan the attack.

[Elite: Strong Dark Remnant]

HP: 2000/2000

Attack: 50

Defense: 30

Skill:

[Devour]: At intervals, can restore its own HP and enhance its stats by devouring nearby living dark creatures.

…

The moment she saw this skill, Su You immediately ordered everyone to stop attacking the elite monster.

“Don’t attack the tallest, biggest one for now! Focus on killing all the dark creatures around it first!” This thing’s combat power wasn’t actually that high—its only advantage was its large health pool and tankiness.

(End of Chapter)"

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