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)"