Chapter 70: Wealth and Disaster

Of course, the most important thing was that Su You had enough backpack space to carry all this copper slag!

Ores usually stacked in groups of twenty, while copper slag stacked in fifties, so after all that digging, Su You had only used up three backpack slots.

After a while, Su You figured she had enough copper and decided to take a break, leave the mine, and head back to her territory.

Before leaving, Su You glanced around, looking for the white ermine. As her gaze swept across the cave, she finally spotted a snow-white ermine… or rather, its butt, sticking out from a small corner.

Su You: ???

She paused for a moment, then walked over to see what kind of trouble the ermine was getting itself into this time.

“Eek?!”

As soon as she approached, the white ermine seemed to hear her footsteps and started struggling frantically.

It was only when she saw it struggling that Su You realized the ermine must be stuck.

There seemed to be a small hole here. The ermine had squeezed its front half inside, but perhaps because it was too chubby, its back half was stuck at the entrance.

Su You reached out, grabbed the other half of the ermine, gave a gentle tug, and pulled it out of the hole.

Ding—

Just as the ermine was pulled free, Su You saw something arc through the air in a perfect parabola, landing on the ground with a crisp sound.

Before Su You could see what it was, the ermine darted over, picked it up, and scampered back toward her, tail wagging.

When it reached her, it eagerly placed the object in Su You’s hand.

“Eek!”

“What’s this…” The color looked familiar to Su You, and she thought she recognized it, but wasn’t sure.

“Eek eek eek!!!” After dropping the item in Su You’s hand, the ermine ran back to the spot where it had gotten stuck and began frantically scratching at the stone wall.

Having seen something similar before, Su You had a hunch. She took out her pickaxe and tapped on the wall.

Unlike the last time, when the sound was long and clear, this time it was dull and muffled, not at all like a hollow stone wall.

Su You didn’t give up. She methodically tapped her pickaxe along the entire stone wall, and finally, at a spot slightly below the right side, she noticed something unusual.

The sound here wasn’t crisp, but not completely dull either. It was odd, but she couldn’t quite put her finger on it.

She ran her hand over the stone, noticing the texture was different from the surrounding rocks. Su You decided to check the information on this section of the wall.

[Marble]

Category: Material

Quality: White

Description: A type of material used in construction. Requires a copper pickaxe to mine.

…

The rest of the wall was ordinary stone, but this spot was marble, which could only be mined with a copper pickaxe. Anyone could tell there was something special about this place.

But knowing was one thing—there was nothing Su You could do about it right now, since she only had a stone pickaxe.

Still, compared to whatever might be hidden behind the marble wall, Su You was more interested in the little white ermine tugging at her pant leg.

She bent down and picked it up, and at the same time tried to check its information…

This ermine kept finding things—clearly, it wasn’t an ordinary animal. In Sunset Continent, almost everything could be inspected by players, but the rarer or more special something was, the less information would be revealed.

Su You had assumed it was just a normal ermine, so she hadn’t bothered checking before—after all, inspecting uncollected resources or living creatures consumed energy.

Here, “energy” meant hunger and stamina.

That was why Su You didn’t inspect everything she saw—her stamina and hunger bars couldn’t handle it.

But now that the ermine had shown its unusual abilities, Su You didn’t mind spending a bit of stamina and hunger.

[??·White Ermine]

Level: 3 (5/300)

Potential: 90

Skills: Basic Tracking, Treasure Seeking (locked), ?? (locked)

Description: An ermine that looks ordinary but isn’t. Likes berries and meat, not picky, will eat almost anything, but its absolute favorite is the phoenix fruit. Feeding it phoenix fruit will significantly boost its stats.

…

After reading this, Su You’s expression grew complicated.

She never expected this ermine to have such high potential, multiple skills, and even a prefix.

Potential, as the name suggests, refers to how powerful and effective a creature’s skills can be—the higher the potential, the stronger the skills and their effects.

Prefixes don’t just appear on creatures like this ermine; any item, tool, or equipment can have a prefix.

If a tool or item has a prefix, it means it has some special property.

For example, a [Durable·Stone Axe] will last longer than a regular stone axe because of the “Durable” prefix.

When a creature has a prefix, it usually means it has legendary bloodline.

Maybe because this ermine was still low-level and weak, its prefix was sealed, so Su You couldn’t see the details.

But judging from the two visible skills, Su You suspected its ancestor might have been a treasure-hunting beast. In other words, its prefix was probably “Treasure-Seeking,” making it a [Treasure-Seeking·White Ermine].

That would explain why it was so good at finding connected mines, and even a second inner mine.

Even though its treasure-seeking skill wasn’t unlocked yet, with its inherited bloodline, simply finding ores in a mine was no challenge at all.

So now the question was: knowing this was a treasure-hunting beast, should Su You let it go?

“…” Su You glanced at the ermine clinging to her and couldn’t help but frown slightly.

Anyone else would have accepted it without hesitation—after all, with a treasure-hunting beast and proper training, who wouldn’t be able to find mountains of gold and silver in the future?

But things weren’t that simple.

Because everything in this world is balanced.

A treasure-hunting beast may bring endless wealth, but it also brings disaster.

(End of chapter)"