Chapter 93: Potential Value

[Congratulations on completing the quest ""Prosperity and Flourishing."" System rewards: Bounty Card x1, Territory Reputation +5, Silver Coins x10.]

After submitting the quest, the first thing Su You did was click to check the Bounty Card.

[Bounty Card]

Category: Special

Quality: Purple

Description: Consuming this item allows you to post a Regional Bounty in the Quest Hall. For more information on Regional Bounties, please refer to the relevant introduction in the Quest Hall.

...

Regional Bounties had been introduced before. Once a Regional Bounty is posted, any territory that has built a Quest Hall can view the bounty she posted.

And this Bounty Card is the essential item needed to post a Regional Bounty.

If she guessed right, consuming one card allows you to post one Regional Bounty... In the game before, it was pretty much the same, except back then the item consumed wasn’t a Bounty Card, but something called a ""Bounty Scroll.""

The Bounty Scroll functioned the same as the Bounty Card; it was just a different name.

She didn’t know why they bothered to change the name for no reason, but as long as it didn’t affect usage, it didn’t matter.

...

After finishing one quest and figuring out what the Bounty Card was for, Su You turned her attention to the next issue.

This issue was related to the only available time-limited quest.

The penalty for failing this time-limited quest wasn’t exactly light. After all, Reputation and Prosperity are hard to come by in the early stages, especially Reputation. She only had 11 points in total... Oh, now it should be 16, since she just completed a quest.

But even so, suddenly losing 10 Reputation points was still a pretty harsh punishment.

Because without Reputation, the Bounty Card would basically be useless—no one would want to take on a quest from a territory with no reputation; the risk would be too high.

But then again, compared to the previous punishment of wiping your data and erasing you from existence if you failed a quest, just losing some territory stats didn’t seem so bad...

However, aside from territory stats, failing the quest would also reduce her ""Potential Value""...

What exactly was this Potential Value?

Su You stared at the last failure penalty for the third quest, lost in thought.

When was the last time she heard the term ""Potential Value""?

It seemed... just last night.

If she remembered correctly, last night, when her territory leveled up, a window suddenly popped up in front of her mentioning ""Potential Value""...

[A1-16, as the human territory lord with the highest ""Potential Value,"" the Execution System can, within a certain range of authority, provide you with a one-time reward service. The service includes but is not limited to requesting items, asking questions, solving problems, etc.]

Yesterday, she received a reward because she had the highest ""Potential Value"" among all human territory lords. So, if her Potential Value wasn’t high, she definitely wouldn’t have gotten that reward.

But if someone’s Potential Value was too low, so low that they ranked at the bottom among all territory lords, would there be some kind of punishment?

Su You had no way of knowing.

Regardless of whether there was a penalty for low Potential Value, just the fact that a high Potential Value could earn her rewards meant she absolutely had to complete this quest and not let her Potential Value drop.

Yesterday, when Su You was probing the Execution System, she learned something important: this kind of reward service wasn’t a one-off. As long as she met certain conditions in the future, she could get more custom rewards like the one yesterday.

Moreover, the more rewards she earned, the greater the ""authority"" the Execution System would grant her.

If she failed to get the beacon she asked for this time, maybe next time it would be given to her directly—or even several at once...

Although Su You had never openly shown any curiosity about why the planet she lived on had been inexplicably turned into data, not showing it didn’t mean she wasn’t curious.

She simply knew she wouldn’t get any answers, so she didn’t waste time pursuing the question, nor would she waste a reward opportunity on it.

Compared to questions that probably wouldn’t get answered, Su You would much rather ask for items and tools she actually needed.

Because she understood the value of almost every item, but not the value of those questions. Instead of asking something that likely wouldn’t be answered, it was better to get something practical to help her develop her territory faster and more smoothly.

Once she unlocked more authority in the future, then she could ask those secret questions... learn their purpose... and uncover the truth behind everything.

...

...

Although she wasn’t entirely sure about the requirements for getting more rewards from the Execution System, she could guess that it was probably related to Potential Value.

Either that, or it was tied to how quickly she developed her territory.

If she wanted to keep her Potential Value, she had to complete the quest within the time limit.

And judging by the current situation, her quest basically translated to: ""Within the time limit, increase the territory’s population to ten people.""

Aside from one person she could recruit soon from the tavern and two more with Recruitment Cards, she’d have to hope that in the next few days, wanderers like Dolly and Lylek would show up in her territory—and not just one, but two.

On top of that, she had to make sure all three people recruited from the tavern would actually join the territory within the time limit.

Unfortunately, up to now, Su You hadn’t seen the territory info panel refresh with a [Wanderer] event, which meant the chances of recruiting wanderers in the near future were almost zero.

In this situation, her odds of completing the quest were also close to zero.

Su You felt a headache coming on... This kind of luck-based thing was completely out of her control; there was nothing she could do, and naturally, no real choices to make.

""If there really aren’t any wanderers..."" then she’d have to use a rather special method to increase her territory’s population.

Although this method was a bit... unconventional, and even somewhat risky, if there really were no wanderers, it would be her only option.

Thinking about what she might have to do in the next few days, Su You, who had been planning to rest, quietly returned to her desk.

Dolly was about to ask why she wasn’t resting, but when she saw Su You’s less-than-cheerful expression, she swallowed her words and changed the subject.

""Is there still something missing in the territory?"" Dolly saw her sit back down and instinctively assumed there was something in the territory that hadn’t been set up yet, so Su You had come back to fix it.

Su You paused, then nodded slightly. ""We’re still missing some things to protect the territory.""

(End of chapter)"