Chapter 14: Rabbit

Watching the numbers return to their normal color, Su You set down her wooden cup and opened her backpack to check the time.

The countdown on the lord’s token now showed fifty-one… almost fifty-two hours remaining.

Based on the elapsed countdown, it should be around five o’clock in the morning.

Since sunrise hadn’t arrived yet, the sky was still a murky gray-black without the sun, as if shrouded in a layer of dark fog.

This gloomy color, combined with the eerily quiet surroundings, made everything feel especially bleak and lonely.

Because it was still dark and there was no portable light source, Su You’s field of vision was quite limited.

But since dawn was approaching, as long as she was careful, she could move around as usual… At this hour, she could already leave the safety of the campfire.

Although it wasn’t quite morning yet and technically still nighttime, moving around now wouldn’t attract wild beasts, since their active hours were generally from around 10 or 11 p.m. to 2 or 3 a.m.

They needed rest too, and by this time, those beasts had already returned to their dens.

With no threat from wild animals, Su You tidied up the campfire and put it out. After organizing her backpack, she prepared to head out.

Her main goal for today was to kill a fire demon and collect flame stones.

But before that, she needed to gather twenty pieces of wood to build a basic arrow tower.

To make sure she had enough space in her backpack, Su You cleared out anything unnecessary as much as possible.

Aside from the lord’s token—which couldn’t be discarded but didn’t take up any space—her backpack now looked like this:

Backpack (7/10): String*4, Roasted Berries*14, Berry Juice*2, Stone*5, Stone Axe (1/100), Stone Pickaxe (100/100), Stone Knife (88/100)

Since she was in a hurry, Su You left right after sorting her backpack.

On the way to her destination, she checked the three small traps she’d set up the day before.

There was no fixed schedule for when traps would yield results. With luck, you might catch something in three to five hours; without it, it could be three to five days, or even ten days to half a month with nothing at all.

Besides luck, human factors were also important.

Things like bait and trap placement all affected the chances of catching prey.

It had been nearly twenty hours since she set the traps. Logically, unless her luck was especially bad, there should be something by now… though what exactly, she couldn’t say.

Her route would take her past all three traps, so Su You decided to check them along the way.

When she checked the traps, she found the first two were completely empty—nothing caught.

Though a bit disappointed, she wasn’t surprised.

It was worth noting, however, that the durability of one trap had decreased a little, which meant it had briefly caught something, but the creature managed to escape.

The way trap durability worked was that any time a creature was caught, at least one point of durability would be lost. If the creature didn’t run away immediately and instead attacked the trap, the durability would drop even further.

Although it was a pity the prey got away, the fact that the trap could catch small animals meant her placement was fine.

To improve her chances, Su You adjusted the positions of the two traps a bit and covered them with some leaves and branches to make them less obvious.

A few minutes later, Su You arrived at the spot where she’d set the third trap.

“What’s this…” Seeing the empty ground, Su You paused, then immediately scanned her surroundings.

There were several reasons a trap might disappear. The most common were that its durability ran out, or it was dragged away by another creature.

If it was the former, there would be a “broken trap” with zero durability left on the ground.

A broken trap was a gray-quality item, basically identical to the failed trap Su You had made before—completely useless.

But since she didn’t see any “trap remains” here, it meant the trap had probably been dragged away…

There were two possibilities for a trap being dragged off: one, a small animal escaped but was angry enough to take the trap with it; two, the animal didn’t escape, but while struggling, ended up dragging the trap away from its original spot…

If it was the first case, the trap would be nowhere nearby, since the animal would want to get far away from this dangerous place, even if it meant dragging the trap along.

But if it was the second case, a trapped animal wouldn’t be able to get very far… Since it was still early and Su You held out a bit of hope, she decided to search the area.

And sure enough, she found a pleasant surprise.

Less than ten steps from where she’d set the third trap, Su You found the remains of the trap.

Its durability had dropped to zero, making it unusable, but next to it, Su You saw a rabbit that was clearly dead.

Although the materials for small traps were simple, they were actually lethal, since the inside was lined with wooden spikes.

The spikes didn’t do much damage, but rabbits didn’t have much defense or health to begin with. If Su You could catch up to one herself, a single axe blow would be enough to take it down.

In short, a small trap was more than enough to kill a rabbit.

Su You hadn’t witnessed the whole process, but judging by the scene, it wasn’t hard to guess what had happened.

First, the rabbit stumbled into the trap. Then it tried to escape, but couldn’t break free from the string, so it ended up dragging the trap along—explaining why the trap wasn’t in its original spot.

While it struggled, the wooden spikes kept inflicting small wounds.

The damage might have been minor, but like ants biting an elephant, as long as the rabbit couldn’t escape, the damage would keep adding up.

In the end, the rabbit was worn down and died, just like the stone monster before.

Although the rabbit wasn’t very big, it could still provide a decent amount of resources. After a moment’s hesitation, Su You decided to head back the way she came."

"15. Whetstone

She needed to return to her base and “process” the rabbit first.

An unexpected gain was certainly a good thing, but the appearance of this rabbit had disrupted Su You’s original plans.

According to her initial plan, she was supposed to head to the respawn point where that mysterious creature had wiped out all the stone monsters yesterday. She’d spotted a type of stone called “sandstone” in that area.

Sandstone requires a pickaxe to mine, and its main use is to craft an item called a “whetstone.”

As the name suggests, a whetstone’s effect is to restore the durability of tools—at least, from a game mechanics perspective.

That’s why she’d used her stone materials to make a stone pickaxe: with sandstone, she wouldn’t need to keep crafting new stone axes just to chop wood.

Normally, stone monster lairs have a chance to spawn sandstone. But to mine it safely, you first have to kill all the stone monsters nearby. Otherwise, tearing down their home right in front of them isn’t just provocative—it’s asking for trouble.

So, in the end, she had that mysterious creature to thank.

If it hadn’t cleared out those three stone monsters for her, Su You would have hesitated for a long time yesterday—debating whether to use her stone to make an axe, or spend more time clearing out the monsters, then mine the sandstone and use it to craft a whetstone to repair her axe before chopping wood.

But now that the stone monsters were gone, she didn’t have to struggle with that decision anymore.

In less than a day, Su You’s plans had been disrupted twice by unexpected events: first by the mysterious creature, then by the rabbit.

Although both surprises had turned out to be good for her, they also made Su You more cautious.

Unexpected events can be good or bad—she couldn’t afford to let her guard down just because she’d gotten lucky twice in a row.

...

...

Carrying the rabbit back to her base, Su You began skinning it with her stone knife.

There was nothing particularly special about the skinning process—thanks to the assisted calibration, her speed wasn’t too slow.

Once she’d peeled off a complete rabbit pelt, the rest of the rabbit turned into scattered loot.

[Obtained: Animal Hide x1]

[Obtained: Small Meat x4]

[Obtained: Rabbit Fur x5]

The main reason Su You had set up small traps was for the animal hide—she needed it to craft something called a tool bag.

The tool bag could store tools—axes, pickaxes, stone knives, and even tools she hadn’t made yet, like shovels, hoes, hammers, and so on.

It was basically a separate inventory space just for tools. Although it could only hold tools, having it would free up a lot of space in her backpack.

Right now, for example, her tools alone took up three slots in her backpack—but she couldn’t go without them, since she needed them for work.

The tool bag required [Animal Hide x3, Cord x5] to craft, and could hold one of each type of tool—for example, one axe, one shovel, one pickaxe, one stone knife, etc. As long as it was a tool, it could go in the bag.

But since she didn’t have enough materials yet, Su You just put the animal hide away, along with the rabbit meat and fur wrapped in leaves, and stashed them under a tree.

Once she was done with that, Su You headed straight for the stone monster respawn point.

Because dealing with the rabbit had taken some time, it was already getting light by the time Su You reached the sandstone spawn.

Before mining, she checked her surroundings to make sure there really weren’t any stone monsters left. Only then did she take out her pickaxe and start mining sandstone.

Mining stone was different from chopping wood. Trees were individual—if you could fell one, you’d get all its resources. But stone often formed large patches.

Unless it was a single big boulder, resource drops from these stone patches were calculated individually.

For example, the first swing of the pickaxe had a 5% chance to drop resources, the second swing increased it to 10%, and so on—the more you mined, the higher the chance, until you finally got a drop.

After a resource dropped, the chance would reset.

Since she had sandstone now, Su You planned to do the same as with her stone axe: use her stone pickaxe until it was down to its last bit of durability, then stop.

If a tool’s durability hit zero, it would break and couldn’t be repaired. But as long as it had even a single point left, it was still a usable tool and could be restored with a whetstone at any time.

...

As her pickaxe’s durability ticked down, Su You’s stamina dropped rapidly as well.

To keep up her efficiency, she took a short break midway—just enough to keep her stamina in the optimal range for working.

When her stone pickaxe was down to 3/100 durability, she finally got a chunk of sandstone.

Seeing the sandstone, Su You paused, then stopped mining—she didn’t bother with a couple more swings.

The drop rate for this kind of stone fluctuated, but on average, it took five or six tries to get a piece.

Now that she’d gotten one, the drop rate would reset. With only three durability left on her pickaxe, she wasn’t counting on getting another piece in just two more swings. Since it was unlikely, there was no point wasting her stamina.

She put away her pickaxe and started picking up all the sandstone chunks on the ground.

[Obtained: Sandstone x4]

[Obtained: Sandstone x1]

[Obtained: Sandstone Fragments x6]

...

Once she’d gathered everything, Su You had a total of 15 sandstone and 20 sandstone fragments.

It took five pieces of sandstone to make a whetstone—so 15 was just enough for three whetstones.

As for the sandstone fragments, they weren’t technically mining drops, but rather debris (junk) produced during the mining process. The chance of getting fragments was calculated separately from getting sandstone, and the former was obviously much higher.

The fragments weren’t very useful—at least, not right now. Unlike regular stone fragments, sandstone fragments couldn’t be combined into sandstone. So after picking them up, Su You just set them aside in a corner.

Even if something was useless, Su You never threw things away carelessly. She couldn’t say for sure she’d never need them in the future, and if she did, it would be easier to retrieve them if they were organized. Besides, it didn’t take much effort.

With all this sandstone, Su You could finally start making whetstones.

[Consume Sandstone x15 to craft Whetstone x3?]

[Crafting: Whetstone. Estimated time: 60 seconds.]

[Remaining: Whetstone x2. Estimated time: 120 seconds.]"