Chapter 16: The Art of Balance

While waiting for the whetstone to be made, Su You took a short break and replenished her hunger bar.

Things were pretty much the same as before, but this time, no mysterious creature showed up to snatch her food. She had no idea if that creature had already left...

But that wasn’t really Su You’s concern. The fact that she’d been able to strike a deal with that creature was pure luck.

It just so happened that the creature passed by, cleared out the stone monsters, and the loot from those monsters attracted Su You. It just so happened that the creature liked—or needed—food. It just so happened that she took out some food, and it happened to be the kind it liked...

So many “coincidences” had come together to make yesterday’s events possible.

This was the kind of opportunity you couldn’t seek out, only stumble upon. To encounter it at her moment of greatest need—even if it was just a transaction—Su You was still deeply grateful.

Because, from a certain perspective, that trade hadn’t been fair at all.

...

A minute later, Su You was holding a reddish-brown “stone brick” about the size of an adult man’s palm.

The brick was hefty and felt heavy in her hand. Its surface looked smooth at first glance, but on closer inspection, it was actually quite rough—this was a whetstone made from sandstone.

[Whetstone]

Category: Tool

Quality: Common (White)

Durability: 5/5

Description: A whetstone can restore other tools to a sharp (i.e., fully durable) state. The higher the tool’s level and the better its materials, the harder it is to fully restore its sharpness.

...

The whetstone’s durability represented the number of uses—5/5 meant it could be used five times. After five uses, the whetstone would turn to powder and disappear.

Although the whetstone was a tool, it couldn’t be used to repair another whetstone’s durability. So, you couldn’t just have two whetstones and use them to repair each other in an infinite loop—no whetstone perpetual motion machine here.

With the whetstone in hand, Su You pulled out her nearly-broken stone axe from her backpack.

She gave it a quick grind on the whetstone. In just a few seconds, the whetstone’s durability dropped to 4/5, while the stone axe’s durability shot up from 1/100 to 100/100.

In the blink of an eye, a battered, almost unusable axe was instantly restored to brand new.

Of course, only stone tools could be repaired this efficiently.

If it were a higher-level tool, even using up an entire whetstone might only restore a dozen points—or even just a few points—of durability.

...

With her axe ready, Su You’s next job was simple: chop trees. Lots of trees.

A basic arrow tower required twenty pieces of wood, and building a town core fire needed sixty more. That was eighty pieces of wood in total...

After a whole morning of relentless effort—and wearing out a whetstone in the process—Su You finally managed to gather nearly a hundred pieces of wood.

Since her backpack didn’t have enough space, she crafted sixty of the logs into planks for the town core fire.

The remaining wood stayed in her backpack.

Arrow towers were large structures—like campfires, they had to be placed immediately after being built, unlike wooden fences, which could be stored. So Su You had to carry the wood with her and wait until she reached her destination to build.

“Finally done...” Su You slumped against a tree, exhausted, sipping her last cup of juice as she started organizing her backpack.

Backpack (10/10): String ×4, Roasted Berries ×8, Stone ×5, Wood ×20, Wood ×20, Planks ×5, Whetstone ×2, Stone Axe (5/100), Stone Pickaxe (3/100), Stone Knife (88/100)

Looking at her inventory, Su You seemed to think of something. She took out the stone knife, freeing up a slot, then put the two wooden cups into her backpack, and prepared to head back to her camp.

When she passed the spot where she’d “traded” with that mysterious creature yesterday, Su You paused—the place where she’d left seven portions of roasted berries and a cup of berry juice was now empty. Not a trace remained, not even the inedible wooden cup. Who knew what that creature had done with it?

Still, the missing cup didn’t affect Su You’s plans.

She took out the remaining eight roasted berries from her backpack and, just like yesterday, neatly arranged them under the tree.

Once she’d finished, Su You put the stone knife back in her backpack and left without a backward glance.

Yesterday’s trade was over, but to Su You, the value of seven portions of roasted berries simply couldn’t compare to those ten pieces of stone and one chunk of ore.

Red berry bushes were a common resource in the forest, as were leaves. In other words, roasted berries were basically worthless to Su You—like sand in the desert. They took a little time to gather, but they were everywhere.

But the stones the other party had traded her were like a rare “water source” in the desert—exactly what she needed, and the hardest thing for her to get.

Trading “sand” for “water” in the desert... Honestly, if she hadn’t run out of roasted berries yesterday, she wouldn’t have hesitated to offer not just seven, but seventeen, or even twenty-seven portions.

On the Sunset Continent, there was a special principle that veteran players called “the art of balance.”

No matter what you did, you had to maintain balance. Only by keeping things in balance could you survive more easily on the Sunset Continent...

As the saying went, “If you want to make it on the continent, you’d better join the Church of Balance first.”

As for what this art of balance had to do with her leaving roasted berries here... Su You couldn’t really explain it. But as a “devout” follower of balance, she just knew it was the right thing to do.

...

...

Even though she was now out of food, Su You didn’t bother gathering more red berries on her way back.

It wasn’t because her backpack was full—if space was really an issue, she could always take out a tool and carry it by hand, freeing up a slot. If she didn’t mind the hassle, she could even carry one tool in each hand, saving two slots.

The real reason she didn’t gather more berries was partly a matter of time, and partly because she didn’t need them as food for now.

Back at her camp, the first thing Su You did was use her remaining materials to light a campfire and start roasting meat.

The meat, of course, was from the rabbit she’d just butchered.

Compared to berries, meat restored much more hunger.

[Small Roasted Meat] (Consumes: Small Meat ×1, Leaves ×3)

Category: Food

Quality: Common (White)

Effect: Restores 40 hunger when eaten

Description: Just some average-tasting roast meat, but it fills you up much faster."

"Here’s a fluent, natural English translation of your Chinese text:

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