Chapter 23: Skill Book

Because the Fire Demon Leader had died, the entire nest of fire demons started fighting amongst themselves for the chance to seize the throne. To avoid getting caught up in the chaos, Su You didn’t have time to check what kind of junk she’d actually looted from the Fire Demon Leader.

She stuffed whatever she could into her backpack, and for the things that wouldn’t fit, she wrapped them all up in the Fire Demon Leader’s cloak and carried them in her arms.

Once she’d gathered her spoils, Su You wasted no time and hurried straight back to her temporary base.

……

……

[Obtained: Common Cloak x1]

[Obtained: Copper Coins x89]

[Obtained: Ash x99]

[Obtained: Unknown Stone x1]

[Obtained: Charcoal x99]

……

By the time Su You reached her base, she was already sorting through her loot. But she quickly realized—there really wasn’t much worth calling loot.

Ash, some unknown stone, and a whole pile of charcoal…

Although Su You was honestly quite disgusted by all this (junk), she still organized it and placed it near her base.

After all, charcoal could be burned… Nearly a hundred pieces of charcoal would last her several days.

As for the ash, while it didn’t look useful, it could actually be used to enrich the soil—a handy thing for when she’d eventually build her territory and start farming.

Then there was the unknown stone…

Su You frowned, staring at the stone up and down for a long time. She even tried scraping the surface with a stone knife, hoping something might be hidden inside…

Unfortunately, after all that effort, she still couldn’t figure out any special use for the stone.

After fiddling with it for a while and getting nowhere, Su You gave up. She tossed the stone onto the cloak along with the rest of the useless junk, planning to bundle it all up and take it to her territory later.

As for the 89 copper coins, Su You just put them straight into her backpack—they didn’t take up any space anyway.

At this point, Su You had a total of 136 copper coins: 89 from killing the Fire Demon Leader, and 47 from killing regular fire demons.

The coins weren’t useful yet, but now that she had a Flame Stone and was about to establish her territory, they’d come in handy soon enough.

Aside from all this junk, Su You managed to dig out a few barely useful items from the pile.

Some gravel, some scraps of cloth, and… a book?

Huh?!

The moment she saw the book, Su You was a little surprised. Books that dropped on Sunset Continent were usually skill books.

Here, there’s no such thing as a bad skill book—just ones that aren’t suitable for you. Skill books come in many types: combat skills, life skills, aura skills, special skills, and so on.

As mentioned before, the Lord role doesn’t have any stats that boost combat, so she couldn’t learn combat skills.

Still, skill books are valuable. Even if she couldn’t use a combat skill book, once she had a way to trade, she could sell it for money, or give it to combat-related NPCs to strengthen them—which would, in turn, strengthen her own forces.

All in all, just getting this skill book made up for the rest of the loot being junk—Su You didn’t feel too put out.

At least it was better than a chipped kitchen knife.

After sorting and cleaning up the last of her things, Su You spotted six silver coins at the very bottom. Once she put those away, she’d finally finished organizing all the loot from the Fire Demon Leader.

With everything sorted, Su You finally picked up the book. She hesitated for a long moment, hand hovering over the cover, before she finally opened it.

And the moment she did, the previously blurry text on the pages gradually became clear…

[Advanced Cooking Skill Book]

Type: Skill Book

Quality: Purple

Description: Instantly raises your Cooking skill to Advanced level upon learning.

……

No matter what the skill itself was, Su You’s luck this time was honestly pretty good. Skill books rarely dropped, and this was even an advanced one—you could tell from the “purple” quality.

There are only four grades of skill books: Basic (Green), Intermediate (Blue), Advanced (Purple), and Master (Red).

Although skill books only come in four grades, life skills actually have six levels.

Of those six, only the first four can be achieved directly with skill books; the last two require you to keep crafting things to gain proficiency and slowly level up.

Take Cooking as an example. The levels are: Basic Cooking, Intermediate Cooking, Advanced Cooking, Master Cooking, Expert Cooking, and Supreme Cooking (God of Cooking).

And for any life skill, the last level always has a special title, like “God” or “Saint”—for example, Medicine Saint (Alchemist), Craft God (Artisan), Farming God (Farmer), and so on.

But still… While getting an advanced skill book was great, why did it have to be a cooking skill book?

It’s not that Su You looked down on cooking, but the skill really wasn’t very useful in the early game, since valuable cooked dishes required too many ingredients.

If it was just basic food, Su You could make it herself—like roasted berries, berry juice, or grilled meat. She could make those with or without a skill book; it didn’t make much difference.

Only later, when she’d set up farmland, started raising animals or growing crops, or could get better ingredients from hunting beasts, would the cooking skill become truly useful. Otherwise, in the early game, it was basically pointless.

Other life skills were different, though. Many of the materials needed to craft other items were basic ones—at least, ones she could gather now.

If she could choose, Su You would rather trade this advanced cooking skill book for an intermediate artisan skill book.

Artisan skills might not be the strongest, but they were the most useful early on.

A higher artisan level meant less material consumption when making tools, slower tool durability loss, and more durability restored when using a whetstone to repair high-level gear…

Looking at this advanced but unfortunately cooking-related skill book, Su You sighed, then put it away in her backpack.

It might not be very useful… but it was still an advanced skill book, and worth a lot. Worst case, she could sell it later and buy something else.

……

38 hours, 53 minutes, 10 seconds…

That was the countdown after Su You finished sorting all her loot. In other words, it was just after 5 p.m., and there were still almost two hours until nightfall."