Chapter 26: Basic Workbench

After chopping trees for so long—and wearing out her second whetstone in the process—Su You finally gathered enough wood.

The reason she cut down so many trees at once wasn’t just to collect materials for storage boxes; she needed wood for other things as well.

【Consume 105 wood to craft 35 wooden blocks?】

【Crafting: Wooden Blocks. Estimated time: 60 seconds】

【Remaining: Wooden Blocks x34. Estimated time: 34 minutes】

……

Since most of the upcoming buildings would require higher-tier materials, Su You processed all the wood she’d gathered into Tier 2 materials, leaving herself with very little raw wood.

Three minutes later, Su You took out three wooden blocks, opened the construction menu, and built her first storage box near the settlement’s central fire.

Storage boxes didn’t require many materials, but their drawbacks were obvious.

For example: small capacity, low stacking limits, can’t be upgraded, can’t be recycled…

The first few issues were manageable, but the last one—“can’t be recycled”—meant that if she dismantled the box with a hammer later, she wouldn’t get any materials back.

Other buildings, when dismantled with a hammer, would return some materials… which was why Su You hadn’t bothered making storage boxes at her previous temporary camp.

It wasn’t just that she didn’t have enough stuff to need a storage box; it was also because that camp was only temporary, and she’d have to move sooner or later.

Once she left, she couldn’t take the box with her or recycle it, so building one there would have been a waste of resources.

But it was different now that she had her own territory. She’d be living here for the rest of her life (probably?), so as long as there was enough space, the storage boxes could stay put forever.

Once the first box was built, Su You began organizing her belongings.

Although everything she owned could fit into a single box, she planned to make two, to keep things sorted.

One box would hold commonly used basic materials, food, and tools she didn’t need right now—like wood, stone, fiber (cord), ore, red berries, stone shovels, and so on.

The other box would be for fuel and miscellaneous items she didn’t have a use for yet, such as broken bark, snapped branches, unidentified rocks, charcoal, ashes, etc.

While waiting for the materials for the second box to finish, Su You grabbed her stone knife and gathered about three stacks of berries from a nearby bush.

Before establishing her territory, Su You would have only collected one stack—partly to avoid waste, and partly because she didn’t have enough space to store more food.

Food was different from other items: it had to be kept in her backpack, or there was a high chance that wild animals would steal it while she was away.

Other materials, though inedible and useless to animals, could still occasionally be stolen. That’s why Su You always carried even the items she didn’t immediately need.

She’d rather sacrifice a backpack slot than risk having to re-gather materials because they were stolen. That would be much more troublesome than just having one less slot.

But now, with her own territory and enough storage space, she didn’t have to worry about food being stolen—just whether she could eat it all before it spoiled.

Storage boxes could keep items safe from theft, but they didn’t extend food’s shelf life. So after roasting, the berries would still only last three days.

Only after building a warehouse and storing the roasted berries inside would their shelf life increase to five days.

Five days still wasn’t long, but it was better than nothing.

Su You wasn’t worried about not finishing three stacks of berries in time; she was actually more concerned about not having enough.

Now that she had her own territory, she wouldn’t be the only one needing to eat in the future.

……

After collecting three stacks of berries and tossing them into the central fire to roast, Su You checked on her portable workbench, which had finished making some wooden blocks.

【Consume 3 wooden blocks to build a storage box?】

【Building: Storage Box. Estimated time: 120 seconds】

……

【Consume 2 wooden blocks to build a Basic Workbench?】

【Building: Basic Workbench. Estimated time: 10 seconds】

……

With more types of materials and more things to craft, a single portable workbench was no longer enough.

Whenever she started making something, everything else had to wait until it was done, which was a huge waste of time. So Su You decisively used two wooden blocks to build a second workbench.

Workbenches are a special type of building that can be recycled, but their recycling works a bit differently from other buildings. For most buildings, recycling means smashing them with a hammer and getting back some of the original materials—this is called “material recycling.”

But with workbenches, using a hammer gives you two options: “material recycling” or “full recycling.”

Full recycling means you retrieve the entire workbench intact, so you can just place it down again later without needing to rebuild it.

Generally, all crafting workbenches have this full recycling feature—provided you have a hammer.

Su You didn’t have a hammer yet, since it required stone to craft, but she didn’t need to dismantle or recycle anything at the moment, so she wasn’t in a rush to make one.

Ten seconds passed quickly. As soon as the new Basic Workbench was finished, Su You put it straight to work.

【Use 8 wooden blocks to craft 2 wooden planks?】

【Crafting: Wooden Planks. Estimated time: 60 seconds】

【Remaining: Wooden Plank x1. Estimated time: 60 seconds】

……

“Two boxes used up six wooden blocks, the workbench took two, and the bulletin board needs two planks—that’s eight wooden blocks…” In other words, after all that tree-chopping, she’d only managed to make thirty-five wooden blocks, and now she was already down to just nineteen.

Su You sighed. Even though she’d managed to establish her territory in just three days—or really, two—there was still so much left to do.

For example, she was making these two wooden planks to build a structure called a bulletin board.

As mentioned before, the bulletin board would allow wandering NPCs to spawn near her territory…"

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