Chapter 44: Is There a Mine?

After finishing everything, Su You didn’t leave right away. Instead, she took out her stone knife and started gathering plants nearby to prepare for planting.

Having just farmland wasn’t enough to grow anything—she still needed seeds, and those had to be collected as well.

In the Sunset Continent, seeds are obtained by processing a whole plant or its fruit.

For example, with fiber plants, Su You had to dig up an entire fiber plant, roots and all, from the soil. Then she could throw it onto the workbench and process it into [Fiber Plant Seeds].

Or take red berries, which grow on bushes. Since it’s impossible to dig up an entire berry bush and toss it onto the workbench, the way to get seeds for these is by processing the fruit itself—in other words, processing the red berries.

Besides fiber plants, Su You also planned to collect other plants to make into seeds for planting, like cotton plants, red grass… or even some special plants.

Cotton didn’t need much explanation—it was a familiar and common plant in the forest. Su You hadn’t collected it before just because processing it was a bit of a hassle.

She needed cotton for daily necessities, whether for clothes, bedding, or other things.

Red grass, on the other hand, was a common medicinal herb in the forest.

Boiling red grass with water would yield a bottle of the most basic ‘Low-Grade Healing Potion,’ which restored 10 HP.

Although the amount healed was small, the potion was easy to make and the ingredients were easy to find, making it a popular item for people to stockpile early on.

Since the fiber and berry bushes near her territory were close together, if Su You dug up the fiber plants there for seeds, it would be like robbing Peter to pay Paul. So she didn’t plan to gather plants from right around her territory for planting.

Coincidentally, she needed to go out to deliver some meat, so she could collect seeds along the way… and maybe even unlock part of the map.

That’s right—Su You had already made a map, and at this moment she was wandering around the stone monster spawn point with it in hand.

As she walked, if she spotted red grass or any other valuable plant, she’d stop to collect it. Once she was done, she’d pull out her map and continue exploring.

The map only recorded the path she took while carrying it, so areas she’d visited before remained shrouded in darkness until she went there again with the map to unlock those locations.

She didn’t know how much time had passed, but by the time her backpack was stuffed with all sorts of miscellaneous plants, she was down to her last marker.

Marker: When carrying the map, place it on the ground to leave a mark on the map. You can also name it.

If it were just Su You alone, she wouldn’t need markers—after so much gameplay, she had developed her own way of memorizing the terrain.

But maps and markers were special, shareable items. That meant once she finished mapping and marking the area, any maps she made from then on would be complete and marked.

This way, she could give the map to other NPCs, so they wouldn’t get lost, and she herself could venture further from her territory to gather resources.

Without a map, she’d have to personally lead them to their destinations… which would be a huge hassle, especially if any of them had a terrible sense of direction.

…

Because she was gathering resources while exploring, Su You’s efficiency wasn’t great. From bright sunshine to dusk, she’d only managed to unlock an area about the size of a fingernail on the map.

Normally, she would have headed back by now. But as she unlocked the last area, she noticed something familiar about the terrain and environment…

“Sloping hills, broadleaf trees… Is there a mine nearby?!” Su You had only planned to scout out the map—if she found a stone quarry, great; if not, no big deal. She had all of tomorrow to keep exploring.

But she hadn’t expected that, while she didn’t find a stone quarry as she’d hoped, she did stumble upon an area that was almost guaranteed—a 99% chance—to spawn a mine.

Sloping hills were a type of terrain that looked flat, but the whole surface was actually slanted, indicating nearby mountains. Just having sloping hills wasn’t anything special—mountains weren’t exactly rare.

But if you also spotted broadleaf trees near sloping hills, that was a different story.

Broadleaf trees almost always spawned near ore resource points. You could say that while not every ore resource point had broadleaf trees, every broadleaf tree meant there was an ore resource point nearby.

There were generally three types of ore resource points.

The first was a quarry, where ore was exposed on the surface and could be dug up directly. These were easy to mine, but rarely had high-grade ores.

The second was a mine, where ore was buried inside a mountain. These had common ores and some rarer ones, with moderate mining difficulty.

The third was an underground vein—just as the name suggested, the ore was deep underground, with unknown depth. These were extremely hard to mine, but had a much higher chance of yielding high-grade ores.

The classic combination of sloping hills plus broadleaf trees almost always pointed to the second type—a mine: mountains and ores together. What else could it be?

Of course, there was a tiny chance it was just an ordinary rocky mountain with an underground ore vein. Honestly, if that were the case, it would be worse than nothing.

That’s because resource points in a given area are limited. If one spawns here, the chance of another spawning nearby is very low, or it might only appear far away.

And mining an underground vein beneath a rocky mountain was a real pain—you’d have to dig through an entire mountain just to reach it. No need to say how much work that would be.

Su You figured she probably wouldn’t be unlucky enough to run into such a rare scenario, and she certainly hoped she wouldn’t.

Having discovered an ore resource point, Su You’s plan to head straight home vanished—she wanted to check it out.

As soon as the thought crossed her mind, she was already heading toward the spot where, based on her experience, the mine should be.

She’d already calculated the time—she had at most twenty minutes to search for this ‘mine.’ Whether she found it or not, she’d have to head back to her territory immediately after that.

To avoid any unexpected delays, Su You even set aside ten minutes as a buffer. Otherwise, she’d actually have a full half hour to search for the mine.

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"45. Ghostly Skeletons

Twenty minutes passed quickly, and half the time was already gone, but Su You had already found what she was looking for.

Fortunately, the unlikely event she feared didn’t happen—just as she’d guessed, this was indeed a mine, not a mineral vein hidden beneath a mountain of stone.

However, there was also some bad news: near the mine, Su You spotted many monsters guarding it.

[Ghostly Skeleton]

HP: 100/100

Attack: 20

Defense: 10

Description: An undead monster whose body appears to be a transparent spirit, but is actually made of bones.

...

Just as the description said, the Ghostly Skeletons looked like transparent ghosts at first glance, but if you looked closely, you’d realize that beneath that “transparency” was actually a body made of bones.

Because these Ghostly Skeletons were naturally hard to spot due to their transparency—and with the sky darkening and little light around—if Su You didn’t look carefully, she wouldn’t see their bodies at all. All she could make out were their eerie, green-flamed eyes and their ghostly white skulls.

Since their bodies were nearly invisible, Su You’s perspective at this moment was especially terrifying—wherever she looked, she saw nothing but countless floating skulls suspended in midair...

Faced with this sudden shift from a survival/base-building/sandbox game to a horror/weird/combat game, even though Su You wasn’t afraid of these things and had gotten used to such sights before, she couldn’t help but get goosebumps when those skulls turned to look in her direction.

She glanced at the time, then took the last marker out of her backpack and placed it in a discreet spot nearby, so the monsters wouldn’t find it.

Although destroying the marker wouldn’t affect the map’s record, it would let the monsters know that an “outsider” had been here, making them more alert and potentially disrupting Su You’s future plans.

But she couldn’t just skip placing the marker, either.

Even though Su You had found the mine in just ten minutes, the whole area was full of broadleaf trees, with nothing distinctive to use as a landmark. Combined with the time of day and poor lighting, her visibility was limited, so it was best to leave a marker.

After hiding the last marker, Su You crouched low to make herself less noticeable, then quickly slipped away.

Although there were quite a few monsters near the mine, luckily, there weren’t any in the surrounding areas. At least, Su You didn’t run into any trouble on her way back and returned to her territory without incident.

On her way back, Su You even stopped by the stone monster’s place to check on the meat and berries she’d left behind. Everything was still there, untouched and unmoved.

She figured maybe the stone monster hadn’t come back yet, or perhaps it just wasn’t planning to show up today... Either way, after confirming the food was fine, Su You headed home.

...

...

As soon as she returned to her territory, Su You received a flurry of system notifications.

[Lyle has submitted the completed quest “Build Farmland.” Reward has been automatically distributed.]

[Lake has submitted the completed quest “Collect Wood.” Total completions: 5. Reward has been automatically distributed.]

[Lyle has submitted the completed quest “Collect Branches.” Total completions: 2. Reward has been automatically distributed.]

[Lake has submitted the completed quest “Collect Stones.” Total completions: 1. Reward has been automatically distributed.]

[Lyle has submitted the completed quest...]

[Lake has submitted the completed quest...]

...

There were so many notifications that Su You only skimmed a few before temporarily muting the rest.

In short, the soil for the farmland had been fully tilled and was ready for her to build on. In addition, the two brothers had collected 150 units of wood, 120 branches, and 4 stones for her.

In exchange, Su You paid out 10 copper coins (for building farmland) + 30 (collecting wood) + 6 (collecting branches) + 4 (collecting stones), for a total of 50 copper coins.

Originally, Su You had 136 copper coins and 6 silver coins, plus the 15 copper coins the brothers had given her later, making 151 copper coins in total.

She had placed those 151 copper coins and 1 silver coin in the wooden chest. At their current spending rate, this money would last several more days—assuming no new wanderers arrived.

However...

Su You checked the territory info panel and found that only the dark creature invasion event was left, meaning no new wanderers would be arriving anytime soon.

“Miss Lord!” Seeing Su You return, Dolly looked happy, though there was a hint of hesitation on her face.

She glanced at the two brothers resting by the central fire, then hurried over to Su You.

From her expression, Su You could tell she wanted to talk privately, so she stopped walking.

“Did those two do something?” Since Dolly wanted to avoid Lake and Lyle, Su You had every reason to suspect this was about them.

Dolly shook her head, then nodded slightly. “They didn’t do anything wrong. It’s just that not long ago, the two of them came to me with money, wanting to buy food.”

Previously, Su You had told them that if they couldn’t find food, they could buy it from her. But since Su You was out and Doya was nowhere to be found, after working for ages and getting hungry, the brothers turned to Dolly for help.

They brought the fruits of their labor, hoping to buy food from Dolly, since they could tell she had some authority in the territory.

But since Su You had “forgotten” to tell Dolly about this before leaving, Dolly didn’t know if she should give them food.

If she did... it didn’t seem right, since she hadn’t forgotten she herself was just “sheltering under someone else’s roof.” She wasn’t the owner here and didn’t have the right to distribute supplies.

She’d overheard the brothers’ earlier conversation with Su You: ten copper coins a night for lodging, food charged separately... By comparison, all Dolly had done was help repair a fur coat, and she got free room and board—a total windfall.

So Dolly didn’t dare make the decision on her own, and refused the brothers’ request the first time.

But later, when the brothers produced copper coins and explained that Su You had said they could buy food..."

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