Chapter 58: All Data Has Been Cleared
Building Infrastructure in a Data Driven World
Otherwise, if she accidentally ran into a ghost skeleton, just one hit from it would take away 20 HP—one fifth of Su You’s health bar gone in an instant. A few more hits and it wouldn’t just be her health bar that was gone—she’d be gone too.
So she had to wait until these two finished clearing out all the ghost skeletons nearby before going over herself...
Fighting while holding a wooden basin was a bit tricky, but it was clear the two brothers had worked out a strategy that, while not perfect, suited them very well.
Lake splashed dye in every corner of the area. Su You had prepared plenty of this dye—enough to turn the whole place into a sea of purple.
While Lake was splashing dye, Lyle was in charge of fending off the ghost skeletons that went berserk after being hit by the dye. Once Lake finished his task, he immediately rushed back to support Lyle.
Since they had aggroed quite a few ghost skeletons at once, neither of them intended to fight to the bitter end. Every move they made prioritized defense.
Once the two regrouped, they retreated behind the wooden fence Su You had set up.
With their teamwork and the barrier provided by the fence, they managed to defeat all the ghost skeletons that had been relentlessly chasing them. Now the ground was littered with loot dropped by the slain skeletons.
Su You counted the number of ghost skeletons they had taken down—fifteen in total.
With these fifteen gone, while she couldn’t guarantee that every ghost skeleton on this path had been cleared, there couldn’t be many left.
...
With the ghost skeletons dealt with, Su You quickly gathered all the loot from the ground, then went over to check on the two of them.
Although she couldn’t see their detailed stats, she could still see their health bars.
[Lyle]
HP: 195/230
[Lake]
HP: 205/260
...
Although Lake’s current HP was 10 points higher than Lyle’s, because his maximum HP was higher, he’d actually taken more damage.
After all, a spear has some reach, so it’s not strictly melee, and the chance of taking hits is lower.
Lake, on the other hand, fought with his fists—true hand-to-hand combat.
After checking on them, Su You handed over the healing potions she’d prepared the day before.
She hadn’t given them the potions in advance because, unlike her, NPCs didn’t have backpacks to carry things. If they carried them on their person, they might accidentally drop them during battle... So Su You kept them herself and only handed them over after the fight.
“Thank you,” Lyle and Lake said, taking the potions and downing them without hesitation. It wasn’t that they were careless—they recognized what the potions were, so they felt safe drinking them. Otherwise, Lake might have drunk it anyway, but Lyle would definitely have hesitated.
Fifteen red herbs meant fifteen basic healing potions in total. For now, Su You gave each of them three.
It wasn’t enough to fully restore them, but you could only drink three of the same potion in a short period anyway. After three, you’d get a debuff called [Potion Resistance].
[Potion Resistance]: Due to consuming too many (three) of the same potion in a short time, any further use of the same potion within the duration will have its effect reduced by 80%.
A basic healing potion restores 10 HP, so with an 80% reduction, it would only restore 2 HP.
Red herbs and water weren’t valuable, but there was no need to waste them.
Plus, the more you drank, the longer the resistance lasted—the duration increased exponentially. So, all in all, it wasn’t worth it.
The base duration of Potion Resistance depended on the potion’s grade—the stronger the potion, the longer the resistance. For basic healing potions, it lasted just ten minutes.
Ten minutes wasn’t ten hours—they could afford to wait.
“I just checked—the ghost skeletons over there should all be cleared out,” Lyle said, drinking his third potion and sharing his observations.
Su You nodded slightly and collected their empty wooden cups.
“You two should—”
[Time in the Datafied World has ended. The system is processing data...]
[Data processing complete. A total of 415,264,151 stray data entries have been generated. All data has been cleared.]
Su You had been about to suggest they rest for a bit, then the three of them could check the path ahead together. If all the ghost skeletons really were gone, they could keep moving forward and see if the road led straight to the mine... But the sudden appearance of these two system messages cut her off mid-sentence—and interrupted her train of thought.
Looking at that string of numbers, Su You couldn’t help but feel a chill run down her spine.
She’d already guessed this would happen, but she hadn’t expected the system to so “kindly” notify them.
If the stray data was really what she thought it was, did that mean these 415 million pieces of stray data... were actually 415 million lives?
As much as Su You didn’t want to admit it, deep down she knew this was the truth.
She opened her personal info panel, and sure enough, the two auras she’d had were both gone. That meant it was now 8 a.m. on the third day...
It wasn’t just her world being settled—everyone else’s was too...
“Lord Su... Lord Su?!” Lake called out, worried something had happened when Su You suddenly fell silent mid-sentence.
Su You snapped out of her shock at the system message and finished what she’d been saying.
After hearing her out, the brothers sat down to rest and had no objections. Still, Lake seemed a bit concerned about Su You’s earlier reaction.
Su You noticed his concern and casually made up an excuse to brush it off.
After all, she couldn’t exactly tell them... What, that this was just a datafied world, and they weren’t real people, just strings of data serving “real humans”?
Fortunately, Lake didn’t press the issue. In fact, after hearing her excuse, he responded earnestly.
“Don’t worry, Lord Su. Since we said we’d help, even if there are more ghost skeletons by the mine, we’ll take care of them for you. You can absolutely trust the word of us brothers!”
Su You just smiled and said nothing."
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