Chapter 7: Sunset Flower

Although Su You didn’t know if the round trees in this world still had this particular trait, she’d rather believe they did—after all, it couldn’t hurt to play it safe.

Because of this, whenever Su You peeled bark, she always chose round trees, and when she chopped down trees, she picked round ones, too.

It wasn’t because round trees dropped more wood, but because a round tree with its bark stripped looked so ugly. Since she’d already peeled off its bark, Su You felt responsible for it—she couldn’t just let it live on looking so hideous, risking the scorn of the other trees around it (or so she imagined).

After peeling five more round trees and chopping down another five, Su You finally gathered all the materials needed to upgrade her backpack to level one.

She glanced at the pile of items on the ground—things she couldn’t pick up because her backpack was full—and immediately opened her inventory.

[Do you want to use Rope*5 and Bark*10 to upgrade your backpack to Level 1?]

Looking at the dialog box projection in front of her, Su You didn’t hesitate to select “Yes.”

Almost the moment she made her choice, her open backpack interface was forcibly closed. When Su You opened it again, her backpack, which had only five slots before, had expanded to ten. The rope in her bag had decreased by five, and all the bark was gone.

Before going back to pick up the items she’d dropped earlier, Su You checked the stone axe in her hand—Durability: 11/100.

Yep, a number sure to drive anyone with OCD crazy.

Each round tree she chose took exactly ten swings to fell. She’d chopped down six in total, using up 60 durability. The extra 29 points of durability were spent peeling bark—29 swings, 29 durability.

Even though it was an annoying number, Su You didn’t mind. In fact, it worked out perfectly for her.

Since she didn’t need any more bark, Su You found a random tree with 10 HP, chopped it down with a few “thunks,” picked up the dropped items, and tucked the stone axe—now down to just 1 durability—into her backpack.

After that, Su You spent some time picking up all the broken bark she’d left behind while chopping trees, as well as the excess wood she couldn’t carry before, plus any branches, leaves, and even a lucky piece of flint she found along the way.

So, scavenging as she walked, by the time she returned to the first round tree she’d chopped and picked up the items she’d left there, her newly upgraded backpack was almost full again.

After tidying up her inventory a bit, Su You’s current resource collection looked like this:

Backpack (9/10): Rope*5, Flint*3, Wood*20, Wood*2, Red Berries*50, Branches*20, Leaves*42, Broken Bark*84, Stone Axe*1 (1/100)

With her supplies more or less gathered, Su You felt she’d completed her first day’s tasks—not above and beyond, but she’d gotten everything she needed. Now, all she wanted was to hurry back and get some rest.

Just walking around and picking things up had already drained her stamina to half, not to mention she hadn’t started at full stamina to begin with—what with all the bark peeling and tree chopping, her energy was even lower.

If she hadn’t taken a break halfway through, she’d probably have collapsed by now.

Even so, her stamina was now stuck at 21/100.

Stamina at 20, 40, and 60 are three special thresholds: below 20, movement speed drops sharply; at 20–39, all actions other than walking (like chopping, digging, crafting, building, etc.) slow down; at 40–59, hunger depletes faster.

Low stamina was a pain, but if you could keep it at 60 or above, you’d get a speed boost for all actions.

Su You’s current state was definitely not great—her stamina was low, and her hunger bar, which she’d just filled, had dropped by more than half. Still, bad as she felt, she had enough energy to walk back.

Stopping and starting along the way, Su You used a little trick almost everyone knew: by the time she reached her temporary camp, not only had she not lost any stamina, her stamina had actually gone up by two points—from 21 to 23.

This trick took advantage of the game’s stamina recovery and depletion mechanics. By deliberately interrupting actions, you could keep your stamina from dropping, and with practice, even make it rise a bit.

It was a great trick, especially in the early game when your stamina cap was low—almost a lifesaver. The downside was that it wasted a lot of time… What should have been less than an hour’s walk took Su You a full hour and a half.

When she finally arrived, Su You visibly relaxed.

The first thing she did was sit down to recover her fatigue and stamina, then start organizing her things.

She had no clock, no phone, and the data panel didn’t display any time-related info, so Su You had to find other ways to tell the time.

On her way back, Su You had spotted a pale yellow wildflower and casually uprooted it. Now, as she sorted her things, she planted it nearby.

[Sunset Flower]

Category: Other

Quality: White

Effect: Eating it reduces HP by 1.

Description: An ordinary little yellow flower. It’s poisonous, but only slightly. Its only notable feature is that it blooms for a while at sunrise and sunset.

The Sunset Flower’s trait was clear: it would bloom for a period at sunrise and sunset. As long as she could confirm those times, Su You would have two chances each day to adjust her sense of time.

Unlike the real world, unless there was special weather or some unusual event, sunrise and sunset times in each season never changed.

And in the world of Sunset Continent, the seasons weren’t spring, summer, autumn, and winter, but “Mild Season,” “Rainy Season,” “Disaster Season,” “Destruction Season,” and so on.

The forest resource point always started in the Mild Season. Its biggest feature was that it had no features—everything was calm and peaceful. It wasn’t the best season, but it was the most suitable for early development, since there weren’t too many special events.

In the Mild Season, sunrise and sunset were both at six o’clock… But for now, Su You didn’t need the Sunset Flower to tell the time, since she had another way, though it was only available for a limited period.

Su You glanced at the yellow flower, which showed no sign of blooming, and got back to work.

As mentioned before, not only was her stamina low, her hunger was too. So, the first thing Su You did after sitting down was to prepare to process the red berries she had with her.

Unlike crafting ordinary materials and tools, processing food required a dedicated kitchen workbench for cooking.

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"8. Berry Recipes

At this early stage, the environment wasn’t exactly ideal, so all Su You could do was set up a campfire and do some basic processing.

There were two sets of materials for making a campfire: one was [Wood x5, Rope x2], and the other was [Wood x3, Stone x1].

Although Su You had enough materials for either method, since stone had more uses early on and was harder to find in the forest, she naturally chose the first method to build her campfire.

But before setting up the campfire, Su You first combined her loose stones into stone material. Once that was done, she put in two pieces of wood...

‘Wood x2, Stone x1’—these were originally the materials for making a Stone Axe, but in reality, the same materials could be used to craft different items.

For example, when Su You opened the crafting interface at her workbench, she could see that both ‘Stone Axe’ and ‘Stone Knife’ were available to craft.

[Use Wood x2, Stone x1 to craft Stone Knife?]

[Crafting: Stone Knife. Estimated time: 120 seconds.]

Two minutes later, Su You took out the Stone Knife and then put in the materials for the campfire.

[Use Wood x5, Rope x2 to craft Campfire?]

[Crafting: Campfire. Estimated time: 300 seconds.]

Since making a campfire took five minutes, Su You had decided to craft the Stone Knife first, then the campfire.

Once the workbench started running, Su You finally took a look at the Stone Knife’s info.

[Stone Knife]

Category: Tool

Quality: Common (White)

Attack: +1 (Attack Damage: 10)

Durability: 100/100

Description: An ordinary but fairly sharp stone knife. Can be used for cutting items or as a self-defense weapon.

Su You held the stone knife in one hand and took a piece of wood from her backpack with the other. Just like when she made the wooden needle before, she started her handiwork.

Although Su You wasn’t particularly skilled with her hands in real life, she’d played plenty of VR games before, and these kinds of games always had some kind of assistance or calibration, so making simple items wasn’t too hard for her.

As wood shavings fell to the ground, after a while, Su You obtained: Wooden Cup x1.

[Wooden Cup]

Category: Tool

Quality: Common (White)

Description: An ordinary wooden cup, can be used to hold liquids.

Following this process, Su You made three more wooden cups, so now she had four in total.

Maybe because the crafting method was simple, and she was using tools, all four cups were made successfully on the first try—no failures.

Once she finished her handiwork, the campfire on the workbench was also done. Su You took it out, and when she used it, a translucent image of a campfire appeared before her eyes. She could place it anywhere on the ground around her.

She picked a suitable spot and set down the campfire, then immediately threw in all the nearby items she’d prepared as fuel.

Things like broken traps, rough wooden needles, a wooden needle (Durability 4/20), snapped branches, and shredded bark, etc.

Once the burn time reached an hour, she stopped adding fuel.

The reason she was in such a hurry to feed the fire was because, when you first place a campfire, it comes lit for ten seconds.

While the fire is burning, you can keep adding fuel to extend the burn time. But if the fire goes out, you have to use ‘kindling’ to relight it.

Kindling isn’t hard to make, and there are three common recipes: