Chapter 76: Great Wealth

Not only had all the wealth been distributed, but even the final choices everyone made were the same—they all chose to contribute to the territory.

Last night, Su You had already taken some food from the warehouse and put it up for sale in the tavern. While it’s not entirely accurate to say that you can’t sell things without NPCs, it’s pretty close.

After all, without NPCs, there’s no one to collect money, restock goods, or serve customers. Everything relies on the customers to help themselves, and payment is entirely on the honor system.

But since there are so few people right now, and Su You didn’t think any of them would just “steal” food without paying, she simply opened up access to the tavern.

As for pricing, since all the food available was just ordinary fare with nothing special, Su You set the prices based on how much hunger each item restored.

1 copper coin = 20 hunger points. Even with nonstop labor all day, at most you’d spend just over twenty copper coins to be full.

Since this is a basic necessity, Su You didn’t set the price too high. After all, if people can’t even afford to eat, it would obviously lower the residents’ goodwill toward the territory—that is, their loyalty.

As for their income, that’s harder to say, since everyone works at a different pace. But as long as they aren’t slacking off, they can earn at least two or three days’ worth of food money in a single day—maybe even more.

Speaking of money, it’s worth mentioning how much Su You has on hand right now.

Originally, she had 6 silver coins and 136 copper coins. Converting that for convenience, that’s 736 copper coins.

Previously, when Lyle and his brother killed the ghostly skeletons, Su You picked up some coins from the loot—fifteen ghostly skeletons in total, dropping 53 copper coins. Adding that to her previous amount, she had 789 copper coins.

But after these past two days of expenses, those 700-plus copper coins had dwindled to just over 400. At this rate, in less than two days, Su You wouldn’t have enough money to post tasks on the bounty board anymore…

But it’s fine, because Su You actually has a huge fortune in reserve.

And the source of this wealth is the Black-striped Tiger.

Aside from a pile of meat and materials, the Black-striped Tiger also dropped 12 copper coins, 16 silver coins, and… 1 gold coin.

Doya and Lyle contributed the tiger’s loot, which naturally included this windfall.

At a 100:1 exchange rate, sixteen silver coins equal 1,600 copper coins—not to mention the gold coin!

That’s a whole 10,000 copper coins!

In short, this sum greatly eased Su You’s financial troubles, allowing her to establish a currency cycle in the territory ahead of schedule.

…

After chatting with Lake, Su You gave Dory a couple of instructions, then set off toward the chain mines as she’d planned yesterday.

Before leaving, she was pestered by a certain white ermine. But before it could pester her for long, under Su You’s cold stare, the ermine blinked pitifully, then turned around and sat with its back to her.

The little gesture made it look as if it had suffered some great injustice—and the one who’d wronged it was Su You.

Seeing this, Su You almost laughed in exasperation.

Was she unwilling to bring the ermine along?

Absolutely!

But why?

She was going out to explore and take care of important business, not to play tourist or pretend at house. Why would she bring a pet along?

Especially a pet that could attract all sorts of random creatures at any moment… Wouldn’t that just be asking for trouble?

Fortunately, although the ermine was a bit clingy, it knew when to back off and didn’t throw a tantrum. Otherwise, Su You would have to seriously consider whether to keep it around.

Unaware that it had almost been abandoned again, the ermine watched Su You’s departing figure, waving its tail a bit forlornly. In its eyes, besides grievance, there was a hint of other emotions… but those were feelings Su You was destined never to see.

…

…

Returning to the chain mines, Su You made her way to the marble deposit and took out the copper pickaxe she’d prepared in advance.

With the sound of clanging metal, a good amount of marble dropped to the ground. As usual, Su You didn’t pick up the resources as she mined; instead, she waited until she was done, then gathered everything at once.

Otherwise, bending down over and over to pick things up would be exhausting.

She didn’t know how long she’d been at it, but by the time her full-durability copper pickaxe was worn down to half, she finally saw a small gap in the area she’d been digging.

“…This opening is pretty small,” Su You thought. Yesterday, she’d tried to estimate the hollow area behind the marble wall by tapping and listening for echoes. She found that although the whole wall was marble, the hollow part was only behind the lower half.

Knowing this, she could have started digging directly into the hollow section, but she didn’t. She wanted to confirm the maximum size of the opening, so she extended her digging a bit beyond her original plan before breaking through.

The result made her frown—it really was tiny, like a ventilation duct, just big enough for a person to crawl through, with no room to turn around.

In other words, once you go in, you have to crawl all the way to the end—there’s basically no way to back out.

Su You stared at the opening for a while, but in the end, she decided not to crawl through to see what was on the other side.

Not only did she not go in, she even dug up two more pieces of regular stone and blocked the opening.

With that done, Su You started collecting the marble on the ground.

Given the current building materials, Su You remembered that many structures required marble—like the blacksmith, carpenter, food shop, weapon shop, armor shop… basically, all the shops needed marble.

Even the lord’s manor required marble, though it used marble slabs (3 marble bricks = 1 marble slab) instead of bricks.

In short, Su You needed a lot of marble.

But there was no way she could gather so much on her own, so she only collected enough for the quest hall construction, then went back to mining copper ore.

Copper ore could be used to make all kinds of tools, as well as weapons and armor. Su You hadn’t forgotten that in about five days, she’d have to lead the territory’s residents in defending against an attack from dark creatures.

(End of chapter)"

"77. Tusk Dagger

[Obtained Copper Ore x4]

[Obtained Copper Ore Residue x8]

...

As Su You mined more and more ore, the durability of her copper pickaxe dropped to its last point.

She took out a whetstone and used it on the copper pickaxe. Normally, a single use of the whetstone would fully restore the durability of a stone tool, but when repairing the copper tool, it took two uses—and even then, the durability wasn’t fully restored.

If repairing a stone tool gives +100 durability, then repairing a copper pickaxe only gives +70 per use. Even after two repairs, that’s just +140 durability, while the copper pickaxe’s max durability is 150.

After repairing her pickaxe, Su You didn’t continue mining. Instead, she gathered all her loot and left the mine, heading back to her territory.

The first thing she did upon returning was to take out the marble she’d collected and start making marble bricks. The quest hall required five marble bricks, and since it took three pieces of marble to make one brick, the seventeen pieces she’d gathered were just enough.

[Use Marble x15 to craft Marble Brick x5?]

[Crafting: Marble Bricks. Estimated time: 120 seconds.]

[Remaining: Marble Brick x4. Estimated time: 8 minutes.]

...

While waiting for the marble bricks to finish, Su You rummaged through a wooden box and found the wild boar tusks she’d collected earlier.

She planned to use these tusks to craft two daggers.

Although wild boar tusks could be used to make other things besides daggers, the other items either required materials Su You didn’t have, or the crafting process would damage the tusks, wasting their value.

But with tusk daggers, there was no such waste—she just needed to polish the tusks a bit and they’d serve as sharp blades.

Making tusk daggers required two workstations: a furnace and an intermediate workbench.

Su You already had a furnace, so she put in two of the last four copper ingots she had left from yesterday.

[Consume Copper Ingot x2 to craft Copper Dagger Blades?]

[Crafting Copper Dagger Blades. Estimated time: 300 seconds.]

With the dagger blades done, it was time for the edges.

The crafting process for tusk daggers was to first forge the metal dagger blades in the furnace, then place the tusks on a workbench of the appropriate level to process them into tusk edges, and finally combine the blades and tusk edges on the workbench.

Wild boar tusks were of relatively high quality, so a basic workbench wasn’t enough—Su You had to upgrade it to an intermediate workbench to process the tusks.

Upgrading a basic workbench to intermediate required [Plank x5, Stone Brick x5, Copper Ingot x2]... It might seem simple, but later on, the amount of materials needed for crafting increases dramatically, and one workbench just isn’t enough.

And that’s just the materials for upgrading a single workbench.

But for now, Su You didn’t need that many, so upgrading just one would do.

Conveniently, after making the dagger blades, she had exactly two copper ingots left.

Even if she didn’t, it wouldn’t matter—she’d just mined about ten more copper ores. If she ran out, she could always smelt more.

[Consume Plank x5, Stone Brick x5, Copper Ingot x2 to upgrade Basic Workbench to Intermediate Workbench?]

[Please cancel any tasks and remove all items from the workbench before upgrading. All commands and items on the workbench will be cleared during the upgrade, and the workbench will be unusable during the process.]

Su You had already chosen an unused workbench to upgrade, so she didn’t even bother reading the prompt and just hit “Upgrade.”

[Workbench upgrading. Estimated time: 10 minutes.]

“Milord, what are you making?” Laike asked, pushing a wooden cart loaded with rocks. When he saw the two wild boar tusks in Su You’s hands, his eyes lit up with excitement and a hint of awe.

Before Su You could answer, he parked the cart by the bounty board and hurried over to her, curiously eyeing what she held.

“Are those... boar tusks?” Laike wasn’t sure at first, but when Su You nodded, he instinctively glanced in a certain direction, then turned back, looking at her with admiration. “Did Miss Duoya kill that one too?”

If it had been before, even if Su You told him the boar was killed by Duoya, he’d have been skeptical. But after the black-striped tiger incident, Laike now automatically associated anything impressive with Duoya.

Unfortunately, he was wrong—this boar had nothing to do with Duoya.

Su You didn’t mention the mysterious creature, just said it wasn’t Duoya who killed the boar. Laike didn’t press further.

He didn’t seem disappointed by her answer. Maybe, to him, it didn’t matter who killed the boar—he still thought Duoya was amazing.

After all, anyone who could seriously injure a lively tiger with just a bow and a few arrows was obviously formidable.

As they spoke, the dagger blades finished in the furnace. When Su You took them out, Laike’s eyes lit up again.

He saw the dagger blades and the boar tusks. With his adventurer’s experience—well, actually, anyone could guess what she was making—Laike was no exception.

“Milord, are you making tusk daggers?” Laike realized he was asking the obvious.

Luckily, Su You didn’t mind and simply confirmed it.

“In a few days, some merchants or caravans should pass through. A tusk dagger should fetch a good price,” Su You said casually, but it caught Laike’s attention.

He immediately reached for his pocket and pulled out a coin pouch.

“How much do you want for it, milord? Name your price—I’ll buy it! After all, it’s better to keep the profit in the family!” Of course, Laike wasn’t buying the dagger for himself—he didn’t use such weapons.

As Lyle had said before, Laike preferred using his fists. The gauntlets Su You gave him after the last quest were now his prized possession.

The one who really needed a dagger was Lyle.

In a straight-up fight, Lyle couldn’t beat Laike—Laike was naturally strong, and his fists were his weapons. With a weapon against someone unarmed, it was only natural for Lyle to lose.

(End of chapter)"

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