Chapter 81: Wind Millet Grass

Even though many things had changed, the vast majority of the mechanics were still exactly as she remembered.

What she worried about most was the possibility of time-limited quests—especially the kind that forced you to accept them, and punished you if you failed to complete them. It was just like that very first “Establish your territory within three days” quest.

But there was no point in worrying about these things. If the system really did assign mandatory timed quests, she’d just have to do them—she couldn’t just refuse to level up her territory for the rest of her life because of it.

...

For the next half-day, everyone in the territory was busy with their own tasks, and Su You was no exception. Her top priority right now was to finish exploring this forest as quickly as possible.

“One map per person, one area per day”—this was the most accurate description of every player’s early-game experience.

After gathering enough resources to survive, the next step was to explore the entire area they lived in as quickly as possible.

This wasn’t just to get a sense of the surroundings, find out where resource points were, or learn the lay of the land for easier resource gathering later on.

Most importantly, they needed to use the information from their exploration to predict which red disaster season would follow the mild season, and prepare in advance.

Usually, the length of each season was variable, but the initial mild season at the start of the game was an exception.

The opening mild season always lasted thirty days—mainly to give everyone a stable start and prevent them from dying off too early.

And after the initial mild season, the next season would always be the red “disaster season.”

On the Sunset Continent, there were three main types of seasons.

The first was the blue “stable season.” Like an NPC’s neutral trait, the blue stable season was neither good nor bad—or rather, it had both good and bad aspects.

For example, the mild season was a stable season: nothing particularly good or bad happened, just peace and quiet. Another stable season, the “rainy season,” was both good and bad.

As the name suggests, the rainy season was marked by lots of rain.

The “good” part was that the rain helped all kinds of resources grow and cycle faster. The “bad” part was that frequent rain could make life much more difficult.

The second type of season was the green “benevolent season.”

The most common benevolent season was the harvest season, but there were also the prosperous season and the inspiration season, among others.

The harvest season, like the rainy season, sped up the growth and renewal of all kinds of resources—animals, plants, and natural resources. But it was considered benevolent because it didn’t come with constant rain.

The prosperous season, also known as “trade season,” was marked by a surge in trading activity—merchants and all kinds of transactions became more frequent and smoother, and the goods available were more plentiful.

With more goods on the market, prices generally dropped a bit, making trade season the perfect time to clear out merchants’ inventories.

The inspiration season, also called “learning season,” was when everyone’s efficiency at any learning-related activity noticeably increased.

...

The last type of season was the red disaster season.

Common disaster seasons included “destruction season,” “storm season,” and “drought season.” The names pretty much explained themselves—no need to elaborate.

Exploring the map in advance couldn’t prevent disaster seasons, but it did let Su You figure out which disaster season would follow the mild season.

To explore, Su You took out her newly made “regional map.”

A regional map was centered on the spot where it was made, covering a certain area—not the whole forest or continent.

And to predict the disaster season, she only needed to explore an area of about that size. Exploring more than that was pointless—it would take too much time, and she’d be better off just gathering resources to tough out the disaster season.

Before setting out, Su You divided the regional map into nine sections. This made the map look a bit like an uneven tic-tac-toe grid—her preferred way of exploring.

You didn’t have to explore every inch of the map. Experienced “veteran players” could get a pretty good sense of the situation and resources just by seeing part of the terrain and where it was located on the map.

Su You was no exception.

On this nine-grid map, Sunset Territory was in the very center. The mine was in the upper right, and the fire demon and stone monster were to the left and right of the territory, respectively.

Su You marked these on the map with charcoal. The map now looked roughly like this:

[Unknown 1] [Unknown 2] [Mine]

[Fire Demon] [Territory] [Stone Monster]

[Unknown 3] [Unknown 4] [Unknown 5]

Aside from those four areas, there were still five sections Su You hadn’t explored yet. Her goal today was to check out [Unknown 1] and [Unknown 2].

With her objective set, Su You put the map away, grabbed some food, tools, basic materials, and a certain lifesaving item, and set out.

...

...

“Why isn’t the Lord back yet...?” Dory sounded a bit worried as she looked at the darkening sky.

Next to her, Doya looked calm on the surface, but there was a hint of emotion in her eyes.

“Don’t worry, the Lord has an agility potion—she’ll be fine.” Doya’s tone was unusually gentle, as if trying to reassure Dory.

But even with those words, Dory couldn’t help but worry as long as Su You hadn’t returned.

Still, part of her attention was now caught by the mention of that potion.

“Doya, what was that potion you mentioned just now?”

“An agility potion, made from wind millet grass. It’s a potion that increases your movement speed after drinking it.” As she spoke, Doya couldn’t help but recall the earlier scene.

There wasn’t much to the memory—she’d just happened to see Su You holding a bottle of potion and asked about it offhand. It really was just a casual question, but Su You had told her what it was anyway.

Wind millet grass wasn’t exactly rare, but it mostly grew deep in the forest, so it was quite lucky that Su You had found four plants near the forest’s edge.

Since she didn’t have a potion workbench yet, Su You had made the potion by hand.

(End of chapter)"

"Here is a fluent, natural English translation of your text:

---