Chapter 83: You Can Do That?

Although she knew how to make it, just like with the bow and arrow, she was missing the materials.

Dolly understood what Su You meant.

She wanted to make herself a pair of gloves, but for now, she didn’t have enough materials. Still, that didn’t matter—just the fact that Su You was willing to help her make gloves already made Dolly very happy.

“There’s no need to trouble yourself, my lady. With my current skills, a restorer’s gloves wouldn’t make much difference anyway.” Dolly clearly wasn’t the type to refuse to admit her own shortcomings. On the contrary, she had a clear understanding of her abilities and was willing to say so.

For her right now, gloves weren’t the most important thing. What mattered most was improving her own skills. From Su You’s perspective, that meant helping Dolly level up her restoration skill.

“I’ll prepare a box later, and put some items that need repairing inside, along with materials for repairs. You can arrange your own time to work on them.”

Skill leveling was related to proficiency, and proficiency increased with use.

The more you used a skill, and the better the results, the faster your proficiency grew. Once it maxed out, you’d hit a bottleneck. After that, an NPC’s proficiency would stop increasing until, during some use of the skill, they’d have a sudden insight and break through to the next skill level.

Of course, if there was no progress for a long time, as the lord, Su You could also help them break through by consuming certain resources at a specific building.

The process was different, but the result was the same. There was no such thing as an “inferior breakthrough” if you used outside help instead of your own abilities.

Right now, Dolly was stuck at the bottleneck for a beginner restorer. Fixing things wouldn’t increase her proficiency anymore, but each repair attempt was still a chance for her to level up.

“Alright.” Dolly didn’t know exactly what Su You meant by “things that need repairing,” but she was eager to level up, so she didn’t really care what she was fixing.

As long as she could level up, it didn’t matter what she was restoring.

After that, Su You didn’t leave. She chose to stay by the city’s heartfire, surrounded by a pile of workbenches, and started processing materials.

Other than the portable workbench Su You didn’t plan to use, there were five workbenches in total: two for synthesizing wood, two for fiber, and one for stone.

The stone workbench was intermediate level; the other four were basic.

Upgrading a workbench not only unlocked more recipes, but also reduced crafting time.

For example, originally it took one minute (sixty seconds) to combine crushed stone into stone blocks, but now it only took fifty-four seconds—a 10% reduction.

Of course, not everything got a 10% time reduction—only recipes that were originally available at the basic workbench got this bonus.

By the same logic, new recipes unlocked at the intermediate workbench would only get a time reduction at the advanced workbench, and above that, there was even a top-tier workbench.

Once the workbenches were set up, Su You took out a stone knife and a pile of materials, and started crafting by hand.

While she worked, Dolly and Doya watched from the side.

Dolly was curious about what she was making, while Doya was puzzled—why did their young lord seem to know and be able to do everything?

Sure, there were geniuses in the world who were knowledgeable and skilled at everything, but someone this young… that was unheard of.

Still, Doya wasn’t foolish enough to ask directly. Anyway, having a capable lord was much better than having an incompetent one.

So, one person worked while two watched, and before long, a huge pile of “junk” had accumulated at Su You’s feet.

And it really was junk.

In that pile, you could even spot some familiar items, like “crude wooden needles” and “broken traps”...

There were also plenty of “newcomers,” like “irregular wooden knives,” “scratched arrows,” “broken wooden fences,” “chipped wooden cups,” and so on...

In short: when it came to making junk, Su You was an expert (not really).

She already had bad luck, and on top of that, she was deliberately not being careful, which resulted in this mountain of trash.

“These should all be repairable for you, right?” To avoid making things too high-level for Dolly to fix, and to make sure she had enough materials, Su You had only made low-level trinkets.

Not only could a beginner restorer at the bottleneck fix these, even a novice apprentice could manage—though it might take more effort.

Dolly stared, dumbfounded, at the pile. For once, she didn’t answer Su You right away, but just gawked for several seconds before responding.

“I can… it’s just… a lot…” A lot was an understatement!

Just the stack of chipped wooden cups was taller than she was—at least a dozen of them.

And those “crude wooden needles” were even more ridiculous. They were the easiest to make, just like sharpening pencils—shave, shave, done. They used the least materials, so Su You had made a whole “bundle”—so many that you couldn’t hold them all in two hands.

The sharper ends weren’t very sharp, but with that many all together, they still looked kind of creepy.

“It’s fine, just take your time. They’re only here to help you level up. If you finish leveling and there’s still some left, just throw the rest away.” As she spoke, Su You calmly took the last intact wooden cup she’d just made and deliberately chipped it.

In an instant, a perfectly usable wooden cup became another “chipped wooden cup.”

Dolly, watching all this: ...You can do that?

Doya, who hadn’t planned to pay attention but was forced to by Su You’s bizarre actions: I don’t really know how restorers work, but… isn’t this basically exploiting a bug?

Whether it was a bug or not, Su You had already tossed all the junk into the newly built wooden box. Besides the trash, she’d also put in some wood, string, and other materials.

Because there were so many types of junk, each one needed its own slot, so the fifteen-slot box filled up quickly.

(End of Chapter)"

"**84. Reward Service**

Logically speaking, if constant repairs alone could lead to breakthroughs, then Su You would only need to make one type of junk item, with no need to create so many different things. But reality wasn’t so simple.

If a repairer spends too long fixing the same kind of item, or if the item’s level is much lower than their own, their skill proficiency might not even increase—let alone level up.

That’s why Su You made so many different types of items: to avoid this problem.

After Su You finished crafting all these things, the familiar system notification sounded, and a semi-transparent window appeared before her.

After reading the contents of the window, Su You massaged her hands, which were a bit sore from making so much junk. She greeted Dory and Doya, saying she was a little tired, and then returned to her room.

All the way back, Su You pretended not to see the window floating in front of her. Only after she was back in her room did she recall the system prompt and then read the window’s contents again.

**System Notification—**

[Congratulations! Sunset Territory has met the requirements for upgrading to an Intermediate Camp. The system has automatically upgraded your territory, and the corresponding rewards have been placed in the quest hall’s treasure chest.]

**Window Text—**

[As the human with the highest potential value among all territory lords, A1-16, the Execution System is authorized to provide you with a one-time reward service within certain limits. The service may include, but is not limited to, requesting items, asking questions, or solving problems.]

Just reading this, Su You knew how important her choice was this time. That’s why she wanted to return to her room and carefully consider what “reward” she truly needed.

First, some unrealistic requests were obviously out of the question—like asking the system to conjure up a whole city for her, or to give her tens of millions or even billions of gold coins.

After all, it clearly stated that the Execution System could only provide a service “within certain limits.”

The same went for asking questions. Su You had a lot she wanted to ask, but after thinking it over, she felt those questions either couldn’t be asked, or even if she did, the system definitely wouldn’t answer.

For example: What exactly are you? Why are you doing this?

Questions like that would either be ignored or answered with word games to brush her off.

Since there was no time limit, Su You pondered for a long time—so long that she even heard doors closing in the neighboring rooms. The sound was close, so it was probably the Lyle brothers returning to their rooms.

Jolted out of her thoughts by the noise, Su You let out a breath, drank a glass of water to calm herself, and then tentatively asked:

“For this reward service, how will I know if my request is within the allowed limits? Or, if I accidentally make a request that exceeds those limits, will I lose this reward opportunity altogether, or will I get another chance to choose?” After saying this, she quickly added, “If answering this question counts as using up the service, then don’t answer.”

[…]

Although Su You didn’t get any response after saying this, she could vaguely sense a strange emotion from the system.

It seemed a bit speechless, as if it thought Su You was being overly cautious… But Su You didn’t feel she was being too careful at all.

If it was just about not exceeding the limits, Su You could easily do that—like asking for a few branches or something. That would definitely be within the system’s power.

But there was no point in that. Branches were everywhere in the forest, and this reward was a rare opportunity. If she wasted it, she’d rather not have it at all.

But if she asked for something a bit more substantial, her worry was just as she’d asked: what if she went too far and lost the chance altogether?

Such a vague reward, with no further explanation, didn’t feel like a reward to Su You—it felt more like a trap.

Just as Su You was considering whether to give up entirely, a new line of text appeared in the previously unchanged dialogue box—

[Note: You have five chances to make a request. If a request exceeds the allowed limits, one chance will be deducted automatically. After five failed attempts, the reward will be canceled. If your request is within the allowed limits, it will be granted immediately.]

Why didn’t they just say so earlier!

Five chances were still a bit few, but much better than losing the reward after a single failed attempt…

Su You didn’t know if this message had been left out by mistake, or if the system had simply never considered the issue until she brought it up and then added it on the fly… Whatever, it didn’t matter. What mattered was deciding what to ask for.

Since she had five tries, Su You decided to start with the highest-value requests and work her way down—at the very least, she’d use up three attempts.

Before making her request, Su You decided that what she needed was an “item.”

She carefully reviewed all the information panels she could access, then compiled a list of items she needed but couldn’t currently obtain.

After much deliberation, Su You finally made her first request—

“I want a beacon.” The beacon was a material used to build a structure called a “Signal Tower.”

The Signal Tower could increase the probability and quality of all actions related to attracting NPCs—such as speeding up the arrival of merchants and travelers, increasing their numbers, and improving the quality of NPCs available for recruitment at the tavern…

In Sunset Continent, the most important resource for a lord was NPCs. Any kind of NPC was valuable—even the most rebellious ones could be put to use by Su You.

It’s no exaggeration to say that with a beacon, the territory’s development speed could easily triple.

But obviously, Su You knew this, and so did the system. As expected, her request was rejected.

[This request exceeds the allowed limits. Request denied. Remaining attempts: 4.]

Since she’d expected this, Su You wasn’t too disappointed. After all, the beacon wasn’t that rare—at least, it was much easier to get than Dragonbone.

Normally, beacons could be obtained by trading with a certain short-statured race.

This race was extremely greedy; as long as you had money, even if Su You beat them up and then paid for the beacon, they’d still do business. They’d never give up a deal for the sake of “dignity”… unless you didn’t pay enough.

(End of chapter)"

"Certainly! Here’s a fluent, natural English translation of your text:

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