Chapter 85: Severe Fatigue

Normally, trading with this race is the only way to obtain a beacon.

Players can’t craft beacons—not because they lack materials, but because there’s no recipe for it. Beacons are a “special technology” item exclusive to this race.

After her first request was rejected, Su You crossed out an item on her paper with a charcoal pencil.

She calculated the value, then made a second request.

...

【This request exceeds your authority and has been rejected. Remaining attempts: 1. This is your final chance—if rejected again, the reward service will be canceled.】

After being rejected for the fourth time, Su You had more or less figured out the limits of this execution system.

This time, the system hesitated for a long while before rejecting her, which made Su You suspect that her fourth request was right on the edge of what was allowed—barely acceptable, but just a little over the line.

Without much hesitation, she stated exactly what she needed.

“I want a magic rune book, a building card, and a recruitment card.” On her fourth try, Su You had asked for three building cards, one recruitment card, and a magic rune book. The result was a rejection, but she could tell it was close to being accepted.

Since this was her last chance, Su You didn’t dare push it. She reduced the building cards to just one and kept the rest unchanged.

There’s not much to say about building cards—they’re similar to the previous tavern cards, except these are given out randomly. The system wouldn’t let her pick, but it did guarantee she wouldn’t get duplicates of buildings she already owned.

The recruitment card allows her to immediately refresh the tavern’s recruitment options, adding two more NPCs to choose from and increasing the number of recruits by one.

Currently, her tavern only lets her pick one out of three NPCs per refresh. With the recruitment card, she’d get a one-time chance to pick two out of five, which is really helpful in the early stages when manpower is scarce.

The magic rune book lets her change an ordinary NPC’s class to mage. Even if the person has no magical talent, after the change, they become an apprentice mage. Their combat power isn’t great, but they can be trained over time.

The magic rune book is a class-change item—it can be crafted or traded for. It’s not extremely valuable, but it’s hard to get in the early game.

Su You wanted the rune book to prepare for the upcoming attack by dark creatures. She planned to use the recruitment card to find a promising candidate to become a mage, increasing her territory’s chances of withstanding the assault.

After all, dark creatures aren’t ordinary enemies. Having just Duoya the archer and Laikelaier, two regular combat NPCs, wouldn’t be enough.

Su You thought the system might hesitate again before giving her the items, but to her surprise, almost as soon as she finished speaking, the system responded.

【The rewards have been placed in the treasure chest in the quest hall. Please collect them.】

Although it was the same familiar, cold mechanical voice, to Su You it sounded almost like the system was fleeing in a panic.

Su You: Huh? What’s it so afraid of? I just asked a couple more questions, that’s all.

Su You: This execution system really can’t handle pressure.

Good thing the system couldn’t hear her thoughts, or it would definitely want to curse her out.

You call pestering me with endless questions “just asking a couple more things”?

The system realized it couldn’t show any leniency to humans. Give them an inch and they’ll take a mile—give them a little sunshine and they’ll bloom all over the place!

Ever since Su You found out she could ask other questions and get answers, she’d been constantly testing the boundaries.

As annoying as it was, the system couldn’t do anything about it for the sake of fairness, since everything Su You did was right on the edge of breaking the rules—but never actually crossed the line...

Although she hadn’t crossed the line, the system itself almost...

No!

It hadn’t said anything!

The execution system comforted itself with this thought, then grumbled as it moved on to the next place.

Next “lucky winner”: Did this system eat gunpowder or something? I just asked how to claim my reward, why is it so grumpy?

...

...

Su You had no idea what the system was grumbling about, nor that it was taking out its frustration on others. All she knew was that after finishing her conversation and collecting her rewards, a sudden, inexplicable wave of exhaustion washed over her.

She’d wanted to check out the rewards from the Fire Demon Leader and her territory upgrade, but the fatigue forced her to lie down and rest.

Before resting, she glanced at her status panel. When she saw a new notification, she instinctively rolled her eyes and flopped onto the bed.

【Severe Fatigue】: In this state, you cannot perform any actions. Stamina and hunger decrease rapidly. Resting will recover fatigue, and stamina/hunger loss will return to normal speed.

...

...

“What are you two doing here?” After waking up, Dolly opened her door and saw the two brothers standing outside the far-right residential house, looking confused.

In order, the buildings on this row were the tavern, then Residential Houses 1, 2, and 3. The spot where the brothers were standing was Su You’s room.

“We wanted to ask the Lord something, but it seems she hasn’t gotten up yet?” Because of the difference between men and women—and because they felt awkward about knocking—they’d searched the whole territory for Su You, and when they couldn’t find her, they could only wait outside her door.

That’s why Dolly saw them standing outside Residential House 3 as soon as she stepped out.

“Is it urgent?” Dolly didn’t really want to disturb Su You’s rest, but seeing the brothers squatting helplessly outside the door, she hesitated, then took the initiative to ask.

“It’s not exactly urgent. It’s just that yesterday, while gathering resources, we found something strange. We thought we should let the Lord know.”

The brothers, Lyle and Laikelai, were mainly responsible for collecting stone (including sandstone) and wood. At first, Lyle cut down trees near the territory, but after they’d cleared most of them, yesterday afternoon he and Laikelai went to the mine—one to chop wood, the other to dig stone—so they could look out for each other.

It was during this trip that they noticed an increase in ghostly skeletons nearby. Although the skeletons didn’t seem to be approaching, the brothers decided to investigate the area just in case.

(End of chapter)"

"86. Monster Spawner

In the end, what they discovered was that, near the spot where they had killed the Black-Striped Tiger, something resembling a stone gate had appeared.

This stone gate was very tall, and had no fancy decorations. If there was anything noteworthy about it, it was that the gate looked ancient—at the very least, it was certainly older than the combined ages of the two of them.

The stone gate was covered in moss, a testament to the passage of time, and bore many mysterious marks whose origins were impossible to determine.

As Lyle put it, if he had to pick a suitable place for this stone gate, he would say it belonged in the ruins of some ancient, long-forgotten site.

...

After hearing Lyle’s description, Dolly was clearly a bit dazed. With her limited experience, she couldn’t fully grasp what these things meant, but she could tell from Lyle’s account that the stone gate must have some special significance.

After all, it had appeared out of nowhere—and it had only been less than two days since they killed the Black-Striped Tiger.

For such a stone gate to appear in just two days, it was certainly not something ordinary power could accomplish. It likely involved some kind of unspeakable, extraordinary force.

“In that case, how about I knock on her door and ask?” Dolly wasn’t just offering to help them—she was also a bit worried herself. She was concerned about why Su You still hadn’t gotten up so late today, and whether something might have happened.

Even though she knew nothing bad could really happen within the territory, the sunset flowers had already bloomed and closed again. Compared to Su You’s usual routine—getting up before the flowers even opened—today was truly, exceptionally late.

“Sorry to trouble you,” Lyle nodded to Dolly, then pulled Lake away from the doorway to give her space.

Dolly knocked on the door as usual. After a short while, she heard some movement inside. Before she could say anything, the door opened.

Su You stood there, looking exhausted and confused, her fatigue obvious despite the hint of puzzlement in her eyes.

Even after a night’s rest, for certain special reasons, the “Severe Fatigue” debuff on her had only downgraded to “Moderate Fatigue.” That was why Su You had slept in so late.

It wasn’t that she didn’t want to get up—she simply couldn’t. She’d slept like the dead, and if Dolly hadn’t knocked, Su You might have slept straight through to the evening.

“What’s up?” Su You couldn’t help but yawn, instinctively leaning against the wall, her eyes a bit unfocused.

As she asked Dolly what was going on, she grumbled inwardly about how stingy the system was—just a few questions, and it slapped her with a debuff.

Dolly was startled to see her so worn out. Lyle and Lake were also puzzled, unable to understand what could have happened to leave her in this state.

But the debuff wasn’t life-threatening. At most, it just meant she’d need to rest a bit more, which would have some impact on her plans—but not much, since she’d already intended to stay in the territory today.

“Milady... I’m not here for myself, it’s them who wanted to see you. By the way, are you... alright?” Dolly first explained why she’d knocked, then expressed her concern for Su You’s health.

Su You shook her head slightly, took a cup of water from her bag to wake herself up, then said, “I’m fine, just stayed up too late last night. If there’s something to discuss, let’s talk inside. You guys go wait for me in the hall.”

She pointed toward the quest hall.

The brothers nodded and headed straight for the quest hall.

They were actually quite interested in the building, which had just been completed the night before. But since they’d come back late yesterday and were tired from gathering resources, they’d gone straight home to rest and hadn’t had time to check it out.

“Then I won’t bother you, Milady. Please take care and get some rest.” Seeing that Su You was alright, Dolly breathed a sigh of relief and went off to start her repair work for the day.

Su You quickly tidied herself up, checked the territory’s status, grabbed a bite to eat, and then headed to the quest hall as well.

...

...

“So, what you’re saying is, that gate appeared out of nowhere, looks ancient, and when you get close to it, there’s some kind of strange resistance?” Su You summarized Lyle’s findings, already forming a suspicion in her mind.

And after Lake’s next comment, her guess was all but confirmed.

“We actually noticed something else... though we’re not sure if it’s related to the stone gate.”

“Go on.”

“Yesterday afternoon, when we went over there, we found a lot more ghostly skeletons near the mine. There weren’t that many before. We’re not sure if they were hiding and just showed up now, or if it’s something else...”

By “something else,” Lake was clearly referring to the stone gate, though he wasn’t certain, so he didn’t say it outright—just reported what he’d seen.

A sudden surge in ghostly skeletons...

A knowing look flashed in Su You’s eyes.

Lyle caught the change and asked directly, “Milady, do you know something?”

Su You nodded. “If I’m not mistaken, this is probably a spawn... a spawning point for ghostly skeletons.” She’d almost said “monster spawner,” but that was a player term, not something she could use with NPCs.

Simply put, this stone gate would continuously spawn ghostly skeletons, much like the previous Fire Demon boss. The difference was that monsters from a spawner dropped loot and had no upper limit on their numbers. Unless the spawner was destroyed, it would keep producing ghostly skeletons.

But destroying a spawner wasn’t easy. She’d have to enter the spawner, defeat the boss inside, and then destroy the spawner’s core to put an end to it.

Of course, she wouldn’t have to go in alone. After all, a lord player couldn’t possibly clear out an entire spawner by themselves—she could bring her territory members along.

The inside of a spawner was much like a “dungeon” in an online game: you fought your way through, beat the boss, and cleared it for rewards. But if you failed... well, there was no need to elaborate—those who knew, knew.

In short, at this stage, the appearance of a spawner was not good news, because Su You simply didn’t have the strength to clear this “dungeon” yet.

(End of chapter)"

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