Chapter 91: Extra Tasks

However, although Dolly guessed correctly, she only got half of it right.

Su You did indeed plan to send her to the tailor shop, but not as an employee—instead, she was going to make her the owner.

“You mean… you want me to be the owner of the tailor shop?!” When Dolly heard she was to become the owner, her first reaction wasn’t happiness or excitement, but rather a sense of panic and helplessness.

She shook her head frantically, as if refusing, but also as if she was hesitating about something.

“Miss Lord, I’m not even at the level of a beginner tailor yet. I’m not qualified to be the face of a tailor shop.” In fact, that was putting it nicely.

In some small and medium-sized cities, the tailor shops there… well, they’re not just tailor shops. In almost any shop that sells handmade goods, the owner’s skill level is never below intermediate.

If you’re not even at the intermediate level, how are you supposed to manage employees?

You can’t have a situation where the boss is less skilled than the staff, right?

On the Sunset Continent, things are different from the world before. Here, everything is based on strength. The idea of “the boss just provides the money and the staff does all the work” is actually quite rare.

Even if it does happen, it’s usually because a behind-the-scenes investor has spent a lot of money to hire a master with impressive skills to act as the shop’s public face. People recognize the skilled boss, not the moneyed one.

Basically, bosses here are “skilled professionals”—and not just any, but “high-level professionals.”

The reason for this is that, in this world, the boss represents the shop’s reputation. The higher the boss’s skill, the more customers are willing to come and buy things.

More customers means more profit, which in turn attracts more skilled people to apply for jobs.

This value system is quite different from reality, but that’s not important.

As an experienced player, Su You naturally knew this, but she didn’t care… Still, even if she didn’t care, she couldn’t say that outright—after all, she wanted to reassure Dolly.

“But I believe you can become an excellent tailor… unless you don’t want to be the owner of the shop.”

Now, that’s the power of words.

If she’d just praised Dolly, it wouldn’t have worked. But Su You said she believed in her, and with Dolly’s affection for her, there was no way she’d want to let her down.

Sure enough, after hearing Su You’s words, Dolly hesitated for a moment, then nodded, her words full of gratitude for Su You’s trust.

“Since you believe in me, Miss Lord, I won’t let you down.” At this moment, Dolly’s eyes were practically shining. Her excitement wasn’t just because of Su You’s praise and trust, but also had something to do with her past experiences.

It was a knot in her heart—one Su You didn’t know about, but happened to untie by accident.

As a bystander, Doya could see things clearly, but she didn’t plan to say anything, just quietly watched the scene unfold.

And so, Su You appointed Dolly as the owner of the tailor shop, then moved all the sewing materials, tools, workbenches, and the pile of “junk” waiting to be repaired that she’d prepared for Dolly into the shop.

Once all that was done, she went back to her territory construction work.

Just like that, time slowly passed until the evening of the sixth day…

Unlike before, although it was nighttime, the whole area was now lit up with lamps, making the night feel bright and cozy.

The light within the territory drove away the darkness brought in from outside…

…

After a whole day of work, Su You was a bit tired.

Even though she seemed to just sit at her workbench all day, without much walking around or doing anything strenuous, arranging and setting up the territory still took a certain amount of physical energy. And realistically, it was draining both physically and mentally.

After all, doing the same thing for a long time with almost no breaks would tire anyone out.

So, after she’d finished lighting up all the remaining dark corners of the territory, she finally put down her work and decided to give herself a break.

As she rested, she opened the territory information panel. Thanks to her day’s efforts, the “prosperity” of the territory had now surpassed fifty points, meeting the requirements to upgrade to a large camp.

In other words, she only needed to recruit five more NPCs, and she could upgrade the territory to a large camp.

Recruiting five NPCs wasn’t too hard. She had a recruitment card that could bring in two NPCs instantly, and it had been almost four days since she recruited Doya, so the tavern should be refreshing new candidates any day now.

Each refresh would let her recruit one NPC, so that was three in total. She’d just need to wait for two more “wanderers” to show up.

However, there was one thing to keep in mind when using the recruitment card: after using it, the tavern would go back into cooldown.

In other words, it was best to wait for the tavern’s second recruitment refresh before using the card. Otherwise, she’d only get two NPCs, and would have to wait several more days for the next chance.

That’s why Su You hadn’t used the recruitment card right away, but instead spent the day building up the base—she wanted to wait for the second tavern refresh, then use the card.

…

As Su You sat resting and waiting for the tavern to refresh, Dolly and Lake suddenly approached her from opposite directions.

From their expressions, Dolly looked overjoyed—clearly she had good news to share.

Lake, on the other hand, looked a bit odd—not like he had bad news, but not exactly good news either.

The two of them arrived in front of Su You almost at the same time, and both paused when they saw each other.

Lake: “You go first.”

Dolly: “Mine’s not urgent, you go ahead.”

Su You: …Why don’t you both just say it together?

After a few seconds of silence, Lake spoke up first.

“It’s nothing urgent, really. I just noticed there are a few new tasks on the bounty board, but I don’t seem to be able to accept them. So I wanted to ask, my lord, what’s that about?”

New tasks?

Su You was taken aback, then stood up and looked at Dolly, signaling her to share her news.

(End of chapter)"

"92. Bounty Card

Dolly quickly pointed back in the direction she’d just come from and said, “I just wanted to let you know, my lady, that the red berry bushes have fully grown. It shouldn’t be long before they start bearing fruit.”

These red berry bushes had been planted on the third night. Normally, it would take 72 hours—exactly three days—for them to mature, but thanks to “Harmony I,” it only took about 67 hours.

By her calculations, they should be fully grown by this afternoon.

But Su You had been too busy to check on them, so she hadn’t realized. Dolly only discovered the bushes were ready after dinner, when she went to check on the crops’ growth.

The fact that the red berry bushes had matured was great news.

When Su You first established the territory, she’d deliberately chosen a spot with water, berry bushes, and fiber plants. But after so many days of gathering, the wild berries and fiber nearby had long since been picked clean.

It was only because there were few people and plenty of meat that food was never in short supply. That’s why Dolly usually focused on gathering fiber, only picking a few red berries if she happened to see them. Otherwise, she was afraid they’d go bad before they could eat them all, which would be a waste.

Because they hadn’t been actively collecting berries, there were now almost none left in the territory—in fact, you could say there were none at all.

The only ones left were those already cooked into meals.

As a result, everyone’s daily diet was basically meat, meat, and more meat… While meat was tasty and filling, and eating it exclusively didn’t cause any negative buffs, going without any other flavors for so long was still a bit much.

…No wonder Dolly was so happy. She was probably sick of eating meat these past few days, and the thought of having berries soon—even if they hadn’t actually ripened yet—was enough to make her cheerful.

The berry bushes maturing didn’t just mean they’d have something else to eat and more variety in their recipes; it also meant they now had a stable food source.

This food source didn’t require them to go out and risk anything—they could just harvest it within the territory, and it would keep producing over time.

Unlike red grass, berries and fiber plants could be harvested repeatedly, just like fruit trees. In theory, as long as the bushes stayed healthy and well-nourished, they could keep producing fruit indefinitely.

In this data-driven world, that theory was directly realized.

As long as they were watered regularly and cared for, the berry bushes would never die, and berries could be harvested endlessly.

The first batch of berries would appear 24 hours after the bushes matured, and after that, a new batch could be picked every three to five days.

One plot of farmland could support four berry bushes, and each harvest would be enough to fill at least a fifth of a level-one warehouse.

So even if the territory ran out of meat, they could survive on berries alone.

“By tomorrow evening, we should be able to harvest the first batch of berries,” Su You estimated. Dolly immediately nodded in understanding.

“Mm-hmm! I’ll go pick them then!” Dolly nodded, indicating she’d said all she needed to.

After that, Su You followed Lake to the bounty board. When she saw the new tasks posted there, something clicked in her mind… If she remembered right, there was now a new type of task called a “System Quest,” wasn’t there?

And these system quests unlocked once the territory reached intermediate camp status… She’d been thinking about this just yesterday—how could she have forgotten today!?

…It must be because of that debuff.

Su You didn’t hesitate to blame it on the fatigue debuff. Otherwise, under normal circumstances, she’d never have forgotten—especially something she’d just been thinking about the day before.

After shifting the blame, Su You explained to Lake that she’d be handling this particular quest herself, so he didn’t need to worry about it.

Since the quest involved the system, some kind of protocol seemed to kick in. Though Su You’s explanation was a bit odd, Lake didn’t ask any more questions.

“All right, then I’ll leave you to it, my lady.” With that, Lake left without asking anything further or sticking around to check out the system quest.

Su You wasn’t surprised by his reaction and immediately began reviewing the quests.

Currently, there were three system quests on the bounty board. Of these, two were untimed, and one was a timed quest.

【Prosperity and Flourishing】 (Completed)

Issuer: Unknown

Objective: Raise territory prosperity to 50 (53/50)

Reward: Bounty Card, territory reputation, money

Restrictions: None

Failure Penalty: None

【Stop the Darkness】 (Accepted)

Issuer: Unknown

Objective: Successfully repel the attack of dark creatures (0/1)

Reward: Random building card, territory reputation, money

Restrictions: None

Failure Penalty: Unknown

【Develop the Territory】 (Accepted)

Issuer: Unknown

Objective: Upgrade the territory to a large camp (0/1)

Reward: Unknown, territory reputation

Restrictions: Time limit 120 hours (Time remaining: 98 hours 14 minutes 21 seconds)

Failure Penalty: Territory prosperity -10, territory reputation -10, potential value decrease

……

After reading through the three quests, Su You came to the following conclusions—