Chapter 82: Getting Wood

Chapter 82: Chapter 82: Getting Wood

She led them on a long detour before finally finding two large boulders.

"The boulders aren’t loose, and they can block some of the wind. Building a wooden house here is a good choice."

Lan Lan gave the boulder a kick. After confirming it wouldn’t roll, she put her unconditional faith in Shi Zhile. "I’ll do whatever you say, boss."

Shi Zhile pressed her forehead. "Don’t call me boss."

"Then I’ll call you Sister Zhile."

Shi Zhile replied, "That’s fine."

Li Ran looked around, growing more satisfied by the second. "This spot is really good. We’ve got the boulders at our back and a view of the beach to the south. It’s just a little far from the shore."

Shi Zhile said, "A bit of distance is better. We’ve been scouting for half the day and haven’t seen any animals on the island. There’s no telling where the monsters will come from."

"Underground, the sea, or the sky... if we’re too close, it’ll be hard to keep watch. Let’s mark this spot for now and go see how the others are doing with resource gathering."

The three of them headed for the woods. Without a raft, the forest was the only place on the island to gather wood.

Two in the afternoon was the hottest part of the day. For a summer day, the sun felt very warm on their skin.

As their bodies warmed up, their need for water increased as well.

[Mild Dehydration: Due to environmental effects, the player’s body is losing water too quickly. Please rehydrate in a timely manner. (Survival Value -1 / 5 minutes)]

[Mild Hunger: The player is in a state of mild hunger. Failure to eat will result in a continuous loss of survival value. This loss will accelerate over time. (Survival Value -1 / 10 minutes)]

The moment the notification sounded, Lan Lan panicked.

"Sister Zhile, at this rate, we’ll lose almost 20 survival value points every hour! The supplies we brought aren’t nearly enough to last for seven days."

Shi Zhile checked her status panel. Five minutes hadn’t passed yet, so her survival value was still unchanged.

"No need to panic. If we ration what we have, everyone has enough food for two or three days. The condition is that we can’t lose a single point of Life Value. That’s why starting tomorrow, we’ll need to send a team out to find more supplies. For now, everyone eat something to get rid of the negative status effects."

She took the lead, pulling out a bottle of water and taking small sips. Then she tore off a piece of beef jerky from her backpack and ate it as she walked.

The edge of the woods was overgrown with weeds, and the shrubs within were fairly dense. Looking in from the outside, most of the sunlight was blocked out.

They hadn’t entered earlier in the morning in order to conserve time and energy. Now, as they stepped into the woods, a sudden chill washed over them.

"Get your weapons out. Watch out for snakes and bugs."

Shi Zhile took out her axe. She picked up any dry, broken branches she came across and stored them in her backpack.

’Although this instance has limits on what you can bring, it hasn’t disabled our backpack access. My infinite slots are still here.’ This put her mind at ease.

Whenever she passed a dense patch of grass, she would tap it with her axe.

Lan Lan and Li Ran, trailing behind her, weren’t idle either. They spread out in a two-meter radius, gathering dry kindling.

About two or three meters ahead stood a large, fallen tree. Its trunk was snapped, as if something had knocked it over.

Shi Zhile walked over, axe in hand, and found a wooden chest where the trunk had fallen.

[Obtained Wooden Chest ×1.]

Shi Zhile reached out and opened it.

[Obtained Wood ×5, Purified Water ×1.]

Seeing that Lan Lan and Li Ran weren’t looking her way, she quickly stashed the purified water, then carried the wooden chest to one side.

"There are chests in the woods, and they have wood inside. You two should check the nearby bushes carefully while you search, so you don’t miss any."

Lan Lan’s eyes lit up. "Sister Zhile, how much wood did you get from it?"

"Five."

Li Ran walked over. "The chest is made of wood, too. If we break it down, we could probably get about ten pieces in total."

Lan Lan was a bit disappointed. "Only five? There are ten of us. To build a wooden house big enough for all ten, we’ll need at least a thousand pieces of wood. Going by the drop rate of these chests and the amount of wood they give, it’ll take more than three days to build the house."

Shi Zhile stored the chest, then swung her axe at the broken tree. With a single strike, she chopped clean through the trunk, which fell to the ground with a THUD.

[Obtained Tree ×1. Can be broken down into Wood ×10. Break down?]

"Yes!"

With a crash, the massive tree instantly broke into several logs.

"One tree breaks down into ten pieces of wood. Since there’s more than one way to get it, you two will be in charge of searching the surrounding area for treasure chests, and I’ll handle chopping down trees. Let’s meet back at this spot in half an hour."

"Leave markers so you don’t get lost."

Before either of them could respond, she was already swinging her axe at another, larger tree.

’Lan Lan and Li Ran haven’t gone far yet.’ She deliberately held back, not felling the tree in just a few swings. Instead, she worked at it methodically, making it look like a slight struggle.

The undergrowth here was sparse. As soon as the other two were out of sight, Shi Zhile picked up her pace, felling trees in an average of two swings each.

To avoid creating a conspicuous clearing, she didn’t chop in just one spot, prioritizing the already broken trees in the area.

’There are bloodstains on the broken branches. Looks like there might be other large creatures in these woods.’

She quickly sent a message to Lan Lan and Li Ran, then headed in another direction to continue chopping.

「Half an hour later.」

Shi Zhile returned to their meeting spot.

’I chopped down twenty-seven trees. Adding the wood I got at the beginning, that’s a total of 285 pieces.’

A few moments later, Lan Lan and Li Ran returned, both looking dejected and unhappy.

Shi Zhile asked Lan Lan, "What’s wrong?"

Lan Lan lowered her head. "My luck is terrible. I only found one treasure chest, and it only had two pieces of wood inside."

Li Ran added, "I’m about the same. I found two chests and got a total of five pieces of wood."

’It seems the contents of the chests are random. Or maybe the contents are fixed, and they’re both hiding some of what they found.’

’When you don’t know each other well, it’s normal to keep things for yourself. Everyone wants an extra ace up their sleeve to stay alive.’

Shi Zhile was no exception. She had no intention of revealing all the wood she’d collected. Out of her 285 pieces, she planned to contribute sixty-five for now. If Wang Gang’s group contributed even less per person, she would reduce her amount accordingly.

Shi Zhile said, "Don’t worry about it. Our main task today was just to explore the island. It’s already past three, and it gets dark early. We’ll head out from the west side and follow the coast back to the starting point to meet up with the others."

’Without a fire, tonight is going to be brutal.’

The tide was coming in. As the three of them walked along the shore, their luck turned out to be quite good—each of them found two chests.

None of them asked the others how much wood they had gotten; they all kept their haul to themselves.

The waves washed onto the shore, one after another. Suddenly, a glittering golden treasure chest was tossed onto the sand.

Shi Zhile was closest, and she bent down to pick it up.

[Obtained Treasure Chest ×1.]

She didn’t try to hide this one, opening it right away.

[Obtained Wood ×5, Iron Nails ×5.]

’Iron nails are a new type of material. This means we’ll need more than just wood to build the house; we’ll need nails, too.’

’We can chop trees for wood, but without a workbench, iron nails will be the hardest resource to acquire.’