Chapter 28: A New Week, New Resource Points

Ji Chen pushed open the wooden door and took a peek outside. 

The rain had finally ceased. 

It had been a relentless downpour throughout the night, accompanied by thunder and lightning.

But now, everything was calm and peaceful. 

The locals were busy cleaning up the debris left behind by the storm, mending their damaged houses, and heading to the resource point to resume their work. 

After a short period of rest, the whole territory was back in action.

"My Lord…"

Alice's gentle voice came from behind. She had just woken up and was rubbing her eyes while looking outside in a daze.

Despite her groggy expression from just waking up, her alluring appearance was still noticeable. The shoulder strap of her garment hung loosely on her arm, revealing a generous expanse of unblemished skin.

Due to the internal storm, Alice did not return to the pool to rest last night. Instead, she stayed in the lord's mansion.

On such a stormy night, a man and a woman were alone in a room. The atmosphere was naturally a little ambiguous.

With a full 100 favorable impression points, it was not difficult for him to do something to Alice.

However, there was a problem.

Whenever he looked at her beautiful face, her eyes were full of childlike fondness and admiration for him. He wouldn't bear to hurt someone who looked at him as though he was the most admirable and important person.

Ji Chen admitted that he couldn't do it.

He wasn't the kind of creature who thought with his lower body.

Moreover, Alice was not a pure human, but a legitimate Siren that even seafarers who make a living on the ocean feared. Her true form was that of a mermaid, with a large tail, beautiful scales, and pointed ears.

As these thoughts crossed his mind, the small flame burning inside Ji Chen quickly extinguished, as he adopted a wise and prudent demeanor. He knew that he should not, or at least he wasn't ready to take such action yet.

"My Lord, what's wrong?"

As he came to his senses, Alice was already standing in front of him, so close that he could almost smell the faint fragrance emanating from her body. 

She lowered her head slightly, revealing a patch of snowy white that caught his eye. 

Ji Chen cleared his throat and avoided eye contact before saying, "I'm fine. Let's go out. It's the start of a new week." 

In this game, a week held significant importance, and it signified several new opportunities. 

The Resource Detection Tower had refreshed its scanning chance, which allowed the exploration of three new resource points. 

The military recruitment camp had also started a new wave of recruitment, and the novice period was over, meaning that the territory would no longer protect itself from wild beasts and monster attacks. 

Today, he could also collect the week's resource points.

Every Monday, a new pile of work would await him, but Ji Chen did not feel impatient.

He considered this a battle rather than work. As he took a deep breath of the fresh post-rain air, he felt ready for the new week.

Ji Chen began by using the Omniscient Crown to survey the territory within a 1-kilometer radius. 

He discovered only a few red dots in the sea towards the beach, indicating small sharks. 

However, there were no abnormalities in the jungle in the other three directions, and there weren't even many red dots. 

This suggested that the crazy sweep a few days ago had been effective, and he didn't need to leave behind troops to guard the territory for the time being.

Arriving at the Murloc statue, he found that recruiting a River Murloc now required more resources after unlocking the nodes twice before. 

To recruit 14 of them, he needed 350 units of wood, fiber, and clay. 

As soon as the new Murloc appeared in the territory, chaos ensued with their croaking, and the old Murlocs' emotional expressions and languages filled Ji Chen's ears.

"Croak!"

"Croak!"

However, Ji Chen quickly suppressed them.

He continued to head to the Resource Detection Tower and used up all three of his scouting opportunities.

Three golden lights flew above the forest and turned into pillars of light at three locations.

The locations of these three resource points were slightly further away than the previous week's three.

As the Resource Detection Tower was used to detect the nearest resource points to the territory, the detected resource points would gradually become farther and farther away from the territory with each use over time.

Before setting off to explore the new resource point, he first went to the crude iron mine and the clay mine to collect the resource output that was one day less this week.

The mini crude iron mine collected about 600 units of crude iron, while the small clay mine only collected about 900 units of clay and 180 units of by-product stone due to its capacity being only half.

A week passed, and the neutral recruitment camp for the Naga Warriors refreshed.

Similarly, the 14 Naga Warriors consumed a total of 420 units of wood, fiber, and clay.

After a round of recruitment, the wood and fiber that the people had painstakingly cut down for many days had almost been exhausted, leaving only a single digit number of resources.

However, it was all worth it. The army was the most important existence in this game.

Looking at the twenty-eight Naga Warriors and thirty-five River Murlocs behind him, Ji Chen's heart swelled.

He had worked hard this week to get this!

In the future, his military strength would only increase in numbers and become stronger.

After recruiting the troops, he set off without stopping.

After a long journey, they arrived at the first new resource point.

This was a concave-shaped stone mountain. In front of the green stone wall, there were some stones piled up in the open.

[Quarry]

[Scale: Small]

[Level: 1]

[Main resource produced: Stone]

[By-product: Limestone (1/5 of the main resource)]

[Storage: 17500/17500 units]

[Maximum weekly production: 2100 units]

[Weekly Personnel Production: 50 units/person]

It was a small quarry!

Ji Chen was delighted at first, but then he couldn't help but sigh.

It was useless to give him such a quarry now. The territory simply did not have enough labor to excavate.

Now, the population problem had become a worry for him.

"After I'm done with these things, I have to start looking for the natives. If this continues, it'll be too wasteful to have resource points but not mine them."

His gaze shifted.

He frowned slightly.

Why was there no guardian monster in this quarry?

He opened the Omniscient Map.

The map showed that there were more than 20 red dots in the mine, but to the naked eye, they were just a pile of stones.

Could it be…The monster was hiding in the pile of stones?

He focused his gaze on the pile of stones.

As expected, the monster's interface appeared.

[Stone Puppet]

[Level: 8]

[Tier: 2, 8 stars]

[Skill: Stone body (blue skill, the stone body has strong physical defense)]

Rock Bash (Blue skill, uses the rock body as a weapon. Heavy blows can easily cause impact and stun effects)

Throwing Rocks (Green Skill, Throwing Rocks at Enemies)

Stone Swallowing Revival (Green Skill, Able to Swallow Stones to Repair Body)

[Military characteristic: Elemental creation (increases resistance to spiritual spells by 50%)]

Good heavens.

Level 8 Tier 2 Stone Puppet.

There were two blue skills, one for Stacking Armor and the other for Control.

Looking at the stone puppets sleeping soundly in the pile of stones, Ji Chen didn't have the confidence to defeat them.

Because of the characteristics of the army, Alice could not control them properly, and their sandbag-sized fists were dangerous threats once they broke free from Alice's control.

Furthermore, he was unsure if the weapons of the River Murlocs and Naga Warriors could penetrate their defenses. 

Thus, he decided to skip this resource point for now, knowing that the quarry they had just occupied was empty due to a lack of manpower. 

As the saying goes, a wise man judges the situation and knows when to advance or retreat.

He planned to deal with the stone puppets when the conditions were favorable, but for now, he decided to let them be and led his army to the next resource point without hesitation.