I Live on the Land in Global Games
Chapter 99 - 98: Binding Vine

Chapter 99: Chapter 98: Binding Vine

Time in the Trial World passed in a flash, and once again Mu Ying awoke in the familiar tree house, timing it just right—it was morning.

The wolf pack downstairs had already gone out, and Yuan Gungun lay forlornly on the ground, with the wolf pups clambering all over him as if conquering a great mountain, trying their hardest.

Mu Ying waved her magic wand, and the kitchenware and ingredients immediately busied themselves in an orderly manner, while the flying broom swept back and forth inside the house.

While waiting for breakfast to be served, Mu Ying casually lifted a wolf pup onto her lap and stroked its fur.

This action stirred up a hornet’s nest; even at their young age, the pups had learned to compete for affection and all launched an assault on Mu Ying’s legs.

Mu Ying helplessly watched the pups climbing over their siblings’ heads, clinging to her legs and striving to climb higher, sighed, and had to lift each one in turn to stroke its fur.

Once on her lap, each pup would obediently expose its belly and squint its eyes, begging to be petted.

At first, Mu Ying enjoyed being surrounded by a bunch of furry creatures, but gradually, she felt something was amiss.

It was supposed to be her happy time petting, so why did it feel more and more like she was a massage machine?

Mu Ying ignored those pups that had just been petted and were trying to sneak back into the massage queue, "Enough, enough, no more petting, go play on your own!"

After breakfast, Mu Ying teleported to her own plantation.

She planned to only grow a carefully selected variety of plants in the plantation in the future, using a mass sowing approach for other afforestation tasks.

Currently in her plantation were not only the vegetable seedlings and fruit trees that satiated her, and Iron Bamboo Forest that served as Yuan Gungun’s reserve, but also the cultivation of Binding Vines and that section with the weakly active root was of utmost importance.

The root quietly remained buried underground, and no amount of Druid Tricks could make it sprout. If it hadn’t been for the natural power still existing within it, Mu Ying would have thought it was dead.

Druid spells barely affected the root, so like cultivating the Binding Vines, Mu Ying used the magic power of the green witch to alter it, supplemented by Recovery Spring.

This step was exceptionally effective; small buds sprouted in just a few days, though their growth rate was still very slow.

As for the Binding Vines next to it, they were much easier to cultivate, and they were nearly ready today.

[You have cultivated a new type of plant "Binding Vine." This plant is stable in nature, non-heritable, requires high planting conditions, and is of some value, gaining Professional Experience ×300]

Seeing the grown Binding Vines, Mu Ying finally understood why Grandpa Shom was so enthusiastic about cultivating plants.

A single Binding Vine had rewarded her with 300 Experience, which was much better than her daily painstaking farming, and suddenly pushed her progress bar over 50%, making level 5 not so far away anymore.

Unfortunately, cultivating new plants was not an easy task, and Binding Vines were actually not quite up to standard, with many restrictions. They couldn’t grow without magic power, and on Deep Blue Star, she was probably the only one with magic power.

That meant, only she could keep them alive. This wasn’t a good thing for the plants. There was still much room for improvement.

However, rather than spending a lot of time researching improvements in the real world, the Trial World was more suitable.

The environment there was safe and stable, and time flowed somewhat faster.

After tending to these two plants, Mu Ying did not, as usual, go out to plant trees but returned to the tree house instead.

She opened the lid of the water tank in the corner of the wall, which was brimming with coins, slightly forcing the lid ajar.

This tank was specifically purchased for storing money.

After accumulating for so long, it was again the joyful time to count money.

"35 gold 58 silver 42 copper!"

This amount was enough to build a few more sub-camps.

However, though the current population of the territory was over 2500, more than half was Mushroom Men, who lived in the underground Night Light Forest and did not need to rent houses.

The Night Light Forest is now the moniker for the Mushroom Man Dungeon.

Of the remaining thousand or so people, Mu Ying was the only lone wolf. The rest were grouped into teams, each sharing a tree house. Since the tree houses could be expanded, stacking up multiple levels to accommodate more than ten people each was no issue, and a few of the 100 tree houses built a long time ago were still unrented to this day.

The sub-camp designated as the plantation also nearly satisfied the planting needs of the territory’s residents; hence, there was temporarily no need to open new sub-camps.

Looking at the Territory Shield, its defensive power had early reached level 5 but was still sufficient.

This way, one might wonder where to spend all this money.

The reason boiled down to the restrictions posed by the population, limiting the development of the territory. Without enough people, the Territory Level couldn’t be raised, making many high-level shops reluctant to set up here. Perhaps this also explained why blueprints for functional facilities like sub-camps and transmission arrays remained locked.

This ultimately isn’t a game, where could one fuss over the population in a construction game!

"People, people, people, where can I find more people?"

Thinking it over, there were only two methods: one was to entice people from other territories; the other was to relocate another friendly dungeon like Mushroom Man here.

The latter was something one could hope for but not count on, so the focus had to be on the former.

The severe isolation among territories was not just because the dangers in the wild had become incomparably serious.

The traces of humanity had long been erased, and numerous monsters had descended from the sky. Perhaps not every Monster bore hostility towards humans, but the majority certainly did.

That is to say, Deep Blue Star, once explored by humans more than ninety-five percent, overnight turned into virgin land, with nobody knowing what was out in the wild.

Thus, everyone only dared to start from their territories and gradually explored and expanded nearby, even avoiding staying outside overnight.

Mu Ying opened the blueprint design section of the territory interface, and it appeared that the territory needed a new type of blueprint.

She listed her requirements.

The requirements were simple and consisted of only three points: "Roads, to be built outside the territory, and to have certain defensive capabilities."

[Territory Level Insufficient, Blueprint Cannot be Generated]

It really wasn’t that easy, was it?

Mu Ying removed the third requirement.

[Facility: Road]

[Function: Facilitates walking, speeds up traveling]

[Specification: Width 1-5 meters; length not limited; material options from high to low included stone slabs (high material requirements, high durability), gravel (ordinary material requirements, ordinary durability), and dirt (no material requirements, poor durability)]

[Materials Needed: Corresponding materials, energy]

[Blueprint Conversion Requirement: 500 energy]

Mu Ying looked at it and found it satisfactory, directly spending 5 silver coins to convert it.

Building the road was not only a material expense but also consumed a significant amount of energy.

She checked and estimated that a 2-meter-wide path would require 2 energy points per meter.

A dirt road didn’t need additional materials, which was a relief, but if it were a gravel road, it would need 10 stones per meter, and a stone-slab road would need 20 stones per meter.

If she didn’t prepare materials and used exclusively energy, each stone would cost 2 points of energy.

Calculating this way, her savings now seemed insufficient again.