Chapter 17: Call for Help

Seeing this private message, Lily hesitated, not replying immediately.

Logically speaking, it was still the novice safe period. Survivors shouldn’t be getting injured.

Over the past few days, everyone in the chat channel had been discussing Treasure Chests and food. Very few people died. While not entirely unheard of, it was still strange.

During her moment of hesitation, the other party sent several consecutive messages.

"No matter what it is, as long as it can heal external wounds, we can trade blueprints, Skill Books, and Crystal Cores for it."

Seeing this, Lily was tempted.

After some hesitation, she finally replied.

"I need to see what blueprints and Skill Books they are first. Also, you have to tell me why you need Healing Medicine."

Shortly after the message was sent, the other party sent over two blueprints and a Skill Book.

After inspecting the blueprints, Lily made up her mind to get her hands on them at all costs. They were tower defense blueprints meant to be installed on vehicles.

One was for an Arrow Tower, which could fire flying arrows at approaching enemies. The other was a Lightning Tower, which, as the name suggested, attracted lightning during rainstorms and converted it into usable resources. Both of these structures had to be placed on a vehicle to function.

The final item was a Binding Skill Book. Once used, it could summon a section of vines to bind a target.

"Deal, but I don’t have much medicine on hand. I can’t give you all of it."

Almost the instant the message was sent, a reply came through.

"Thank you! Thank you so much! By the way, don’t sleep too deeply these next couple of nights. Even though the novice protection period isn’t over yet, monsters in the sea are already trying to attack us."

"Is that how you got hurt?" Lily replied.

"Yeah. I thought the novice protection period was absolutely safe, so I wanted to know my enemy to ensure victory. I tried to drag one up under the cover of darkness to study it, but almost got myself killed in the process.

"But it wasn’t a total loss. The two blueprints I just traded you dropped from those monsters. If I wasn’t so badly injured, I wouldn’t bear to trade them away."

"I’ll learn them and check the crafting materials," Lily wrote. "I can give you a few finished towers, but you’ll have to provide the materials yourself."

"No problem, no problem! Thank you, boss! But seriously, you’d better not try killing those monsters yourself. They’re ridiculously tanky. I only managed to kill them by relying on my Talent."

Lily filled a five-hundred-milliliter mineral water bottle with Healing Water and traded it over. Upon receiving the blueprints, she chose to learn them without hesitation.

Crafting an Arrow Tower required: Wood x30, Stone x30, Iron x10, and Crystal Core x5.

Seeing this, Lily immediately crafted four Arrow Towers, placing them in the four cardinal directions—north, south, east, and west. Next was the Lightning Tower.

The materials needed to craft a Lightning Tower were several times that of an Arrow Tower. The basic materials tripled, and it required a whopping fifty Crystal Cores to craft. Despite the steep cost making her heart bleed, Lily still crafted three of them just in case.

She placed the Lightning Towers relatively far away, considering they were much larger than the Arrow Towers. Besides, they only functioned during thunderstorms. The rest of the time, it was better to keep them out of the way.

After Lily sent the list of required crafting materials to the other survivor, there was no immediate reply. They were probably busy treating their wounds.

Closing the chat channel, Lily looked outside, recalling the person’s warning. The sky had already gone completely dark, signaling the end of another day. Tomorrow would be the final day of the novice protection period.

Lily realized that there were indeed things staring at her from the dark, but she had noticed this early on. What surprised her was that the lurking creatures seemed to have retreated further away, and their numbers were fewer than before.

"Could they be afraid because of Shelly’s Level?"

Her eyes lit up at the possibility. If that were true, it meant she would still be safe under Shelly’s protection even after the novice period ended.

Day seven.

The final day of the novice protection period.

Lily opened the regional chat channel. She could clearly sense the growing anxiety among the Survivors. At the same time, the demand for weapons had peaked. Over the past few days, quite a few people had obtained weapon blueprints and were using this opportunity to heavily hoard basic materials, blueprints, and Skills.

Seeing this, Lily hesitated briefly before lowering the price of her Fish Spears slightly. Overall, however, they remained a bit pricey.

The main reason was that many people had already bought her Fish Spears over the previous days. If she slashed the price too drastically now, those earlier buyers would be taken for fools. Who would dare buy from her in the future? Most importantly, it would breed resentment.

Furthermore, in the current weapon market, her Fish Spear was still a Tier 0 top-class weapon. It could damage medium and even large fish—something other weapons couldn’t match. Therefore, she had no shortage of buyers.

That was why she could still sit tight.

For the rest of the day, Lily continued to direct Shelly toward Treasure Chest locations so she could fish them up. During the journey, she took stock of her current supplies.

First were the Treasure Chests. Yesterday, she had harvested three wooden chests and six Bronze Treasure Chests. Combined with her previous haul, the stockpile had reached a terrifying number. She planned to open them all tonight.

Although she had countless basic materials and wasn’t lacking for now, she couldn’t stop collecting them just yet.

She had ten packs of 2.5-liter bottled water, a hundred 500-milliliter bottles of water, and three boxes of Instant Noodles. However, two of those noodle boxes were pickled mustard green flavor, which she disliked; she would list them in the trading zone later.

She also had various amounts of bread, chocolate, juice, beverages, canned food, sausages, and hardtack, as well as a large amount of fish meat and an entire dismantled whale carcass. She had sold quite a bit of whale meat yesterday, but that consumption was barely a drop in the bucket.

In summary: her supplies were plentiful, and her defenses were sound.

Before Lily could revel in her satisfaction for long, a tender cry for help suddenly reached her ears.

"Help... please save my mommy."

The voice was weak, sounding as if the speaker was on the verge of dying as well.

"Shelly, turn around. Let’s go see what’s happening," Lily commanded.

Although she had awakened the Ocean Listener Talent, she actually wouldn’t hear anything unless she actively toggled it on. Otherwise, she would hear the desperate pleas of every fish she caught. How could she bear to kill them then?

But this time was different. This voice had actively rung out right beside her ears.