Mushroom Meat Soup

At dusk, Li Wei returned to camp. Phila had already made dinner, and its aroma drifted through the camp courtyard.

The open ground in the courtyard was covered with mushrooms that had been cleaned and laid out to dry. Spread out, they covered more than ten square meters. It had been a bumper harvest for her today.

After the heavy rain last night, there were naturally plenty of mushrooms today.

"Oh, my George, hunting isn't that easy, is it? Don't lose heart. You're already an excellent hunter. Come have dinner and try my Mushroom Meat Soup."

Phila greeted him in high spirits. She seemed to have pulled herself together, and even served Li Wei a bowl herself.

"Thanks, Mom!"

Li Wei thanked her. He wasn't worried that Phila would poison him, and although the Mushroom Meat Soup looked unremarkable and dark, it smelled wonderful. He was hungry, too, so he picked up the bowl and gulped it all down. His eyes lit up as he ate.

It really was delicious. The Mushroom Meat Soup was savory, and perhaps thanks to the animal fat she'd added, it was rich and fragrant. After drinking it, his whole body felt refreshed, and every taste bud was cheering. He'd been exhausted after a day of traveling, but after one bowl of soup, he felt as if half his fatigue had vanished.

"George, is it good?"

Phila sat to the side, smiling warmly as she asked. She was so kind that Li Wei almost got the impression they were a loving family. She was acting far too strangely.

"It's good."

"Then have another bowl."

Phila served Li Wei another bowl before taking one to Penny. She seemed to be in such a good mood that she even made small talk with Penny, asking if the Mushroom Meat Soup tasted good.

Penny didn't seem interested in talking and gave only a brief reply.

Still, Penny drank three big bowls of the Mushroom Meat Soup.

Li Wei drank three bowls, too. Dinner was not only plentiful today but came in generous portions as well, yet something still felt off.

As he pondered this, two lines of information appeared without warning.

[Professional Chef *** developed a new dish and received the approval of the head of the household and all family members. This is a one-star dish. Consuming it regularly will make the body stronger. If consumed at least twenty times a month for six consecutive months, it will grant one Free Attribute Point.]

[Professional Chef *** donated the recipe and preparation method for this Mushroom Meat Soup to the family and received twenty Family Contribution Points. However, she must provide at least twenty servings of Mushroom Meat Soup each month for the next six months. Unless prevented by unavoidable circumstances, her Contribution Points will otherwise be revoked.]

[Friendly reminder: This will not affect the acquisition of experience or contributions toward the Main Quest.]

Li Wei stared at the messages, utterly stunned. Th-this was allowed?

A seasoned schemer had just swooped in and stolen his thunder!

Damn it, it was only his first day as head of the household, and he had just thirty Family Contribution Points left. Phila had probably already surpassed him.

And she'd done it after making a mistake earlier and suffering a crushing defeat.

All he could say was that it was terrifying.

If her family's Main Quest hadn't been interrupted by the wolf attack, Phila would have been invincible.

Li Wei had to admit defeat.

After resting for a while, he'd planned to return to his room and sleep, but Phila's brilliant achievement had left him too excited to doze off. He grabbed his short knife and began carving wooden arrows by the bonfire.

Penny had said that the quality of wooden arrows was closely related to how well they performed when shot.

He needed to improve himself one step at a time.

By the time he'd carved ten wooden arrows, it was already late at night. But Li Wei wasn't sleepy at all, nor did he feel tired. He had to admit, Phila's Mushroom Meat Soup was amazing. No wonder donating it had earned her twenty Family Contribution Points.

As he mused over this, Li Wei used the firelight to nock an arrow and shoot ten times. It was part of his daily training and couldn't be skipped.

Thanks to the boost from his Professional Hunter class, he could now hit the target with every wooden arrow from within twenty meters. Of course, the arrows were ruined when they hit.

They were disposable after all.

But they were essential for Li Wei to master the Hunting Bow and improve his archery skills and proficiency.

As the saying went, a sharpshooter was made by feeding him bullets.

So a master archer was probably made the same way.

It was a new day. After breakfast, Li Wei took his axe and brought his Wooden Spear and Hunting Bow. He crossed the stream, whose flow had weakened somewhat, and headed to the east bank to chop trees.

He was already used to this kind of work. With ten points of Strength and 140 points of Stamina, felling ten trees a day should be easy.

But this time, unlike before, Li Wei chose trees about thirty or forty centimeters in diameter.

These large trees were harder to chop down, but he wanted to use their thick trunks to upgrade the camp palisade again. Phila and Penny might have their internal conflicts, but external dangers were more numerous and unpredictable.

If possible, he even wanted to build an archer tower inside the camp.

About an hour later, the tree crashed to the ground. The tremendous noise startled even Li Wei.

At the same time, he gained a full ten points of Logging Experience—one tree was worth ten!

Clearly, trees of different thicknesses awarded different amounts of Logging Experience.

But the tree really had been hard to chop down, especially with his rather underpowered axe. His Stamina was almost completely depleted.

He had to rest for half an hour before he could start trimming the branches and crown. That was an important step, too. Unless he turned it into a log, it wouldn't count toward the Main Quest's harvest.

And it took a lot of effort.

Even though Li Wei was in excellent health now and ate well, he couldn't fell another tree before noon.

By the time he finished trimming it, it was already noon.

Afterward, he led Old Ox and dragged the more than ten-meter-long log back. To his surprise, the quest progress in his status window had changed.

It now read 1/3. So one tree this big really was worth ten of the smaller ones?

"So what's the standard for one unit? Is it one cubic meter?"

Li Wei wondered what the standards were for other types of harvests. They probably each had their own.

For example, the five units of dried wild vegetables Phila had donated last time definitely couldn't have been measured in cubic meters.

And there was the prey he had to hunt next. The requirement was two units. Surely he wasn't supposed to get two cubic meters of meat—that would be ridiculous.

When he returned to camp, Phila had already made lunch, and even Penny was able to come out and walk around carefully.

"George, you actually chopped down an oak tree! Can you split it into firewood? I want to make some charcoal."

Penny leaned against the wall and spoke weakly.

Oak? Charcoal?

Li Wei looked back at the log he'd dragged over, taken aback. He couldn't tell what kind of tree it was at all. No wonder it had been so hard to chop down that morning.

"Are you making charcoal now? You haven't recovered yet."

"My silly little brother, after it's split into firewood, it'll need to dry for a while. Our Blacksmith Shop can't do without charcoal." Penny spoke with a strong translation-like cadence, but Li Wei understood what she meant. She was subtly telling him what they needed to do before they could build the Blacksmith Shop.

Li Wei didn't mind. In fact, if Sam hadn't died and Phila hadn't become head of the household and set them on a different development path, Penny's Blacksmith Shop would probably already have been in the works.