After getting the information he wanted from others, Zhou Zhengping quickly turned back to find Zhou Bai and Xiao Bai, describing the situation outside briefly to them.
"It's probably the so-called Newbie Protection Period at work—the number of demon beasts is relatively small, and their levels aren't high. But I think as time passes and our levels increase, stronger demon beasts will start to appear." Zhou Bai analyzed. She had played enough games before the apocalypse to understand the patterns.
Early in the game, it's definitely when they accumulate their initial capital, especially resources. They had a good amount of gold coins, but resources were seriously lacking.
"Yeah, I think so too. That's why our family must work hard to level up over this next month." Zhou Zhengping agreed. "And Xiao Bai, you should focus on reaching Level 5 as soon as possible and work on upgrading the territory level. That'll make things safer."
"How about we take a walk nearby first, just to get used to everything?" Zhou Bai suggested, glancing at her Lord panel, which showed nearby red and green dots.
With this kind of map indication, they were already a few steps ahead of the others.
"Alright." Zhou Zhengping and Ding Qiurou immediately replied, long prepared mentally for all this.
They acted as soon as they decided, and the family of three quickly left their territory together.
Seeing the three of them marching out with iron axes, looking fierce, some people who were resting exchanged glances, then quickly got up to take action as well.
Two frail women in someone else's family were this bold—how could they fall behind?
Some who were low on resources hurriedly followed suit. Wood and stone could at least be exchanged for a good amount of copper coins! The territory's purchase price was higher; they could collect and sell to the territory. Judging from the price of iron axes, future weapons wouldn't be cheap. Better to save up more money—these are their capital for survival later.
**
And now the three of them had arrived at a small grove.
"Dad, Mom, I checked here already. No demon beasts for now. Let's try collecting wood first. If any demon beast is alone later, we'll take care of it then, more naturally." Zhou Bai said cautiously.
"Alright." Zhou Zhengping and Ding Qiurou nodded, both glancing at Zhou Bai with a bit of relief in their eyes.
After the apocalypse, their daughter had transformed from lazy to clever and decisive. If the day came that they accidentally had an accident, they'd feel much more at ease about her future.
The family promptly started chopping trees with their iron axes.
Zhou Bai's axe swung down, leaving only a mark on the tree. She blinked and kept going, hacking at it more than ten times before the tree flashed with a white light and turned into wood.
[Congratulations, Host, you have obtained wood*5, Experience Points +1.]
After gathering it, she checked on her parents. Her dad was already chopping the third tree, while her mom hadn't finished the first.
Clearly, collecting wood depended on personal constitution, so when their levels increased, their constitution would too.
Thinking about this, Zhou Bai buried herself in chopping trees. Chopping added experience points, even if it wasn't much—it was still better than nothing.
After confirming chopping trees did grant experience, Zhou Zhengping, after figuring out roughly how many chops it took to collect wood, purposefully left the last hit for Zhou Bai.
Zhou Bai didn't refuse either.
So just like that, their family steadily gathered resources, shifting locations as the trees were spread out.
After a while, the three of them had collected several hundred units of wood, and Zhou Bai's level had risen to Level 3.
Gradually, Zhou Bai also received news about other refugees entering Hope Village. With a map to guide her and others in the territory, she didn't worry, manually blocking those notifications for now.
Until a different message arrived.
[Dear Host, your residents have reached 100, fulfilling upgrade condition 1.]
Hearing this, Zhou Bai couldn't help but smile.
Now 1 and 2 were complete; only 3 remained.
She looked around and, seeing no one nearby, quietly said to her parents while looking at a small red dot on the map not far: "Dad, Mom, can we go hunt demon beasts now? If I reach Level 5 tonight, I can upgrade the territory."
"Let's go!" Zhou Zhengping's eyes brightened slightly.
Quickly, with Zhou Bai leading the way, they ran right into some wandering magic rabbits and demon rats, smaller demon beasts.
They noticed that for demon beasts lower level than themselves, they could see their level; but for those higher, they couldn't. Even so, killing demon beasts just took a few more attacks. Clearly, even the higher-level beasts weren't much stronger than them.