Knowing she couldn’t stay on the island forever, she spent the next year busily upgrading her space and storing seafood, drying it out.
For the entire year, she didn’t go anywhere else but stayed tethered to her speedboat, ceaselessly harvesting seafood, drying and preserving everything that could be dried.
Since her Space Mall points had exceeded five million, she made every effort to store the seafood she collected in the remaining year.
Thanks to her hard work, the space farmland had leveled up from Level 3 to Level 4, expanding from six plots to eight.
To upgrade from Level 4 to Level 5, two million Gold Coins were required. After reaching Level 5, it would be a watershed where one could open ranches and fisheries, and the farmland warehouse could be opened to the public, thus requiring even more Gold Coins.
She struggled for nearly a year just to reach Level 4 because after the initial six plots, the cost for each additional plot increased by one hundred thousand. For example, the seventh plot cost two hundred thousand Gold Coins, and the eighth plot three hundred thousand, which was why saving Gold Coins was so challenging.
Fortunately, the higher the level, the higher the selling price of the vegetables. At Level 4, she gained access to plant potatoes, Little White Cabbages, canola, and lettuces.
Currently, the vegetables she could grow included red and White radishes, cabbage, garlic, potatoes, Little White Cabbages, canola, and lettuce, while the grain crops were wheat, rice, and corn.
Leafy crops like these had short maturity periods, ripening in about five to six hours, or seven to eight. To plant and sell as much as possible, she focused on newly unlocked vegetables such as Little White Cabbage, canola, and lettuce, which meant she had to enter the space regularly to harvest and replant, keeping her incredibly busy.
Having just upgraded to Level 4 and with a two-million-Gold Coin gap to reach Level 5, she felt she needed to live on the sea for at least another year to a year and a half.
"After reaching Level 5," she told herself, "every day you weed, fertilize, water, and harvest, you’ll accumulate Experience Points. Plus, the land will give you certain gifts, seeds that you can’t buy in the mall and will sell for a good price. Basically, every five levels mark a watershed, so keep it up!"
Last winter, she had spent the whole season digging for oysters, nearly depleting them from the reefs in that area. From oysters alone, she had made close to a million.
Now, the seafood around the island she was on was noticeably less abundant than when she first arrived. If she could feel the decrease, it was clear it was more than just a little.
So this year, she planned to check out the surrounding small islands for anything worth foraging.
Typically, the rocks in the middle of the sea would be covered in lots of sea snails (green mussels). To harvest these green mussels, speed was of the essence due to the risk of the tide rising at any moment, and given the central sea location, the waves were extremely large. She went directly wearing leather pants and a raincoat; the speedboat was hard to secure since there was nowhere to tie it, so she simply returned it to the Space Mall. Thɪs chapter is updated by NoveI-Fire.ɴet
Then, with a bucket and a screwdriver in hand, she squatted down to dig for green mussels. She really found a lot, as numerous as you can imagine densely packed oysters.
The reef was roughly one to two meters wide and three to four meters long. She felt quite scared standing on it, as each wave that struck brought a bone-chilling sensation. Moreover, it was still February or March, and the weather was cold!
The green mussels clustered tightly, firmly embedded into the rock face. The ones on the edges were easier to handle, but the ones in the middle were especially difficult. After two hours in the raging waves and seeing the tide rising, she had only managed to fill two buckets. They were incredibly difficult to dig out since they were so deeply embedded; even with her strength, she had only managed two buckets.