Frontiers ~Chronicles of Bucket-san’s Detailed Pioneering~ - CHapter 129

Chapter 129 – No good

The Pumpkin Labyrinth was released near the end of the Halloween event.

We have to clear three randomly selected mini-games in it in order to obtain Pumpkin Coins, and we can exchange those coins for some very attractive event items.

Most of them don’t need many Pumpkin Coins to be obtained, and most are sweets.

There are also some Halloween costumes one can buy, but they have no performance at all, so they’re essentially just cosplay.

Of course, I’m going to the labyrinth for sweets!

However, it will be hard to secure a large amount of sweets because there are only a few days left until the end of the event.

Those sweets do have a longer expiration date than the ones obtained by deliveries, but they still expire after three in-game weeks, or one real-time week.

And well, I’m not that good at those mini-games in all honesty. They’re all about moving around without being found by the event mobs, and stealth skills are completely useless against them.

Nonetheless, I’m challenging the labyrinth again today. This time with only Lolita and Lulu, who both want a lot of sweets.

Mika and Hime don’t seem to care too much about the prizes, so after they played a bit on it with their usual parties and clan members, they decided to just go back to their usual behavior.

Especially because a new field area has recently been opened, so Mika and her friends seem to want to give priority to that one.

If there was any good material there, I’d like them to sell them to me. I’m looking forward to what they bring back.

On another note, while me and Lolita are going to the Pumpkin Labyrinth to eat, Lulu is challenging it for a different reason.

Namely, she is collecting samples to get a better idea of how to reproduce those sweets.

If she is able to make them, then we’ll be able to eat those sweets at any time, even after the event ends, so we’re totally rooting for her.

We’re exchanging our event coins for different sweets each time in order to give her more samples.

Though of course, we still eat them after her research is done, as they’re truly delicious.

Why couldn’t they hold this event for longer?

******

The Halloween event was now at its end.

Each day we went to the labyrinth and collected all sorts of sweets to give as samples to Lulu, and to eat them later.

… And I kept on being found by the event mobs up until the very end.

Well, even if I was a bit of a burden, I still compensated for it when a minigame suddenly required us to craft a product that was hard to make, so I kinda compensated for it at those points… It’s okay like this, right?

“It’s over. I wanted to secure more sweets…” Lolita grumbled.

“That’s because you eat them right away, Lalalu. If you took your time, they’d last longer.” I replied.

“But they’re delicious! They’re gone before I realize it!” She exclaimed.

“Well, I can understand your feelings.” I told her.

“Lulu is also working hard at it, but it seems to be pretty hard to reproduce those event prizes…” Lolita grumbled.

“Is it really that difficult…?

“Well, I guess I have no choice but to not give you any other sweets then, Lalalu.” I told her.

“That’s horrible! Only one more! Just one more, please!” She exclaimed.

We didn’t have enough time to do another run on the Pumpkin Labyrinth, so we were now just enjoying the sweets in my workshop.

Lulu had gone with us to the labyrinth, but she didn’t come to the workshop because she wanted to go back to her research.

So, right now, only me and Lolita are here.

Lolita had finished eating all her sweets and got some of mine too, but I’m not giving any more to her because she eats way too fast.

She truly loves sweets, doesn’t she?

Well, I can understand it because they’re delicious, so… Lulu, please succeed in reproducing them soon!

“It really looks delicious… Please…” Lolita begged me.

“That’s no good, Lalalu.” I replied.

******

The Halloween event had ended, but there was no sign of a new event appearing even after the month changed.

Up until now there had always been an event on each month, so people were quite confused about it on the forums.

I mean, it’s not like there was an official announcement saying that there would be an event every month or anything, but it still feels a bit sad to have no events at all.

Well, with or without events, my routine is still the same.

I’m the only one who can make steel gear with Options in them, and the demand for that is endless.

Also, a new material, Magic Steel, seems to have appeared in the new field area.

This one allows us to make a Magic Ingot with relative ease even without its specific recipe, so it’s quite something.

Of course, that’s very useful to me who couldn’t obtain neither the Magic Silver Ingot nor the Magic Steel Ingot recipes, so I might as well try this new Magic Steel out.

Attribute-focused equipment is very good at the specific things it focuses at, but its defensive power is clearly lacking.

On the other hand, armor made with Magic Ingots doesn’t have that much defensive power either, but they compensate for that by having a high magic defense.

Its use is different, but it’s still an important piece of equipment.

It’s especially useful for people who can’t use the attribute-focused gear to easily dodge attacks, as they’ll need to take precautions against magical attacks.

Furthermore, if I can get some good Options on those items, then they might be almost on par with attribute-focused gear.

In other words, there is a real demand for Magic Steel gear.

I was a bit tired of only making steel stuff, so this was good for a change of pace. Especially because it will surely sell.

******

The sweets I got at the Halloween event were about to reach their expiration date, so I ate them all at today’s girls-only-gathering.

Lulu’s research is still ongoing, but it truly seems to be quite hard to reproduce those event-exclusive sweets.

Nonetheless, Lulu is still trying to overcome this challenge each day. Do your best, Lulu!

In any case, due to Hime’s great work, the supply of Magic Steel is quite stable right now, so I’m being able to produce plenty of Magic Steel gear right now.

After all, information on the Great Wolf Doll was shared on the forums in the blink of an eye, and everyone was pretty excited by seeing such a big doll and all its arms in combat. Not to mention how Hime herself is already a celebrity.

With that doll showing the greatness of Magic Silver Ingots, plenty of people are going after the Magic Steel and selling it to my store.

Though well, even with that, it took way too long to get all the materials ready for the Great Wolf Doll, so I have no plans of making a new one any time soon.

Sure, some people did try requesting for it at my store, but after a ban or two, the requests stopped in the blink of an eye.

Regardless of all that, the development of field areas seems to be steadily progressing, though there are some difficulties with it due to the necessity of doing maintenance woodcutting on already unlocked areas.

However, the number of player Pioneers is still increasing each day, so it will probably work out in one way or another.

Even us, at our girls-only-gathering, were talking about the new players that were constantly appearing.

Like, plenty of new people have been trying to apply to enter Works, but nobody has passed Lolita’s examination yet.

And at the same time, I also got some reports from my clerks about people who wanted to become my disciples.

It’s not that strange for it to happen though. Not only to me, but also to Lolita, Mukaida, Mii and Muu. All of us got requests from people that wanted to become disciples.

However, those people seem to mostly want to make use of our facilities and materials, so… Once we explain that we won’t share our facilities nor our materials, the ‘potential disciples’ give up right away, often times while also cursing us.

It was a hot topic on the forums for a while, but when Lolita explained her reasoning about it, people stopped complaining for the most part.

And due to all that, people who want to become disciples are being barred right away.

Maybe there are some people who actually wanted to be disciples properly, without actually wanting our facilities or materials, but… It just can’t be helped. Allowing people to try becoming disciples was being more trouble than it was worth.

Some people are still angry about it on the forums, but they’re a small minority.

******

One day, about two real-time weeks after the end of the Halloween event, we finally received a new official announcement.

And it was the biggest announcement yet.

“Yuri! Hime! Did you two see it!?” Mika exclaimed.

“Yes, yes, I saw it.” I replied.

“Major update.” Hime said.

The first major update announcement of Frontiers was coming.

We did get bug fixes and events with some regularity, but never a major update.

This time though, it was big enough to the point they decided to give us the announcement in advance.

“We’re finally going to connect to the other countries!” Mika exclaimed.

“I’m looking forward to the new skills.” Hime said.

“I’m interested in the master-disciple system myself.” I commented.

“They also said that the necessity of maintenance woodcutting would be reduced, so we should be able to get new areas faster from now on!” Mika exclaimed.

People were really talking a lot about it on the forums, because the development team usually doesn’t give that much information to us, so the fact that they shared this much ended up creating quite the fuss.

Of course, on top of reading the forums, we also read the official announcement carefully.

The notice explained what was coming in the next update, but they also made sure to point out that what they were sharing were not the only things that were coming.

It really is a major update alright. So big that they’ll need a bit more than a real-time month to finish it.

Until then, we’ll be preparing for what is going to come.

After all, after the update comes, we’ll probably get access to many new materials, so no matter how much money I have saved up, it probably won’t be enough, so I need to make sure to get even bigger reserves.

And like… We’ll be connecting to the other servers like this, so I’m worried if I’ll be able to keep my position as the top craft-focused player Pioneer after the merge.

Though until now, nobody has been my rival, so that might be alright.

However, I didn’t really look up much information on the other servers, so I’m looking quite forward to what they’re like.

Mika, Hime, the people from Works, all of them are my important friends.

Surrounded by many people, I’ll continue doing my best to do pioneering on Frontiers!

End of the Fifth Arc.