Chapter 365: Value of a Lumberjack

Kang Taewoo, however, noticed that something was wrong.

"My lord, you haven’t taken up the lumberjacking secondary profession?"

"Does it make that much of a difference?" Joo Joowon asked. He assessed the consumption of his stamina and Mental Power and felt that there was no problem at all.

If he went all out, he could probably sweep through the entire mountain in no time. The only price he would have to pay was that he would need to sleep for a long time after returning to recover his strength.

"Not really," Kang Taewoo replied, shaking its head. "It’s just that players without the lumberjacking secondary profession will lose a few units of wood when cutting down trees, and they’ll also consume more stamina."

The secondary profession mainly affected the harvesting of wood with a quality grade.

Such materials were considered one type of natural treasure. Trees that produced this kind of wood usually contained special energy within them, making them different from ordinary plants.

These trees required trained professionals to cut them down. Reckless chopping would only cause the energy contained in the wood to dissipate. That was still the better outcome. In the worst case, the tree itself would be ruined by improper cutting, rendering all the harvested wood useless.

The trees they were cutting down now, however, were nothing more than ordinary trees. At most, they had been washed by energy, making their wood harder and more difficult to chop. Regardless of who did the cutting, the result would essentially be the same.

After all, it was only basic wood. It had not even reached the threshold for being classified as a quality-grade material.

However, Joo Joowon’s expression immediately changed when he heard this. Wasn’t this consequence serious enough for him?

After all, Earthfire could currently only attach itself to the wood found in the mountains. What would happen if there was not enough wood and the city walls ended up with blind spots in their surveillance coverage in the future?

He glanced at the tree stumps left behind after the trees had been cut down. Their cross-sections were remarkably smooth, not at all like something produced by an axe. Someone could easily believe that the trees had been cut with a machine.

Could these remaining stumps represent the wood wasted when players without the lumberjacking secondary profession cut down trees?

After all, if something as unscientific as a felled tree turning directly into neat, square blocks of wood was possible, then it would not be surprising if the game could make use of the entire tree, including the part buried underground.

In fact, it would be far stranger if ordinary tree-cutting left behind the same old stumps as it did in the real world.

After weighing the advantages and disadvantages in his mind, Joo Joowon could not help looking at Kang Taewoo.

"Kang Taewoo, come here for a moment. I want to discuss something with you."

"What is it?" Kang Taewoo asked, genuinely confused.

In its eyes, this amount of waste really did not count as a problem.

Under normal circumstances, no lord would be willing to assign someone with the lumberjacking secondary profession to cut down ordinary trees like these. The only exception would be if the lord wanted their subordinates to gain experience.

Most lords would simply purchase a few laborers to handle this kind of physically demanding work.

If there were refugees, displaced people fleeing disasters, or ordinary people who had yet to become transcendent living near their territory, the lords would not even need to buy laborers. They only had to provide a meal, and these people could be made to cut down trees until they worked themselves to death.

No player would stand up for ordinary people.

As for the small amount of wood wasted when ordinary people cut down trees, very few people would care about it.

The reason Kang Taewoo was surprised was simply that the wood in this area was already among the finest materials that could still be classified as ordinary. It was only a little short of reaching Level 1.

Because of that, it had assumed Joo Joowon had personally come to cut down the trees to better preserve the wood’s properties.

After all, a territory this large would surely need plenty of manpower. It was impossible that the lord was the only person in the entire territory capable of doing any work, right?

That would make no sense at all.

Only players who possessed the appropriate secondary profession could preserve the wood’s properties.

They could retain as much of the wood’s inherent characteristics as possible when the tree was converted into basic wood. Later, when the wood was processed into finished products, those characteristics would be preserved as well, making the resulting items somewhat more valuable than those made from the most ordinary wood.

Kang Taewoo had initially assumed that Joo Joowon was in this situation because he had the lumberjacking secondary profession. Who would have thought that he did not have it at all?

Then again, that made sense. Most players looked down on professions like this because their prospects for development were not particularly promising.

"As the saying goes, since we’ve already asked one person to handle a task, we might as well let the same person handle the rest. How about you take care of all the wood on the mountain, too, Kang Taewoo?" Seeing Kang Taewoo’s expression change, Joo Joowon quickly added, "We’ll pay you the market price. Don’t worry, I definitely won’t let you suffer a loss."

Compared with other secondary professions, lumberjacking was indeed nothing more than pure physical labor, and its prospects were limited.

When people with other secondary professions reached the higher ranks, others might look at them in a different light, especially if they had one of the more popular professions.

Lumberjacking, however, was different. Even after reaching the higher ranks, its usefulness remained limited.

Once spiritual plants reached the higher ranks, most people would still prefer to find an NPC with a suitable secondary profession, such as cultivation, to carefully tend to them rather than cut them down.