Scavenger Hunt

Despite expecting to die in the dungeon, the elderly farmers had been rather generous with their tributes. Violet noted that they had left three strawberries, a bell pepper, and a bundle of wheat. This translated to 107DP, which now gave her a total of 230DP. Violet chuckled to herself as she said

"Should I become a farming dungeon, love? With all of the crops I've been given, I could easily do some research and plant fields and fields of all sorts of things."

Violet sighed before continuing

"I suppose that wouldn't be a very good way to pay the locals back for their kindness, though, would it? I'd hate to take away their only source of income..."

While Violet already had quite a few different trees and fruit-bearing bushes in her dungeon, it somehow felt different to turn her dungeon into an actual farmland. At least the things she currently had fit the scenery. It wasn't like there was much else Violet could put in a meadow theme anyway. Turning a meadow into a mine wouldn't be allowed by her system anyway.

Violet walked to her new empty square room. This one had yet to have more than some basic slimes and a spawner built in it. However, that wouldn't last much longer. It would take a few rounds of building, but this room was Violet's next goal.

While she walked the distance, Violet mused to herself how unfortunate it was that her system wasn't capable of answering her questions about this world. She had tried asking questions from her system about whether there were any other dungeons with slimes as [Monsters], like hers, or how many adventurers visited an average dungeon each day. However, these sorts of questions were always met with silence.

Violet supposed this made sense. The dungeon core had been born not long before Violet had entered this world and bonded with it. The dungeon core hadn't met any other dungeon masters nor had it been part of any other dungeons. The only knowledge the dungeon core had was the knowledge it had been born with. Things related to the dungeon accords and basic upkeep of the dungeon were all her system could help her with.

Besides that, it was more than clear to Violet that her system menu and the dungeon core were not sentient. It was closer to a computer algorithm or an NPC in a video game. It had set responses based on what you asked of it, but it couldn't do much outside of that. Asking the system what it thought of the weather would either get the system to pull up the weather options for the room or no response at all.

While it certainly had nothing to offer in the way of useful information or company, Violet couldn't fault the dungeon core. It would be the same as blaming herself or a newborn baby. The dungeon and her were one and the dungeon was only a little over a week old. Besides, Violet had other options, even if it would take longer to get any useful information. She could ask Theodore, David, or Elivyre about the world. Of course, she couldn't take everything they said at face value, but it was still better than nothing.

Finally walking into the new room, Violet asked

"Is it possible to make dandelions that have gone to seed?"

[Would you like to spend 4DP to research late-stage dandelions using the [Base Resource] dandelions?

Yes or No?]

That was a lot simpler than Violet had expected and certainly cheaper than expected as well. Well, it was, basically, just a reskin of an item she already had unlocked. They were just at a later stage in their life, but it was still the same plant. Violet easily selected the [Yes] option, happy to have a new option for decorating her rooms.

Next, she spent 46MP to apply long grass, plantain leaves, creeping charlie, clover, white clover flowers, red clover flowers, chamomile, daisies, and violets to the room. Violet planned to use this room to do a special scavenger hunt challenge, so she would need a lot more variety of plants than she had in any of her other rooms. In fact, this was hardly even all of the plants she planned to apply as room features. If it weren't for the fact that she was already out of mana, she wouldn't have even waited to apply the rest. However, there was no getting around her max mana cap.

Violet would have to wait until she had a second floor before she could complete many of her challenges, but she planned to eventually lock adventurers inside of rooms until they completed the challenges in them. However, 250DP just to lock the door to one room was a lot and Violet hardly wanted to make all of her puzzles so difficult. Instead, she planned to use this method only in a few rooms that were further in the dungeon.

Adventurers who were smart enough to complete the challenges would, eventually, be able to leave. However, [Monsters] would have a much harder time completing the challenges. So long as [Monsters] were in all of the rooms where the doors would lock, Violet wouldn't even have to worry about the space being permanently locked. The [Monsters] would either starve to death or slowly be smacked to death by the slimes. Maybe they'd even give up and take the easy way out.

Violet grimaced as she took in her own thoughts. They were a lot darker than she was used to. She had always been a rather optimistic and happy person who lived in the moment. Violet had never suffered from chronic depression or suicidal ideation. She also wasn't exactly an anarchist who just wanted to watch the world burn.

It was difficult to say what had caused this change in her mindset. Perhaps it was just because she had become a dungeon master in this new world and the dungeon core was affecting her sense of morality. She still seemed to have most of the tendencies that made her want to nurture the young and help the elderly. Violet even still found herself desiring friendship and enjoying the small things in life.

However, when it came to things that put the dungeon at risk, she could strike her enemies down with no remorse. Violet had even accepted the death of that one adventurer all too easily. It was difficult to say when things had changed, though. For all Violet knew, this could be a result of how difficult her death had been. Maybe she could no longer trust people so easily because she had seen her own husband dying on their living room floor and then lost her own life not long after.

Violet's mind began to spiral and she clutched her head in anguish. However, before she could think on the topic much longer, a strong wave of serenity washed over her. Violet got up and walked back to the dungeon core room, no longer feeling bothered.