Pixie Pals

Since Violet hadn't managed to sell anything to Avorn and Camellia this time around, she reluctantly decided to try and see if David would be up for it. The promise of income later in the week was nice and all, but it just wouldn't be that helpful in the meantime. However, that didn't exactly mean that Violet was all that happy to interact with the overly standoffish David either.

As it turned out, David was just wrapping things up and fixing to head out by the time she reached him. With a huff, he narrowed his eyes and questioned

"What do you want now? I thought we were done for the day. I need to get my daughter home soon, it's a bit late for her to still be awake."

Violet gritted her teeth as she answered

"I just wanted to see if you'd be interested in buying anything today. However, if it bothers you that much, I'll just leave."

David sounded surprisingly gentle when he replied

"No, wait. What do you have available?"

Violet felt exhausted as she turned back around and answered

"I've got some potions and then some food items. I don't have much else right now, but that might change later on."

David looked thoughtful as he replied

"Alright, well, I'll buy whatever food [Items] you have."

Violet narrowed her eyes in suspicion as she replied

"I don't have a ton, but it still won't be cheap. Are you sure you can afford it?"

David grunted in response before beginning to pull [Items] out of his magic bag. Back when he had thought they would be trading sooner rather than later, he had begun to collect [Items] he thought Violet might have some interest in. However, even back then it had been close to the beginning of the cold season and it wasn't like magic bags could extend the shelf life of goods. So, most of what he had was a mixture of different clothing [Items] and decorative buttons he had bought in the next city over in the hopes Violet would be interested.

Violet began to pull out her own [Items] as she pointed to items, negotiating on a fair price for her goods. She hadn't created much in terms of new merchandise over the last few days, but she still had twelve tins black tea, five glass jars honey, five glass jar apple jam, two iced carrot bread, four bread rolls, two wild violet & honey lollipops, fifteen lavender meringue cookies, and twenty chamomile shortbread cookies. The whole lot had cost her an entire 293 MP to create it all, which was, admittedly, not as big of a deal now as it used to be, but that still meant she was expecting a minimum of 586 DP as a return on her investment.

David wasn't entirely happy with how much he ended up having to trade away for the goods he wanted. While he had gotten a really good deal previously by only having to bring a few flowers, fruits, and mushrooms in exchange for several sweets, he had to trade away much more expensive goods this time. That was primarily due to a fundamental misunderstanding on his part as to how things were valued in the dungeon, but that was hardly something that Violet was going to explain to him now that their relationship had gotten as bad as it had.

Violet ended up obtaining a red velvet dress, a brown leather tunic, a white wool cap, gray linen pants, a blue silk nightgown, some hemp rope, a fox fur scarf, black, white, and blue fabric buttons, clear, red, green, and blue glass buttons, horsehair, flower-shaped, and square patterned ceramic buttons, engraved iron, engraved gold, and engraved silver metal buttons, iron snap buttons, and a lot of wooden buttons. The [Items] couldn't be absorbed until after the dungeon was cleared of occupants, but it would end up being worth an entire 635 DP, which was really not a bad haul.

David felt like grumbling as he left the dungeon, so there wasn't any further discussion on future purchases. Still, it wasn't like he felt entirely put out, he was just disappointed due to not feeling like he was getting as good of a deal as he had the last time. It would be too difficult to travel through the snow to reach the next city over, but merchants still traveled through the area on rare occasions, even during the winter time. So, David could only hope to trade some of the excess sweets, tea, and honey for money and [Items] for future trades with Violet.

It wasn't like David wasn't going to share any of the goods he had obtained today, though. A single tin of black tea, a jar of honey, all of the apple jam, and the bread rolls would be brought back to be shared with Gregory's family. It would be a nice luxury for everyone to enjoy and the jam was bound to make the rare loaves of bread that Edith baked taste that much better. The food wasn't much in the long run and wouldn't be very filling, unfortunately, but that couldn't really be helped.

Selling the sweets would amount to a larger amount of money that could be used to purchase firewood and food that would last far longer than the sweets themselves would. Besides, since it seemed Violet wasn't entirely adverse to selling him things, it would also be good to stock back up on [Items] to trade with her. Perhaps, next time he could even try to buy more useful things like the bread rolls. The winter season was a long one and it was still just the beginning of the season, after all.

Of course, Violet wasn't aware of any of this. She was just happy that she had plenty of [Items] to absorb the next morning. Besides that, she actually had the 500 DP she needed to research the next spawner thanks to Avorn and Camellia's rent being added to her points total right away.

[Would you like to research 100 MP limit [Monster] spawners? Requires 500 DP.]

[Yes or No?]

Violet excitedly selected the [Yes] option. She then spent the rest of the night investing her mana on new spawners for her second floor rooms. It took 600 MP to replace the old 50 MP limit spawners with the new ones. That took quite a while to save up enough for and ended up taking up most of her night. However, it was hardly all of the mana she earned in a night. So, 120 MP was spent on six al-mi'raj and an additional 27 MP was spent on nine giant checkered rabbits. These were split between the blueberry, raspberry, and blackberry forest [Monster] field rooms, effectively doubling their population. There would now be four horned rabbits and six giant rabbits in each of the rooms, making them feel much less empty.

While it may have been worthwhile to consider adding a better variety of [Monsters] and [Critters] to the room to make the rooms seem more lively, Violet preferred to prioritize practicality in this case. More [Monsters] meant that she could more easily defend her dungeon and adventurers would get more use out of the rooms. Environmental considerations could always be considered more carefully in other types of rooms anyway.

The most exciting part of the night's activities, however, was the fact that Violet could finally summon her very first pixies for the dungeon! It took an entire 200 MP to summon just four pixies with two placed in the hopscotch challenge room and two placed in the rainbow of roses challenge room. Violet smiled excitedly as she watched her new [Monsters] flutter around playfully, clearly happy to be a part of the dungeon.

"Um... hello! It's nice to meet you all. I'm Violet, the Dungeon Master."

She nervously greeted me. The pixies all stopped and turned towards her voice, clearly seeming surprised by her presence. However, they were all super friendly as they greeted

"Hi! I'm so excited to meet you! I'm Jasmine!"

"I'm Daisy! Your dungeon is so pretty!"

One of the other fairies hid behind the third one to speak up, so the last two were introduced by the only boy fairy to be summoned.

"I apologize, my wife Lily is very shy around people she doesn't know very well. I'm Cedar, by the way."

Violet blinked in surprise, a bit taken aback by her new residents. However, she soon recovered before reassuring

"That's alright. I'll just quickly move your assigned rooms around so you two can share the same room. Are roses alright with you? The only other option I have is one with a hopscotch challenge. Those rooms will lock at times, which I do apologize for, but I just couldn't quite spare the spawner space in one of the other room types."

Daisy zoomed by excitedly before dancing with Jasmine as she excitedly exclaimed

"Can you believe it? We are actually being given our own rooms to inhabit and we even get to be assigned to a spawner as well!"

Cedar seemed to share that sentiment as he cooly replied

"That's fine, thank you for your consideration. By the way, are there any particular tasks you expect us to complete? I'm afraid our size doesn't make us very effective at combat, but we're still happy to help lead any enemies into [Traps] for you."

Violet shook her head as she answered

"That won't be necessary. Right now it is cold and snowy outside, but I'd like it if you all could go forage outside the dungeon when the spring comes. I realize that might be difficult due to your small size, so don't overwork yourself. Your safety is more important to me than how much progress you make.

Anyway, I'll give you all some time to settle in. I'm going to rest for a while, but feel free to find me if you all need anything."