Short Guest List

While Violet hadn't exactly been expecting her dungeon to instantly become popular with the number of visitors increasing in a matter of hours, she hadn't expected the first day to be so slow either. Whereas there would normally be a small handful of visitors every day, even with the recent winter weather, Violet spent all day waiting only for the dungeon to remain empty. While it was good not to have any [Monsters] to fight off, she was disappointed not to have any opportunities to interact with adventurers.

The first person that ended up showing up for the day was David and Alice. Even then, Violet got the feeling that it was only because he was under contract and was required to show up every single day. The way he was constantly glancing around and kept telling Alice not to run around made it pretty obvious that he was more on edge than usual. It was honestly pretty disappointing for Violet, even despite her knowing that David was never quite going to trust her.

It was like he expected her dungeon to have become a lethal killing machine over the course of a single day. As if her first-floor was even capable of such a thing. She couldn't put the new [Monsters] she had unlocked on the first-floor. They were only available for the second-floor or higher floors. Slimes would be the most dangerous thing that could be on the first-floor for the rest of the time. Well, her pixies and myconid could go to the first-floor and even leave it, but that was a different matter entirely.

Besides all that, she couldn't exactly add [Traps] to the first-floor now any more than she could before. The deal was that she couldn't build any [Traps] on the first-floor, except for directly outside her dungeon core room. A room that wasn't even on the first-floor anymore, which really just said it was impossible to install any [Traps] now. Unless David planned to bring his daughter to the second-floor, which wouldn't be very smart on his part, there was no reason for him to worry.

Sighing, Violet picked her sword back up off of the ground where it had fallen when David knocked her over during their sparring. Turning back around, she said

"You should really relax. Also, I'd like to talk about the current deal we have. Now that I have a second-floor, I don't really have any need for you to leave the dungeon anymore. However, I also don't really want to do swordsmanship practice with you more than once a day. I can't change anything on the first-floor while you are on it, so you don't have to worry about that. I also can't assign anything more dangerous than slimes to this floor and it's impossible to put any [Traps] on this floor now. So, you can rest easy and do whatever gathering or challenges you want after I leave each night.

I do have a contract with another group of adventurers for the winter, though. I'll be telling them that they no longer have to wait for you to leave before they can come in for the night. So, you may have to deal with there being multiple groups in the dungeon from now on."

David flinched at Violet's obviously accusatory statement. However, he played it off as he replied

"Alright, we can do that. It will make things easier for us, anyway. It isn't good for Alice to stand outside in the dead of winter, she might get sick. Besides, it's a decent walk between here and the nearby town, so it isn't like we can go home and then come back that easily either."

David didn't really talk much more than that for the rest of their time together. After an hour, Violet went back upstairs. Her mana was already full and she was eager to get back to building her second-floor. While she did feel more motivated to train harder after the recent intruders, it wasn't like she needed David to supervise her as she did sword swings. She just found it helpful to spar with him each day since it helped in ways that practicing alone couldn't.

The first thing Violet did was to go to the flower hunt challenge room. She removed the late-stage dandelions, chicory, lavender, black-eyed susans, beebalm, and butterfly weed flowers. She also removed the windy weather effect. She hadn't set a specific weather pattern, just the windy option, before because she wanted it to blow the seeds of the late-stage dandelions around. However, she wanted to get rid of the plants that didn't fit the forest theme as well, so there was no point in the wind anymore. Perhaps she would find a new use for the combination of windy weather and late-stage dandelions for one of the first-floor rooms later on.

Next, Violet spent 20 MP applying Alaska violets, fairy slippers, baldhip, and blue-eyed mary flowers to the room. She had taken away more than she had added to the room, but the number of plants was still high enough to make the challenge difficult. The challenge's answers still remained the same since the chamomile, white clover flowers, daisies, and wild violets still remained in the room. Even the lavender meringues were still set as the prize option.

While Violet had originally wanted to have something non-food related on the second-floor, she had felt Theodore was also right about the prizes. Making the first-floor rewards more suitable for children and the everyday person's palate was more suitable for her goals. She'd still have to change out some of the rewards on the first-floor, but it wasn't like they'd be going to waste since she could always assign them to second-floor rooms. She'd just have to make sure to leave herself room for assigning other types of rewards to this floor as well.

The next thing on the to-do list was working on the currently empty 16-meter by 16-meter room on the second-floor. 50 MP was spent on a spawner. There wasn't enough DP to research the next spawner upgrade just yet. It would take an entire 500 DP to research it, which was going to take a short while to save up. Considering unlocking the second-floor cost 1,000 DP, it would seem the spawners were considered quite valuable by the dungeon system.

As the mana was earned at a rate of 1 MP per person per minute, it took a while for the mana to trickle in and add up to enough to continue building. However, Violet was still much happier with the way things worked now compared to the past. Before she would have to wait until adventurers left the dungeon in order to spend it. So, several hours of having visitors would end up being the same amount as a single hour since the most she could get out of it was 50 MP. Waiting on a slow trickle of incoming mana was nothing in comparison.

Since she was limited by the 50 MP spawner, Violet decided to spend 40 MP for two al-mi'raj and 9 MP for three giant checkered rabbits for the new room. Luckily, she had wanted to use a combination of the two to catch adventurers and invading [Monsters] off guard, anyway.

The horned rabbits were actually a bit strange looking as their colors varied from a dark black with red eyes that gave off a sinister feeling to a more pristine white with dazzling blue eyes. Meanwhile, the checkered rabbits were a larger type of rabbit than her [Monster] rabbits and they had white fur with black spots and fully black ears. They were all the same colors, but their patterns did differ slightly. This did hurt Violet's plan to confuse the intruders by a bit, but it wasn't like an adventurer would be able to tell the difference until the rabbit was right in front of them, anyway. So, a rustling bush or the sound of hopping could still make them antsy as they prepared for an incoming attack.

Since David didn't remain in the dungeon for too much longer, Violet only ended up earning enough mana to spend an additional 120 MP on twelve blackberry bushes. She planned to use a combination of bushes and rabbit holes for the rabbits so that they'd have more places to hide and her strategy would be more effective than a more plain forest might result in.

Reviewing the new tribute message from her system, it seemed that David had left her a wool dress today. She had waited until he left to leave his tribute today, likely due to the cold attitude he seemed to have today. As David didn't wear dresses, as far as Violet knew, it was likely the dress was one of Alice's old ones. The dungeon didn't really differentiate between the two and would just size things based on who the recipient was, which is why Violet's new leather boots and silk stockings fit perfectly. So it wasn't exactly going to specify if it was a child's dress or one meant for an adult.

Still, Violet was quite satisfied as she noted she now had another 95 DP, raising her total to 351 dungeon points. As there would be no more mana until Camellia and Avorn came for the night, she headed to the dungeon core room to relax.