The Local Lord

Lord Sylvar Goldenleaf looked up as his daughter came into his office. It had been a long day of filling out paperwork as he carefully managed their territory. However, he had been waiting for his daughter to visit, so he gave her a smile in greeting while she made herself comfortable in the seat across from him.

"So, how did things go, Ava?"

His daughter seemed bored, but she still answered his question promptly.

"Eliath sent the adventurers to check out the dungeon like you wanted. They all returned unscathed, though, they took far longer than expected. It seems that the dungeon is a bit peculiar."

Sylvar frowned, feeling concerned as he questioned

"That's disappointing, I was hoping this would be a valuable opportunity for our people. Has he sent out a notification to the dungeon diplomats?"

Eliath Autumnfire was the local adventures' guild's guildmaster as well as his daughter's husband. More than likely, he would have taken the initiative to check out the new dungeon, even without his own interference. However, he had been optimistic that the new dungeon would give a second life to his city. If there was something wrong with the dungeon, though, then it couldn't be helped, it would have to be destroyed.

Of course, something like that wasn't so easily done. Since the dungeon diplomats were in charge of managing the dungeons and ensuring everyone followed the dungeon accords, they would have to wait for the council's approval before action could be taken. The only bit of good news was that they wouldn't have to worry about finding someone suitable to take care of the problem.

Before he could continue his line of thinking, his daughter interrupted

"Actually, it seems the dungeon is in good health. I thought the same at first, but Eliath explained it was unlikely anyone would safely return from the dungeon if it was truly a danger. Rather, it seems we have a unique dungeon on our hands. One half of it appears to be a rainforest while the other half has wooden walls and floors. It's an open floorplan dungeon as well, which, from what I was told, is quite rare. There is supposed to only be a small handful of them in the entire world."

Sylvar stroked his chin as he sat in thought. Perhaps, rather than being disappointed, he should be more enthusiastic. If they had truly lucked into having a functioning unique dungeon type, their city could see unprecedented growth that could even surpass that which they had previously seen. The last dungeon in their city had been a fairly standard one with a succubus as the dungeon master. The [Monster] variety was decent and everything was well-balanced. The only real worry back then had been the sheer number of adventurers who fell prey to the dungeon master and had willingly gone to their deaths. However, that had been something that was easily accepted and had hardly stopped the thousands of adventurers who flocked to their city just for the chance to conquer the dungeon.

"Do we know what kind of dungeon master is running the dungeon yet?"

He asked. Ava shook her head, looking bored as she answered

"No, not yet. You know how dungeon masters tend to be. They don't like it when you enter the dungeon core room and they rarely venture out, especially in the early days. I'm sure it will just be a matter of time, though. Adventurers are bound to jump on the opportunity to make some quick coin by selling information about the dungeon."

Sylvar nodded, dismissing his daughter so he could get back to work.

Elsewhere, Veronica was taking her first martial arts lesson from Seraphina. The elven woman had brought her a wooden staff and had immediately wanted to start lessons once the sun had set. Apparently, the plan was to start with a weapon and then move on to hand-to-hand combat later on. While both were equally important to learn, she, apparently, thought it would be easier for Veronica to fight off intruders with a weapon to add some oomph to her attacks. Considering the fact that most adventurers and some free-roaming [Monsters] also utilized weapons, she could definitely understand where Seraphina was coming from.

After being knocked on her ass for the dozenth time, Veronica stood up and glared at the woman across from her. She was hardly going to complain, but it was definitely getting annoying to constantly be knocked over and smacked around. Well, it could certainly be worse. If she were in an actual fight, she would have to contend against those with magic or pointy swords and spears. Those would likely hurt a lot more than what she was currently dealing with.

There hadn't been anymore visitors for the day, but that was fine with Veronica. After confirming all she had to do was send Seraphina into the other half of the dungeon to access her system, she had used the opportunity to build a few more rooms and fill them with 50 MP spawners and 3x gargoyles each. She now had five rooms ready to take on adventurers, which wasn't a ton, but it was certainly better than things had been before.

After a few hours, Seraphina must have tired out because she finally called it quits on the training for the night. Veronica was glad for it as she was sure she had several bruises forming and blisters were forming on her hands. It would seem that the ability to heal quickly didn't prevent her from getting injured, it just made it so she was guaranteed to recover within a few hours time.Of course, it was faster for more minor injuries, but it still sucked. She was even beginning to suspect such healing might be a curse since she doubted she'd form the necessary callouses to ensure she wouldn't have to keep suffering in the future.

"Are you familiar with the different types of rooms you can build? It seems like you're mostly just building [Monster] fields right now. I mean, that's fine, if that's what you want to do, but I'd be happy to fill in any gaps in knowledge you might have."

Seraphina asked. As she seemed to genuinely be asking rather than making fun of her choices, Veronica decided to be honest.

"I've never been in charge of a dungeon and we don't have them where I came from. We have stories and games where we can play around with similar concepts, but I'm not sure it's the same thing. I know there are usually things like rooms where you have to solve riddles or dodge [Traps], but I don't really know how things work here."

Seraphina nodded before launching into an explanation

"Well, generally, room types can be divided into three primary types. There are [Monster] fields, which is where the primary focus is the [Monsters] the adventurers and intruders have to fight against. There might be resources added like oak trees or fruit bushes, maybe even a few [Traps], but that's it.

Challenge rooms are the second type and can take many different forms from a riddle that has to be solved to jumping over obstacles. There is always a reward set for the challenge and the system has to know what the conditions are to complete the challenge.

As for the third type, it's, pretty much, just a miscellaneous category. Your boss rooms, a tribute room, and any non-combat, non-challenge rooms would fall under this category. Most dungeons are fairly combat-heavy and the dungeon masters don't get very creative with making other types of rooms. However, I've heard from my friend, Theodore, that one of his dungeon masters likes to make rest areas before boss rooms and some areas that are just meant to be relaxing and peaceful. Since you can't leave the dungeon, it's important that you make it a place you want to live, not just focus on safety all of the time."

Veronica listened to her words carefully, making mental notes. She could certainly see the appeal of turning your dungeon into a place of joy and beauty, but she just wasn't sure that it was her style. Besides, she had the hotel, so there wasn't a need for more dungeon space to be spent on things that wouldn't have some level of defense for the dungeon. Challenge rooms didn't sound like a bad idea to include, eventually, but, even then, she wasn't sure she wanted to dedicate too much space to things like that.

"Alright, thank you for the information. I'll consider what I want to do in regards to challenge rooms in the future, but I don't think I have use for any of the others. I should, probably, be more worried about what to do with the hotel, anyhow. I actually have system quests for that."

Seraphina just shrugged at Veronica's words. It wasn't her job to influence her, just to guide her. Saying anything more would be out of line, so the subject was dropped.