After David left, Violet decided it would be better to work on the next room she wanted to build since she still didn't have enough dungeon points to combine the two halves of the boss room she wanted to build. It took a good bit of walking now to get from the dungeon core room to the wildflower meadow room.
Violet was starting to feel like it was going to be quite inconvenient to get from one end of her dungeon to the next as she began to increase the floors of her dungeon. It might only take fifteen minutes to walk a 1,000-Units, but things got more complicated when that terrain wasn't all flat and included many obstacles. Crossing a river or a large parkour pool couldn't kill Violet, but it did still slow her down just as much as it did any of the adventurers who would explore her dungeon.
This time around, Violet wanted to build a room to the left of the wildflower meadow. So, she spent 5 MP to build a 5-Units straight hallway to the left of the roundabout hallway in between the slime parkour and wildflower meadow rooms. Then she spent another 32 MP to build a 16-Units by 16-Units round room.
This was the first round room built in her dungeon, but Violet had to say that it looked quite nice. Instead of pointed corners of land, the edges all rounded out neatly. It was difficult to tell where the walls were on this floor due to the wildflower meadow base room theme that every room started with. However, Violet felt like the room would look quite nice with cave walls with how smooth and dome-like the walls in this room were.
There wasn't much mana left for Violet to spend for the day, but she already knew what she wanted to build in this room. She wanted to make a large pond room in which she could put koi fish and jade tree frogs. It wouldn't be very beneficial in terms of providing defense for the dungeon and it wasn't going to be made into a challenge room, but it was still likely to be a nice addition to the dungeon.
Violet wasn't naive enough to think she could just build the dungeon based on what would look nice, but she didn't think it hurt to have a few rooms that just added a nice atmosphere. At best, a pond room would draw in locals who wanted to fish in the pond, which would be good for mana later on, but not very useful otherwise. Still, Violet could easily imagine herself enjoying a peaceful afternoon watching the fish swim about while the frogs hopped from place to place.
Violet spent her last 10 MP to manipulate the terrain in the room and create a small hole for the pond. She'd require another 160 MP to be put towards the task before the pond would be large enough for her purposes. However, she hardly planned to make such a thing a priority, right now. Violet needed to finish the boss room as soon as possible, but the pond room could be worked on using the smaller amount of mana left over while she was doing that.
The next morning, Violet spent another 10 MP digging out the pond. The leftover 3 MP wasn't enough for much of anything, so she just shrugged it off, not bothering to worry about so little mana going to waste. As for what her kodama foraged, it would seem her luck was not very good today. She only earned another 4 DP, which brought her total up to 86 total dungeon points. That was still a ways off from the amount she needed to finish the boss room.
Violet's first visitor of the day was Elivyre who even went out of her way to come find Violet after first entering the dungeon. She happily waved some herbs in the air as she declared
"I brought you some special variants of basil and sage. I haven't seen them around your dungeon yet, so I'm hoping that they'll be useful to you."
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As she didn't have much skill in identifying plants, Violet couldn't say whether the herbs were new to her or not. She'd have to wait until Elivyre left so that the dungeon core could identify the herbs for her. Instead, she just happily smiled as she replied
"Thank you, you can just leave it anywhere. How has your business been going lately?"
Elivyre carefully sat the herbs down before slowly replying
"It has been a bit slow. Since the town leader is still evaluating the safety of your dungeon, there haven't been very many people selling me herbs from your dungeon. There are a few adventurer parties who regularly stop by to sell me things, but they don't seem particularly interested in buying any potions.
I have sold a few health potions to the locals for other things, though. Some elderly farmers needed some lesser health potions for some minor injuries and I've had a few people wanting to buy flowers for their sweethearts. I might, honestly, have to consider stocking more fresh flowers for now and just sell off the herbs that I can get ahold of to my father.
Hopefully, in a few years, there will be a larger amount of adventurers in this area and I'll be able to work on more specialty potions instead. Although, I'd have to hire someone with an actual alchemy class if I want to focus too much on potion sales."
Violet nodded along as Elivyre spoke. She didn't know much about how alchemy worked or what running a business was like in this world, but her friend certainly seemed passionate about her work. Actually, now might not be a bad time to ask about such things.
"How does potion-making work, exactly? I don't have much experience with magic in this world."
Elivyre raised her eyebrows in surprise before explaining
"Well, most magic is pretty straightforward. Magic crystals can be used by anyone with the ability to manipulate mana. Fire crystals can be used in kitchen equipment or in conjunction with water magic crystals to make heated baths.
From the studies I've read, more than half of the population never awakens a class. However, that is a bit difficult to accurately measure since most people can't afford to have their class abilities evaluated by a priest or priestess of one of the various patron deities, and not everyone is willing to risk their lives in a dungeon to find out the hard way.
Even for those with classes, not everyone had mana-based abilities. Elementalists, guardian-style tanks, alchemists, etc. have mana, but classes like swordsmen or berserkers don't. That makes it difficult for most people to enjoy the benefits of magical technology, even if they can afford the high cost of purchasing it.
Alchemy is similar to using magic crystals since you use various ingredients that you grind into powers, cook down, etc. to make a potion base before adding mana to the mix. However, it takes a lot of precise mana control and the right recipes to make the potions. Anyone with mana can make potions, so long as they know what they're doing, but those with an alchemy class have skills that make it easier.
They don't have to train as much to master the mana control for making the potions and they get class-based quests that help them to develop new types of potions, among other things. They end up being a lot more efficient and are, usually, the only ones capable of making the higher-tier potions. It's just too difficult to make high-grade potions for anyone else."
Violet looked thoughtful at this information. As a Dungeon Master, it seemed easy to create most things. She even had health, stamina, and mana potion bases. So, she could likely create higher-tier potions just by spending a few dungeon points to research the potions she wanted.
Of course, the more interesting piece of information was the fact that magic technology was a thing. Perhaps this world was more advanced than Violet had thought and it was just that the technology wasn't widespread. Well, things like a television or radio still sounded like a bit of a far-fetched idea, but heated baths and proper ovens still sounded nicer than the actual medieval time level of technology.