Another week in the dungeon passed by with very little changing. David and Camellia's groups were still the only ones interested in visiting the dungeon each day. This started worrying Violet, but she wasn't sure what the cause was. Could it be that her recent renovations also have put the others on edge? Otherwise, perhaps it was the wintertime weather that was the problem. It wasn't like Violet knew how far away the nearest town was, perhaps it was too much for most people to make the trek over. Regardless, it felt unfortunate to see her dungeon become so empty.
Thankfully, Violet wasn't the sort of person to just give up at the first hint of difficulties. Thus, the past week was spent hard at work improving the dungeon and making preparations for the future. There wasn't a lot of building going on, per se, as she had only really been building new things on the first floor with what little mana she could spare each morning. However, 700 MP still felt like quite a bit when compared to the 350 MP her previous mana limits would have allowed for.
Over the course of the week, Violet also continued to receive a steady amount of incoming dungeon points from the few people who were visiting her dungeon. 700 DP had been paid to her from Avorn and Camellia as payment for letting them stay the night in the dungeon. It was all just repeats of things they had already given her, but that didn't matter as much as the points themselves right now. Violet was certain that the snow was hardly making it easy for them to amass the points needed for their rent as it was.
Of course, they also had to work hard to gather an additional 1,000 points worth of goods as well. Violet hadn't completed her trade with them quite yet, but she had been told the previous night that they would be submitting their payment soon. As such, Violet had already completed her research for the dried firewood and planned to finalize the purchases later in the night.
It had ended up costing an entire 50 DP to research the dried firewood with the mana cost being 25 MP per 10 Units. The research costs had been a bit higher than Violet had been expecting as was the upfront mana cost. However, the overall cost for the wood was slightly lower than she had been anticipating. Violet could only suppose that the fact that some sort of time manipulation was involved in the creation of the wood and had to be at fault.
Everything in the dungeon was created from magic, so one would assume that creating dried firewood was no different from creating any other form of wood. However, it wasn't exactly as if Violet was the one who decided how the system worked, nor was she an expert in it to any extent. She could only grasp at straws as she tried to rationalize to herself why the system would even work the way it did.
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In addition to the dungeon points earned through Avorn and Camellia, Violet also got a small chunk of points through the tributes that David brought to the dungeon each day. However, that really hadn't amounted to much as he had gotten quite lazy about it. The first day or two he was more generous and had even brought her a wooden training shield as well as some hair sticks. Of course, Violet had no way of knowing this, but they were all broken when they were absorbed by the dungeon. Still, the remaining days of the week had seen David bringing nothing but a few handfuls of acorns and leaves that he had likely collected from the dungeon itself due to them all being repeats. So, in the end, she had only gotten a paltry sum of 43 DP from David.
While Violet normally wouldn't be so judgemental about what was brought to her as a tribute, she couldn't help but feel slighted in this case. She had been trying to be sympathetic about his circumstances during the winter season by not requesting anything specific as tribute. However, it seemed that this was only causing laziness and a lack of effort on his part. Surely there was a local landfill or something that he could scrounge up something more worthwhile to use as tribute from? Violet sighed, feeling like this was just one more reason that she wanted to cancel their agreement sooner rather than later.
As for what she had spent her actual mana on, Violet still wanted to take her time with building, so she had mostly built empty rooms and hallways. 160 MP was spent on five new 16-Units by 16-Units square rooms, 48 MP was spent on two new 8-Units by 16-Units rectangular rooms, 25 MP was spent on five new 5-Units straight hallways, and 30 MP was spent on three new 10-Units straight hallways. These had been arranged on the first floor to follow the pattern she had already established on the right side of the floor. All she would have to do now was figure out what sort of new [Monster] fields and challenge rooms she wanted to build in them.
Of course, that amount hardly added up to the full 700 MP she had access to across the seven days' worth of mornings. The rest, however, had been spent on upgrading and installing new 100 MP spawners on the first floor. 400 MP allowed her to purchase four spawners, which she installed in the wildflower meadow, the hay meadow, and the two new rectangular rooms she had built.
As she now had more room to assign slimes to the room, Violet even moved the five basic slimes that were on the second floor in the flower hunt challenge room to the wildflower meadow room. As there was previously only one bee colony, a kodama, and a single basic slime in the wildflower meadow room, this more than doubled the population of the room. It was possible this would make the room more difficult, but the slimes tended to only engage adventurers one at a time unless they were intentionally provoked into attacking in groups. Of course, if an actual intruder who meant harm to the dungeon came along, they would all attack at once, but that was unlikely to be the case with young children.
Feeling quite satisfied with finishing up her work on the first floor, Violet headed up to the second floor. She still had much to do and it would be good to check in on her new pixies.