As Violet walked through her rooms on the second floor, she was greeted by each of her new pixie friends. Cedar was the first of which as he said

"Hello, Mistress Violet! Another slow day today, huh?"

Violet gave a faint smile, nodding, before she replied

"Yes, it seems that is the case."

Jasmine tried to cheer her up as she reassured

"Don't worry, we can keep you company, if you'd like!"

Daisy followed that up with her own comment of

"Who needs those pesky adventurers anyway? Certainly not me!"

Violet pursed her lips to keep from speaking out against such remarks. Jasmine and Daisy were very happy-go-lucky free spirits, but they also tended to have quite a bit of prejudice against adventurers. Violet wasn't sure that Cedar or Lily were much of a fan of them either. It was just harder to tell since Cedar tended to be more careful about what he said while Lily was too shy to do more than wave hello while hiding behind her husband.

While she tended to identify more with the people of this world, Violet wasn't so sure that it was even her place to keep the peace between her [Monsters] and the adventurers who entered her dungeon. Most of the folks she had met were fairly decent people who just wanted to earn a living or grow stronger, but it wasn't like everyone would always be so reasonable. When it came time for the dungeon to be defended, it would only confuse those living in the dungeon if they were forced to feel guilty about taking the lives of those living outside of the dungeon now.

Deciding to focus on less stressful things, Violet waved goodbye to the pixies, promising to spend some time hanging out together with them a little later in the day. It was nice to spend time around the pixies since they always seemed happy to see her, but she couldn't help but feel like there was a hint of subservience to their behavior, which also made her feel uncomfortable to some degree. Violet wasn't quite sure whether it was worse to deal with the frightened and overly respectful adventurers or to accept that friendliness from those who were forced to do as she told them to. None of it really felt like genuine friendship in the way that time spent with Elivyre did, regardless of how rare that seemed to be.

As she walked to the dungeon core room, Violet noted that she hadn't really made any progress with building anything on the second floor this week. Despite having more than sufficient mana thanks to Avorn's and Camellia's stays in the dungeon, she had chosen to take a week off from building anything significant. Instead, she had spent her nighttime mana earnings a little at a time before going to sleep for the night.

This had helped her mood by a considerable amount. It was always nice to relive some of the best memories from her previous life during her rest periods. Sometimes she dreamt of her husband, sometimes she dreamt of time spent with family, friends, or coworkers, and other times she dreamt of old video games she had played. The last one seemed especially useful for sparking her imagination in a way that allowed her to consider what she wanted to build her dungeon to be in a more creative way.

With the resources she had access to, she could really do some good for this world. It would take a lot of difficulties and a lot of time to enact change, especially while trapped inside the walls of this place, but she had plenty of time to get it right. For the time being, though, she wanted to start with something small, but that she knew would benefit the locals quite a bit. So, she had spent a good chunk of her dungeon points from the past week researching new merchandise that she could sell.

The firewood that Camellia had requested was likely something that more than just they would need. However, just trying to sell more firewood was likely thinking too small. In the long run, the townsfolk could always chop firewood from the lower floors of the dungeon and then store it throughout the year to ensure there was plenty of firewood the next winter. So, it would be far better to focus on other options that she might even be able to sell year-round.

It took Violet quite a bit of time to think things over. She was pretty sure she wanted to make some new food [Items] to sell since those always seemed to be popular. However, she also felt it was important to consider things like the shelf life, nutrition, and enjoyability of the foods. She already had hard tack, jerky, and raisins available on her [Item] list, but hardly anyone would choose to eat that if they had other options available.

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In the end, Violet had settled on making goods from three general categories. The first of which was soup, which had cost an entire 204 DP to research six of them. The options she had available were a bit limited due to not having the [Base Resources] available to create them. So things like cabbage soups, gumbos, or even beef stew were completely out of the question. What Violet did have was a large variety of vegetables and some game meats that could be swapped out to create a new version of the recipes she had enjoyed in her previous life.

A tomato soup made from tomatoes, deer stock, milk, garlic, salt, pepper, a mason jar, and air magic had been the first she had researched as well as the cheapest. The deer stock had already been unlocked thanks to Tobias's party donating it as part of a bowl of venison apple stew a while back. Since there wasn't even chicken among the [Base Resources] list, it was much simpler to just use what was already available. As for the air magic, Violet was fairly certain that it was being used to remove all the air from the mason jars and pressure seal the jar, much in the way one would be boiling the jars when canning.

The other soups were broccoli and cheese, Italian wedding soup, deer and gnocchi, white deer chili, and venison apple stew. The Italian wedding soup had required that she first research meatballs made from boar and deer meat as well as some ditalini pasta. Meanwhile, the deer and gnocchi was like a knock off version of chicken and gnocchi soup and required that gnocchi be researched to make it. As for the venison apple stew, Violet only had it available without a container or in a bowl. Even if she manually put the stew into a mason jar, it wouldn't be shelf-stable, so it was far safer to do the research for it as well.

The reason why soups seemed like a good idea in the first place was that they would be a well-rounded meal that only needed to be reheated before it could be eaten. Of course, it would also pair well with various garnishes or be delicious when eaten with some buttered bread, but it could technically be eaten as they were. Add to that fact that they were easy to make shelf-stable and quite tasty and it just made for an excellent addition to her merchandise.

The second category of goods Violet worked on was drinks. She had been inspired by trips she used to take to Asian markets with her husband and decided to make powdered milk teas. Having some extra nutrition from the dairy, some energy from the sugar and caffeine, and some warmth from it being a hot drink just made it seem like a good option to have. Of course, it also helped a bit that the black tea she had been selling was quite popular. Even Camellia had bought some from her despite how much financial difficulty she and her husband tended to have.

A black tea version was simple to make as it only required black tea, milk, sugar, a mason jar, and some air magic. The dungeon seemed to be able to manipulate time and what form an [Item] was quite freely when it came to doing research, so it wasn't difficult to make everything into a powdered form. In fact, Violet was pretty sure the air magic was just to seal the jar for extra freshness, which she was hardly going to complain about. She didn't exactly want her goods to go bad before she could sell them after all.

The second version was a matcha tea version, which required her to research green tea using the black tea first. However, both it and the black tea ended up being the same cost for the powdered milk tea version itself. They were only 32 DP each to research or 16 MP for a 0.5 Unit jar full of the stuff. Since it would only require hot water to make, Violet was hopeful that it would prove as popular with the locals as it was with her past self.

Finally, the last group of [Items] she researched fell into the snacks category. Some cinnamon apple chips, caramel pear chips, zucchini chips, mild salsa, and queso that were also all stored in mason jars rounded things out quite nicely. The chips were all basically dehydrated fruits and veggies and didn't require any sort of fat since they weren't the fried sort. They were all pre-seasoned save for the zucchini chips as well, which were meant to be enjoyed with the salsa or queso instead.

After everything was said and done, Violet only ended up having to spend 384 DP to research everything, which left her with 439 DP now. While she could have focused more on building things for her actual dungeon with the amount of points she had earned in the last week, Violet was hopeful that this would be a better investment in the long run. Helping out the locals was likely to earn her some goodwill as well as far more DP than she had spent to research these goods in the first place.

Of course, there were other matters to consider as well. For one, her magic bag could only hold 50 Units worth of goods at one time. Thanks to David buying everything else, she only had 18 potions left, which weighed half as much as a mason jar of goods or about 0.25 Units each. That left her with 45.5 Units for other items.

Unfortunately, Elivyre still hadn't visited the dungeon and so Violet still had her potions. She was half tempted to just reabsorb them and accept the loss of the mana she had invested in them. However, she didn't want to disappoint her friend whenever she did, eventually, hopefully, show up. Violet frowned, she really did hope that her friend was doing alright.

Violet ended up using 30 Units of space to store ten of each of the six soups, 5 Units of space for five of each type of milk tea, 5 Units for five of each of the fruit chips, 3.5 Units or space for seven jars of zucchini chips, and the last 2 Units of space were used for two of each of the chip dips. That had only cost her a total of 1,081 MP to purchase, which was less than she would generally make in a single night lately.

However, as stressful as it was to watch her mana go to waste, it was nice to take some time to just relax. The feeling of potential for what she could build in her dungeon was almost better than the feeling of accomplishment of completing a room or floor, especially without adventurers around to enjoy her hard work.