Shortly after Avorn and Camellia stepped into the dungeon, Violet was met with a notification. Apparently, they had submitted Sixty five rosehips as their tribute today, which amounted to 100 DP, bringing the total up to 451 dungeon points. It would seem they had caught onto how things worked and had only collected as much as they needed to pay for their time in the dungeon.
Violet headed down and informed them that they would no longer have to wait for David to leave to come over for the night. They would still have to pay rent, but that was a separate matter. Since she still couldn't build on her first floor with people there and they were still enjoying having a safe space to sleep for the night, the contract was still very much so valid. Of course, Violet was getting a lot more out of it now that she could use all of the mana that she earned from their visit.
As Violet wanted to have a total of sixteen bushes in the blackberry forest room, she spent another 40 MP for the last four bushes she needed. The room felt massive, even despite the multitude of trees. The bushes helped to make the area feel less empty and like more of a pain to navigate.
Next, 20 MP was spent to make rabbit holes and a tunnel network for her rabbits. The holes had to be much larger than the ones she had made for her slimes in the floodplains meadow due to the rabbits being made from more solid substances as well as the giant checkered rabbits being quite large. Luckily, the rabbits hiding and popping up in a random new location in the room would be a good thing for a dungeon and wouldn't be making any challenges more difficult since this would be a [Monster] field, not a challenge room.
It took a while to get the tunnels just right and yet the mana still kept trickling in. Violet couldn't help but think that it was unfortunate to have so much mana yet only be able to use it on the second floor. While her second floor certainly needed to be sorted out sooner rather than later, the first floor would also need to be renovated before adding some new rooms to it. That meant that Violet would have to more carefully plan out what she wanted to do with the first floor and conserve some mana so that she could carry out said plans. Meanwhile, the second floor would likely be empty, for the time being, and could be freely experimented with. Even if she decided she didn't like something and ended up wasting mana as she redid things again and again, it wouldn't be an issue at all.
After a short break, Violet spent 10 MP on two new 5-Units hallways that led to the left and right of the two roundabout hallways on the floor. Then 64 MP was spent on two new 16-Units by 16-Units square rooms. This brought the second floor's total rooms up to four, excluding the dungeon core room and stairs room. This rate of building seemed almost insane compared to how things had gone with the first floor. Violet wasn't even sure she could come up with ideas for what to put in all of the rooms fast enough to keep up with the amount of mana she now had access to.
Perhaps this was what Theodore meant about not being afraid to let mana go to waste. Even if she could change the location of rooms and what was in the rooms, short of changing the theme of a room after setting the room's theme via the system, it still seemed like too much to be rushing things when she had all the time in the world to take her time and build her dungeon how she wanted. Well, maybe it would be a good idea to slow things down some, later on, but right now she did need to increase the defense of the dungeon. That required her to build more [Monster] field rooms and [Traps], lots of [Traps].
To start with, Violet decided to turn the left-most room into another [Monster] field room. It would, mostly, be the same as the blackberry forest room, but this time it would be a raspberry forest. First, she installed a 50 MP spawner in the room. Then she spent 40 MP on two al-mi'raj and 9 MP on three giant checkered rabbits. Then, over time, she slowly added sixteen raspberry bushes for 160 MP. Finally, another 20 MP was spent on another network of rabbit holes. The two rooms were then, nearly, identical, save for the types of fruit bushes used in the room.
Starting to worry she'd run out of mana, Violet decided it was finally time to start working on [Traps]. She pulled up her [Traps] menu to start with, taking note of what new [Traps] were available.
Available Traps:
Name:
Mana Cost:
Info:
Tripwire
10 MP
Can be used with other [Trap] types. Trips enemies.
Butterfly Wall Trap
10 MP
Releases a horde of butterflies when enemies walk past it causing confusion and disorientation.
(Weak) Rolling Boulder
25 MP
A small boulder that is launched in a straight path from a wall when triggered. Easily crumbles and can be easily dodged due to slow momentum.
Briar Patch
25 MP
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A bush with thorns that is itchy and painful, but does minimal damage.
Unlockable Traps
Violet was happy she had two new [Traps] that were automatically unlocked. The briar patches were likely to work well in her forests, especially when placed near the bushes she already had. The rolling boulder, on the other hand, she wasn't quite sure how to use just yet. They didn't really fit the forest theme and would likely stick out like a sore thumb if they were placed into a wall that was otherwise meant to look like a sky. Next, she decided to pull up the [Unlockable Traps] option.
Unlockable Trap Options:
Name:
Mana Cost:
Unlock Cost:
Tar Floor Trap
25 MP
50 DP
(Weak) Flip Trap
25 MP
50 DP
(Weak) Push Wall Trap
25 MP
50 DP
Pitfall (1-Unit Drop)
25 MP
50 DP
Small Wooden Barricade
25 MP
50 DP
Large Wooden Barricade
50 MP
100 DP
Deep Pitfall (3-Units Drop)
50 MP
100 DP
Slide Floor Trap
75 MP
150 DP
(Weak) Giant Flip Trap
125 MP
250 DP
(Weak) Giant Push Wall Trap
125 MP
250 DP
The only new [Trap] under this list was the deep pitfall option. Without something like stakes at the bottom of it, there was still only so much damage that a pitfall could do, even if it was a 3-Units drop. It was certainly enough to break your spine or the bones in a few limbs, but it wasn’t guaranteed to kill someone. It was still possible that a few healing potions or a healer could get someone back into decent shape, allowing them to escape the dungeon and get more significant treatment.
Violet wasn't exactly eager to have people dying in her dungeon, but many [Monsters] could be just as intelligent or even stronger than an adventurer might be. So, it was necessary to have the [Traps] be capable of taking care of any threats that might come into the dungeon, even if that meant it became dangerous to both [Monsters] and people alike. It just wasn't worth risking her own safety to protect others entirely from danger, especially when adventurers knew that dungeons were dangerous and still chose to enter them.
The first [Traps] she decided to put in were briar bushes, which she spent nearly 400 MP on to purchase sixteen of them. These were split between the blackberry and raspberry forests and spread out to make traversing the room more difficult. The worst the briar bushes could really do is result in someone bleeding a bit and then feeling a bit of pain and a lot of itchiness if they were to fall into them or something along those lines. They were still rather ineffective [Traps], but dungeons were supposed to get progressively more difficult and dangerous, so it wasn't exactly a big deal.
Violet was surprised that she still had mana pouring in. She didn't exactly have a way to tell time, normally, and the dungeon core tended to cause the passage of time to blur even more than normal. So, she was delighted as she watched her mana continue to amass, she had never expected an overnight stay to give her so much mana!
Deciding it would be good to have some sort of warning for the adventurers entering her dungeon, she decided to spend 40 MP on four butterfly wall [Traps]. These were placed in pairs along the two hallways that branched off from the staircase room. They weren't very big [Traps] as they were barely bigger than a computer monitor might be. They had a small door that could be raised and would release a horde of butterflies that would then spread out in the space directly in front of them, blinding anyone who passed by. It was almost entirely harmless by itself, but it would work great as a warning system. She didn't exactly want any children or locals to wander up to her second floor expecting things to be just as safe as the first floor was.
Next, 64 MP was spent on four wooden signs that were placed after the butterfly [Traps] with a warning on them. They read
"Warning! Starting on this floor, the dungeon is no longer safe for non-adventurers and the unprepared!"
Now, no one could blame her if they lost their lives in her dungeon. She had done what she could to warn them and they may as well have been consenting by choosing to continue onwards, ignoring her warnings. Of course, Violet didn't really think much about the lack of light in the hallway, which would make reading such a sign difficult, but, at least, an attempt had been made.
While she would have preferred to save her dungeon points up for a new spawner, she decided it was necessary to invest in some better [Traps] as well. 100 DP was spent on unlocking the deep pitfall [Trap], leaving her with only 351 remaining dungeon points. Then another 60 MP was spent on six more butterfly [Traps] and 100 MP was spent on two deep pitfalls [Traps]. These were placed in the hallway directly leading up to the dungeon core room.
Violet figured it would be a good combination for catching intruders off guard, making it more likely they would end up falling into the pitfall [Trap]. While she was fine with the other rooms having less dangerous [Traps], all bets were off if people were going to insist on trying to go into the dungeon core room. That was a space for her and only her.
Feeling quite satisfied, she decided to go take a nap. Any other mana she earned that night could go towards renovating the first floor in the morning.