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2.31 Rehomed Kodama

Violet sat amongst her pixies, watching them amusedly as they happily flitted around. Lily sat on the ground, leaning up against a purple rose. Cedar grabbed a large chamomile shortbread cookie and struggled to carry it over to her. The cookie fell roughly to the ground, a few small pieces breaking off. Lily and Cedar didn't seem to mind, though, as they sat beside one another, happily munching away.

Lily was still very much so shy and quiet, but she seemed to be warming up to the group. She no longer hid from them, but sat on the sidelines, happy to observe. Meanwhile, Jasmine and Daisy were just as enthusiastic as ever.

"Jasmine! You have to try this, it's so good!"

Daisy exclaimed. Jasmine was a little more subdued than Daisy, but still smiled happily as she accepted the small piece of caramel pear chip. As they ate, they continued to talk amongst themselves, sometimes even bringing Violet into the conversation.

"What's that?"

Jasmine asked as she landed on Violet's shoulder. Offering a reassuring smile, she explained

"It's a map of the first floor of the dungeon. I was actually gifted it by one of the adventurer groups who recently visited."

Jasmine wrinkled her nose in disgust as she asked

"Why'd you keep it? Surely you could make a better map than this."

Violet sighed, not quite enjoying her pixies' dislike of adventurers. The map was plenty accurate and it was a thoughtful gift. Besides, Violet most certainly couldn't make something better than this map. At least, she couldn't right now.

"Maybe one day that might be true, but it certainly isn't right now. I'll likely have to practice for a few years before I can make something of this quality. So, for now, I think this will be a better reference than what I have been using."

Jasmine looked unimpressed as she flew off to play with Daisy. Glad that she hadn't pushed the issue, Violet focused back on the map. All of her rooms were labeled with the same titles her system labeled them with. There were even some markings that represented the various resources and [Monsters] found in each room.

Thanks to Tobias's party, Violet had even managed to finish filling in all of the empty rooms on her first floor. They were all present on the map too, which was really quite fortunate. Violet continued to admire the map as she thought back on the work she had accomplished this past week.

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The giant Jenga game had taken her a total of 270 MP and 190 DP to complete. Luckily, with their visit to the dungeon and the leftover mana from Avorn and Camellia staying the night, she could easily expend 200 MP a day. That ensured she could make progress on her rooms fast enough to stay ahead of their exploration. Of course, part of that was the fact that they had been stopping to complete each of the challenges and only went so far before calling it a day. Luckily, they always cleared out before David showed up for the day, even if it had been a close call a few times.

The Jenga game required fifty four pieces that were layered on top of one another to create a rather tall tower. Despite being referred to as "giant" the total height ended up coming just short of the normal ceiling height. Violet was glad she didn't need to do any terrain manipulation for the room. That still meant that it was taller than most adventurers, though. Luckily, they would only have to remove the pieces without toppling the tower, not stack the removed pieces back on top of the others.

The reward ended up taking a bit of extra research to complete than most of the others. She had to get access to cornstarch by first researching cornmeal to get corn and then researching corn to get cornstarch. That was then used alongside sugar, honey, salt, butter, cornstarch, strawberry, red dye, orange, orange dye, yellow dye, pear, green dye, blueberry, blue dye, grape, purple dye, blackberry, black dye, peppermint, white dye, and white wax paper to make eight different flavors of saltwater taffy.

There was red for strawberry, orange for orange, yellow for honey, green for pear, blue for blueberry, purple for grape, black for blackberry, and white for peppermint. The flavors were a bit different from what they would likely be in her world, but she doubted it really mattered that much. She had to use what fruits and herbs she had access to and she just wanted to have a nice variety of flavors to keep things interesting. Whether they were the usual black licorice, cotton candy, etc. she had seen in such saltwater taffy mixes in her old world didn't really matter that much. It wasn't like the adventurers would know what they were missing out on anyway.

The final challenge had been a wooden lock puzzle. That room had cost slightly less at only 190 MP and 114 DP. However, that was primarily because the puzzle itself was cheap to construct and didn't require her to create and arrange the individual pieces. The wooden lock puzzle was just interlocking pieces of wood that had to be removed in a certain order in order to separate all of the pieces. It was small and placed on a simple round stone altar, something she had gotten quite a bit of use out of.

In fact, the thing that had cost her the most resources was the fact that she had wanted to make a nice environment. Violet knew she had been neglecting her kodama for quite some time and she wanted to make it up to them. However, she no longer wanted to have them taking up spawner space in a [Monster] field room, so she decided to move it to one of her new challenge rooms. Four oak trees, a new 100 MP spawner, and even a second kodama was added to the room. Violet hoped the creatures would be happier with more of their kind around.

As the kodamas only cost 30 MP each to summon, it was likely she could have had three of them in the same room. However, Violet didn't particularly want to use all of the space in the spawner on [Monsters]. If she ever unlocked insects and other small [Critters], it would be nice to have some room to add them. Besides, since kodama were guardian spirits that cared for their environment, she was sure they would enjoy having the [Critters] around. Maybe she could add some other kodama to the first room some other time, but, for now, she thought this would be enough.