Violet knew she couldn't possibly draw as nice of a map as Mirabella had, but she still felt like it couldn't hurt to practice. Since her second floor wasn't included in the map she had received, she decided to practice her map drawing skills in an attempt to create a similar rendition for the second floor.
Over the last week, Violet had continued to make slow progress. However, she had also made quite a bit of progress on her second floor. She likely could have met the requirements for completing half of the second floor by now, if she wanted to. However, she didn't want to rush through things too much. Completing it by the end of the winter season would be good enough.
Violet had started by spending 256 MP on eight new 16-Units by 16-Units square rooms. In addition, 40 MP had to be spent on eight 5-Units straight hallways to connect the rooms. In order to ensure the dungeon core room connected to the last available room, Violet had to move the previous hallway that connected the room to the blueberry forest to make it connect to one of her new rooms instead. Additionally, instead of continuing the normal pattern of three rooms in a row before moving on to the next, she had to make the last two rooms be aligned in a column instead. That allowed her to connect all of her new rooms and hallways so that the adventurers would have to traverse every single one of her rooms before reaching the dungeon core room, gaining her plenty of time to defend her dungeon from threats.
Of the eight new rooms she had created, she decided to leave four of them empty. These rooms would have to be turned into challenge rooms later on, but Violet wanted more time to contemplate what exactly to build in them. Instead, she chose to focus on turning the other four rooms into [Monster] fields.
Previously, Violet had used fruit bushes as the difference between the [Monster] field rooms. Since the rooms were all forest-themed, as that is the floor's overall theme, she was pretty limited on options, anyway. This time she decided to do something similar, but also different. The rooms still all contained eight briar patches for [Traps], six giant checkered rabbits, and four al-mi'raj. However, Violet decided to replace half of the 'enchanted' trees with fruit trees.
Researching pear trees, orange trees, and peach trees had cost her an entire 60 DP, but that felt like a drop in the bucket compared to her reserves. Since she already had apple trees unlocked, it was easy enough to make that the fourth [Monster] field theme. Just like usual, the [Monster] fields alternated with the [Monster] field rooms, creating a checkered sort of pattern. That would help to keep things interesting as well as ensure she could lock each of the challenge rooms until they were completed, slowing the progression through the rooms considerably.
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Between all of the upgrades she had been making on the first floor and second floor, over the week, she had managed to just barely spend a couple hundred dungeon points. Considering she had gotten 700 DP from Avorn and Camellia's rent as well as tributes from Tobias's party and David, she was now sitting comfortably at 11,610 DP. She was also supposed to complete her weekly trade with David tonight, which would easily give her another 2,250 DP, bringing her total up to 13,860 dungeon points. That was of great comfort to Violet as it would make it much easier to unlock her next floor since she would hardly be struggling to scrape together the points for it.
Although, Violet was starting to question how dungeons could ever struggle to make it to Twenty five floors if it was this easy to earn additional mana and dungeon points. The only thing stopping her from burning through all of the points she earned each day was a desire to take things slow and do things properly. It felt good to build each room with its own theme, imagining just how adventurers might interact with them. Rushing through things would also leave her bored in a few years, she was starting to wonder if it might be good to take some time off to relax.
Theodore had told her to consider taking up a hobby a few times during his previous visits. David had also mentioned that she might enjoy drinking tea and eating sweets, as she was now. Having a proper home to do that would likely make practicing hobbies and relaxing easier, but Violet still wasn't sure how to go about that. Was a forest even the place to attempt to build a home? She wasn't sure, but it definitely didn't seem like it would be a good thing to constantly have to traverse to the lower floors from whatever the current highest floor was. Although, it might also be bad to leave the dungeon core vulnerable and to be too far away to protect it.
Violet couldn't help but wish that Theodore was around to ask about these things. It would be nice to hear more about how other Dungeon Masters did things. However, it had been just over a month and he had yet to visit her. Maybe she had just gotten used to how often he visited in the beginning, but it seemed strange to have him away for so long. Then again, maybe she was thinking about things wrong. If Dungeon Masters can live, potentially, forever, then visiting often could very well take on a different meaning, especially since Dungeon Diplomats also had long lifespans.
Before Violet could get too carried away with her own thoughts, she decided to call it a night. The pixies seemed sad to have her leave so soon, but still enthusiastically wished her well. She was glad they didn't seem to find her sleeping all the time strange. Perhaps they didn't know enough about Dungeon Masters to know that it wasn't necessary. Either way, she was more than a little relieved as she laid her head down and began to drift off to sleep. It was so nice not to have to deal with the burden of her own thoughts all of the time.