"Here."
David said before shoving a rusty iron helmet into Violet's hands. Violet smiled bitterly at him as she did her best to sound grateful.
"Thank you. Where should we train today?"
David merely grunted and shrugged at her, but soon he was walking faster as he led the way through the dungeon. Violet wasn't quite sure, but she was more than starting to suspect that David was angry with her. Whether that had anything to do with her previous discussion with Theodore, though, she wasn't quite sure. It wasn't like David tended to be particularly friendly towards her lately anyway.
The tributes changed in the last few days, though. They weren't necessarily better, per se, but they were certainly different. Two days ago she had received an iron sword, which was broken into two pieces with several smaller pieces missing. Then, the next day, it had been a leather satchel with multiple holes in it and that had begun to rot. Today was, of course, the rusted iron helmet, which was, luckily, something new. The other [Items] had only been worth 1 DP and had left her hands feeling dirty as David had insisted on handing them directly to her instead of leaving them in the tribute room.
This helmet, though, would be worth an entire 10 dungeon points! It still wasn't exactly a fortune, but it was still nice to have a new [Item] schematic unlocked. Violet wasn't exactly eager to start selling adventurer equipment on a regular basis, but she felt it was still nice to have the option available. Maybe one day she'd even consider using enchanted equipment for challenge rewards. However, she wasn't quite sure what she could offer that other dungeons wouldn't already have and she didn't exactly want to offer something adventurers wouldn't actually be excited to receive.
Once they reached the wildflower meadow, Violet heard David tell his daughter, Alice
"Take Luna and go kill slimes."
Violet winced, feeling a bit bad for the young child. Ever since she had started selling David food each week, she had seemed more carefree. The plants they had been collecting had even changed from being more focused on those that were edible to flowers and herbs once more. However, Alice seemed nervous again today, which was even more of an indicator of how things were at home than David's foul mood was.
Violet supposed it wasn't surprising when David seemed to be out for blood today. He kept pushing the boundaries of the agreement they had both signed. It didn't take long for her arms to end up covered in small lacerations that slowly wept blood, covering her arms in the crimson liquid. She also ended up falling backward onto her ass and was barely given time to stand up and recover before David was bearing down on her once more.
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After nearly three months of practicing, Violet was getting much better with the sword. However, there was no way that she could learn enough to overpower David, who had years of experience and unnatural strength from his guardian class, in such a short period of time. It would have been nice if she grew stronger with each floor she unlocked like Theodore said other Dungeon Masters often could. However, clearly that wasn't her path in life and she would have to depend on other ways to defend herself and the dungeon. It was really too bad, she would have loved to put up a decent fight against David.
Part of Violet genuinely worried how bad things might get if David was allowed to remain in her dungeon. She wanted to be fair to him and his young daughter rather than punishing him. However, it also seemed inevitable that his passive-aggressive attitude would one day turn into something more dangerous. Perhaps he would try to find a loophole and use it to bring about the downfall of her dungeon or otherwise make her life more difficult. It was simply too dangerous to keep someone so emotionally unstable around her.
After an hour, Violet tried to leave. However, David pretended to be oblivious as he continued to have a go at her, swinging his sword down at her face with her barely being able to block in time. Starting to panic, Violet shouted
"Stop! I said enough!"
The dungeon around her began to shake around her in response to her own emotional response. The recently respawned slimes began to swarm clumsily towards them in a bid to defend the dungeon and their master. David watched her with a dark look as she left the room, only looking away once the door closed behind her.
Violet swallowed nervously, casting the occasional glance behind her as she made her way upstairs. She didn't feel safe until she was in the dungeon core room and even then she still felt shaky. While death wasn't the end for her and the contract would have consequences for David if he ever tried to kill her again, it was still scary.
She hadn't mentioned anything to David and she had to assume that Theodore was smart enough to not put her in danger unnecessarily. Yet it seemed like David knew something was going on and he wasn't all too happy about it. Violet had a bitter taste in her mouth, she no longer wanted to pretend everything was the same. She no longer wanted to show up to their nightly sparring sessions. The only problem was that David had to show up to teach her every night, there was no avoiding it.
It wasn't like she had to cooperate, though. She could easily hide away in the dungeon core room and force him to come after her. However, Violet worried about what that would mean for Alice. Would she be brought home or would she be put in danger? David always seemed to be protective over his daughter, never letting her get too close to the young girl. So it seemed unlikely that he would choose the more dangerous option, but Violet didn't like the idea of gambling on such a thing.
This was going to be a long night...