It was finally time for Violet to put into effect her plans for her new challenge room. She had spent the morning putting together the two new [Monster] fields with one being themed after a kitchen while the other was living room themed. As she had spent 250 MP to create a new type of myconid, she had wanted the room themes to be fitting for them.

Name:

Evolution Cost:

Info:

Tinder Myconid

75 DP

Requires a myconid to evolve. Requires a suitable dark environment with minimal light and soil. Acts and appears the same as a basic myconid, but any attacks received via metal weapons or fire attacks will cause fire to rapidly spread through the area with the tinder myconid acting as the fuel. Capable of evolving into larger varieties of myconid.

Kitchens often had hearths in this world and living rooms, even in the modern world commonly had fireplaces, so it seemed fitting to have her new tinder myconid in such rooms. It was a shame to spend nearly a week's worth of dungeon point earnings for a single new evolution for her [Monsters], but even she couldn't deny just how lethal fire could be. Once adventurers learned how to counteract the tinder myconid, it was unlikely to be an issue, but it was likely that any wild [Monsters] that made it to her third floor would be caught off-guard quite easily.

The rest of her new [Monster] field rooms were made using [Items] she had previously researched. Things like purple sofas, green rugs, deluxe sinks, etc. were easy to throw into the rooms, with very little thought needed. Really, considering how her kitchen had three different areas with two sets of everything and a pantry area in the other, Violet couldn't help but feel that the less she thought about it the less she'd stress about it. It was ugly and repetitive, she hated it, but she didn't really want to leave such a large room so empty either.

Unlike the chaos of the [Monster] fields, though, her new challenge room was going well. A 100 MP limit spawner, three new kodamas, hidey-holes for them to call home, and then the main challenge. The name for this new challenge was "Odd Kodama Out" and she had made a dozen sketches with most of them including kodamas in them just so she could use them to create proper colored paintings through the [Research] system feature. It ended up costing her 1,200 DP to turn the dozen sketches into framed paintings, which wasn't terrible individually, but still painful to see the overall cost. She was definitely going to have to prioritize merchant work for the next month...

Now, all there was left to do was to figure out a challenge reward that would be fitting. Unfortunately, she must have still been stuck thinking about plushies as she couldn't think of anything better than that. Violet tended to get stuck on certain ideas at times and then nothing else quite seemed appealing. Her husband had been kind enough to entertain her months long bouts of cooking and eating nothing but Asian food or obsessing over a video game to the point that her sleep schedule would suffer, but even she knew it was problematic. Oh well, she would just have to think of something else when it came time to do an achievement reward for defeating the boss on this floor since kodama plushies would no longer be interesting if she used it for this challenge's reward.

Stolen novel; please report.

Would you like to spend 20 DP to research kodama plushie using the [Base Resources] undyed cotton, undyed cotton cloth, undyed thread, white dye, and black dye?

Yes

No

With that, she was officially down 2,240 dungeon points for the three new rooms, including:450 DP to evolve 6 myconid into tinder myconid, 20 DP to set the challenge reward, and 300 DP to set the room theme and lock the door for the new challenge room. If it weren't for another week passing, allowing her to earn another 296 DP from repeats and 65 from new tributes including: red wine, white wine, cinnamon basil, and rabbit's foot fern, she would have been far more upset about the costs. It was nice to see she still had 2,311 dungeon points left instead of the less than 2,000 she'd otherwise have.

While Violet had to admit the art gallery really did look quite nice, she was starting to feel so antsy she could hardly stand it. The stress of not only having to give up on her goal of unlocking a personal door lock, but also having to question how many more rooms she could realistically build, even if she had slowed down, was too much. She felt like she needed to do something to fix it right now, but she would have to put in a considerable amount of effort designing merchandise, stock up on everything, and then trek down to the first floor. That would take a while...

Feeling a headache coming on, Violet headed home to make some tea. She might not be able to get sick, but that didn't keep her from feeling discomfort. If she stressed herself out too much, she could still get a stress headache. Luckily, the solution was simple, all she had to do was relax, which some tea would help with. She'd likely go and visit her pixies on the second floor later too. Their enthusiasm always put things in perspective and cheered her up quite well. Without the mind-numbing stress, ideas would come easier and then she could work on an actual solution.

Admittedly, Violet had simply been avoiding the outside world. She didn't want to meet a bunch of new people and take the chance that she'd meet someone with ill intentions towards her and her dungeon. David didn't even have the bragging rights for being the only one who had tried to cause trouble in the first year. There had been that necromancer, Violet still wasn't entirely certain what he had been on about. His whole spiel about attacking her to convince the undead are stronger than slimes and being angry she didn't do what he wanted was more confusing than helpful.

If Elivyre would visit, maybe, Violet wouldn't be as inclined to lock herself up on the upper floors. However, she knew she couldn't blame her friend since it wasn't like her friend had any way to know she was awake. Even if she was aware, Violet was still willing to give her the benefit of the doubt. Maybe she was busy with her business now that she had a proper storefront and plenty of adventurers in the area. If anything, she wished for the best for her friend.

Theodore was a different matter. He was still in the dungeon, having not left it since he arrived, but he also hadn't made it up to the third floor to visit her. That, alongside what she had observed via her [Guest List] skill, was enough to assume he wasn't here for her. It would be good to get some feedback from him, though. Knowing what he thought of the challenges she had made for the first floor would let her make adjustments and use that knowledge to make better ones for the new floors. Still, that was yet another thing she had to add to her to-do list, which just made her feel more overwhelmed.