Violet pulled out the drawings she had made when planning out the new tea party challenge. She had a lot of little details she planned to implement for this room and she didn't want to forget anything. Before doing anything else, she was going to need to do some research for some new furniture. 10 DP was spent on researching a tree stump before 5 MP was used to place one off to one side of the clearing. This was where Violet planned to put a miniature version of the larger tea table for her pixies to comfortably sit at and enjoy themselves.
In order to set up the main part of the clearing, she spent 90 DP and 105 MP to set up a table with chairs and a tablecloth. While Violet had previously researched a rectangular wooden table for her tribute room, she decided to research a new one since a round table would be more suitable for a tea party. It made it easier for everyone to reach everything on the table as well as be able to talk to each other without having to talk as loudly. The tablecloth was perfectly white, but was still well decorated with lace accents on the edges. There were four chairs that were made from sturdy wood with rounded edges and comfortable padded velvet cushions, which ensured those who sat to enjoy the tea would be comfortable. Violet would be using this room herself too, after all.
Nothing about this setup was going to be cheap, but that was why Violet had waited until night when she knew she'd have plenty of mana to use on this project anyhow. For the tea set itself, Violet decided to go with a beautiful painted ceramic with a floral design and gold accents. The set had cost an entire 160 dungeon points to research and 80 mana to create. However, it also had several pieces with one teapot, one sugar bowl, one milk jug, four tea cups, four saucers, four spoons, and a golden storage rack. Honestly, it was the sort of thing that Violet wished she could have afforded in previous life. It was just too bad she had to lose everything she had ever had, including her own life, before she could have such luxuries.
A 3-tier matching painted ceramic and gold cake stand was also needed to display the foods that would be served alongside the tea. However, since there were fewer pieces involved, it only cost 40 DP to research and 40 MP to create two. With four people being served at one table, Violet wanted to ensure there would be enough food to go around. It wasn't like she needed to consume food herself, but she knew for certain there was no way a few tea sandwiches and small desserts would be enough to satisfy four people unless she had, at least, two trays worth.
Of course, simply having nice tableware and a place to sit didn't make for a tea party. There was a need for food and actual tea. So, Violet had planned out a nice menu of some classic afternoon tea options with only a few special additions that fit her personal tastes a little better. 5 MP was spent on water to fill the tea pot and then another 2 MP was spent on some black tea leaves. The teapot had a filter on the inside of it that would ensure no loose tea leaves made it to the tea cups themselves. While she didn't have the option for hot water, Violet hoped the sun could heat the teapots just as well as they did the mason jars she usually did. Either that, or when she set the room's theme, she hoped the system would make the appropriate adjustments.
For tea sandwiches, Violet went with boar, apple, and cheese as a remix of the classic ham, apple, and brie. Then a boar bacon, watercress, and tomato sandwich as a remix of a classic BLT, which required researching boar meat to get the boar bacon as a new [Base Resource] to use. Since sweet sandwiches were also great options, she also decided to make two other choices. There was a strawberries and cream sandwich as well as a pecan-butter and raspberry jam one. Luckily, most of the ingredients she needed for the sandwiches were things she had already researched or received as a tribute in the past, making this part fairly simple. Really, the only thing, besides the boar bacon, she had to research was the raspberry jam and whipped cream, everything else was made with previously unlocked [Base Resources] and [Items].
That made the total research cost for the tea sandwiches was 110 DP, which wasn't bad at all. That put her at 5,550 remaining dungeon points out of her original 5,960, so she was definitely spending a lot on this one challenge, but the individual costs weren't bad at all. There were just a lot of little details to worry about, but that just made it all that much more worth it. Nothing felt quite as good as making a perfectly curated room that would be well-used in the future. The finger sandwiches themselves cost 5 MP for four, but that was more like 5 mana for one normal-sized sandwich made with sandwich bread from her old world. Considering an entire loaf of white bread could be made for the exact same mana cost, Violet wasn't sure whether this was a better or worse investment. Well, it wasn't like she'd be spending mana on it every day, these ones would be respawning as the room refreshed instead, making the cost almost irrelevant.
The next layer on the 3-tier tray was for bread. However, the breads themselves weren't the only thing Violet had to worry about. Butter, orange curd (lemon curd substitute), clotted cream, and jams needed to be prepared in small ramekins that way guests could spread it on the variety of bread options they would have to choose from. That meant she'd have to research ceramic ramekins and then research each of the spreads, even things like butter, which she otherwise had unlocked already. Just for the spreads, it ended up costing 138 DP for the research and 54 MP since she needed two of each type since there were two 3-tier trays on the table to fill.
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Of course, none of that even accounted for the breads themselves. For that, Violet decided to go with bread rolls, mini pancakes, bearberry orange muffins, and triple-berry scones. The first two, Violet didn't even need to research, which was, actually, a surprise. She had expected to have to research the pancakes she already had unlocked in order to make them tiny, but she ended up finding out that the system would adjust the sizing of anything, but that she'd have to spend extra to do so. The pancakes had only cost an extra 1 MP each to create a miniature version of them, but the system had listed 0 DP next to the cost, which suggested the costs could be much worse, depending on what she was working with. Still, this fact alone was revolutionary! She could already imagine the possibilities of what this might mean for the future of her dungeon and she was excited!
Still, there was much work still to be done. Thankfully, the bread options only ended up costing her 16 DP to research, even if the eight pieces of each, two of each per person, ended up costing her 56 MP. It was a bit steep to pay so much for so little bread, but it wasn't like her mana costs, overall, were that bad yet. She had only spent 380 MP for the night out of what was likely to be more than 1,000 mana over the course of the night. She was earning 2 MP per minute thanks to Avorn and Camellia, after all, which easily added up over the night.
Still, she would need to wrap things up soon. There was still the smaller version of the tea party setup to worry about, which was likely to cost her even more than she had spent thus far, even if she now knew she could save on the dungeon points cost. So, Violet got to work making the small desserts to finish off the 3-tier trays.
Lavender meringues, chamomile & honey shortbread cookies, ginger spice cake with spiced pear jam petit fours, and citrus cake, orange curd, and whipped cream mini trifles perfectly finished off the trays. The first two were already available since they were actually challenge rewards on the second floor. Meanwhile, the petite fours and mini trifles took a good bit of research. Violet felt pretty good about the fact that she was making pixie food out to be flavorful and delicious, even if some of the flavors might take some getting used to. As Theodore had previously pointed out, floral flavors weren't something that children and most other individuals would easily be able to enjoy.
Interestingly enough, the research for the ginger spice cake, citrus cake, and spiced pear jam ended up being more costly than the petit fours and mini trifles had been. However, it made sense when Violet saw that the result was a whole frosted ginger spice cake and citrus cake that could be created for 25 MP each. It was much different to have one-bite-sized pieces of cake versus a whole cake, even if the decoration was much fancier on the petit fours. Still, perhaps she should have been expecting as much since all the jams she researched also tended to be 0.5 Unit jars while the recipes she used them in required far less of the substance.
With the trays both now full, Violet was satisfied with the larger table's setup, now she just needed to set up tables on the stump for her pixies. The only problem was how to ensure all of her pixies could be comfortable. She currently had eighteen pixies in her dungeon, but she had only covered half of the space in her dungeon. Considering she had yet to make the resting room and boss room on this floor, it was difficult to say just how many pixies she'd end up with by the time she finished this floor. Even then, there was a limit to how much could fit on any one tree stump.
While waiting for her mana to increase again, Violet looked over her notes and drew up some more sketches to work with. However, no matter how she looked at it, she couldn't seem to figure out something that would ensure everyone was taken care of. She would just have to make do with what she had and hope no one felt left out. Maybe some of the pixies wouldn't enjoy tea parties? It wasn't like they could all make it to the room, anyhow.
Violet decided to go with two rectangular tables for the stump instead of round tables. The challenge itself was meant to be a spot-the-difference type, so it was fine to have some difference between everything. Each table got a tablecloth, eight chairs, two tea sets, four 3-tier cake stands, and an appropriate amount of food and tea. This ended up making the total for everything 1,844 MP plus an additional 136 MP to shrink everything. That, of course, ended up meaning that Violet had to return the next night to continue working on everything because her mana ran out before she was even halfway finished with the miniature version of everything.
Of course, Violet also needed some of the foods and designs on everything to be different, so she also had to spend another 200 MP to make the design on the tea sets and 3-tier trays different from the larger version. The food was left the same since she didn't expect people to try it in order to see if the ingredients were different. However, to make the challenge even more difficult, she also planned to add the stipulation that the adventurers had to follow the rules of fae etiquette in order to complete it.
While that would normally be complicated since the rules said not to refuse a fae's hospitality, but that you couldn't eat their food in their realm or you'd be stuck there forever, Violet just planned to make it mean that they should eat the large food, but not the small food. The adventurers would also be expected to be polite to her pixies and not murder them.
Deciding to call it a night, Violet spent 150 DP to set the room's theme and called her pixies in to enjoy an overdue celebratory feast. She could finish the challenge tomorrow, but she definitely needed a break and she wanted to celebrate the new dungeon arrivals before too much time passed.