Novels2Search

2.59 Empty Challenges

A few days passed before Violet could get back to work on making new challenge rooms. The night after Elivyre visited, she had to make fairy houses for her pixies. Briar and Moss were assigned to the flower hunt room and only required one house to share. Holly and Willow were in the mad tea party room and needed separate houses, which they chose to have placed a short distance apart. Where the twins, Iris and Orchid, almost always wanted to spend time together, the noble siblings much preferred their own space.

The next two challenge rooms were currently empty, but would be worked on today. Violet assigned Chief Alder and Clove to the first one and Clove's wife and daughter, Rosemary and Juniper, to the next one. Despite having different room assignments, though, Violet only placed one fairy house in each of the rooms. She didn't mind if Clove went home to his family each night and she was even willing to design the challenge rooms the four pixies would be assigned to, so that they would only need one participant in each of them to help run the challenge. That way it wouldn't matter that her pixies couldn't open doors and Clove wouldn't have to risk being separated from his family for long periods.

The only remaining pixies that needed to be assigned to a room after that were Basil and Aspen. They were complete strangers who came from different villages in different environments, but they were willing enough to work together, should it be asked of them. So, Violet happily assigned them to the last challenge room she had available and made them separate houses to live in.

Last night there was no mana to spare to work on new challenge rooms, even despite how cheap they were likely to be. Violet had spent the entire night's mana on firewood and shelf-stable foods for the charity program. As promised, Elivyre showed up bright and early the next morning with two Dungeon Diplomats Violet had never met before. They carried the magic bags Violet packed with goods and then promptly brought them back. Apparently, the Dungeon Diplomats that had been sent to help with the charity work were a married couple. They were friendly yet very serious, giving the impression that they took their work very seriously.

While Violet had the feeling that the charity program was likely too late for some, she did hope that it would bring much-needed relief for others. It wasn't like people were suddenly going to have more food, so the end of the season was likely going to be the hardest. Of course, Violet wasn't stupid either, she was well aware of the fact that, even once spring arrived, things wouldn't magically be better overnight. Crops take time to grow, merchants take time to travel, and not all hibernating wild animals would come out right away. That meant there would be a hunger gap in the beginning of spring, but Violet hoped that the locals would warm up enough to her and her dungeon by then that they'd be willing to put in the effort to come raid her dungeon for resources.

Shaking her head, Violet tried to refocus on the task at hand. The two new challenge rooms were actually going to be almost embarrassingly empty compared to the others she had made. However, she still had to put in the work to research new rewards and set the challenge up on the system side of things. For the first challenge, she planned to do a "capture the flag" event. So, she spent 1 MP to summon some purple ribbon. While red was a more classic color for capture-the-flag, Violet only actually had orange and purple unlocked. Besides that, she felt purple was prettier, so it was fine to just use what she had.

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Chief Alder accepted the bit of ribbon, looking perplexed as he asked.

"Am I supposed to do something with this?"

Violet laughed as she spent 4 DP eight over to research a tiny glass jar of edible glitter sealed with a cork. She wanted it in all the colors of the rainbow as well as black and white. Since she now had the option of randomized challenge rewards and the research for the first one had been so cheap, it seemed fitting to offer lots of options for it. Edible glitter was basically just sugar with dye that gets baked until it shines like glitter, basically shiny sprinkles. Violet planned to have the system label it as 'fairy dust' as a fun little way of setting the theme.

Of course, she also had to spend an additional 32 DP to set the challenge reward. However, before that, she needed 300 DP to set the room's theme and lock the door. Finishing up, she explained how capture-the-flag worked to Chief Alder. He seemed to catch on fast as he noted

"So, that's what my job will be in the dungeon then? I can handle that. I'm still pretty young, though, so I can't guarantee anyone will be able to catch me."

The man finished with a chuckle. Violet smiled in return, replying

"Yes, I've noticed that. You don't have to make it easy for them, but don't take any risks either. I'd rather you just let them win than for you to die an unnecessary death."

The next room didn't require any equipment for the challenge itself. Violet planned to play on the theme of pixies being mischievous by having the challenge be a game called '2 truths and a lie". The game would require the pixie to give three statements about themselves and then the adventurer would have to guess which one was a lie. If they guessed it wrong, they would have to start over with three new statements until they guessed correctly. The game could just as easily be run by Clove as it could by his wife, Rosemary.

For the challenge reward, Violet spent 30 DP to research fairy lanterns. Basically, they were glass mason jars with black silhouettes on them that depicted pixies and various nature scenes. An unscented candle would come with it and, once lit, a room could be illuminated with the silhouettes creating pixie shadows on the wall. Since Violet already had most of those elements available as [Items], nothing extra had to be researched to obtain the final product. Another 300 DP to set the room theme and lock the door as well as 30 DP to set the challenge reward and she was already done with the room.

Of course, before she could call it a day, she did have one more stop to make. The mad tea party room hadn't been completed yet. The room's theme was set, so the tea setup would refresh, but it wasn't set up as a challenge yet. For the reward in this room, Violet decided to go with fairy bread. It wasn't something she had enjoyed much in her last life since she wasn't from Australia, but the name was fun and it seemed like a fitting reward for the challenge. The fairy dust sprinkles got used alongside some butter and white bread, all things she had unlocked previously, and the research was easily completed for 10 DP. Since the room's theme was already set, it only cost 150 DP to lock the door and 10 DP to set the challenge with its reward.

Since she didn't end up spending very much of the night's mana on the new challenge rooms, Violet decided to get a head start on the charity work for next week by investing the rest into firewood and shelf-stable foods.