The next day, Veronica still felt frustrated with Seraphina, but she could no longer avoid her. She was still working on the inn side of the dungeon, but had moved on to decorating the previously made rooms. This had been jump started by some inspiration that had come in the form of a discarded iron belt buckle that she had received as a 'tribute' earlier in the day. There had been other things as well, including a leather belt, roasted seaweed, dried apples, and another flint arrow. Veronica honestly felt bad for whoever kept losing their arrows. Even if flint and wood were likely less expensive than metal-based arrows, it had to be expensive to constantly have to replace their arrows.

Before she had started researching new schematics to use in her inn, her dungeon points had been at 605. The first thing she had researched, of course, had been iron nails, which had been insanely cheap at a mere 2 DP. They also cost 1 MP each to summon, which was a lot more expensive, in comparison to other things, but was besides the point since she just needed nails for the other things she planned to research.

Unfortunately, Veronica found that she was lacking a lot of the [Base Resources] needed to properly set up a comfortable inn room. Even the reception ended up lacking due to the limitations she currently had. Still, she did the best she could with the wood she had unlocked thanks to the leftover flint arrows and the new iron nails she had. The notifications for the new [Items] had been rather repetitive as everything had cost 10 DP to unlock and 5 MP each to create.

However, the reception room now had a wooden corner shelving unit and wooden corner counter to one side. Another 50 MP had gotten her a new spawner for a 20 MP will-o'-wisp to occupy. The strange glowing blue ball of light couldn't talk, nor could it charge the adventurers for a room, but it would be useful for guiding them to their rooms. Besides which, Veronica had found out that she could set prices for each room using the system, which would control whether the room doors would unlock for the adventurers as well as accept the payment directly.

Since all she had was the most basic furniture for her inn, right now, and all the rooms were 9-Units by 9-Units, she had decided to keep things cheap and was only charging 10 DP per room per night. It wasn't a ton, but the amount was bound to add up over time and it would easily allow her to afford any necessary research in the future. Veronica was just glad that she didn't have to stand guard in the inn and constantly demand people pay to use the facilities. She would have done it, had it been necessary, but it definitely would have made it difficult to manage other areas of the dungeon.

For the rest of the reception area, Veronica had decided to decorate it with five coffee tables and eight wooden armchairs. Four of the coffee tables had been placed together to create a larger square table space to be set amongst three chairs in two corners of the room. Meanwhile, the last coffee table and two wooden armchairs were placed in front of the reception desk area. The room, honestly, looked very bland with all the wooden furniture, floors, walls, and ceilings. However, uncomfortable wooden furniture seemed better than leaving the room empty. She just hoped she could replace them with something better later on.

The inn rooms themselves were all identical with the same furnishings going into each. There was a large wooden bed frame that could easily be slept on. Rather than being a rectangular frame with nothing in the middle, they were solid with a surface that could be covered with a sleeping bag and slept directly on. She had seen something similar while touring a museum with medieval furniture when she was in college.

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To either side of the bed area was an end table with functioning drawers. In one corner of the bedroom was also a corner desk with a wooden chair as well as a wooden wardrobe against the same wall. The plan was to put a fireplace on the other side of the room once she had the [Base Resources] to make such a thing. The wardrobes had both drawers on the lower half and a top half that could open to display a wooden rod which clothes could be hung from. Veronica had considered making hangers for it as well, but had decided to skip such luxuries for now.

Now that the basic furniture was taken care of, though, she had the desire to get ahold of better materials to work with. Surely there were merchants in the city who could sell her luxurious clothes, stone bricks, and fire-making materials. However, since she couldn't personally leave the dungeon, she would have to rely on Seraphina to negotiate on her behalf. That was why she was now standing in front of the dungeon core room, staring at the door as she tried to work up her courage. After she stood there for far too long, Seraphina opened the door with an unamused look and asked

"Do you need something?"

Her tone was friendly enough, making it obvious that she didn't feel the same tension she did. That was frustrating for Veronica who was still very much so upset with the elven woman and found her carefree attitude about it all to be frustrating. Still, she decided to press forward since she wanted to accomplish her goals sooner rather than later.

"Yeah, I was wondering if you could help me trade with the local merchants. I have plenty of mana, so I'm hoping I could make some [Items] they'll want and I can get some materials to use in my inn rooms in exchange."

Seraphina looked surprised as she replied

"That's an interesting proposition. I'm not sure it's necessary, though. I can just go buy you whatever you want, within reason. I'm actually supposed to bring you tributes, just like the adventurers, but you haven't expressed an interest in anything yet, so I haven't bothered. It would be nice to have a proper room to sleep in at night."

Veronica had seen the elven woman eating and even sleeping on the hard stone floors of the dungeon core room. Sometimes, she tried to sleep as well. While she always fell asleep right away, it was also very much so unnecessary. Besides, with how cold and uncomfortable the floor was, it wasn't really that tempting to spend all her downtime sleeping when she could be doing other things.

"Can you really afford to buy very much? I don't want to put you out."

Veronica said. She might not be happy with her decision to let her die, but she didn't hate the woman either. Seraphina smiled as she replied

"It's sweet of you to worry, but I'm getting paid for this. Dungeons are an integral part of this world, so some of the taxes collected by each kingdom are paid to my village and then Dungeon Diplomats, like myself, receive compensation for ensuring the dungeons are taken care of. Why don't you figure out a short list of what you need, for now, and I'll see about picking up what I can. I don't have a whole lot on me right now, but you can consider it compensation for letting me use one of your inn rooms."

Veronica was hardly going to refuse such a good offer, so she immediately got to work considering what she needed most right now. Since it wasn't necessary to buy the actual [Item] she needed and it was actually easier to just get the necessary [Base Resources] she needed to figure out which of those she needed. A mattress could likely be made from feathers and she already had undyed cotton cloth and thread. A fireplace would require something to make a fire, firewood, and stone for the furnace itself. Maybe it would also be good to consider options for a toilet area or a new tavern section. Since she might not be able to get a lot, she definitely had to carefully consider her options.