With a little more information about what exactly was going on with the dungeon, Veronica felt a lot more confident about her next project. Technically, she had already started on it as she had created the rooms in the inn, she just had yet to fill them with furniture. As she had been worried about building too fast, she had been putting it off since it just didn't seem necessary to work on it before when she had plenty of inn rooms already. Now that she knew it was more about trying to bend the rules and make things more dangerous and unbalanced on the first floor than they really should be, it almost felt laughable that she had ever stalled things on the inn side of things.

There were only twelve rooms in this newest set for her to work on, but she planned to make them double rooms with two full size beds and a partition wall between them. While the rooms were only 9-Units by 11-Units rooms, making them barely bigger than her smallest room size, she still planned to charge slightly more for them. At 15 DP per night, they'd still be a bargain compared to spending 20 DP for separate rooms, even if it likely seemed silly for anyone to choose to rent them when they were paying with the equivalent of Monopoly money to begin with. Leaves, pebbles, sticks, and random flowers found on the side of the road, the dungeon would accept them all as currency. It was a Hell of a deal.

Since she already had everything she needed to furnish the rooms researched, it was only a matter of spending her mana on it. That, unfortunately, required a few days' time to pass by as nights and mornings her system was locked and she couldn't access it to spend her mana. She could, of course, build on the dungeon side, most nights, but the inn always had guests. Even if no one else would remain, there would always be Seraphina. It was still strange how she counted as some strange middle ground between dungeon entity and non-dungeon entity where [Traps] and [Monsters] posed no threat to her, but yet, she could still access the menu for the inn. From what she had heard, challenge room menus didn't even show up for Dungeon Diplomats, so they couldn't be awarded the prizes, nor could they be locked in the rooms. So, why the inn was any different, she really wasn't sure.

Shaking her head, Veronica tried to concentrate, she was obviously getting far too distracted from the task at hand. First, every room needed a partition wall that would split the room down the middle on the longer side. Then a bed on top of a green rug had to be placed on each side. Each bed would get its own set of blue silk sheets and pillowcases as well as pillows and a blue quilt. An end table went on either side of the beds, offering a bit of storage space to hold belongings, even if it was nothing compared to what most rooms had on offer.

The rest of the room was a community space with potted peace lilies on either side of the main entrance door, a wooden desk and leather chair in one corner, and a fireplace with firewood in the other. Technically speaking, while it was a bit cramped, adventurers would have everything they needed for a night's rest. They could cook a stew at the fireplace, write things at the desk, and sleep without having to look at one another. All that and they could save themselves five whole acorns a night off of the usual price! Veronica laughed to herself as she thought that last bit over.

While Veronica was still disappointed about having to say goodbye to her family forever and hated being trapped in the dungeon, she wasn't exactly miserable. She had always been a bit of a loner who preferred to be left with her own company. Perhaps it would have been nice to have a cute dog to keep her company or to spend her nights with a significant other, but, otherwise, she was content to be alone. It was almost ironic that she hadn't been in a relationship when she transmigrated and she had left most of her friends behind when she graduated college. None of her coworkers at the multitude of jobs she had tried out had quite clicked with her, so she was used to spending most nights at home alone.

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Now, none of this was to say that she was particularly unpopular with others or that she was some prude. She had been with a couple guys over the years, but the relationships had always fizzled out after a few months. The longest relationship she had been in was maybe two years? She wasn't sure now, but it had ended when the guy had claimed he needed space after his sister had been sexually assaulted by some guy. She was fairly sure that was just an excuse now since he had gotten together with some other woman not even a month later. It was impossible to know if his sister had actually gone through such an ordeal or not since she had never been close to his family, but she rather hoped, for the sister's sake, it had been a lame excuse on her ex's part for dumping her.

When people started to filter into the inn, Veronica sighed as she watched her system give her the now-familiar prompt about not being able to access the system when people were around. She headed back to her own room, already thinking about what to make herself to eat. She had stocked up the fridge with alcohol and some of the other food recipes she had gotten as tributes. It would have been nice if she had some basic ingredients like flour and sugar, but she just kept putting it off. They were unlocked as [Base Resources], meaning she could use them to research foods with the system, when she had access to it, but she needed them as [Items] if she wanted to spend mana to have them for her personal use.

The alcohol of this world wasn't quite what Veronica was used to. Ale sweetened with honey or mixed with milk was a bit strange. The blackberry wine she had was a bit better, but it wasn't like she had ever been much of a drinker in the first place. In fact, she had only ever started trying alcohol in recent years. She was in the latter half of her twenties, but she simply had never seen the appeal of alcohol in her earlier years and much preferred to focus on her studies. She didn't want to turn out to be a nuisance like her brother. God, she hoped he was doing their parents' business justice. Even if she didn't particularly miss anyone from her old world, that didn't mean she loved the idea of things going to ruin without her.

Pulling out a piece of paper, Veronica continued working on her plans for the new tavern. She couldn't just make a kitchen and a bar, she had to have a proper menu with appropriate prices. The main problem was that she was worried about the prices she'd be charging for the food and alcohol. She'd likely have to make most of the food she wanted from scratch and do a lot of manual labor to keep things running smoothly. While some things could keep well when stored at room temperature, a lot of things weren't good unless they were fresh, as she had personally experienced. The magic stove had an oven and could certainly be used to reheat things like the cinnamon oatcakes, but it was too easy to burn things and the texture wasn't quite right unless they were fresh. Besides which, she likely wouldn't have access to the system all the time and it would be cheaper to make everything from ingredients than to constantly spend her mana on premade foods, especially if she wanted to use cuisine that was more at home in her old world than this one.