Veronica had a hard time putting together the previous events and the fact that she was now alive and standing in the dungeon core room. However, once she got her bearings, she was quick to accuse

"Why didn't you do anything? I thought you were supposed to be helping me!"

Seraphina looked bored as she replied

"I'm not always going to be here to help you."

"I- I died! What do you-"

Seraphina was quick to interrupt her complaints

"Well, you aren't dead anymore, are you? Besides, you have to learn this lesson sooner or later."

Veronica felt livid as she questioned

"Lesson?! What lesson?!"

With an exasperated sigh, Seraphina explained

"Well, I did tell you that you're immortal now. That means you literally can't die unless the dungeon is destroyed, period. Although, that connection does go both ways. If you die too often and end up traumatized from it then that can lead to the dungeon core corrupting. That'll be far worse than the depression or PTSD you might, otherwise, suffer from. It could lead to life feeling unbearable while you go insane and you'll feel the need to make others suffer just as much as you are.

Honestly, I get it, you're mad, but it must not be that bad if the dungeon isn't stepping in. If you were that badly off, it would be sending out calming waves of energy to force you to calm down, relax, and be happy. Anger isn't really an issue, as far as the dungeon is concerned, though. That's effective for plenty of things like defending the dungeon in times of need, for example."

Veronica still felt like arguing about it, but tried to take a moment to calm down. Seraphina wasn't entirely wrong. While it had all come as a shock and she was most definitely upset with her assigned dungeon diplomat, it wasn't like she felt like curling up in a ball and crying or anything. Maybe that was because of the way she had grown up. Her childhood was mostly happy, but she had to get used to competing with her brother from an early age. She knew now that crying when things didn't go her way wouldn't solve anything. If she wanted things to get better, the only thing that would help was determination and hard work. Sure, that didn't work for everything, but the things she couldn't change weren't worth wasting energy on caring about anyhow.

Seeing her starting to calm down, Seraphina must have decided it was a good time to continue to educate her.

"Your [Monsters] have similar mechanics, you know. If your gargoyles die too much then their souls can also become corrupted. That tends to lead to them being worse at battle and more prone to attack at even the slightest provocation. However, if it gets too bad, they'll just stop respawning and need to be replaced.

Most summoned [Monsters] aren't sentient enough for you to need to feel pity for them. As for contracted [Monsters] who come from outside the dungeon, they, generally, know what they are signing up for. Out there, if they die, that's it, their lives are done. In here, they're almost guaranteed to die again and again, but their lives will also be longer and they have the opportunity to evolve or do unique non-combat tasks for you with both offering them the chance for a less dangerous existence."

Veronica frowned. She hadn't really given it much thought, but it was true. Her dungeon [Monsters] would all have to die repeatedly to adventurers, sometimes even multiple times a day. They wouldn't all be like the gargoyles who just seemed to snarl incoherently at her or glare menacingly. It was possible she could end up with a more sentient creature like the goblins she had dismissed when she initially arrived here.

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Deciding she didn't want to think about all of this anymore she mumbled her goodbyes and left the dungeon core room. Seraphina seemed far too cheerful as she called after her

"Don't worry, I'll keep the dungeon core safe while you're gone. Remember, we still have training once the sun sets and all the adventurers go home."

Great, so she couldn't even get space around here for very long. Veronica mentally rolled her eyes. She definitely needed a distraction. Maybe she could work on her inn side of the dungeon for a bit? She certainly had a few [Missions] relating to building things on that side of the dungeon.

Earlier in the day, she had built her sixth 18-Units by 18-Units square room on the tropical rainforest side of the dungeon. It already had a 50 MP spawner and three gargoyles assigned to the room. However, she had, unfortunately, discovered that the leftover space on the right-most side of the dungeon didn't fit any of her current room-building options. The menu did suggest she could research new options to use for dungeon points, but she would be leaving that for another day. Right now, she just wanted to be left alone while she worked on other things.

The first day she had been here, she had been experimenting and found out that she had to always have a path that led from the entrance to the dungeon core room. Why the dungeon would want to keep such a weakness, she wasn't sure. Perhaps it related back to the dungeon accords Seraphina liked to reference all of the time. Considering how she had been checking her dungeon core for corruption, it was likely that the open access was meant as a way to ensure a dungeon could always be destroyed in an emergency.

Still, that didn't mean she had to keep open access on the inn side of things. Even if she blocked things off some, she would still have a route through the tropical rainforest. Adventurers would just have to contend with getting lost in the trees and fighting her gargoyles before they could reach the room, not that it had stopped that crazy half-giant. She shivered in discomfort as she reflected on the memory.

Four groups of adventurers came through the dungeon over the course of the day. Most of them had weak energy signatures and their group numbers ranged from those going solo to four-man parties. Thanks to Seraphina's presence, she always had plenty of mana accruing, but her menu accessibility was cut off on occasion as adventurers wandered into her work area. None of them paid her much attention, only sparing her an odd glance on occasion.

Veronica did have to admit that her party dress and wedges weren't doing her any favors when it came to blending into this new world. Most of the adventurers were wearing pants, including the women, but she highly doubted that a pair of jeans would have been any better. Really, Veronica needed to get a hold of some new attire so she could play the role of innkeeper and Dungeon Master without anyone batting an eye.

Regardless of the constant distractions, she still managed to make some decent progress on building. By the time Seraphina came along to fetch her for martial arts training, she had 10 new 9-Units by 9-Units inn rooms and plenty of hallways to connect everything. She also managed to figure out that she could just ask the system to unlock a new 15-Units by 19-Units rectangular room and a system prompt popper up.

Would you like to research a 15-Units by 19-Units room for 68 DP?

Yes

No

Thanks to earning 422 DP for the day from the adventurer's tributes, that amount barely felt like a drop in the bucket. So, now she also had a room perfect for a reception where adventurer's could check in. The only real issue Veronica was worried about was the lack of suitable tributes for making things for the inn rooms.

It would seem that wherever she was living now was full of elves and, for some reason, had a lot in common with the Asian countries of her home world. She had received three flint arrows, some evening primrose, an empty potion vial, a cork stopper, a camellia flower, perilla leaves, a bit of hemp rope, cherry blossoms, taro root, some twine, chrysanthemums, lotus root, ginger, and a chunk of jade stone. Veronica supposed the mythology from her own world about elves must be true with the number of plants and nature-based [Items] she was getting for tributes. Many of the [Items] didn't even seem like the sort of thing that would grow near a coastal city, so it was likely they had chosen to buy them purely to leave as a tribute for her dungeon. Still, she was hardly going to complain since she was most certainly benefitting from the variety.