Would you like to purchase the third dungeon floor for 3,000 DP?

Yes

No

Veronica was almost giddy as she selected the [Yes] option. She had regained access to the system today and she had immediately gone ahead and unlocked the third floor. The first prompt she had actually received was actually a notification informing her that she had received 25 MP worth of man regen. That had confused her and she had ended up nervously checking to see if she had access to the system and if the dungeon core room was unlocked again. As it would turn out, both the dungeon core room and dungeon entrance were still locked, but this was still progress!

Now that she had access to the system again, she could finally do something with all of this time she had on her hands. Of course, since the first and second floor were already complete, she had to unlock the third floor before she could actually start working on anything. The progress was also going to be extremely slow as well since she would only receive 25 MP each day since she couldn't receive visitors. However, she was fine with that since there was still plenty that she could do.

Things were much more chaotic when the dungeon began to tremble and shake as a new floor was built. Veronica even ended up falling into a wall so hard that she conked out until after things had settled down once more. Who would have known that the dungeon core room was not only the most convenient place to be when a new floor was unlocked, but also the most stable? At least this confirmed some more good news, she could now sleep!

Of course, Veronica was hopeful that it wouldn't be necessary to waste time with such things, but it was still comforting to know she was no longer being punished. There was a part of her that worried that this too was a test, though. Would the dungeon core deem her unworthy of being its guardian if she wasted away too much time by doing things like sleeping? She had been promising for the last few weeks that she would take responsibility and properly protect the dungeon from now on. It had mostly been out of desperation, but she could only assume that the dungeon had decided her attitude was acceptable and had decided to give her a second chance now that she had access to the system again. Still, since not everything had returned to normal, she also had to assume this was more like being on probation than completely forgiven.

The third floor was not one of the ones she would receive a new set of [Monsters] and [Traps] on it would seem. However, she did get to choose a new skill.

Please select a new skill:

Skill Name:

Info:

Masterkey

Allows for better lock controls on inn & tavern doors including designating rooms as a larger variety of room types with more strict controls on who can access the space. Does not affect rooms outside of the tavern & inn side of the dungeon.

Housekeeping

Allows the Dungeon Master to auto-clean and straighten a room at a cost of 10 MP per use. Includes restocking supplies that were previously stocked in the room when the room was first designated as an inn room.

Guest Profiling

Displays a list of non-dungeon entities currently in the dungeon alongside their classification, classes, rank, location, temperament, and hospitality preferences.

As both the [Housekeeping] and [Guest Profiling] skills would only be useful if the dungeon was functioning normally, Veronica decided to opt for the [Masterkey] option this time. It would allow her to have more freedom in the future as well as the present. She could set up rooms explicitly meant for staff living quarters, something that would have been useful when Elora and Eldrin were still around, and she could also make things like rentable shop spaces. After all, it is quite common for large hotels, malls, and similar spaces to rent out building space to other businesses as it would help draw in more customers and benefit everyone involved.

Please select a new floor theme:

Grasslands

Snowy Pine Forest

Haunted Catacombs

Since Veronica already knew that she'd have to reuse either her goblins or gargoyles for this floor, it was only sensible to make her choice based on that. Since the first floor has gargoyles and the second floor has goblins, she also figured it would be best to alternate between the two until she unlocked something new. The [Haunted Catacombs] was the best choice with that in mind.

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The tropical rainforest was alright, but the connection to gargoyles was loose at best. Sure, she could imagine some sort of jungle temple with gargoyles and make the connection that way. However, honestly, a haunted catacombs theme just made a lot more sense for her gargoyles to live in. Besides, grasslands sounded like it would have the same problem as the swamp with adventurers just walking straight past every challenge room and [Trap] to complete the boss fight and be done with the floor. As for the snow pine forest, she didn't really want to torture her [Monsters] with the cold, even if the gargoyles were unlikely to be bothered.

Later today, she actually planned to give all of her [Monsters] on both sides of the dungeon the option to choose to stay or be dismissed. Some of them were summons, like the gargoyles, so it was possible they'd die if they chose that option, but she still wanted them all to have the option. Anyone who left could be slowly replaced with new [Monsters] that hadn't been around to suffer in a locked dungeon while she was at her worst. Even then, she might have to replace some of them again when, and if, the dungeon was ever open to the public again. It would be a pain, but she also couldn't leave the dungeon defenseless, so she couldn't just not replace anyone that left either.

It ended up taking several weeks to accomplish anything she wanted to do in the dungeon. The third floor dungeon was set up very similarly to the first floor when it came to room sizing and general layout. Still, it felt like a very different space due to the change in theme. There was dust, cobwebs, and other debris everywhere. She also had to manually add torches to the rooms as there wasn't an artificial sun to light the way. That wasn't something that was a problem for her, but both her [Monsters] and adventurers alike would need to see where they were going.

For the most part, she just kept things simple and added three gargoyles to every [Monster] field room. She could, technically, add more since she now had 100 MP limit spawners, but she quite liked the balance of having the same number of [Monsters] in each room. Besides, even if she couldn't prioritize it right now, she did want to one day add some [Critters] to the rooms. Since she had no idea when she'd get more dungeon points or a larger amount of mana on a daily basis, she had to focus on some things while letting other things fall to the wayside.

When the basics were taken care of for the main dungeon, it was time to take care of the hotel. That ended up taking even longer, but it was very important to invest in the inn and tavern. The only thing that would tempt adventurers to still visit her dungeon, even despite how dangerous she'd make the dungeon, was to play to her strengths and build comfortable inn rooms with a delicious tavern menu. She'd need something different on every floor, no matter how expensive it might get.

In order to accomplish that, she had to spend 54 DP to research 11-Units by 16-Units rectangular rooms, 70 DP to research 18-Units by 17-Units rectangular rooms, and 64 DP to research 18-Units by 14-Units rectangular rooms. All of that was just so she could have nine 20-Units by 36-Units rectangular inn rooms that could house four adventurers each, seven 11-Units by 18-Units empty shops she could rent out, and one each of a reception area, tavern, kitchen, cleaning closet, laundromat, a spa, and a gym. All of the miscellaneous rooms were either 18-Units by 17-Units or 18-Units by 14-Units in size.

Despite keeping things relatively simple and reusing a lot of the furniture she had used on the first floor, it was still necessary to do quite a bit of research. For the bedrooms she needed red silk sheets, a red Romanian quilt, and the same bedding, end table, and wardrobes the first floor had. She had ended up deciding to go with a Romanian theme for the third floor as it matched well with the haunted catacombs theme while being more interesting than something like France or Rome, Italy. She'd likely still use more popular countries as themes later on, but she didn't plan to repeat any themes, so it was better to save the big-name countries from her old world for other floors.

The rest of the inn rooms involved large communal baths, much like the public baths on previous floors, but they were only usable if you rented that room. It was possible that parties would be a mix of different genders, but it wasn't like the guys could stay out of the bathroom while the girls bathed and vice versa. If you couldn't even trust your party not to peep on you in the bathroom, how could you trust them with your life?

The kitchen area was similarly very communal in design. There was the same magic stove, fridge, and sink setup with basic wooden counters, the same ones she had used on the second floor, and then there was a large wooden table with two wooden benches. Romania wasn't exactly a third-world country or anything, but it was known for having rather simplistic and rustic decor. The main eye-catching pieces were usually cloth in nature like clothing, quilts, or rugs, which was where she focused her efforts. 30 DP for red silk sheets, 20 DP for a Romanian red quilt, and 10 DP for a Romanian red rug for the hallways. The rest was all repeats.

There were other things she had to research as well like a red & black floral Romanian armchair for 40 DP to use in the reception area and other public areas. Plus, she had invested 600 DP in making a deluxe version of the magic wood stove, magic ice box, magic sink, and magic bathtubs. Having access to hot water for the sinks and bathtubs was already a huge quality-of-life improvement. It was well worth slowing down her building process to replace all of the old fixtures on the lower floors and she was sure her future patrons would feel similarly.

The only thing left after that was the laundromat. Unlike the modern-day ones that used machines, though, this one was very primitive. 30 DP for a washboard made from wood and metal, 50 DP for a clothes wringer, 30 DP for a clothesline, 20 DP for clothespins, 16 DP for an ironing board, and 150 DP for a magic clothes iron. Then, she just assigned two brownies to the room and put them in charge of handling both the labor and the customer service. Since there weren't adventurers to take care of, they could practice by cleaning her clothes. It would be good to save some mana by not having to recreate and absorb her clothes all the time and she had already spent long enough handwashing her laundry when she didn't have access to the system as it was.

When it was all said and done, she had a decent foundation for the third floor and had 326,851 DP still remaining. She still needed to work on challenge rooms and a boss room for the main dungeon area as well as take care of the tavern preparations, which would likely take her more than a year to complete at the current rate, but it was still nice to feel like she was making progress again.