Big Sale

After Avorn and Camellia left, Violet spent her mana on two stamina potions and two tins of black tea. Then she went to her new pond room to relax until more people showed up in the dungeon.

With Matthias gone, their party had to mostly rely on the local tavern for their meals. The rest of them could cook alright, but it was certainly nothing to write home about. Mostly, they could just throw together some campfire stew, but they weren't talented enough to make much else. As such, they had stopped by the local tavern to have breakfast before heading to Violet's dungeon, bringing a few hoecakes as tribute. Hoecakes were similar to pancakes, which they had given as a tribute previously, but these used cornmeal rather than being a sweet, fluffy, pan bread.

Noticing there was a new puzzle to try out, Tobias's party decided to spend their time checking it out today. The sliding ball maze was a new puzzle to their party, but it still seemed simple enough. The balls slid with little resistance, but still required one to bend slightly over and push them with both hands due to their size. After confirming this fact, Tobias turned to the others and said

"Alright, so, it seems like this one should be doable enough. From what my system message is telling me, it looks like we just need to arrange these balls in a specific order and get them to the middle-most endpoint. I'm not sure what the "order of the rainbow" means, but it shouldn't be that difficult to rearrange the seven colors until we get it right.

It'll be difficult for all of us to work on this puzzle at the same time, but we all get the reward if we all participate and complete it. So, why don't you two work on moving the colors we don't need out of the way I will move a single color to the endpoint before moving on to the next. This way we can complete the puzzle more easily without tripping over each other."

Violet noticed right away when Tobias's group entered the dungeon. However, she decided to give them some time to themselves first before trying to sell her wares. When she noticed they were remaining in one room for quite a while, she determined they were likely working on a puzzle of some sort. That was likely to take a while, but there was no point in interrupting them unless she planned to help or hinder their progress. She wasn't interested in doing either, so she just moved to the wildflower meadow room to wait for them instead. They'd have to pass through it to leave her dungeon anyway.

It took a bit longer than Tobias was expecting to complete the rainbow ball maze puzzle. Several hours had passed by the time they got the notification that the puzzle had been completed correctly and, even then, Tobias got the feeling that they were lucky to complete it so easily. He was starting to get the feeling that the flower hunt puzzle would end up taking them more than a year to complete, if they could ever complete it. They'd more than likely just have to report the information on the puzzle without being able to solve it. That would reduce their pay, but there was simply no helping it.

Since they had already spent so much time in the dungeon, their group started to make their way to the exit. However, Violet caught them as soon as they entered the wildflower room. She smiled happily as she greeted

"Hi! How are you all today?"

Tobias's group had met Violet several times now, so they were much less nervous than they had been the first time they had met her. As the party leader, Tobias stepped forward to answer

"Greetings mistress Violet. We are alright, but is there something we can help you with?"

Violet nodded happily as she replied

"I was wondering if you all would be interested in trading some items with me? I've decided to try out being a merchant and have several items available for sale."

Tobias had never heard of a dungeon master playing the role of a merchant before. Yet another peculiar thing he would have to report to the guild. However, he decided to play along. As he reached for his coin purse, he asked

"What sorts of goods do you have for sale? I'm not sure how much money we can spare right now, but I'd be happy to take a look."

Violet frowned as she replied

"I don't need money. You adventurers don't seem to know much about how dungeons work, do you? What holds value outside dungeons doesn't hold the same value inside of them. A copper coin could be worth a lot for the first one I ever receive, but it would be worth a lot less for all future exchanges. The same could be said for valuable jewels and anything else you could imagine. If you want things to be worth more in exchanges, you need to offer variety or quantity rather than quality."

Tobias had the feeling that Violet was giving him this information for a reason. Perhaps she wanted him to pass on the information to the adventurers' guild or other adventurers? Well, it wouldn't hurt to include the information in his report when he went to submit one of the chamomile and honey shortbread cookies they had received as a challenge reward. They had received five cookies each for that challenge, which could be considered a quite generous reward.

Tobias turned to look at his party members to discuss the issue. They hadn't been expecting this, so they didn't exactly have much to trade with them. However, Mirabella stepped forward after saying "I've got this." to her brother.

"I've got some of my map-making materials I could trade you. I can show you them and you can tell me what you want in exchange, but I'll need to know what you have for sale first."

Violet smiled excitedly. Paper and writing tools would definitely be new items to her dungeon! She eagerly explained

"I have healing potions, mana potions, stamina potions, tins of black tea, wild violet and honey lollipops, lavender meringue cookies, and chamomile and honey shortbread cookies. I'll likely have other things for sale later on, but I only have a limited stock available at any given time."

Tobias's eyes lit up at the mention of the lavender meringues. Pulling his sister aside, he said

"Can you get some of the meringues? That's the reward for the flower hunt puzzle. More than likely, we won't have time to complete it. We got lucky with that rainbow ball challenge, but there's no way the same will happen with the flower hunt one. If I can submit the prize from it alongside what little information we already have on it, we can still make a decent amount of pay from it."

Mirabella nodded before turning back to Violet and saying

"We'd like to purchase a tin of tea, four lollipops, and five of your lavender meringue cookies."

They'd have to send one of the meringues off to the guild, but it would be nice to have one each just to try. Besides, Mirabella wasn't sure of how many of each item Violet had or how much she would end up charging for them. She needed to be modest in her request to avoid any problems.

Violet spent some time negotiating the items she wanted in trade, but she ended up asking for a sheet of parchment, a sheet of paper, a goose feather quill pen, and one glass inkwell full of charcoal ink. However, Violet hadn't been expecting to get as many dungeon points as she did from the trade. Where she had only had to spend 45MP for the items she had sold, she ended up obtaining an entire 235DP from the trade. With the hoecakes she received as tribute tacked on, she now had a total of 612DP.

Violet smiled giddily as she spent her mana on ten new tins of black tea. It would seem that the tea and sweets were far more popular than the potions were. At least, that was the case right now. Things could change in the future, so Violet wouldn't consider the potions a waste just yet.

As for Tobias's party, they made sure to pay Mirabella a fair price to compensate her for the items she traded away and then split the items amongst themselves. Having tea and sweets was a luxury, even for adventurers like themselves. However, being able to enjoy a nice treat like this was still worth far more than the amount they might make off of selling them, especially if they could just trade Violet for more in the future.