Disgusting Zombies

Before Theodore had left, he had asked Violet if she had anything specific she wanted to request as tribute in the future. She had replied that she wanted a lily pad and lotus flower, which Theodore had found a rather odd request, but he promised to look into it for next time. However, he still needed a tribute for this time, so he went out into the forest surrounding the dungeon and brought back a nutlet, which would allow Violet to make birch trees.

This brought Violet up to a total of 222DP. This wasn't quite enough for the chameleon slimes Violet wanted to research, so she held off on spending any dungeon points. Instead, she used her 50MP to improve her floodplains meadow some more. 10MP went into creating rabbit burrows and a bit of tunneling underneath the ground. These holes were bigger than usual, but still pretty small as they were meant for slimes to travel through. An additional 40MP was spent to purchase said slimes. These slimes were just basic ones and Violet had no plans to evolve them any time soon.

Before Violet could even relax, a rather foul energy entered the dungeon. From what Violet could tell, there were five separate energy sources. While Violet was going to leave whatever it was alone, the familiar thudding against the wildflower meadow doors, which was only a short distance away, gave her pause.

Violet went to investigate and was met with three zombies when she opened the door. However, the sound of a commotion across the way gave away the fact that there were more enemies than just these three. Violet created some distance from the zombies before engaging them in combat. Even if she couldn't turn into a zombie, she'd rather avoid being bitten and scratched up.

Violet dodged out of the way of one zombie before swinging her sword at another. While her movements were still more clumsy than she'd like, the zombies were much easier to dispatch than the goblins had been. She tripped one zombie before dodging another, twirling around to swing her sword down on the downed zombie and cut its head off. One of the two zombies grabbed her arm and Violet yanked her arm violently away, shoving herself backwards and away.

When they came to the roundabout hallway, Violet used it as an opportunity to create some more space and pick them off one by one. She sliced an arm off one zombie, retreated backwards and then took another swing with her sword, cutting its head off. The last zombie of this group of three was taken out similarly. They might have been decaying, but their heads were still difficult to destroy, it was much easier to cut their heads off using the much weaker spine. Then she could go back through and finish them off once they were incapacitated.

Once she was done, she rushed off back towards the wildflower meadow room and found that the other group had managed to force the dungeon doors open with sheer force. However, they were still breaking down the other door that led to the slime parkour room. While Violet doubted the zombies could swim, she also didn't want to deal with having to figure out a way to finish them off so they wouldn't prevent her from building indefinitely.

She knocked one over and finished it off before turning to the last one. It was not having nearly as easy of a time trying to break down the sturdy stone door now that it was alone. However, Violet still wasted no time in finishing it off.

These zombie attacks were starting to get rather annoying. Violet wasn't sure what was causing zombies specifically to be attracted to her dungeon. However, they were certainly becoming quite a nuisance. Their rotting flesh and persistence in aiming for the dungeon core made the otherwise easy-to-handle enemies quite frustrating.

Violet felt like vomiting as she jumped straight into the pool of the slime parkour room, clothes and all. She quickly washed the blood and flesh from her skin and clothes, as best she could. It would be far preferable to walk around in soaking wet clothes for a while than it would be to have the stench of death continue to linger.

Violet went to the hay meadow room after that to rest in the sun. Her clothes could dry off while she tried to clear her mind enough to get to work on improving the dungeon. Violet wasn't exactly a clean freak, but she was pretty sure she absolutely hated zombies and the filth they brought with them. It was hard to get over the stress of dealing with them, even with the dungeon actively working to calm her down.

Eventually, Violet began to look over her spoils of war. She had only gained 15DP since the zombies were so basic that there wasn't anything new to absorb after killing them the first time. This put Violet at 232DP, but the increase was so small that it just made Violet feel even more frustrated. All this work to kill them and defend the dungeon only to barely gain anything from it. Adventurers were way better as they always left nice tributes and they, usually, were not a danger to the dungeon!

Violet sighed as she got up. She quickly summoned four basic slimes to the hay meadow for 40MP before heading to the floodplains meadow to summon another. While Violet did want to have chameleon slimes in the hay meadow, it wasn't like she couldn't evolve them later on when she had more dungeon points to spare. For now, even basic slimes would be an improvement.

The slimes wouldn't help with the zombie problem, but it was still reassuring to have more [Monsters] in the dungeon. Violet was starting to feel like she couldn't wait until she unlocked her second floor. Then she could wait until they made it to the second floor to bother with defending against them. Even if a few zombies ended up trapped in the bottom of the slime parkour pool, it wouldn't stop her from continuing to build. If anything, it would just mean she'd have a guaranteed source of mana.

Well, Violet did have the feeling that her aqua slimes would eventually end up killing the zombies since they'd respawn every few minutes, even if there were [Monsters] of adventurers in the dungeon. So, it stood to reason that they'd be able to slowly, but surely kill the zombies off. Still, it'd be far better than what she was dealing with right now.