Hedge Maze

Elivyre spent most of her time in the dungeon picking flowers as she spoke to Violet. While she found the flower hunt challenge interesting, she chose not to attempt it. She wanted to try doing some research into it first and would need to come back on a separate occasion to attempt any challenges. 

Elivyre didn't want to pressure Violet in any way, but the main reason she had come to the dungeon was to gather the flowers and herbs for her store. She needed to make enough money to cover her housing fees until she could get a proper foothold in the local market and the best way to do that was to sell things to her father. He had already agreed to pay for her new shop to be built, but she was on her own in the meantime.

It was pleasant enough just getting to talk with Elivyre, so Violet didn't force the issue. As excited as she was to show off her challenges, her new friend's company was more than sufficient. Besides, David seemed more than happy to throw himself at the challenges, so it wasn't like she needed another person to test the challenges out for her.

While they had gotten to talk for quite some time, the time flew by quickly and it wasn't long before Elivyre and Diva had to leave once more. The herbs that had been brought over ended up being pineapple sage and Thai basil. Well, that was what the system menu classified them as, but Violet seriously doubted that the basil was known by that name in this world. 

Other things being known by the same names as those in her world were already quite strange, but, from what little she knew, the towns, cities, and kingdoms in this world had their own naming sense. So, it was doubtful that anyone would consider a basil plant to be related to a place from her world. Unless, of course, they had been brought over by another reincarnated dungeon master who had spread the name until it became well known enough to be called that here as well.

Violet shook her head, dismissing the thoughts as trivial. It wouldn't do to dwell on such things when there was other work to do. The new tribute had been enough to bring her up to a total of 156DP, so she could now afford to combine the two halves of her boss room. As they were both 16-meter x 32-meter rectangle rooms, they'd combine into a large 32-meter x 32-meter square room. That had a total area of 1,024 square meters, so she'd end up having to pay 103DP to combine the rooms since it cost 10% of the total area of the new room to do so.

This room size would have been far easier to make after she unlocked the second floor. However, Violet didn't like the idea of having her boss room be the same size as some of her other rooms, like the garden meadow or flower hunt rooms. She wanted the boss room to be large enough to fit a proper hedge maze into as well as to give it a feeling of importance compared to the other rooms. Maybe size isn't everything, but it still, somehow, just felt right to have a large boss room.

After combining the two halves of the boss room, Violet was left with a mere 53DP. Well, what went up had to come down. It would be difficult to save up enough dungeon points to unlock the next floor at this rate, but Violet wasn't too bothered by it. She could always just stop building rooms for a while and find something else to do with her extra mana in the meantime. That or she could always just ignore the mana since it wasn't like it would be difficult to save up mana after the next floor was unlocked.

A lot of mana was already going to waste every single day. Her dungeon core couldn't convert aether and store more than a set amount of mana. Yet people often visited the dungeon in large groups for long periods. Even if Violet only had one group of adventurers in the dungeon at a time in the future, she'd still end up with more mana from each visit than she did now. Although, she certainly hoped she wouldn't end up with an empty dungeon too often.

Violet finished walking over to her new boss room and began to work diligently on designing the new hedge maze. The pink azalea flowers on the dark green bushes were quite pretty, but they were also very thick and bushy. This made it so that Violet was stuck with either having a more simplistic maze with wider paths or a thinner path with a more complex maze structure. It didn't seem like that big of a deal to make the path only wide enough for one or two adventurers to walk through at a time, so that's what Violet went with.

Drawing on the same inspiration she had used when designing the slime jigsaw puzzle, Violet decided to make the maze themed. The azalea hedge bushes had to be created manually and cost 20MP for every 100 square meters. This was a far higher cost than most of her other flower-based room features, but she supposed it made sense. The bushes were tall and thick, making them almost wall-like in structure, which was quite a bit different from the normal plants.

Violet decided to make an outer square-like picture frame before making nine flower-like circles within the maze. At the center of each, she planned to put a tree to make it resemble the centermost portion of a flower. Of course, the middlemost circle of the maze would have the boss monster rather than a tree.

Violet didn't have enough mana to finish more than half of the maze's hedge walls, so she would have to finish it the next time she got some. 100MP was a lot to spend on some flowery bushes, but Violet felt it was a nice touch since it fit the meadow theme of the flower and it made the room smell quite nice. The trees and the boss [Monsters], of course, would also need mana, so it was likely to be a while before the room could be completed.

Violet was hopeful that she could get the boss room's doors to lock until the boss monster was defeated. It would not only slow down intruders so that they couldn't reach the dungeon core room as easily, but it would also prevent them from burning the room down as a shortcut. If they were locked in and tried to start a fire to get rid of the maze, they'd end up choking on the smoke and be at risk of burning alive. It wasn't very likely that the slime would die first either since it would be at the heart of the maze and a good distance away from the adventurers.

While it would be unfortunate for anyone to die in the dungeon, Violet couldn't say that she had the luxury of caring either. The boss room would be the last room before they reached the dungeon core room, so it needed to provide sufficient defense to deter anything from going any further. Even once the next floor was unlocked, the boss room would still be important since it would have to be conquered before anyone could move on to the next floor.

Violet was also half tempted to actually research some of the trap options and then to place the [Traps] in between the boss room and dungeon core room. However, all of the [Traps] available on the first floor, even through research, seemed rather weak. As such, Violet felt like it would almost be better to just hold off on any proper [Traps] until she unlocked the next floor. Then she could build all of her rooms with [Traps] included in a natural and sensible way.

The second floor wasn't meant to be for locals, pre-adventurers, and beginner adventurers like the first floor. Those who entered the second floor were meant to be willing to put their lives on the line to further explore the dungeon. If they ended up dying to one of the [Traps] after choosing to continue onwards, then that wasn't something that Violet had to worry about. This was her home they were intruding on and she needed to put her safety first.