The Exchange

Perhaps the slime parkour challenge truly was too difficult. Despite his previous day's success, David still ended up failing today. It was difficult for Violet to want to make the changes that would make things easier, though, as the room was easily one of the better defenses the dungeon, currently, had. The same things that made the challenge difficult for people, were the same things that made the challenge a suitable defense against [Monsters]. Where a human might feel frustrated as they slipped and fell into the water, a monster, who was less likely to know how to swim, was liable to end up drowning.

The capture-the-slime challenge was also continuing to give David a good bit of trouble. Alice had managed to figure out how to lure the slimes into her basket and carry them over to the fenced-in pen area, but the slimes would end up jumping out of the pen sooner or later. David was less successful as it was too difficult to grab onto the slimes and they seemed to sense him coming from a mile away. Since there were only the two of them, they couldn't capture the slimes quickly enough and they had yet to complete the challenge.

The new flower hunt challenge wasn't difficult logistically, but it required knowledge that neither David nor Alice had. While Violet could certainly tell them the correct answer, it wasn't exactly in her best interests to do so. 

The longer people didn't know how to complete the challenges in her dungeon, the longer they'd have to spend attempting to complete them. It would also make it so that the rewards she was offering would continue to be valuable for a longer period. While David had explained that all dungeon challenges seemed to be only able to be completed for a prize once per person per day, it still wasn't great if people could complete a first-floor challenge too easily.

 If they could, they could just walk to that part of the dungeon every single day with a group of people, complete the challenge in mere minutes, and then leave the dungeon until the next day. It was a great way for the adventurers to make money in the short term, but it would, eventually, cause the goods to become less valuable and make it less likely for adventurers to continue to visit the dungeon in the future, which was bad for everyone.

Violet wasn't sure the problem would be quite as severe with consumable goods as it would be for something like a sword or armor, but she was still happy that she didn't have to worry about the challenges in her dungeon being exploited too much. After all, this first floor was meant to be the foundation upon which the rest of her dungeon would be built. If she could convince lots of people to visit the first floor every day, then she would be able to more easily build her later floors.

Speaking of building, Violet had recently run into a rather large problem. While she had the azalea flower she wanted and the two halves of the boss room were finished being built, she couldn't combine the two rooms. She only had a mere 82DP, but she needed 105DP to combine the rooms. Of course, she'd still require even more than that if she wanted to make any upgrades to the room, create a new type of slime for a boss monster, or just about anything else.

While David was still off taking a break, Violet spent some of her mana to create five candy apples and five wild violet and honey lollipops. Since David was struggling so much to complete the slim parkour and capture the slime challenges, it was likely that these [Items] would still have some value in the outside world. Sweets weren't very common in medieval Europe, from what little Violet knew. So, she hoped it would be enough to tempt David into helping her out.

Violet waited until after swordsmanship training when Alice was beginning to get tired and no longer felt up to collecting flowers. Then she said

"Hey, before you go, I wanted to ask you about something."

David looked warily towards Violet. He just wanted to get his young daughter back home and it seemed a bit suspicious for a dungeon master to say something like this out of the blue. Even if Violet seemed genuinely more harmless than other dungeon masters, David couldn't quite put his guard down around her.

"Yes? What is it?"

Violet brought out the sweets she had summoned earlier and David tilted his head to the side in confusion as he waited for her to explain.

"I was hoping we could come to some sort of agreement. I'm willing to offer you these sweets in exchange for a mix of twenty mushrooms, flowers, and fruits for tribute tomorrow."

Violet wasn't confident that she wouldn't end up being given repeats of things she had already received, so she had to hope David would agree to exchange double the number of [Items] she was asking for. As for David, he quickly agreed.

"Alright, I can do that. I'll have to show up for swordsmanship training late tomorrow, though. It takes a good bit to get to the nearest city and I can't be confident that there will be any merchants with what you want stopping by town anytime soon. It'll likely be easier in a few years after a proper business district develops, but things are a bit limited here in terms of what is available."

Violet just nodded, pushing the objects forward into David's hands. He placed them on top of the flowers in Alice's basket, which he was carrying, before leaving the dungeon.

David somewhat doubted that Violet understood just how valuable these sweets were. While there were certainly desserts, none of them were quite like the ones found in her dungeon. Breads tended to be denser due to how unpredictable wild yeast could be and candies didn't tend to include flowers in them. 

That idea alone was quite a novel concept and David had been surprised just how much Alice had enjoyed the first lollipop he had earned from the dungeon. He didn't exactly expect flowers to taste good, but he wasn't exactly about to question it since the odds were he'd make a small fortune from this haul.

Forget about the cost of the tribute Violet wanted, David could likely afford to build a small house with the profits from selling these ten [Items] alone. Of course, it would be nice to build a bigger house with some magical technology in it. Maybe a nice heated bath using fire and water magic crystals?

Perhaps David could even hire some staff and build a larger manor, if he worked hard enough. Then he could afford to have a garden to grow flowers and a chef to make sweets that he could offer up as tribute for Violet. That would likely win him some brownie points with Theodore as well since he'd be doing more than just the minimum required in the contract. He only had to provide something as tribute, unless Violet asked for something specific. As such, if he went out of his way to bring her nice things she would enjoy, without being asked, he might even be able to convince that damn dungeon diplomat to stop breathing down his neck.

Plus, it couldn't hurt to help Violet develop her dungeon more quickly. If that happened, then he would be able to earn better rewards on the higher floors. It wouldn't exactly be safe enough for him to feel comfortable bringing Alice with him anytime soon, but it wasn't like he couldn't go out of his way to explore the dungeon by himself. David was sure he could even spend a week straight in the dungeon, if he wanted. He'd just have to bring enough tribute to cover his stay and he'd have to train Violet for a short while each night. The rest of the time could be spent gathering resources into a magical bag and defeating stronger [Monsters].

If he made sure to learn where all the [Traps] were and how to avoid them, it might even be reasonable to bring Alice to explore some of the higher floors. The extra experience would be beneficial as it would allow her to grow stronger faster and it wouldn't hurt for her to learn how to disarm or avoid [Traps]. Adventurer schools tended to teach a lot about that sort of thing as well, but it was different to learn from a textbook versus learning from experience.

Of course, none of that would be happening anytime soon. Even with an abundance of tributes and visitors, dungeons took time to grow. Alice would have a few years to become comfortable with the concepts of dungeons and to work on her affinity with her beast tame. Increasing Luna's level and letting the wolf cub grow a bit older would help his daughter a good bit as well. David couldn't exactly guarantee they wouldn't get overrun by [Monsters] and it would be reassuring if Luna and Alice could handle the larger number of stronger [Monsters] more comfortably.