Wax Boards

Later that night, David came to visit the dungeon. This time, he didn't bring Alice with him as it was already quite late at night and he didn't want to disturb his daughter who was already fast asleep by the time he got home. She'd likely be upset that she had missed out on visiting the dungeon, but David was sure she'd quickly move on from it since she'd be able to go tomorrow night.

Violet was nowhere to be seen, so it would seem he would have to go looking for her. While David had been slowly getting used to the slime parkour challenge, he preferred not to cross it tonight. Instead, he went through the floodplains meadow and then into the hay meadow. Violet wasn't there or even in the new flower-filled challenge room. It would seem he would need to try the other way then.

The garden meadow was also empty, but there was a new entrance on one side of it, so David went that way. Since the hay meadow no longer had a path leading to the dungeon core room, David supposed this must be the new way to it. The hallway was much longer than any of the others he had seen in the dungeon and it didn't even end in a room. Instead, he got stuck trying to navigate one of the annoying roundabout hallways before continuing along another hallway.

 Of course, his tired state made him end up turning around the first time, so he ended up in the garden meadow once more and had to re-walk the entire way down to the roundabout hallway again. Eventually, David came to a room with a narrow path that was obscured by tall, bushy azalea hedges. While it was interesting to see what Violet had chosen to do with his recent tribute, he was not thrilled by the idea of walking through a hedge maze.

It wasn't a bad idea for Violet to put a large hedge maze like this in between the dungeon core room and the rest of the dungeon. It was very tempting to turn back around and leave the dungeon just to avoid the hassle. David would have done so too, if it weren't for the fact that he was required by contract to teach Violet swordsmanship.

It took quite a while of him walking around, lost, before Violet finally came over to rescue him. If it wouldn't get him into trouble, David would have even scolded Violet and insisted she come to meet him from now on instead of making him walk around lost for so long. It wasn't exactly part of his job to navigate the mazes, but Theodore would still get upset with him since it is considered perfectly normal for dungeon masters to hide away deep inside the dungeons and not go to greet people.

Shaking his head, David cleared his throat before saying

"I brought you some morel mushrooms, red pine mushrooms, chanterelle mushrooms, a puffball mushroom, some honey mushrooms, Alaska violets, fairy slipper flowers, baldhip flowers, blue-eyed mary flowers, starflowers, twin flowers, an orange, an apricot, a peach, and some apples. I left them all at the entrance, but I did make sure to bring you the tribute you asked for. 

I'm not sure what you will need next, but I went to a merchant who was selling flowers and mushrooms from a nearby dungeon with a forest setting as well as a fruit vendor for some fruits. I tried to get you things that I haven't seen much of, but I can't guarantee all of it will be new to you."

 Violet smiled, delighted, as she replied

"Thank you! I appreciate you going so far out of your way to help me. I'll probably end up with a forest-themed floor sooner or later, so I'm sure they'll be useful then. I don't want to use every plant type I obtain on the first-floor, anyway. It's good to save some things for later."

David didn't have much to say on the topic of dungeon building. He didn't know much about how it worked, nor did he want to get in trouble for pressuring a dungeon master to build in a specific way. While polite chit-chat would likely be tolerated by most adventurers, David was already on thin ice, so he couldn't be too careful.

Since Alice wasn't here and David was too exhausted to do most of the other challenges, he decided to just attempt the flower hunt challenge for a short while. They walked to the room in near silence and then Violet went to begin sword training. Meanwhile, David quickly gathered a variety of flowers and got to work on testing different combinations on the altars. He had never heard of flowers having any sort of meaning behind them, so he had no clue what the answer could actually be. As such, all David could do was to randomly try different combinations until something worked.

Luckily, this challenge allowed you to attempt it until you got the answer right. However, the sheer number of flowers in the room and the fact that he had to place the right flowers on four different altars in the correct order made the challenge quite difficult. The chances of guessing the correct answer the first time through sheer luck were abysmal. David wasn't very good at math, so he couldn't say how many different combinations there were, but he did know one good way to keep track of things. 

He had bought a wax writing tablet in town while he was purchasing Violet's tributes. It was a bit expensive for the initial purchase, but it would be cheaper in the future since he would only have to pay for new wax to refill it as necessary since the board could easily be smoothed over and reused. Paper was a bit more expensive to purchase since it often had to be made through an arduous process by craftsmen and wasn't common to find in dungeons.

Anything that was super common as a reward in dungeons and could be farmed and sold en masse would quickly lose its value. Similarly, rewards that were harder to earn in dungeons, or [Items] that had to be made by craftsmen, would be worth significantly more. That was a big part of the reason why David didn't feel like complaining about how difficult most of Violet's challenges were. It made the few rewards he did manage to earn that much more valuable.

After reaching a point where he felt like he was going to lose his mind with boredom, David decided to take a break. He hadn't managed to complete the flower hunt challenge, but, at least, he had managed to eliminate some of the potential options. Since he had purchased a multi-sectional wax board, he had plenty of room to record things. Sooner or later, he was bound to find the answer through the process of elimination and then it would be easy to complete the challenge.

All dungeon challenges could only be completed once per day, but this challenge would be easy once he knew the answer to the riddles. He could just spend a few moments completing it each day and then move on to something else. David could likely even sell some of the information on how to complete the challenge to other adventurers or the adventurer's guild that he'd be working at in a few seasons.