The years continued to pass and Veronica’s mental state continued to be unstable. She had already managed to process much of the trauma and anger she had developed in her initial years in this new world, much less any issues she had in her old world. While some people were strong believers that the only way to move on from and process trauma was to get a professional involved, that wasn’t entirely true. Many problems could immediately be reduced just by removing oneself from the situation. Then you just had to sort out your feelings on the matter and identify any unhealthy habits you may have picked up while trying to cope with the situation. The later half of that wasn’t something that Veronica could particularly help herself with, but she wasn’t exactly eager to change it either.
As for the first half, she had nothing but time to think and process her feelings. She didn’t have to worry about having nightmares because sleep had been denied to her until the system had been returned to her. Then, now, sleep was just like sinking into a void as there was never anything to dream about and there wasn’t exactly the benefit of recovering energy from it either. It was simply a way to pass the time. So, all she had to do was come to a conclusion about her own feelings and what she wanted to do about it in the future.
Considering it has now been a few decades since she had last regained access to the system, it was likely that everyone she had known in this world was either dead or had long moved on with their lives. Elves had long lifespans, but there was no way Bluelight Cove City was still standing and adventurers had better things to do than to stick around in a town without an active dungeon. Veronica would have preferred to have overcome the obstacle that Bo represented, but she would have to settle for never having to see him again. As for anyone else, she had been working hard to train every day and the dungeon had been making her stronger with every floor she unlocked. She was now much more confident that she could defend herself and that she wouldn’t be willing to give in so easily next time. Besides, it wasn’t like giving up was an option. The dungeon core had made that more than clear.
Waving her hand, Veronica accepted the 10,000 DP cost to unlock the sixth floor, bracing herself for the tremors she knew were coming. Now that she was stronger, they didn’t bother her nearly as much as they once had. She knew it was likely that she was merely as strong as a low-ranking adventurer now, but she was hopeful that one day she’d even be able to remain conscious during the strengthening process she underwent each time she unlocked a new floor. After all, twenty five floors was a lot of growth to undergo and what she couldn’t gain from that, she could make up for by learning what she could about using the weapons available in this world.
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Please select a new skill:
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Skill Name:
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Info:
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Tranquil Retreat
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This crowd-control skill turns the tavern side of the dungeon into a non-combat area with a non-stressful, relaxing environment. Non-dungeon entities who violate the non-combat rule will be banned from the premises permanently.
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Surveillance
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Allows the Dungeon Master to view all areas of the dungeon as if they were looking through a window into the room. Rooms that have been rented out for private use are off-limits to maintain guests'' privacy.
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Forecasting
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System prompts will be delivered to the Dungeon Master at set intervals displaying relevant information about events outside of the dungeon so that they can plan ahead for the resulting effect on the tavern''s traffic.
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Logistics
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Adds a new menu to the [Status Menu] screen that can be used to monitor supply levels, manage staff, and change prices remotely.
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She had already decided to get the [Surveillance] skill this time, but she could already see which skill she should get next. Now that she was feeling more clear headed, she wanted to focus more on the future and what would be the best move from a business standpoint rather than just focusing on defending the dungeon without much thought to anything else. With that in mind, she needed to prepare for when the dungeon had high levels of traffic and ensure the entire tower’s worth of taverns and inn rooms could run smoothly. [Surveillance] would be good for security as well as ensure she could better protect herself, but [Logistics] was an essential skill as well. She’d have to get it next time.
Veronica quickly pulled up the [Status Menu] to look at her new skill.
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Dungeon Status:
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Current Mana 63 / 300
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Current DP: 290,206
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Current Floors: 6
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Current Rooms: 125 (25+25+25+25+25+0) | 144 (41+28+23+28+24+0)
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Tavern
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Surveillance
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Monsters
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Critters
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Construction
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Research
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Missions
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She had only had a mana cap of 250 DP until she unlocked the sixth floor, but she had already received the day’s mana regen, which was always 25% of the total, so she had 63 MP available. It would be 75 MP now that she had a new mana cap of 300 MP. That would make renovating the dungeon much faster than it had been when she first regained the system, but it still wasn’t as good as it could be.
Opening the new skill, she saw that everything was further divided into floors, which was then divided into dungeon versus tavern and then a list of the rooms she had. Choosing the first floor reception area, she tried it out. It displayed on the system menu much like it would if she was watching something on a tablet, if said tablet could float in the air and only be viewed by its user. She switched to a few other rooms as well and frowned. The skill would likely come in handy in the future, but right now all it did was remind her how much her dungeon was still lacking.
Veronica was planning to start coming up with a long-term plan for how to build the dungeon. She already had maps drawn up to base the next few floors on, but they were based on her old philosophy where she felt the need to screw the adventurers over as much as possible. That wasn’t actually good for business, so she needed to start over from scratch and figure out what would be best for encouraging business and meeting her guests’ needs. However, it was likely that would take a few years since she had to base it all off of philosophy and her experiences in her old world. In the meantime, she’d have to build this floor, and likely the next as well, just so she could prepare in case the dungeon became active again.
It was really unfortunate as it would be difficult to renovate everything after the fact, but it was even worse to let the time and mana go to waste by not using it. She had, of course, been a bit wasteful with it already by creating food and other luxuries for herself, but she had been sparing about it and the cost for the ingredients to make a single meal wasn’t actually that much, nor was the cost for some paper.
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Please select a new floor theme:
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Aurora Glade
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Flooded Caverns
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Ancient Graveyard
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The last floor, she had used the new mimic [Monsters], so this floor was already slated to be for the kuo-toa. There were two options that could potentially involve water, but the aurora glade wasn’t a guarantee of that the way the flooded caverns were and she really didn’t feel like having to manually add water to every room. Besides, at least caves were likely to be condoned off into separate rooms.
After undergoing the strengthening process, Veronica immediately got started on setting up the floor. It still required months of time to build everything, but that wasn’t exactly anything new. The dungeon side was in fact dark caves with areas where the land was lower and bodies of water were present. Most of it wasn’t quite deep enough for Veronica to swim under the water, but rather it would come up to her ankles, knees, or even her waist. Luckily, it seemed to be enough to meet the requirements for her new fishmen [Monsters], so she was able to easily set up the rooms on this floor just as she had on the others.
As she quite liked the setup for the dungeon, this floor mirrored the layout of the second and fourth floors. The boss room was on one end and there were three challenge rooms periodically placed throughout the floor. All of the [Monster] fields were left empty with nothing but the basic stone and water in the room. While it would be good to add resources and [Critters] to the room, sooner or later, it wasn’t exactly something Veronica was in a rush to invest in. That could wait until the dungeon was active again and she had the mana to invest in such things. All she cared about was the tavern side and having a functional dungeon to provide what little protection it could. She was hardly going to depend on it, much preferring to depend on herself in all things.
The only room size that needed to be researched this time around was an 11–Units by 19-Units rectangular room, which cost her 60 DP. All of the inn rooms were 18-Units by 18-Units square single rooms. One side of the inn had rooms for a laundromat, gym, training room, spa, public bathrooms, a cleaning closet, and the reception. Meanwhile, the tavern and kitchen were placed towards the middle and were side by side at a slightly smaller size than the inn rooms themselves were. Honestly, it was a bit silly to have two public bathrooms only to have only two tables and a handful of barstools for seating in the tavern. Even if every inn room had its own kitchen, it just wasn’t a very good setup. However, none of that really mattered. Right now she was just getting a feel for things and figuring out what she liked and disliked, she’d have to redo most of the floors when she made up her mind anyway. Luckily that was even an option, it would be a shame if she had to live with all of her mistakes for all of eternity and couldn’t experiment like this.
For the new furniture, Violet went with Mediterranean inspired pieces. Lots of arabesque designs that used flowers, foliage, and intricate patterns alongside a mostly orange and white color scheme. An orange sectional sofa, white armchair, a coffee table, a wardrobe, an end table, a rug, a quilt, orange silk sheets, potted rosemary, and a painting of Greek food ran her 330 DP in research costs. The designs were quite pretty and the rosemary smelled nice. At least the furniture would be reusable when she renovated. She could easily move all the furniture to one room, remove the rooms she didn’t want, add the rooms she did, and then move the furniture into their new spots before creating new furniture to fill in the gaps. It would certainly save her on mana costs.