[System Message - Limited Time Event: Halloween!]
[Adventure crystals have appeared in guild halls across the world! As long as you have completed at least one quest, you can use a crystal once to an instanced dungeon. Crystals will be available during the entire month of October, with entry available until midnight UTC October 31. Happy Halloween!]
[You will not be able to take equipment inside, or bring anything you find outside the dungeon. Based on your performance you’ll receive a reward, with a chance of getting rare skills and items. You may enter the dungeon once - either as an individual or a party. All crystals are equivalent. The dungeon will end upon the death of any party member or defeat of the boss. NPC’s may also enter; death inside the crystal will be reversed. Time inside the instanced dungeon will be 10x that of Dungeon Quest. Contact the nearest adventurer’s guild for more information.]
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Koji:
Koji: (What… huh? Adventure crystals have appeared… This is awesome! I have to tell Gabe about this! Wait… he has to work today… maybe I'll check it out and let him know about it. He’s been wanting to go to a dungeon, but I know he doesn't want to kill anything. This is like literally the best option there is for that! That said, should I take my apprentice with me? It looks like you can only enter once… but it would be a perfect opportunity to train… but as soon as she gets hurt it’ll be over! Aaaagh! I want the reward but I want the training opportunity too! How else is she going to fight something without any real danger? Ugh.)
[Quest - Train a Magician! (Part 4)]
[Carmen has chosen you to be her mentor! Train her to be a magician. She has learned about elemental mana forms, magic formation, and magic history. The next step is showing by example! She needs to observe an offensive spell used to attack, a defensive spell to defend, or a support spell to buff in a real combat situation, at least 500 times.]
Koji: “You have got to be kidding me. This little girl better grow up to be an all-powerful archmage with all the stuff this system is making me do… and it has to be *in a real combat situation* which means that my decision has been made for me.”
I turn to Carmen.
Koji: “You ready to go on an adventure, kid?” (Also. There isn't even a reward for this quest. Which means I'm just doing this out of the goodness of my heart right? Man.)
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Kai:
[Entering Adventure Crystal: Halloween]
We appear in an expansive space. It feels almost as if we're outside - stars shine and a full moon hangs high in the night sky. There’s enough light to see, but not clearly. To the left and right are rows of houses, covered with orange lights, and surrounded by figures of demons and spiders and witches and pumpkins. Between the houses is a road - which is where we’ve appeared. I turn and look behind me, and see a smooth stone wall stretching upwards towards the sky - the edge of the dungeon.
Gladys: “This place feels odd. We just have to defeat the monsters and kill the dungeon boss, right? Stay on your guard, and let's get moving!”
She turns right and walks to the house, holding a ball of light in her hand. She walks around the house and notices two small round orange shapes hanging in a tree - they’re buckets of sorts, in the shape of a large orange squash with a black face painted on the outside.
Gladys hands me one of the buckets.
Gladys: “We don’t have any weapons yet. These will have to do for now even though they’re flimsy. Hopefully we’ll find something better soon.”
Inside each of the buckets are two small objects wrapped in paper. I reach down and touch them and a screen appears.
[Small candy]
Gladys is looking at the candy with a puzzled expression.
Gladys: “The clerk at the guild said that every adventure crystal is different, and that our score is based on defeating monsters, gathering treasure, speed, defeating the final boss, and some type of hidden clear condition. I think that this candy might be a kind of treasure, so let's defeat the monsters, take their candy, and destroy this thing!”
Kai: “Whatever you say Gladys. This place is weird, but it doesn't feel dangerous.”
Gladys: “An even better reason to be on your guard!”
We finish circling the house, and find a few more pieces of candy. We reach the front door again, and after checking the area, Gladys carefully opens it using a spell. Just inside the door is a witch, who cackles loudly and begins chanting a spell as soon as the door opens. She’s no match for Gladys tho, who is able to turn her to dust in moments. The witch drops a black pointy hat and a few pieces of candy.
Gladys picks up the hat and puts it on.
Gladys: “How does it look on me?”
Kai: “Um… like a black pointy hat?”
Gladys: “Gosh Kai. You are so clueless. And that's one reason why I love you so much. The ‘house’ is actually empty - there is just this tiny room with nothing inside. No treasure chest here. Let's keep going.”
The street, which seemed at first to be a straight shot, actually has multiple branches and over 100 houses.
Where the first few houses seem simple - a piece of candy hidden in the backyard and a witch or a skeleton inside the front door - very soon there are huge angry spiders dropping from overhanging arches, undead creatures appearing from gravestones, ghosts flitting about near lampposts, and inside every house some type of demonic presence that drops a piece of candy and rarely something else.
At the end of each branching street is a much larger house - inside each of these there is a large room filled with dozens of demons, skeletons, and witches, and after defeating all of them we gain access to a treasure chest filled with… yet again, more candy. Some houses have small immovable buckets with a few pieces of candy in front of them, and the space inside the door is empty, as if someone had already defeated the monster and left the candy in the bucket.
Gladys is a machine. She waits for nothing and has developed a method that is fastest to destroy everything in her path. The ghosts and undead that appear from graves are purified with flames in an instant. Spiders get hit with bolts of lightning. Doors open as we approach and the occupants inside are hit with multiple spells sometimes even before I get a chance to even see what they were. And when it comes to the groups of demons… We open the door to the first large house and the entire group begins to cast spells, which all target me. Everything is rebuffed by a spell shield before Gladys pushes me out the door and closes it behind her. Her face is calm and silent. As we walk away, the entire building - walls and all - goes up in orange, black, and white flames. When the flames die down a couple houses later, she jogs back to pick up the candy which somehow survives even when there was nothing else left. Every other time we see a large house at the end of a road, she calls down a massive pillar of fire and lets everything burn a few houses before we would even get there. By the time we arrive, we only have to sift through ashes to find the candy. Everything else is gone.
Otherwise, she quickly opens chests, finds hidden secrets, and tosses everything to me.
It’s been many hours since we first entered the adventure crystal. I have an orange bucket in each hand, full to the brim with paper-wrapped sweets.
We approach the final house, at the end of the central street. This house is many times larger than the rest, and it disappears into the dungeon wall behind it. It has a huge sign above it that says “Haunted Mansion” and we can hear screams and wails coming from inside.
Gladys: “The boss will be inside this house somewhere. Stay close.”
---
Koji:
After paying 5 copper to register Carmen as an adventurer (Why don't they ask for identification? Do they not care about child trafficking in this game? Or maybe they already knew Carmen… I don't know), we head into the adventure crystal together.
[Entering Adventure Crystal: Halloween]
After a brief fade, we’re on a street in a small subdivision, with normal-looking houses on either side. It looks like a typical Halloween in the suburbs. The sight is a bit jarring, actually. Something like this is anything but typical for Dungeon Quest.
Koji: (Where do they get ideas like this from? This could be a real street for all I know - maybe the AI pulled data from street photography? There are even street numbers on the houses, cars in the driveways, and names on the mailboxes… what is this?)
We approach the first house on the left. The front yard has trees full of spider webs and typical Halloween decorations, including a row of jack-o-lanterns on the front porch.
Koji: (This still feels so surreal. Like I'm in the real world, and hordes of little kids are going to be running up behind me any moment.)
As we approach the front door, a spider drops from a nearby tree. Carmen screams, and the spider spits out a string of web in her direction.
Oh no you don't!
I may only know a basic spark spell, but even without a wand I can shoot it off instantly. Three spells go out in rapid succession, and the spider reels back from the hits.
Somehow I'm still calm. I turn to Carmen.
Koji: “The main reason we came here was for the next part of your training. You’ve learned about mana and spell formation and history; now it’s time to actually observe combat magic. I only know one spell - *magic spark* - but after an extreme amount of practice I can cast it really fast. While it looks simple, it's actually pretty versatile. For example, I just cast it three times quickly, which increases the chance of causing monsters to be stunned. The stun will wear off soon, so stay close to me, watch, and learn.”
And thus begins the Halloween sparkfest.
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Kai:
Gladys ends up burning down the Haunted Mansion instead of going inside the front door. The first pillar of fire is met with resistance since the building is somehow resistant to damage. But after summoning an electrical storm, explosive gases, drilling holes with earthen spikes and drenching / filling the entire building with a tidal wave of flammable fluid, it only takes a handful of fire pillars before all that is left is char and candy. Even the boss is nowhere to be seen. We pick up everything that isn't burned and touch the glowing orange crystal at the edge of the map.
[Adventure Crystal: Halloween - Complete!]
[Calculating score]
Mobs defeated: 100%
Treasure found: 45%
Damage taken: 0
Destruction grade: SSS
Time Spent: 5:12:47
Dungeon boss: Cleared
Party size: 2
[Calculating reward]
Reward:
1 x Candy Corn Earrings
1 x Bracelet of Equanimity