Chapter [ERROR]

Red Sands Desert, Principality of Rebirth.

Dungeon Factory, Workshop.

"What....is that?"

Alexandra smiled as she turned around, and brought up the carved pumpkin.

"It's a pumpkin! For halloween!"

Emilia opened her mouth, then closed it.

"O....kaaayyyy? And what are you going to do with it? For that matter, where did you get it?"

"Oh a lot of things. And one of the adventurers was carrying one around, don't ask me why. His party got wiped, and ta-da!"

"....Right. What sorts of things? I can understand the christmas celebration, but we can hardly have CQ go around the dungeon trick and treati..." Something in Alexandra's eyes made Emilia freeze in place. "No. No no no you did not!"

"She wanted to have some fun!"

"You sent CQ to go around trick and treating adventurers?!?"

"Yeah! I mean, I sent her with an escort. A large escort. And hey, it's good fun, either they pay up in treats, or they have to fight her and her guards!"

"Right. And on what floor did you send her?"

Alexandra winced.

"The first one, since most groups don't get to the second one, not on a regular basis anyway." The Earth born shrugged. "I know, some noobs will get stomped, but hey, I did put up a warning sign, and a new quest!"

Emilia rose an eyebrow, and Alexandra snapped her fingers, causing a handful of screens in the workshop to light up. The vampire advisor looked up, and her eyebrow rose higher as she saw what the screens were showing.

One was a sign, a good old wooden spike and plank sign with the following written on it:

Beware, adventurers!

For the Crimson Queen's hunger has been awakened,

Satisfy her with sugary offerings, or suffer the consequences!

A cluster of adventurers were currently reading it.

The next one showed the entrance hall, where the quest screen was currently empty, save for a warning and a quest:

WARNING: The Crimson Queen is loose on the 1st floor. Bring her offerings of sweets or fight her to the death!

New Quest (Repeatable): A group of Jack o' Lanterns have taken over some of the dungeon's defenders. Slay them, and be rewarded! Current locations: 1st floor, 8th room ; 1st floor, 16th room ; 2nd floor, roaming the ruins; 2nd floor, destroyed temple; 2nd floor, water temple entrance hall.

This panel wasn't being read by anyone, but that was mostly because adventurers were still only allowed one group per hour, although Alexandra had made some noises about raising that once they worked out the kinks of the logistics system, and, well, finish rebuilding their golem stocks. Since she hadn't actually bothered to recover her destroyed golems after the battle, and simply told the adventurers to take them -she'd said it would be more trouble than it would be worth to reclaim them, although Emilia had a sneaking suspicion the Earth-born had a second motive about this-, they'd had to rebuild their numbers while simultaneously fixing the damage to the entrance and sustain the adventuring delves.

"Okay...but still, aren't you afraid that CQ, will, you know...."

"Get killed?" Alexandra sighed, and shrugged. "I don't know. I mean, I know she'll be fine if she 'dies'. She doesn't even seem to care about just being brought back either, she just treats it as being asleep it seems. Besides, she seems to be having a ton of fun, with the preparation and all."

"The preparation?"

"Oh, right. Here." Alexandra gestured at a corner of the workshop, and Emilia stepped around one of the shelves packed with prototypes to get a good look....and gasped. "What....happened?"

It looked like someone had let loose a tornado inside of a pumpkin field. And then tossed a bunch of fireballs and blades in the same tornado for good measure. Gods, she'd seen the blade swarm spell, notorious for it's....messiness, leave a cleaner aftermath than this!

Alexandra chuckled as she twirled a knife in her hands.

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"I gave CQ a bunch of knives and a pile of pumpkins. Then told her that if she wanted to, she could carve them however she wanted for her guards to wear. And, well, she got some of them in here to teach them how to carve the pumpkins themselves." The Earth-born shook her head. "They, ah, aren't exactly dextrous to begin with, let alone wearing full plate armor. They made something of a mess. And that's without counting CQ's...enthusiastic contributions as well."

"I....see. How much damage?"

"Had to replace 3 of the palace guards, and some of the armor pieces off of the Royal Guardians. The prototype cases held up." Unsurprising, given that they were basically a box of armor plating on a shelf. Alexandra trusted her prototypes to not explode at an inopportune moment, or not create a chain reaction, about as far as she could throw the entire mesa. "Had to replace a few tools and knives, but that was it. The tables held up, but, you know, they're giant slabs of stone."

"Right, fair enough. So....what now?"

"Now." Alexandra patted her carved pumpkin. "I'm going to carve some more of those. I've pulled out a bunch of prototypes, and I'm planning to get them some field testing with the jack o' lantern golems."

"That's...smart. And sneaky."

"Yes, especially as I'm expecting half of them to explode. Come on, I can duplicate them, but I want to make some unique faces for each, and, well...you're better at designing patterns or that kind of stuff than I am."

Emilia hesitated. Carving pumpkins was messy at the best of times, and Alexandra wasn't exactly the person not to put her hands in the grease, so to speak. But....it was always hard to get her dungeon core interested in anything resembling esthetics. It was an opening she had to take.

Besides, she hadn't had carved a pumpkin in forever!

*****

"There you are!"

CQ lifted her head from her bag of treats, and looked at the strange group that had just entered the room. There was four of them, the one in front -and who had spoken - in shiny armor, with a man in robes wielding a staff by his side. Behind them was another man wielding a grimoire like mom, and a lady with a bow.

So...fighter, mage, sorcerer, ranger, if she remembered mommy's lessons right.

"Yes?" She said as she rose, closing her bag of sweets. "Trick or Treat ? Have you come to pay me tribute?" She said in her best haughty tone.

"No! We have come to stop your tyranny, and your sugary tributes! You have pumped our kin for too long for their riches! Ah, get it? Pumped, kin?"

CQ tilted her head as the mage facepalmed and the sorcerer whacked the armored fighter behind the head. She wasn't that familiar with the things her mothers called 'puns', but she did know enough to know this was a bad one....and barely qualified to begin with.

"So, you have come to challenge me?"

"Yes! I am Runald Steinhaus, paladin and silver ranked adventurer! Know the name of the one who will end your pun-y reign of terror!"

This time the paladin's companions audibly groaned, and CQ winced. Hadn't mom said that there was a paladin that annoyed her? One that made constant puns? If he was that one....Well, she was sure mom wouldn't mind if she bent the rules a little. She was supposed to let them have the first strike after all, to prevent 'PKing', whatever that meant.

"Very well, then you have chosen...trick."

Then she stepped, and she was no longer there. She looked straight into the sorcerer's startled eyes, and slammed her sword to the hilt inside of his stomach, before taking it out and-

Usually most adventurers were too stunned by her attacks to put up much resistance when she pulled that trick for the first time. These ones were obviously different however. The sorcerer's bracelet suddenly glowed, and CQ flew through the room as a wave of force slammed into her like the fist of an angry god. She bounced on the ceiling, her crimson shield flashing around her, before slamming into the ground.

She leapt back onto her feet, and was already dodging by pure reflex. And those reflexes served her well, as an arrow passed through where her head should have been. She raised her hand, palm directed at the ranger, and cast power beam.

The human lady yelled out in agony as the beam of pure energy slammed into her, but the paladin, who had been engaged with 3 of her royal guardians at once, held out his hand, and shouted. His shield glowed, and a phantom of it materialized between CQ and the ranger, absorbing the beam, before shattering into a thousand pieces, which quickly dissolved into motes of light.

CQ frowned. She knew what a mana construct looked like -after all, she was one-, but this one was...odd. Not pure, like her, more like a...copy. Just a pale imitation of the shield it had been bound to.

She didn't even bother to look at the mage as he pointed his staff at her, and simply stepped out of the way, teleporting in just the right place to stab in the back of the paladin's knee.

The paladin roared in agony, but took the hit without going down, and then swiftly decapitated one of her royal guardians, before whirling around, using his shield to block a series of attack by the last two guardians as he took a swipe at CQ.

The boss simply took the hit, letting her shield take most of the damage for her....and then let go of her sword as she went under the paladin's guard, grabbed a cylinder from her belt...and pressed it against the paladin's chest. She met his eyes, smiled sweetly....and poured power into the activation rune a split second before stepping away.

The room shook as the betty warhead detonated, and the paladin flew straight into her golem's lines, taking out the two royal guardians he had been fighting by sheer virtue of hitting them at speeds arrows were supposed to fly, not people. He ended his course in her Royal Marksmen, killing 3 outright and scattering a handful of others, and CQ frowned as he started to rise again.

Then she felt herself rise into the air, and she flailed in panic as she looked for the source of the spell.

She found it rather quickly. The mage was pointing his staff at her, and made a wide motion with it, and CQ felt herself accelerating through the air. She hit her last royal guardian full force, reducing the golem to scrap as she slammed through him and then into a palace guard, staggering him long enough for the sorcerer, who was trying to hold it at bay as he downed a healing potion, to unleash a lightning bolt and kill it, singing CQ in the process.

The boss looked up, her eyes dark. Combat was fair game, killing her was fair game, but using her as a mere projectile? That wouldn't do. That wouldn't do at all. The mage smiled, picked her up again with his magic, ignoring the crossbow bolts that were pinging off his magical shield, threw her...and she stepped.

She'd lined herself up for a punch, having forgotten to retrieve her sword for a shot at killing the paladin. She'd expected to just hit the mage hard enough for him to lose concentration and lower his ward, and allow her golems to turn him into a pin cushion.

Instead she discovered that she somehow conserved her momentum...and punched the mage at a speed better suited for a bullet.

Her first crashed into the ward of protection surrounding the mage, causing it to shatter in a flash of light, and break CQ's fingers....but her first continued on it's way. First onto the mage's thorax....then through it.

CQ shook her head as they hit the wall, getting back up, and then stopping as her arm refused to follow. She looked down, and winced. The mage was....very, very dead. She didn't know what had killed him, but the impact against the wall had surely broken his neck given the awkward angle his head had, and...well, her arm was currently stuck through his ribcage, and she could see her hand on the other side. She put her foot on his body, and ripped out of her hand with a sickening squelch, shaking it to get the worst of the fragments of spine and goefied organs off of it.

Then she turned around to survey the battlefield. The ranger had gotten back up from the power beam...Right on time for her Royal Marksmen to choose her as a target. She'd probably dodged a fair bit of the bolts, but...well, she clearly hadn't dodged enough of them, her lifeless eyes contemplating the ceiling as half a dozen bolts stuck out from her chest and head.

The sorcerer was still up, but he was backed up against a wall by a trio of her palace guards, and as she watched, he was cut to pieces, apparently having run out of magic tricks. Then she turned to the paladin...just in time to see an armored fist fill her vision, and fly through the room, again.

I need something to tie myself down to the floor. I'm tired of being thrown around! She thought to herself as she jumped back to her feet.

The paladin...was missing his helmet, and several pieces of his armor. In fact, he looked exactly like....he'd been on the wrong end of a betty mine. Or several, actually. Behind him were the remains of her Royal Archmages and Royal Marksmen, reduced to pieces as they finished off the ranger, as well as the palace guards that should have protected them.

She looked up at the paladin's bleeding face. He looked young, despite his raven black beard and mustache, streaked with his own blood.

"You....you..." He sputtered, before coughing. His armor had taken the brunt of the punishment from the betty, but he still seemed to have suffered some internal wounds.

"It looks like your pun-y adventure is at an end paladin."

The paladin froze, and chuckled.

"Good one, but that won't-"

He didn't even see the javelins thrown by the palace guards behind him coming.

CQ contemplated his body for a few seconds, before shaking her head as she looked around the room.

"I'm going to need some new guards. And more pumpkins."