Museum Core Chapter 88: Halloween

Jaclyn glanced up at the lettering that now loped across the top of the doors. Knowing that Daedalus was doing something special for Halloween made her slightly less apprehensive, but the warning nevertheless put her hackles up.

That is not dead which can eternal lie, and with strange eons, even death may die.

The quote was familiar, or at least she was certain that she’d heard it before somewhere, but it was still spooky, something that was made all the worse by the fact that she knew that undead were real, and that some of the things that existed out there in the wider multiverse were so dangerous that they might as well have been Outer Gods or the Big Bad’s of a comic book crossover event.

And speaking of big bads, she was feeling like she was walking into the lair of some dark lord, because the museum really had been done up in all sorts of ways. The exterior walls were still the same as they had been yesterday, beige-brown and looking like they could have been centuries old, but that was just about the only thing that had stayed the same.

Hundreds of pumpkins covered the outside, all clearly having been carved from an identical base fruit but there were dozens of carving variations, each one beyond intricate beyond what she’d ever seen, lit from the inside by some incredibly powerful light source she could not identify, allowing all the hundreds of tiny details in the carvings to become starkly visible.

The visages of lethal snarling tigers, the fang-filled skulls of monkeys, beautiful landscape pictures, and geometric designs that could either be abstract art or mind-warping runes, she was only certain that it was the former due to her knowledge of Daedalus’ character.

Skeletons, animal skins and cobwebs hung from just about every place something like that could be hung from, and a brief glance inside the entrance hall showed that the water was now dyed crimson, the color of freshly spilled blood, opaque but illuminated from unseen lights set into the floor, something clearly only added to throw the shadows within into stark relief.

Jaclyn shivered. Someone had clearly had a whole lot of fun decorating the place, perhaps a little too much. Because if this had been the before times, Jaclyn would likely have taken one look at the whole affair and not gone in without several precincts’ worth of reinforcements.

But it was also freezing out here. Not only was she up here at the crack of sparrow’s fart, the sun wasn’t even up yet, but the weather service had, for once, managed to make a long term prediction that was right on the money. Having that transformation zone blocking the Gulf Stream had resulted in the temperature getting a bit … nippy. Yes, the only thing

But no matter what happened in there, it couldn’t be worse than the last couple of weeks of dealing with reporters.

They’d been everywhere.

Several had even ambushed her outside Eve’s school, but she’d immediately responded to that by gathering their cards, then forwarding them to the PR department and putting them on the BPA’s blacklist for interviews. And whoever they worked for, whenever possible, which basically meant anyone who didn’t work for a major, major, network.

Of course, to make the threat of blacklisting really stick, some actual interviews had to be given. Oh, joy of joys …

Obviously, Jaclyn wasn’t shy about talking in public, she was a police officer. Talking to random strangers was a fundamental part of the job, especially strangers who were usually predisposed to dislike you, actively hated you, or were constantly waiting for an excuse to jump down your throat.

But that wasn’t the same as giving interviews.

Besides, there were few people who tested her patience as badly as some of those reporters had. Some wiseass had taken one look at her after the fight with the snake, covered in pixelated red splotches everywhere except her head and one arm, and nicknamed her “Jaclyn the Ripper,” as in, a riff on a certain (in)famous serial killer.

If she ever got her hands on him … well, she wouldn’t do anything, being an ass sadly didn’t make someone an outlaw beyond the protection of the legal system that anyone could do anything to, not to mention that reporters enjoyed an extra layer of protection due to freedom of speech issues … but short of actual pedophiles and murderers, that particular reporter was at the top of Jaclyn’s “people I’d like five minutes alone in a dark room with.”

Yet even so, while the whole affair had bubbled up and come close to boiling over, it had, in fact, stopped just barely short of exploding.

There’d been outrage, there’d been pearl clutching, there’d been petitions to stop all delving … but nothing had ever gained enough momentum to become a true problem for anyone.

So in the end, all the mess had achieved was leaving Jaclyn with a burning desire to face a problem she could “solve” with her fists and not make things ten thousand times worse in the process.

As she paced in front of the door, waiting for the others, she examined the two racks that had replaced the noticeboard since yesterday, each holding thirty stereotypical pointed wooden stakes, like those you’d see Van Helsing going after a vampire with.

Grabbing one, she examined the system screen that popped up.

Equalizing Stake (E-Rank, uncommon)

A stake of rowan wood, enchanted to allow even those who have not yet reached D-Rank to participate in the Halloween event. All event monsters will reduce the speed and force of their attacks against the holder of a stake to that of an early-rank, and any animating spirits will dissipate upon destruction of their mortal shell, rather than needing to be destroyed separately.

Energy draw: middling (capacitor for 3 hours of use)

Restrictions: can only be used on October 31st, will disintegrate at 12 am, can only be used by an E-Ranker

And there, in a second shelf, sat the F-Rank version of the stake, with a description that was identical in all but two respects: any place mention of “E-Rank” had been replaced by an “F” and the energy draw had jumped to high while the capacitor would only last for two hours instead of three. Which did make sense, despite being meant to make things fair, the whole affair would obviously still require energy to work, and said energy would have to come from somewhere.

An interesting idea, but it was also informative. Obviously, it had been designed to let even more people participate, as though Daedalus were suddenly borderline desperate to have more delvers.

Normally, this might have been concerning, indicating that something was wrong, but this event had been planned a long time, and there was no reason to expect that the changes were anything other than him wanting to make the most of this once-a-year opportunity, though it was a little surprising how focussed an inhuman dungeon core was on the holiday calendar.

Any other Halloween, Jaclyn would have been out there with Eve, wearing her old uniform with enough gear and insignia removed that she wouldn’t be mistaken for an actual patrol officer presently on duty.

But instead, Robert was walking their daughter through Manchester, and she was here, waiting on a whole lot of other people to arrive before she could go charging in.

… the Christmas event, should it exist, better not be during the actual holidays!

Also, there was the fact that she had to wait and go in with a group for safety because it was dangerous and not covered by the training contract, and that wasn’t something she could just ignore.

Well, actually, she could, being the boss and all, but if she were the kind of person who’d use her role to pull crazy, reckless nonsense, she wouldn’t have gotten it.

Or at least that was how it was supposed to work; the less said about how that played out in the real world, the better.

However, Jaclyn was someone who saved the crazy, reckless stunts for occasions that demanded such, or mad allowances that ensured the results of failure were less … final.

She could handle getting her ass handed to her by boss monsters under training protocls a dozen times in a row, and she’d probably enjoy herself as long as the challenge was at least possible. But getting herself killed over nothing was decidedly not happening.

So she waited there, pacing in front of the entrance hall. Flying here had been fun, but it had also left everyone else quite far behind. And it would have been unthinkable to abandon everyone under normal circumstances, but Henderson, Granger, Gula, and Harjaz were along for the ride, as well as the European group and its four wielders of the jungle’s system, who could spot just about anything, no matter how hard it tried to hide.

Jaclyn looked around, glancing inside, trying to spy something through the darkened windows, and then turned back towards the jungle.

Something shrieked. It was something halfway between a cry of pain and an exclamation of pure terror, at a volume that would likely damage a normal human’s ears permanently.

She whirled, fists up, phantom badger paws manifested, only to come face to face with … a parrot. A fucking parrot. She hadn’t even heard it approach.

“Cool, right?” Daedalus commented using an unseen avatar. “I have a few grammophones, but the sound quality was shit, so I decided to find something that could already mimic sounds, make it better, and give it protection against all detection except the visual.”

As if to demonstrate, the parrot made a sound like an old door creaking open … a painfully familiar sound, remembered from more movies and TV shows and audio dramas and a whole bunch of other places than she cared to list …

“You got your hands on a library of stock sounds, probably horror movies in part- …” Jaclyn trailed off as she came to another realization. “Oh, I am going to kill Granger.”

“Even if you were right, don’t you think that’s a little bit of an overreaction?” Daedalus commented dryly, still unseen.

“Tell me to my face that it wasn’t him,” Jaclyn challenged with a wry grin. That young man was responsible for selling the overwhelming majority of “atmospheric” gear to the dungeon, there was no reason to suspect that he wasn’t responsible for this particular issue.

In lieu of an answer, the parrot turned around and flew up into the rafters, bone-white feathers gleaming sinisterly in the darkness of the room for a long moment before it vanished into the gloom.

Jaclyn chuckled softly. Yeah, that’s what she thought.

But the consequences wouldn’t be too egregious. After all, while the new library of sounds Daedalus had acquired had some combat applications, unlike the costumes for the monkeys, it was hardly weapons-grade plutonium. Probably just a stern talking to, and maybe a dunce cap, if the sounds wound up being too annoying during the delve.

Though she still wasn’t too sure of the exact medium the sounds had been delivered with, since gramophones were apparently out. Or were they just a bad fit for deploying the sounds?

Either way, “problem” for later.

She finally tore herself away from the entrance and started looking around at the vast clearing that had been created around the entrance, and it was starting to look actually decent.

Not good, mind you, but far from terrible.

Modern construction equipment would have turned into very useless, surprisingly expensive art installations within hours of being brought into the transformation zone, useless even if they somehow managed to wrangle them this deep in.

But stripping down that same equipment until it could function would have taken a while, and likely been too much effort since they did have other options. Specifically, going even further back to basics.

Floors of compacted dirt, slightly wetted and with cement mixed in, then squashed beneath metal plates with dino-shifters standing on top of them, and finally finished with a lime-based binding agent that they’d found … somewhere.

Of course, even sealed, none of that would last long under the English weather, but there were simple roofs to prevent that.

Daedalus had been fairly helpful, too, though perhaps that shouldn’t have been too surprising considering how all this would benefit him, too. He’d asked for and subsequently received some basic lessons on modular engineering, and soon produced a whole bunch of poles and unrollable metal sheets that could be put together to create a wide variety of simple buildings.

Nothing crazy, and there was still a lot that needed to get put together, but things were still flowing smoothly.

And now, finally, the vehicle caravan was showing up, and it had actual parking spots. Somehow, that had wound up being the very first thing that had gotten finished, and that would never not be silly to her.

“Alright, gather around,” Jaclyn waved, immediately regretting her phrasing.

There wasn’t much to say here, really; they’d known this day would come for months and had prepared accordingly, and the briefings had all been held weeks ago. But she still wanted to say a few things and clarify other points that had come up since then.

“The dungeon is providing items to allow E- and F-Ranks to participate, with attributes that tell me that we’re probably going to see a lot of animated bedsheets and the like.

“Anyone who isn’t D-Rank isn’t going inside without a fully charged stake, and anyone who is needs to either have a mana-containing attack or a party member with one.

“Remember that this isn’t the same dungeon as usual, and that since Daedalus is heavily playing into horror movie tropes, there might be serious traps, so watch out for those. He’s also got several ways to make creepy noises, which might disguise actual threats.

“Be careful, make sure your teammates are safe, let the loot get checked outside so we can find out what’s worth hunting …”

Jaclyn trailed off and flashed them a grin.

“… and if there’s any candy, share.”

Sniggers and the odd laugh filled the air.

Then, she broke them up into groups and finally got to enter, marching inside accompanied by Granger and one of Harper’s medics-in-training, a middle-aged man whose nametag read “Jones” and who hadn’t bothered introducing himself further.

The stench of iron burned in her nostrils the moment she crossed the threshold, clearly held in by some kind of supernatural effect, briefly making her think that Daedalus had used actual blood for the crimson pool at her feet, but she swiftly realized that wasn’t the case.

Yes, blood did smell strongly like iron, but that was not what was wafting through the air right now. It wasn’t the odor of blood masquerading as iron; it was just iron, as though someone had gone a little crazy with the wire brush while trying to clean stainless steel cookware.

Actually, looking around, that was likely exactly what had happened: scratched and beat-up metal panels, rusted in spots, covering several of the walls.

It wasn’t a charade that would have lasted very long, even if she didn’t have a badger’s nose, but between the red sea below and the burgundy stained glass that had replaced the ceiling, it did all combine to form a rather striking image.

Another cry rang out from the distance, making Jones jump slightly, while Jaclyn just continued to watch for danger, ignoring it. Even if she hadn’t known about the parrots, that hadn’t been a person but one of those animal noises that resembled a person in distress. A fox, or something, she wasn’t sure.

Still creepy as all bloody fuck, but managable in theory.

Which was almost certainly the whole sodding point. Watching them jump at shadows without causing actual harm.

Just like the shadows flashing through the “water” at her feet, as if there were an entire menagerie of nasty critters in there, ready to knock them off the stones that served as a walkway. Those were probably just created and controlled by some kind of shadowkinetic monster, though there was likely a more “official” term for that kind of po- …

A mass of spikes and chitin the size of your average dog launched itself straight at her face, but only at an outright glacial pace compared to how fast she could move or perceive the world when she wanted to.

Bamm!

Her fist hammered into what she only now recognized as the sea scorpion they’d delivered recently, and tore clean through, shattering its exoskeleton while spraying bug guts and hemolymph all over the place.

And then the whole thing vanished, replaced with a few random pieces of rock candy sticks.

“Normal, unranked monster,” Jaclyn commented as she snatched the “loot” out of the air before it could fall into the red lake. “Just there for shock value.”

She looked at the candy. It seemed to be normal, but the presence of a description implied otherwi- …

Rock Candy (unranked, common)

Sugar and flavoring. Doesn’t need a description but got one anyway.

Never mind.

The loot was as basic as the creature. She stuck it into her utility belt, where the rest of the loot would also go. Maybe magically made sweets would make for a good apology gift for Eve, assuming they wound up with enough of the stuff to spare some.

Three more times, the sea scorpions leaped at them, and three more times, the monsters came apart the moment they were hit, either by her fists or Granger’s magic missiles. She stopped jumping whenever one attacked after the first time, but out of the corner of her eyes, she could tell that Granger and Jones weren’t quite as calm about all this.

But pretty soon, they were at the end of the hall and turning back into what was normally the dinosaur section, only to stop dead. Because the entire damn corridor was utterly stuffed with cobwebs to thick that Jaclyn briefly feared it might be enoguh to actually restrain her if she walked into that mess.

She poked it with her finger. The two dangers she could think of as being the most easily hidden amidst spiderwebs were some kind of toxin atop the strands, which she would be immune to, or some kind of razor wire, which she would hopefully be tough enough to avoid getting killed by.

But it was just, well, webs.

Tougher than they looked, the way spiderwebs always were, and in a concentration that might actually become a serious impediment if someone got tangled up in enough of it, and apparently every single strand was sticky, but otherwise … just annoying.

Jaclyn tried to pull it off her fingers, then rub it off with her thumb, but all that was managing to do was shred it into smaller bits that still stuck around.

“If someone gets stuck, just clean it off,” she said, referring to the utility magic that everyone here should have. She gave Jones a questioning look. Being able to magically clean wounds was a skill any medic should have, but she’d have preferred confirmation over trust in this situation.

He just raised his hand, and a few spiderwebs nearby melted away into nothingness.

“Don’t waste mana,” Jaclyn sighed. “And Granger, avoid fire and lightning, that stuff is probably flammable.”

Part of her just wanted to burn it all down, but she had no idea how long the fire would last, and if they were unlucky, it would turn into a blaze that locked them out of the dungeon for most of, if not the entirety of, the event.   

But no, they slowly entered, and not even a minute in, Jaclyn could already tell that this was going to give her a complex about spiderwebs, she just kept feeling them all over, any time a part of her body wasn’t in her field of view, the sensation of spiderwebs brushing across her skin sent shivers down her spine.

Granger had managed to cast some kind of temporary anti-web spell onto himself, though considering his sheer mana pool, he could probably afford it. Jones, in the meanwhile, was in the same boat as her.

Was this really all there was to it, a whole bunch of highly annoying decorations?

And then she heard it. The clattering, the chittering, the grinding. It was like nothing she’d ever heard, and this time around, she was pretty much certain this wasn’t some damn parrot.

Jaclyn raised her hands, already manifesting her spectral badger paws as her eyes flicked across the room, attempting to find whatever was approaching in the gloom and webbing. Just what was that? And how many were out there?

When the first of the monsters attacked, she almost missed it, the bleached white skeleton blending in far too well with the spiderwebs, only becoming visible as it launched itself through the air from several meters away. It was small, barely larger than a chicken, but the fang-filled maw and claw-studded feet, including one particularly long and lethal-looking sickle, made it abundantly clear that this used to be a velociraptor in life …

But even the live ones, fire-breath and all, were usually fairly easy to beat. This thing was a mere fraction of the weight of the living version, and went flying even as several of its bones crunched underneath her fist. Yet even though it went flying into the gloom, it had easily survived the impact.

Jaclyn grimaced. It was rare that she found herself on this side of the “too light to hurt” weight difference. And that hadn’t been the only enemy present, judging by the sounds.

The hairs on the back of her neck rose, and she whirled almost purely on instinct, managing to snatch the raptor out of the air with relative ease … which, of course, left her there with a snapping and gnashing murder machine mere inches from her face, empty eyesockets glaring hatefully at her.

She clenched her free hand into a full fist and slammed it into the skeleton, pulverizing its skull, ribcage, and a large chunk of the spine as it continued until it smacked into her other palm. And then, she let it fall to the ground in pieces as she turned to make sure nothing harmed the others … that was when she heard the scraping behind her, as the skeleton pulled itself back together again.

Jaclyn stomped down on it, blasting the pieces of the reforming skeleton across the room … and it was still repairing itself. That was when she finally figured it out. It was the same damn animating energy that had been responsible for the walking armor and flying dresses she’d faced in the British Museum. Apparently, those things were a little more flexible than she’d initially expected.

So she kicked it once again, though this time, she summoned an eagle talon around her boot and the invisible strands of energy attempting to pull the form back together vanishing just as a fully intact raptor skull manifested amidst the rubble.

There was a blast of energy behind her, and she turned to see Granger telekinetically tearing apart a second skeleton, then sending a blast of frost through the center of the debris field, the magical attack destroying the spirit as well.

Well, Henderson was going to have a fun time with this place. He’d be able to destroy the shells simply by sitting on them, sure, but at the same time, he was entirely lacking in actually magical attacks capable of hurting intangible enemies.

“I can handle these,” Granger announced, spiderwebs disintegrating around him while light began to illuminate the immediate area now that doing so wouldn’t make it nigh-impossible to see past the webs.

“Point out anything bigger,” Jaclyn replied as she hurled herself back into the webs to start hunting down the other raptors. With an exclusion zone established around the “squishy” members of the party, proactively pulverizing the raptors would be much more effective than standing in front of Granger, smashing animated skeletons, and perpetually fouling his shots.

Assuming that their foes were limited to just the little blighters.

In the end, that wound up being the case, though Jaclyn wished it hadn’t because her plan, while effective, had left her looking like a literal mummy by the end of it, covered in cobwebs to the point where only her efforts to keep her face clear allowed her to still function. All in all, her weight had likely increased by around a quarter, nothing that would have seriously been able to slow her even a couple of ranks ago, but it still felt utterly disgusting.

The fact that there was no dust or spiders in the webs did very little to change that.

She was about to ask Granger to use his mana to remove the whole lot, but he’d already waved his hand through the air, and it disintegrated, leaving her entirely clean.

It hadn’t even been properly disgusting, that was much too far, just … icky. Not that she’d ever use that word out loud, the jokes would follow her for years, despite the fact that the others would likely feel much the same when so thoroughly wrapped in spiderwebs.

However, even so, there was a bright spot to this whole affair.

Loot.

No one had looked at the skulls while there’d still been monsters around, but now that the room was clear …

Savage Skull of Bloodletting (E-Rank, rare)

The skull of an ancient predator, filled with the kind of malice only undead can muster, a ceaseless desire to devour the living, infused with the power to spill as much lifeblood as possible.

When fuelled by magic, this skull will immediately start chomping at anyone in range, save the one who activated it, causing significant bleeding and reducing healing for ten minutes in all wounds inflicted. It can be re-used if intact after use.

Energy draw: low to activate for twenty seconds

Interesting.

There were limits to how useful it would be externally, it looked like something that could easily wind up shaking itself off whatever they were thrown on the outside, but if you could get this thing to be swallowed by something like that snake … well, “savage” would describe far more than the skull itself.

She’d also managed to find something else that would have found its way onto her office shelf as some kind of hunting trophy, if she wouldn’t likely have to give it to a university or something.

Display Skeleton (unranked, uncommon)

A complete set of velociraptor mongoliensis bones with wires and instructions for assembly, as well as a stand made from amethyst.

The descriptions for mundane objects were rather simple, but they got the point across, and confirming that there was nothing magical involved had its own kind of value.

“Uh, Deputy Director, do you need any healing?” Jones carefully asked, and Jaclyn groaned internally. Would this always happen when they had healers in the dungeon?

But she said nothing out loud.

“No, I’m fine.”

And she really was. Looking down, she could see a small rip in her trousers that seemed to have been caused by the fangs of a monster, but it hadn’t actually reached her flesh, let alone caused any injuries.

Together, they headed deeper, following the normal path but coming face to face with entirely new environments and foes. Lots of skeletons, a couple of actual bedsheet ghosts, and a whole lot of loot that was either useful or interesting, but nothing special … until Jones caught a face full of spiderwebs, stopping to cough and spit until he finally straightened, glaring at the walls as though they’d personally offended him.

Only for him to suddenly reach out and tear off a large chunk, holding it up towards her face while calling up the status window that the web had, for some reason …

Hidden Treasure (F-Rank, uncommon)

Regular spiderwebs, infused with an F-Rank healing potion, found in the corners of the Natural History Museum only on Halloween. A hidden treasure that had likely been angrily swiped out of the way by many a delver before being correctly identified.

“How many of these have you destroyed, how much money have you burned until you finally got to the point where you read this description?”

If placed on an open wound, they will stem any bleeding present and rapidly heal it, as long as the injury is within the bounds of the potion.

“Oh you’re an evil wanker aren’t you?” Jaclyn sighed and shook her head, only half serious.

If Daedalus really were evil, it would have been at least a little obvious during the previous delves, but he was also having way too much fun with all this nonsense.

Then again, perhaps she should be looking at him a little differently, more as one of her more prank-inclined colleagues. People who could be serious, and smart, and professional, but when given a proper and genuine excuse, they’d cut loose and pull insane stunts that no one had ever expected out of them.

It wasn’t like the dungeon was much more dangerous on this All Hallows Eve, beyond the fact that the changes for the event had negated the advantages stemming from her familiarity with the old layout. The whole place was just freaky.

But that description was just plain mean. Yet at the same time …

Jaclyn shook her head and started chuckling.

“Well played, Daedalus, well bloody played.”

The ability to mass harvest healing items would be useful, even if it was only possible on a single day in the year … but at the same time, thinking about the sheer amount of the stuff that had gotten wrecked thus far made her physically ill.

But now there was no use crying about spilled milk; all they could do was make sure to tell the others to harvest it when they went through.

Suddenly, the decor of the rooms changed, dirt floors and vine-covered walls replacing stone and spiderwebs, while something shimmered at the other end of the room.

“Well, that’s an interesting take on the headless horseman,” Granger commented.

The monster was a humongous skeletal deer that absolutely had to be prehistoric, with an empty uniform of some kind sitting on its back, and a jack o lantern with a grinning skull carved into it hanging from the deer’s side.

And she could see several more moving around in the gloom beyond the corridor that led out into the next room.

Only for a swarm of magic missiles to fly into the monster’s ribcage, carefully weaving between the bones and only flashing through the area that the animating monster just absolutely had to be.

Before it had even gotten halfway towards them, the “steed” fell apart, causing the rider to slide across the floor and towards them …

Jacyln punched the pumpkin. If this thing was supposed to be the headless horseman, that had to be the weak point, right?

It exploded when her fist smashed through it … literally exploded, obliterating the monster but also shredding her sleeve until past her elbow.

“Yeah, we really shouldn’t have given him the nitroglycerin,” she sighed, shaking her throbbing hand. The explosion hadn’t been anywhere near as powerful as it could have been, but it still hadn’t exactly been pleasant.

“Granger, get the others.”

As in, detonate the nitroglycerin in the other lanterns because she wasn’t looking forward to punching impact-detonated explosives. Again. And she didn’t even have to give those specifics. Benefits of having worked together for so long.

And the pumpkins exploded under a hail of magic missiles in an instant, but this time, the “explosion” merely sprayed orange fruit chunks across the floor … that damn spirit was holding the explosives within steady, wasn’t it?

There were definitely two spirits there, one for the deer, one for the “rider.”

Jaclyn launched herself into the air and flung herself onwards with a beat of her wings, crashing into the nearest rider feet first, manifesting the eagle claws to grasp a hold of the fabric, ripping it clean off its mount, leaving the deer to Granger.

She just continued her flight, pulling her legs up so she could rip into it with her hands, one strike to open the uniform, the second to destroy the spirit within, causing the monster to come apart and the pumkpin to go flying until it hit the third monster, coming to a dead stop and promptly detonating, properly this time.

The last pumpkin, belonging to the third pair, also exploded somehow, the triggering explosion apparently having overwhelmed the spirit’s stabilization ability.

Well, that was easier than expected …

Jaclyn had known better than to say it out loud, but it seemed she’d still jinxed them.

Because unless she was very far off the mark, the thing presently rumbling towards them was the same tank they’d given Daedalus, covered in fluorescent paint depicting arcane-looking runes and sigils.

Oh … shoot.

***

Thomas grinned, and Elias laughed. The Halloween dungeon was a strong combination of jump scares, mild psychological horror, and general “could have gotten you there, had I been so inclined” stunts, as with the nitroglycerin in the pumpkins. While it was under the direct control of the machine spirit, it would be held fast, moving smoothly and in one piece without risking instability.

A neat little trick that could be used in anything that used machine spirits, but it was far too unfair to use in regular dungeon operations.

Much like how the tiger tank made entirely from E-Rank materials was much too powerful to be “fair” when combined with the right monsters, which was why the specific vehicle he had “ambushing” the delvers was made from regular materials.

Of course, he’d painted it entirely black and covered it in fluorescent demonic script from top to bottom, he had a certain “reputation” to uphold.

As she always did, Abrams launched herself straight at the target, both closing the distance and physically interposing herself between the barrel of its gun and her allies, neither of which could truly be trusted to take a hit and survive.

But despite her sheer durability and toughness, the laws of physics still held some sway. So when the tank did fire, the fact that she caught the shell on crossed forearms, manifested badger paws bleeding off much of the force before it could hit her, being able to easily tank the strike did fuck all to prevent her from rocketing backwards from the impact and go spilling across the floor in a tangle of limbs.

And then Granger lobbed some kind of fire spell straight down the barrel of the tank’s main weapon, blocking it completely.

Or could the gun still fir- … nope, it could not. It really, really couldn’t, as proven by how thoroughly the entire top half of the tank had exploded, leaving the “boss” of the event just as a very heavy but ponderous battering ram capable of moving under its own power.

Of course, the machine spirit immediately began pulling everything back together, but Abrams took this as her chance to pounce on it and start ripping apart everything that he fixed the instant something was back in its proper place, while Granger began to use a combination of heat and cold to shatter off huge chunks of armor until eventually, the tank came to a stop, spirit dead.

Thomas sighed. Next time, he’d make something less fragile. However, for now, he’d just reward them with a chest of F- and E-Rank potions for their efforts and then watch how the next group managed it.

***

All three of them were tired, sweaty, and covered in cobwebs when they stumbled out of the dungeon, but also heavily laden down with treasure.

Jaclyn gave a brief list of what was the most useful out of all the loot, which really just had the spiderwebs on it, and passed on all the warnings that needed sharing.

And with that done, she heavily sat down on one of the chairs scattered around the waiting area, and began divying up the candy evenly between everyone who’d gotten dragged out here.

Did they need the candy? No, they were adults, they could buy their own.

But deciding that it all had to wind up in a lab or some vault because it had come out of the dungeon just felt mean. Even if everyone here was far from a kid, there was a little bit of a child in all adults, wasn’t there?

Letting everyone go home with a little candy just felt right.

… Unless someone died. Then it would feel incredibly inappropriate, which was why she’d be sitting on this until it was time to go back.

***

So, that was that finished. Plenty of fun, plenty of borderline “mean” but still acceptable pranks, but overall, it had been slightly easier than his regular dungeon because using an event to create FOMO and lure in people … bad look. Really bad look.

However, now that it was over, he needed to reset the dungeon, and get back to grinding, which sadly actually translated into making a situation that other people would be willing to grind in. Unless he was willing to resort to becoming a deathtrap, luring in as many people as possible and murdering then all, but there was a damn good reason he didn’t want to do that, why he’d never do that.