"Fred?! Fred's out!"
From the jagged mouth of the pumpkin head, a human hand shakily emerged. Fred stumbled out, his face and lips a ghastly white, as if all the life had been drained from him. He clutched a sack tightly in his hand, and with every step he took, the sack jingled with the sound of metal clinking together.
The students standing outside the pumpkin head, seeing that someone had completed the challenge, instantly swarmed him, congratulating him and asking about what happened inside.
"Fred, that's great! You're the first one out!"
"Fred, did you finish the game? What was it like in there?"
"Are those Galleons in your hand?! My God, what Dreyar said was true!"
"..."
Everyone was talking at once, not noticing that Fred could barely stand. Before anyone could react, Fred suddenly collapsed with a loud thud, his eyes spinning and foaming at the mouth, just like the others who had been thrown out. The Healing Team's Hufflepuffs, seeing another guinea pig emerge, happily ran over, hoisted Fred onto a stretcher, and carried him away.
The students watched as Fred, covered in a white sheet, was carried away, and a chill ran down their spines. What kind of demons and monsters were in that game that even Fred, who had completed it, was completely drained?
Based on what everyone knew about the Weasley twins, either of them should have been cheering in excitement after finishing the game and getting the prize. But what was this?
However, despite their fear and unease, when the students remembered the heavy sack of Galleons in Fred's hand, greed took over. They started looking at the pumpkin head with a renewed eagerness. Since Fred had completed the game, it meant it was possible. There was still a chance for the 90 Galleons, or at the very least, 80!
So, one after another, more students started to warm up, filled with a heroic ambition to challenge the demonic lair before them.
Meanwhile, Dumbledore and the four Heads of Houses were standing not far away, quietly watching everything unfold in front of the Great Hall.
"Albus, are you sure this is alright?" Professor McGonagall asked, worried. She watched as more and more unconscious students were being carried away on stretchers by the Hufflepuff Healing Team.
"I don't think we have anything to worry about, Minerva. Dreyar isn't the kind of person who doesn't know what's important," Dumbledore replied with a smile. "These students have only fainted. They're not seriously harmed. Besides, don't you think it's fun to add some extra surprise to the holiday for the students?"
"No, I do not think so! And I doubt the unconscious students would think so either!" Professor McGonagall immediately denied, her face full of doubt. She had seen the faces of the students who were thrown out, and they didn't look like they were having fun at all.
Dumbledore looked at the commotion of the students nearby and sighed for some reason, "Youth is a wonderful thing, being able to feel that unique passion that comes with it."
Then, he took out his pocket watch and checked the time. Seeing that there was still some time before the Halloween feast, he suggested to the four Heads, "Everyone, let's go back and rest for a bit. Let's not disturb the children's fun."
Although the Heads of Houses all had reservations about what was happening in front of the Great Hall, since the Headmaster had said so, they couldn't voice their opinions. So they could only go back and have a second cup of afternoon tea in their offices. Before leaving, however, Snape looked at the Great Hall and said coldly, "A boring game!"
On the surface, he was talking about Victor's game. But in reality, his eyes were fixed on the unconscious Slytherin students, a cold glint in his pupils. He thought that these unconscious "little snakes" were a disgrace to the Slytherin House!
At this moment, a few more students, after a fierce internal struggle, resolutely walked through the mouth of the pumpkin head. This time, the team was a group of Hufflepuffs. But it wasn't long, maybe less than ten minutes, before these students, who had been so confident before they went in, were thrown out one by one. Without exception, they were all unconscious from fright.
And so it continued until just before the feast began, and the game finally ended. The mastermind behind the game also arrived on cue. In front of the Great Hall, the students saw Victor with his mischievous grin and all moved out of the way, as if the Dark Lord himself was standing before them.
Victor looked around and saw a large number of students lying unconscious on the lawn. He grabbed a member of the Healing Team and asked for a count of the day's results.
According to the statistics, throughout the afternoon, nearly half of Hogwarts' students, or 401 people, had participated in the game. With the exception of Fred, the other 400 had fainted. Of those, 400 were foaming at the mouth, and 401 would have nightmares that night.
In reality, the pumpkin head was a large-scale illusion spell that Victor had cast. It was an improved version of the spell Skyscraper, a magic used by the S-Class wizard Mystogan from his time in Earth Land.
Skyscraper (Modified): An illusion spell that pulls people into an illusion designed by the caster. Unless the caster voluntarily releases them or their mental strength is powerful enough, they cannot break free.
For the Halloween game, the illusion Victor had set up for the students was a horror game from Earth, Silent Hill. Anyone who had played the game knew it was one of the top ten horror games in the world.
To give the students a fully immersive experience, Victor had thoughtfully adjusted the flow of time within the illusion. The time flow of the illusion to reality was 10:1, which meant that an hour spent in the illusion only amounted to six minutes in reality.
Upon entering the pumpkin head, the students wouldn't immediately enter the game. Before the game officially began, they could see a set of rules: survive for two hours or find the hidden secret of this world. If they met either of these two conditions, the students would receive a generous prize of Galleons. Of course, if someone wanted to try and finish the game, Victor wouldn't stop them.
Naturally, Victor wasn't so crazy as to make the students try to complete Silent Hill. The game was already difficult to handle for a normal person on a computer, let alone a 100% realistic experience with players who were still immature students.
So, to prevent any students from going insane, Victor replaced some of the overly bloody elements in the game. All the blood was now a dark reddish-black. In the game, players could respawn if they were killed, but they would be thrown out of the pumpkin head if they fainted from fear.
Even though the game was officially over, Victor didn't remove the spell from the pumpkin head. He simply moved it to a corner next to the Great Hall entrance so that students could enter whenever they wanted to play.
It was clear that he intended to "terrorize" the entire student body of Hogwarts.
With the game over for now, the Halloween feast was held as scheduled. All the students who had fainted during the game were awakened by Victor's magic. However, when they woke up, their eyes were filled with nothing but fear when they looked at him.
During the feast, Fred held onto his bag of Galleons, using it as a form of psychological comfort. The monsters from the game, which he couldn't describe with words, were still haunting his mind.
Ron, who was sitting next to him, kept asking how he had completed the game, but Fred refused to talk about it. He simply didn't want to relive it. It was too horrifying!
Victor, of course, knew how Fred had managed to complete the game. Fred was unlucky, but he was also very lucky. He was unlucky because soon after he entered the game, he was discovered by the game's final boss and chased all over the place. But he was lucky because during his escape, he coincidentally ran into a group of "nurse sisters." Fred accidentally discovered that as long as he didn't make a sound, the faceless nurse monsters around him wouldn't attack him.
So in the end, he had stood completely still in the middle of the nurses for over an hour, not daring to move or even breathe, and had completed the game. He was also lucky that the final boss hadn't found him.
But just as the students were enthusiastically discussing their experiences in Silent Hill, three very flustered voices suddenly rang out.
Everyone looked to where the voices came from and saw Professor Quirrell rush into the Great Hall, shouting, "Troll! In the dungeons! Troll!"
"Troll! I thought you should know." Then, he pretended to faint.
After a moment of stunned silence, the students finally reacted and let out terrified screams. The Great Hall instantly descended into chaos. "AHHHH!!!!"
However, amidst the high-pitched screams, the students who had participated in the game before the feast were remarkably calm. What was a troll compared to the monsters from the game?!
"SILENCE!" Dumbledore, seeing that many students were in a panic, had to use the Sonorus charm to calm everyone down. "Please do not panic. Now, prefects, please lead your students back to their common rooms. Professors, you will join me in the dungeons."
As soon as he finished speaking, the prefects of each house began to lead their students back to their common rooms in an orderly fashion.
But at that moment, Harry, standing in the crowd, suddenly remembered something. He quickly grabbed Ron, who was about to leave, and said, "Hermione! Hermione doesn't know about the troll! Neville said she's been in the girls' toilets all afternoon!"
The two of them exchanged a look, and without a second thought, they ran toward the dungeons.
At this very moment, Victor had already arrived in the Hogwarts dungeons. He had almost forgotten about the troll incident on Halloween until Quirrell's shout had reminded him. Entering the girls' toilet, Victor shouted, "Hermione, come out now!"
Hermione, who was still crying in a stall, suddenly heard a familiar voice and weakly asked, "Victor?!"
"It's me!" Victor walked over to her stall and simply undid the locked door.
"Ah! You pervert! This is the girls' toilet!" Hermione immediately blushed, looking at Victor as if he were a creep.
"What pervert? I haven't done anything to you!" Victor took out a tissue to wipe the remaining tears from her face and said, "Come on, let's go. Are you going to wait for the troll to come and eat you?"
"..."
"A troll! What troll?"
"A troll has been let into the school," Victor said, pulling Hermione out of the girls' toilet and pointing to the end of the corridor. "There it is!"
Hermione looked in the direction Victor was pointing. At the end of the dungeon corridor, a three-meter-tall figure with a dull, gray, granite-like skin came around the corner with heavy steps. Its massive body was topped with a small, bald head the size of a teacup, and it was dragging a huge club.
"Ugh... that smell!" A foul stench from the troll hit them, and both Victor and Hermione immediately covered their noses. The smell was exactly like a dead rat, but ten times worse!
"Victor, get rid of it now!" Hermione said with a muffled voice from behind him. Since she had witnessed the spell that shattered the sky a few weeks ago, she didn't believe Victor couldn't handle a small troll.
"What's the rush? It's not every day you get to see a troll. Let's have some fun with it first!" Victor first used magic to block his sense of smell, then took out his wand. By the way, is there anything on a troll that's worth money? I've been spending a lot lately!
"Hey! You big oaf!" Victor shouted at the troll, immediately catching its attention. The troll looked around and saw two little figures standing in the distance. Its low intelligence led it to believe they were food that had come to it, so it began to lumber toward Victor.
"Hermione, stand behind me!" Victor shielded Hermione with his body, pointed his wand forward, and a small red magic circle unfolded. A fiery fireball was released, hitting the troll directly.
"ROAR!!!" The troll let out a loud scream. But looking at its slightly scorched skin, it was clear that Victor's charm, the magic circle version of Incendio, hadn't really hurt it. This was because Victor had compressed the power of the spell to a very small degree. He wanted to test the magical resistance of magical creatures.
At the same time, even though Victor's spell hadn't done much damage, it had completely burned away the troll's only piece of clothing. Victor, seeing this, immediately shot a solid spell that destroyed the troll's "little friend." Hermione was behind him, and a little girl shouldn't have to see such a thing.
But… Hmm, it's so small! I thought it would be bigger! Victor thought to himself.
With his "little friend" gone, the intense pain instantly sent the troll into a berserk rage. It let out a pained and furious roar, raising its wooden club, and charged toward Victor.
Victor raised an eyebrow, waved his wand at a large statue of a knight beside him, and a white magic circle for Transfiguration activated. In an instant, a black and white creature the size of the troll appeared in the dungeons.
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