[Entering from Locked In]

With the completion of the house that had seen him locked in and stripped of his magical power, he had quite honestly assumed that he would be stuck in there for longer than he had actually remained within. With some aid from Circe, he had managed to find his way through a room that was a bit too rich in hunting trophies for his tastes, before making their way down into some kind of cellar filled with crates and boxes containing identical keys. With an assist from Circe, who had managed to rip off a piece of somewhat out of the ordinary wallpaper, they had been presented with a sort of code containing mountains, clouds and birds. Not really knowing what it was supposed to mean, if it was even something that had a meaning to begin with, it had coerced him to look for a crate with a similar inscription.

Wandering across the festival ground, Griswold could not help but think how things might have turned out if she hadn’t done that, as it would have put him into quite a bit of trouble for sure. The fact that every last one of the crates and boxes contained identical keys meant that if he destroyed one and found a key that did not fit, he would have just had to go around destroying them one by one in order to find one that would fit while having no way of knowing ahead of time which one he was supposed to be looking for. And in the worst case scenario, he would have destroyed all of the boxes and crates to look for a key, only to find that every single one of them contained a key that looked exactly like the one next to him. Had that happened, he would have been locked up in there for at least another hour or two.

At that point, there was a good chance that he would have tried to physically punch and kick his way out through the door instead, as the thing responsible for sapping away his magic did not seem to limit his strength or speed at all, which was likely another reason why he was not allowed to bring his swords inside with him. But as things had turned out the way they did, it seemed the two of them had been the first to make it out, allowing him to reclaim his weaponry and harness from the two nobles in charge of the activity and from there make his way back to here. All things considered, he wondered just how much more there truly was to the whole festival, what with him having already gone to the pumpkin carving tables to see what he could do with his skinning knife.

He had also gone zombie hunting already, kicking the event into overdrive so he, Noah and Dante could all take part in it and cut loose. Due to the difference in power, it was easy for him to just run rampant and kill everything in sight, though that would have killed the fun for the rest of them. That and because of the fact that he wished to not destroy the forest it had taken place in, he had gone about it without the use of a single magic spell. Relying entirely on his strength, speed and his swords, the zombie hunting had still been over in the blink of an eye, even if some of those same zombies had been classified as “Grand” level threats. Truth be told, all he had truly felt was the fact that they seemed more durable, making them harder to destroy due to their resilience to damage.

But in the end, their resilience had meant nothing before the black blade Feardèanamh. A weapon that had once belonged to a dark elven warlord, one he had actually had the chance of meeting in the depths of the ocean where his warped serpentine form resided up until the moment where Griswold had used this very blade to actually murder him. Though his blood had long since been cleaned off of the blade, it felt like some kind of poetic justice to put someone who had made people into slaves, warped into monsters and had used their interference as a means of culling large numbers of another aquatic race, to put him to death with a weapon he had once used during the time he spent on land as an actual elf.

And seeing as how going door to door to collect candy had not really been something he cared for, mostly because he was a grown-ass man, that meant there were really only two things he could do that were still on the festival grounds and not actually in town. Truth be told, the only reason why he had come to the grounds while wearing a costume was because he was led to believe that it was a requirement, though it really only seemed to be a requirement for the costume contest. And since he had already gone through the trouble of dressing up in something that came directly out of Hania’s own wardrobe, the least he could do was go through the trouble of partaking in the actual contest and see if what he was wearing was worthy of winning any prizes or not. So with that thought in mind, Griswold began approaching the stage not too far from him.

For the longest time, he had been somewhat weary of people, mostly because at the time he had first entered the land of Clover and got saved by Emery Cromwell, he was told how the people in the forsaken realm did not often take kindly to strangers. Given the fact that he was of dwarven and elven descent, it was hard enough for the man to pass him off to people as his nephew Griswold that come to live with them after his parents had died of disease, that much was for sure. Though the idea that people were incredibly superstitious and did not like things they did not understand or people they did not know had made him rather closed and to himself, rather than being this loud and open person that did not mind being in the spotlights. But as time had progressed, so had he, meaning he was no longer bothered by it.

After all, he was no longer just Griswold now, he was the Solarian Wolf, a name that had come to carry some weight in the forsaken region as a result of all of the good work he had done there. So in a way, whenever he was doing his job, he was more or less already in the spotlight, which made it a lot easier for him to just swallow his pride for the time being and just get up on the stage to get things over with. Wandering towards a group of people that had already gathered, Griswold looked around to see that a jury was sitting at a table facing the stage. As he approached, a woman came to collect him, claiming that if he was to be another contestant, he should be taking a position along with the others so they could be sent onto the stage one by one until everyone had been given a turn. Making it clear that it would take the judges a moment to pick a winner afterwards, Griswold nodded, showing he understood the implied “Don’t wander away after leaving the stage”.

Looking around to see the other contestants, he could tell that some of them had really gone out of their way to put a lot of effort into their appearance, which was likely why they had stepped up to take part in the contest. Once the first of them was called onto the stage, they showed off what effort they had put into what was essentially a walking fruit basket. While it seemed fun to some degree and was obviously quite creative, it did not directly strike him as the kind of thing that would win by swaying the hearts and minds of the judges. Still, it was quite impressive, and had a good chance at winning for sure. Once the first contestant left the stage, the judges took the time to write down a bunch of notes and quietly discuss things among one another for a moment or two. Though he could not hear what they were saying, he imagined it was to trade critique and praise.

By the time the second contestant had been told to step onto the stage, Griswold could tell that this was someone who was a bit more restrained in terms of wardrobe, putting him closer to the level of dressing up as he himself. Wearing a long black trench coat, a black top hat and hauling around a large shovel, it was only once it was explained on stage that the black bull understood that this man had chosen to dress as a grave digger. While interesting, that was really all there was to it as far as Griswold himself was concerned, though he wasn’t a judge. Thinking about the costumes he saw coming by however, he believed the chances of him winning were fairly slim, though he did not really care a whole lot about winning as it was anyway. But that did not really matter as much as actually participating, at least that was what he thought when the grave digger left the stage for contestant number three.

Dressed like a scarecrow, the man was mostly just dressed in rags, carried a scythe around with him and had his head covered in a burlap sack with holes cut out for vision. While it was an interesting sight to see and was quite on point when going over his own knowledge of scarecrows, which were usually just simplistic men wearing a simple set of old clothing and got stuffed to the brim with straw. They were not at all like some of the people he had seen walking around in similar outfits and attires that made them look like they were meant to scare off people instead of birds. Feeling that the need to scare people, primarily children was always a bit of a strange thing to go about, the scaring of birds was something he at the very least understood. It was only natural not to want a bunch of birds to eat all of your seeds and vegetables.

The scaring of kids however was an entirely different thing. He understood why some parents would tell scary tales to children to keep them from venturing away from home and into the wild world surrounding their settlements, villages, towns and cities. There were a lot of dangerous people out there that would absolutely snatch a kid up off the road or wherever they might encounter them if they believed they might be able to get some ransom money out of it. And then there were the wild animals and creatures that were dwelling in the world that had an easy time turning a child into a pint-sized snack. But scaring the for the sake of some twisted form of pleasure and fun, that was not something he was ever going to understand, as the very concept was entirely foreign to him. But the people in this country seemed to enjoy it, so he wouldn’t mouth off about it.

Once the scarecrow came off of the stage and allowed the judges time to discuss the attire, the last person to come before him was called to the stage. Appearing as a mixture of what seemed like an undead and a pirate of some kind, there was no doubt that it was at the very least original, as he had not seen anything like it before up until now. Showing the depth of the outfit to the judges, when the man finally came off of the stage, it was time for Griswold to take the stage and show his costume, which was not really a costume. Showing the white and blue attire from a foreign land, he also drew his two swords. While not exactly a direct part of the attire, he showed that he was going for the appearance of an oriental warrior, flashing his blades around a bit with a few skilled strikes. Whether that would get him any extra points or not remained to be seen, though at least the effort was there.

Coming down the stage, a short waiting period started where the judges left their table along with their papers, disappearing behind the curtains of the stage so they could properly discuss their findings and criticism to come up with a clear winner, Griswold leaned against a nearby tree to wait it out. Watching how some of the other contestants were eagerly discussing who they thought might be the winner while trying to convince the others of how much effort they had put into their attire, Griswold personally did not care a whole lot. He just wanted to know who the winner was so he could take his leave and have a look at the murder mystery house, which was effectively the last activity that remained that did not mean having to leave the grounds and head into the town. But that was something that had to wait for a little while longer it seemed, which was fine. He was in no rush after all.

After roughly fifteen minutes had passed, it seemed the judges had finally come to make their decision known. Starting by addressing the five contestants and letting them all know what they had liked about their costumes and what they had not really enjoyed or believed could have been handled better, it turned out that they had enjoyed the sword show Griswold had put up to get the point across that he was dressed as an oriental warrior. A point of critique however was the fact that the swords they believed were “props” should have also been swords hailing from that same portion of the world. In a way, he figured that it was a good thing to bring up, but aside from that did not really care about it a whole lot. Once the time had come to announce the victor, it was stated that the Scarecrow had received the most votes from the individual judges. Claiming that it was the most realistic looking attire, there was really no objection from him.

Watching as the scarecrow went onto the stage to claim his prize, Griswold really did not care enough to know who the runner up and all that was, believing his part in this activity had come to an end. Without really saying anything, the man took his leave to head back onto the festival and see what the situation was with the murder mystery house. Not really knowing what to expect from something that was named as such, the mystery portion intrigued him quite a bit, even though the whole thing regarding to murder seemed silly. He knew that there wouldn’t be any killers active at a festival due to the sheer amount of magic knights that were present, so it seemed likely that they would just “kill” people as per the rules of a game he did not yet understand nor grasp. Still, it sounded like it was going to be interesting, potentially even fun. Or rather, he hoped that it was going to be fun, as this dressing up thing had been rather tiresome and boring with the constant waiting for approval, meaning it was hardly a fun activity to begin with.

However, he was still glad to have gotten it over with, for obvious reasons. That said however, with the way things had been going and the amount of activities he had already gotten himself into, part of him was more or less done with the whole thing. Right now, going to the murder house as a spectator would be just fine for him, as he would just leave the participation to the others that were really jumping out of excitement to get in. Even though he wasn't even halfway his twenties yet, at times like these, he just felt older than he actually was, so just sitting around or hanging back for the remainder of the festival was going to do just fine.

2750 (15030)

[Exit]