522 Designing a task

Anyways Nick returned to his friends and hung out with them while trying to think up a good premise for a task. The problem wasn't that there wasn't that many options but rather the exact opposite in that there was far too many to choose from. There was the canon second task and the several dozen variations of it that Nick could think of just off the top of his head. 'Now that I think about the canon though most of the tasks were rather focused on combat and environmental adaptation. What if I did something else?' Nick thought with a grin.-

He had an idea that was nearly guaranteed to throw off the participants but would indeed be an exciting way to show those watching a different sort of competence. The premise was a simple treasure hunt but with a few twists. For starters it would take the hostage idea from the canon second task and implement it as a factor. The second was that Nick was going to create a special area for the task that simulates a random environment for each participant. In addition there was going to be enemies through the task based on the magical creatures that would naturally live in them.-

Obviously the creatures would be heavily nerfed false replicas since the task was going to be hard to die in ideally. Nick had plenty of time to create all this as well since his task was going to be the second that was to be held after christmas break. It should be understood that the other schools with their potential participants wouldn't even show up until a week before Halloween and the first task would be held sometime in November. This meant Nicks task only needed to be completed by January at the latest.-

"So Dumbledore wanted to talk to you about the tournament , did he drop an juicy hints on any of the tasks?" Tracy asked greedily after he returned. "Not a single detail , he merely wanted my help is setting up the welcome for the other schools while filling me in on the tournament being held." Nick lied calmly. He had no intentions of ruining the surprise for everyone and decided to lead them down a pointless trail instead. "Drat! I was hoping he would have told you something since you are clearly not going to be participating in it." Tracy said with mild disappointment.-

"Oh? And why would I not participate?" Nick asked curious why she would say such a thing. Not that she was wrong but in any case she shouldn't be aware of the exclusion from it he had. "It wouldn't even be a competition at that point and literally everyone knows it , if there isn't some rule stopping you from joining I'll eat my wand." She said with a scoff. "Well you are right in that I have been completely excluded from being a participant so your wand is safe for now." Nick said with a chuckle.-

The next day Nick got started on the project for his task in secret by heading to the chamber of secrets. Once there he began to consume the statues that lined the wall before reconstituting their materials into a huge chamber using the realm. He then started to create a highly complex and extensive runic script to enchant the chamber to be not only spatially expanded by a massive amount but to also have realistic environments. There were a total of ten different environments that each participant could possibly encounter , forest , desert , volcano , cave , arctic , swamp , valley , mountain , lake and urban.-

Each of which Nick carefully programed to have their own unique pros and cons that needed to be overcome. The worst one by far was the urban environment as the magical creatures for that one were , dementors , boggarts and wizards with the last being the biggest obstacles. Creating the nerfed versions of the magical creatures was the hardest part for Nick as it was a mix of transfiguration , illusion magic and runes. The result was a bunch of realistic looking combat dummies with preprogramed abilities that were weaker than their true counterparts.-

It took Nick nearly three weeks to finish this part and start moving on to the next step of creating the treasures to be found. Enchanted rings , armor , weapons , wands and potions were created en mass with different effects and materials. The reason Nick did this was because he thought the organizers had been far too cheap in the prizes for winning the tournament. The participants were going to be allowed to keep these treasures so even if they didn't win each participant still walked away with at least something. Was it necessary , not really but Nick felt like doing it so why not?