The group began advancing towards the dungeon core’s room. There were only a few rooms left between them and the boss. They were using the mana golem to scan ahead for any traps.

All of a sudden, they heard an unexpected sound.

“Help.” A very weak, barely audible voice rang out.

Peeking with the golem behind the corner, they could see a chained up man, emaciated and weak to the point it was incredible that he was still alive.

When the man saw them, he seemed to regain a bit of life, his weary eyes shining in the poorly lit room.

“Please, you have to help me. This … thing, it’s crazy, it killed my whole party! It only kept me alive to feed on my mana day, after day, after day. After I pass out it keeps draining me, and I wake up screaming from the pain.” The man then broke down crying, trembling uncontrollably.

“How horrible!” Lunaris and Helios were on full alert, but as soon as they saw the man their hearts sank, completely forgetting about the dungeon core and rushing to aid the man.

“Guys, the dungeon core is very close, you shouldn’t be letting your guard down.” James told the two.

“It’s ok, I’ll block any attack coming from that direction.” Helios quickly set up an arcane formation on the ground using magic crystals, which was meant to block anything that came from the dungeon core’s direction.

James was still on high alert though. The man’s plea pulled at his heart strings too. But this was too fishy. Life on Earth makes you a lot more cynical than life in a magical wonderland, so he was a lot less trusting than Helios and Lunaris.

As Lunaris was trying to heal the man, James was looking around nervously. All of a sudden, he felt a bit dizzy, and he thought he felt a strange smell. It was such a subtle feeling, almost imperceptible. He barely noticed it, but something was definitely off.

But to James, who was now so tense that he could crush a rock with his sphincter, that was enough of a sign.

He quickly conjured an icepick, and sent it flying deep into the man’s brain.

The attack came out of the blue, completely unexpected to everyone around him. The sight was so shocking that Lunaris and Helios couldn’t even scream, they just looked at James without a sound.

They just stared at him for a few seconds, unable to even move. They were both high level mages, but they were mostly just raised at the institute. The only things they ever killed were monsters. Cutting down monsters even in the most grotesque ways was something normal, they didn’t blink an eye.

But seeing James kill a vulnerable man in cold blood was something they just couldn’t compute, they were paralyzed in shock. Such a heartless act was incomprehensible.

James didn’t really have time to explain though. He quickly grabbed each of them by the hand and almost dragged them out the room.

“I’ll explain soon, just come with me, trust me.” James told the two, who were barely responsive.

He dragged them away, going back to the room where they fought the demons, as he knew it was safe.

“I know what you’re thinking. To you, it looks like I just killed a man that was begging us for help.”

Lunaris and Helios were just staring at him, not making a sound.

“But I didn’t. It looked eerily realistic, I almost fell for it myself, but I’m pretty sure the man was just a trap set by the dungeon core.” James said awkwardly, unsure of how to explain this bizarre turn of events.

They took a few seconds to process this.

“Pretty sure? Pretty sure?! You drove an icepick into someone’s brain because you were pretty sure it was a trap?” Helios exploded, finally gaining back a little bit of coherence.

“Hey, don’t get me wrong. I wouldn't have done that in a million years if not for every single neuron screaming at me that something was incredibly weird about that situation. The sight of the man made me sad too, and I really did wish we could've saved him.” James paused, he was aware of how bad things looked. “But considering our current whereabouts, I’m 99% sure that was a trap.”

“That just means there’s a 1% chance you just killed an innocent man without even blinking. A man that needed our help!” Lunaris was so upset she was barely able to get the words out.

“I know that it looks bad, but hear me out. My instincts were screaming at me. I’ve done enough stupid things in my two lifetimes to know that when your gut tells you that something isn’t right, it means your brain is overlooking something.” James blurted out.

He didn’t want to mentally scar his friends, they weren’t as desensitized to these things as he was. So he had to figure out a way to calm them down as soon as possible.

The Aetherweb was so innocent compared to Earth’s internet. With James’s experience as a recluse browsing the internet 24/7, something like this was not that shocking.

He would’ve warned them before he did it, but he didn't know if he could spare even a few seconds. It was most likely a trap, but he wasn't sure what kind of trap it was. Would the man kill one of them while they were trying to save him? Anything could have happened. But he had to be decisive for once in his life, he just couldn't risk the well-being of his friends.

“We were just a few rooms away from the dungeon core, and we come across this sob story of all a sudden? That’s amateur stuff. The dungeon must think it’s quite slick, but when you’ve spent a lifetime reading and watching every fucked up thing Earth has to offer, you develop an intuition for these kinds of things.” James stated, slightly proud but also ashamed of himself at the same time.

“So you do something like that on a hunch? Because you spent your time reading the vilest things you could find? Didn’t you stop and think that maybe you were just paranoid” Lunaris asked with watery eyes.

“I know it sounds stupid, but this is dungeon delving 101. You yourselves warned me about how deceitful and clever this dungeon is. I’ve been scammed enough times to know a scam when I see one.” Yet again, James really didn’t know if he should be ashamed of all this wisdom, or be proud of it.

“So I was already suspicious as hell. A dying, chained man, really? Come on, at least be more original. Then I started feeling a bit dizzy, and that’s when I decided to pull the trigger.”

After James explained his thought process in full detail, Lunaris and Helios started to calm down. When he mentioned the dizziness, that’s when they finally snapped out of their shock.

“Aye, I think I felt something too. But it was so faint, you reacted based on that?” Helios asked, unsure if he should be impressed or scared.

“I was already on edge. I had a feeling it was a trap when I first heard the voice. But I couldn’t act on it immediately. But when I felt dizzy, I thought I knew I had to act. If I didn’t, there’s a good chance the three of us would be dead already.” James usually wouldn’t have had the stones to be so decisive. But the thought of his friends dead was enough to immediately make him act.

Helios and Lunaris spent a few minutes reflecting the entire situation. They knew what kind of person James was, and their friendship had already grown quite deep. If it were anyone else, they probably wouldn't have calmed down so easily. But this being James, they quickly had a change of heart, instead feeling grateful that he cared about them so much.

“So what do we do now? I’m not sure that the trap was deactivated when I killed that thing, whatever it was.”

“I have an idea.” Helios said. “We blow it up.”

“Blow what up?” James asked.

“The room. We blow up the whole room.” Helios said with a smile, completely back to his usual self.

“You meathead, that’s your answer to everything.” Lunaris smiled as well.

Helios then extended his hand, conjuring something that looked like a black ball.

“This is a pretty nifty spell I picked up a while back. By the time the flames from the explosion die down, there will be nothing left of that room but a smoking crater. Uh, you may want to cover your ears.”

Helios then placed the bomb in the Mana Golem’s hands, and James sent it to its destination.

If Helios hadn’t told James to cover his ears, his eardrums would’ve definitely ruptured again.

The explosion was so powerful that everything was shaking, it felt like a volcano was erupting.

James conjured another Mana Golem and sent it to check things out.

What he saw was a great relief. He was right.

“Among the smoldering remains, there’s a thick miasma all over that room. A purple haze that can't be anything else but poison.” James said, feeling very happy that he didn’t kill an innocent man after all. The chained man was definitely just a monster that the dungeon spawned, meant to keep someone in that room long enough for the poison to kill them, or at least weaken them.

He put his hands on Helios’s and Lunaris’s head, which allowed him to transmit what the golem was seeing.

“Yes, that is definitely poison.” Lunaris and Helios were even more relived than James was.

“We’re sorry we reacted that way, mate. We always trusted you, it was just a very shocking and unexpected thing to see.” Helios was truly happy that his friend wasn't a cold-blooded murderer. Deep down, he knew it from the very first moment, but the shock was just too great.

“I’m the one who’s sorry. If I had time I would’ve warned you, but I knew something was off and I didn’t want to waste a single second, I didn’t know what danger we were facing.” James said, feeling uneasy for putting his friends through that. Seeing their shocked faces was heartbreaking, he didn't want to ever hurt them again.

"I'm sorry too." Lunaris added, giving a quick hug to both of her friends. "I'm glad at least one of us was able to think rationally. Now that I think about it, most of the traps this dungeon laid out weren't a big deal at all. I was almost beginning to think it wasn't a sentient dungeon at all, it was so underwhelming. And then this happened."

Now that they've been through this unsettling episode, their friendship and trust in each other only grew stronger.

“There’s only the boss left. We definitely won’t fall for any more tricks.” Helios said while pulling out a gilded sword that perfectly matched his shield.

“Yep, I think all that’s left is to smash this thing.” James replied, excited to get revenge on this duplicitous scumbag dungeon. Only the many levels he would get for destroying the dungeon core would soothe the anger he felt.

“I’m actually aching to destroy this thing as well. The damn bastard really played me like a fiddle.” Lunaris said angrily.

The dungeon's ugly trap only ended up making them even more motivated.