Covered in the black slime and oil from the many tar-elementals they had to defeat on their way to the second boss, the group travelled through the ancient-looking hall, the walls were crumbling away, revealing fossils trapped within the exposed stone.

The green-fire braziers stood against the dusty walls of the endlessly long tunnel; they were located symmetrically between the pillars.

Upon closer inspection, JohnWillStab could see that there were dozens of skulls in each one.

“JohnWillStab: That… was a lot of monsters…” John remarked, his health was near the sixty-percent mark, Bonifacius was still on full health while Foxly was dangerously close to fifty-percent.

♛’s health was full thanks to her cheats.

“Bonifacius: Indeed… perhaps we should rest for some time…” he suggested, noticing a small pocket to the side of one of the walls.

“XxFoxlyxX: Good idea!” he exclaimed.

With no objections from any of the exhausted party members the decision was made.

Cautiously, Bonifacius walked over to the small room, shield drawn.

“Bonifacius: Tis safe!” he exclaimed, giving John, ♛ and Foxly the go-ahead to follow him inside.

Immediately XxFoxlyxX fell to the ground with his hands crossed behind his head.

“XxFoxlyxX: Do these always take so long?” he asked glancing down to his watch and seeing that they were playing for almost forty minutes already.

“Bonifacius: Thou must remember there are only four of us!” he reminded Foxly.

“JohnWillStab: At least I got a chance to try out my new ability!” John exclaimed hovering his mouse over the [Projectile Dodge] skill.

“Projectile Dodge allows the user to become immune to one, non-AOE range attack, upon dodging the attack the spell will become inactive and will need to be manually re-enabled after the thirty-second cooldown.”

“That brings me up to five abilities, kick, slash, gut-punch, dagger-throw and projectile dodge!” John thought, looking down to his abilities.

JohnWillStab sat down on the dirt ground.

“Bonifacius: Free from combat, our stamina and health shall regenerate in five or so minutes.” Bonifacius explained.

“XxFoxlyxX: Guys, look!” he pointed to a dark corner of the room, in the shadows stood a crimson chest.

“JohnWillStab: Nice! Treasure!” he exclaimed, waiting for Foxly to grab it like every other piece of loot in their vicinity.

“Bonifacius: We must be careful; it could very well be a mimic!” he explained.

JohnWillStab raised an eyebrow.

“JohnWillStab: A mimic? Like a chest-monster?” he asked.

“Bonifacius: Mimics are far more complex than that, they are a race as diverse at the number of things found in abandoned ruins and dungeons!” Bonifacius explained.

XxFoxlyxX nodded.

“XxFoxlyxX: Hard to believe Bromy wrote a list of each one in his books…”

“JohnWillStab: Ah, the moss guy!” John nodded understandingly.

After a few seconds, ♛ spoke up.

“♛: It’s just a regular chest, I just checked it.” She explained.

Suspiciously, XxFoxlyxX folded his arms, he didn’t say anything.

Seeing this, ♛ rolled her eyes.

“♛: Dude, seriously? You think I bothered getting all the way here to have you get eaten by one mimic?” she asked with an exhausted expression.

“XxFoxlyxX: I don’t know about the others, but I still don’t trust you,” he said plainly.

“♛: Whatever, just leave the chest then,” she said with a shrug.

Bonifacius casually approached the wooden chest.

“Bonifacius: Come now, friends! Trust is crucial to our success!” he said with a confident smile.

“♛: Yeah!”

Bonifacius confidently opened the chest, revealing a small pile of silver coins.

“♛: You actually opened it!?” she asked with a dumbfounded expression.

“Bonifacius: Of course!” he turned to John and Foxly with an innocent expression of satisfaction.

“Bonifacius: Does thou see? Our healer was telling the truth! Thou have nothing to worry about!”

John eyed his party members awkwardly.

“Foxly really doesn’t trust her…” he though, seeing his suspicious expression.

“I guess it’s not that I trust her… But I don’t want to be an asshole… Bonifacius would be sad…”

This content has been misappropriated from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.

“JohnWillStab: Come on, it’s just a dungeon, serial killers have friends they don’t kill too!” John said with a thumbs up.

♛ turned to face him.

“Was that… supposed to be nice? Or was it a plea for mercy?” she thought, seeing Foxly breath a disappointed sigh.

“XxFoxlyxX: All I’m saying is being a little critical of the person who wanted to scam you less than twenty-four hours ago is logical!”

“Bonifacius: JohnWillStab is right, we owe it to both ourselves and our party members to facilitate the environment others can put their past misdeed behind them!” he exclaimed.

“♛: …”

“♛: Sure.”

“XxFoxlyxX: SHE SAID THE ‘…’!” he exclaimed glaring at the chat.

“Bonifacius: Tis only natural one adds ellipses to their speech when being in-character!”

JohnWillStab looked around the room they were in, pillars stood around the square chamber; two against each wall as well as one in each corner.

The ground was made from dirt and rock.

“♛: Guys, relax! Remember, I’m just here because I felt bad! That’s all!”

“Felt bad my ass! Just two bosses left until you’ll become my pawns!”

“XxFoxlyxX: If feeling bad was a problem for you, you wouldn’t be running a slave-business, would you?!”

Suddenly the room turned red as JohnWillStab’s foot landed on a small pressure plate engraved with a skull.

The crimson light illuminated his regretful expression.

“JohnWillStab: …”

“JohnWillStab: What are the chances that was just a moody light switch?” he asked looking over to the rest of his party members.

The wall which led them inside the trap closed, trapping the four within what was now recognised as their resting place.

In the centre of the room appeared a vortex of bones and what looked like rags or bandages.

From the oddity, the inhuman form of the monster manifested.

Its face was completely bandaged, its torso was longer than the entirety of John’s character.

Its hands looked like scythes, crudely sewn into its hand-stubs.

Its feet looked like digigrade hooves.

“XxFoxlyxX: SLIM TO F#*KING NONE!” he screamed back as the undead creature arched its back more than ninety degrees before setting its sights on Bonifacius.

“Bonifacius: TIS A MURDER-GOLDEM!”

The sound of clashing metal could be heard as the golem sprung over the small battlefield to Bonifacius with its scythe-arms, slashing at Bonifacius’ shield relentlessly.

His health ticked down as ♛ began casting her healing spell.

This time there were no flowers or bugs appearing as her spell fizzled away.

“♛: WHAT THE F#*K!? MY MAGIC ISN’T WORKING!” she exclaimed as Bonifacius was launched across the room.

His character smashed into one of the pillars, collapsing it and causing some rubble to fall down from above.

Seeing Bonifacius taking dangerous amounts of damage, XxFoxlyxX reached for his water-sphere card.

He threw it into the centre of the room and activated it to no effect.

“XxFoxlyxX: My magic isn’t working either!” he exclaimed turning to John who was already running after the murder golem.

“JohnWillStab: How long is this supposed to last?!” he asked, unleashing a barrage or kicks and slashes at the creature.

Its constant attacks left no time for Bonifacius to retaliate, not that he would risk lowering his shield.

“♛: All magic traps have a ten-minute timer, if we could survive that long, the monster would despawn!” she explained.

“♛: There is no way we can last that long!” She tried targeting the room, the walls and even the golem itself, but they were abnormally well protected, it was like asking for the place someone is staying in a hotel with millions of rooms, also the person teleports to a different one every second.

Meanwhile, Bonifacius’ health was at the fifty-percent mark already, it hasn’t even been a minute.

JohnWillStab targeted the monster seeing that its health was full.

“JohnWillStab: I’m not even dealing any damage!” he cried.

“Bonifacius: I may be able to hold it off for another minute without my abilities…” he explained.

John nodded.

“JohnWillStab: Got it.” John looked around the room.

“If the boss monster is killable, it must be killable without magic, in other words physical attacks…”

“Maybe a specific part of it? Like a core?”

“JohnWillStab: Bonifacius, did the moss guy ever mention the golems to you? Do they have a core or something?”

Bonifacius shook his head, with every attack he blocked he was pushed one step closer to a wall.

“Bonifacius: A golem possesses a soul, what makes it a golem and not a regular monster is the process of creating it from inanimate materials through magic!”

“Shit…” John looked around the room.

That’s when a solution came to his mind.

“JohnWillStab: Crown, Foxly, stand where the door was!” he instructed.

“XxFoxlyxX: You have a plan?” he asked, already walking to the door which was blocked with discoloured stone, ♛ followed him.

“JohnWillStab: Yeah!” he grinned.

“♛: Does your plan involve maths?” she asked sarcastically.

“JohnWillStab: No!” he replied, still smiling.

“Bonifacius: What shall I do, friend?” he asked, his willingness to cooperate with JohnWillStab threw ♛ off guard.

“♛: I’m not comfortable putting my faith in that guy…” she said wryly.

“XxFoxlyxX: I know he looks, acts, and is stupid, but planning things is the one thing he seems alright at…” Foxly remarked observing John’s every action.

“JohnWillStab: Bonifacius! Get the golem to smash the pillars!” he instructed as JohnWillStab began kicking some of the stole pillars in hopes of damaging them enough to break.

♛ face lit up.

“♛: You’re trying to make the roof collapse onto it and keep it, immobilized for the remaining eight minutes!” she exclaimed.

♛ grabbed the staff from her back and rushed over to one of the pillars.

“JohnWillStab: Hold on! If the roof falls, I won’t be able to move you and Bonifacius out of the danger!” John exclaimed as one of the pillars shattered.

Bonifacius moved to the side as the golem’s scythes sliced two pillars down across the middle, causing them to crumble away.

John looked at the remaining pillars.

“Four down… ehh… one, two, three… four of twelve… eight! Eight to go!”

“♛: Shut up, I can keep my own HP up just fine!” she exclaimed as slowly the pillar she attacked began to lose HP.

She observed its durability carefully, seeing that it was barely changing until a strong kick from Foxly removed a solid chunk of HP from the pillar.

♛ turned to look at him curiously.

“XxFoxlyxX: Your stick isn’t doing any damage, don’t think helping you means I trust you!” he said before planting another kick to the pillar.

She shrugged, “♛: Whatever,”

Just as Bonifacius’ health was dipping into the ten-percent area the eleventh pillar broke.

♛ and XxFoxlyxX retreated to the final pillar, conveniently left beside the exit.

With all three attacking it, the final support of the roof broke.

The whole room shook as the boss glanced up to see the incoming downpour of rocks.

Moments before Bonifacius would have met his pancake-like fate, JohnWillStab jumped in, grabbing him with the “/pickup” command and running towards the door, he moved with the swiftness of someone chased by an army of pissed-off undead.

“HERE WE GO!” he thought as the room began to crumble into many boulder-sized chunks.

♛ and Foxly watched the scene as John sprinted towards the exit.

Even so, it seemed like destiny was against John’s continued survival, because a massive rock was falling right at him.

Before ♛ or Foxly could even hope to warn John, the rock flew right through him.

Moments later he reached the safety of the doorway where he waited the collapse out.

“♛: WHAT THE FUCK WAS THAT!?” she demanded, vividly remembering the rock pass through JohnWillStab.

John smiled smugly.

“JohnWillStab: Projectile-dodge!”

He put Bonifacius back down.

After a few minutes of waiting, both the boss, the magic-blocking effect and the wall blocking the door exit.

JohnWillStab, ♛, XxFoxlyxX and Bonifacius stepped outside of the room where they practically collapsed to the ground.

“Bonifacius: Perhaps… another rest is in order…”

“♛: Perhaps…” she replied exhaustedly