“Now that was an impressive fight,” Sabrina said as she sauntered into the chamber, her lips curled in a smile that seemed . . . suggestive.
Jeremiah stared at her incredulously. He couldn’t help but notice the sway of her hips.
“What . . . what are you doing here?”
“I couldn’t let you have all the fun down here in the dungeon, now, could I?”
He knew she shouldn’t be there, but he was so happy to see another human being that he ignored the nearly imperceptible voice telling him something was wrong. He felt almost giddy at the prospect of sharing the dungeon adventure with her.
Sabrina approached and slung an arm around Jeremiah’s shoulders. “Tell me all about your adventure,” she whispered in his ear.
Jeremiah was suddenly overcome with a rancid smell of rotting flesh. He wrinkled his nose in disgust. “Let’s get out of here. This thing stinks.”
He kicked the dead Orc Overlord as he led Sabrina out of the chamber, her arm still draped over his shoulders.
A voice somewhere in the back of his mind screamed at Jeremiah, but he ignored it. He marveled that Sabrina cared so much that she would enter the dungeon after him, just to make sure he was okay.
Jeremiah looked sideways at his friend, a smile on his face, just as a knife slashed toward his throat.
He threw himself backward, barely avoiding the attack, and for a brief moment, saw a creature with pale skin and sharp teeth superimposed over his friend’s features.
“You’re not Sabrina!”
A voice from somewhere—in his head, maybe, but he wasn’t sure—screamed at him to run.
The image shimmered, and his friend was there again.
“What are you talking about?” Sabrina asked, stepping toward him with her hand outstretched beseechingly.
Jeremiah watched his friend skeptically and shook his head to clear it. “What’s happening?”
“The dungeon’s playing tricks on your mind,” Sabrina said. “It’s trying to get you to turn on your friends. It’s classic dungeon deception.”
“Oh.” He did have a feeling that something was trying to exert control on him somehow. It did make sense that a dungeon would have all kinds of tricks to protect itself and the treasures inside.
He did his best to push down the sense of wrongness. Having Sabrina at his side would definitely be helpful because there was still a lot of dungeon left to explore, and there were certain to be a lot of monsters left to battle.
Jeremiah summoned his sledgehammer and turned to leave the chamber. “Come on, let’s clear the rest of this dungeon and get out of here.”
This book is hosted on another platform. Read the official version and support the author's work.
He looked over his shoulder at Sabrina and motioned for her to follow him.
The visage of the pale-skinned monster flashed over her face again as she lunged forward to skewer him with a dagger, and Jeremiah instinctively swiped his sledgehammer in front of his body, blocking the blow.
He blinked and looked up to see Sabrina cradling her arm against her body. “What did you do that for?!”
Jeremiah looked around in confusion. “There was a monster here. It attacked me.”
She scowled at him for a moment before a smile returned to her face. “There are no monsters here. Just me.”
The voice in his head screamed that something was wrong, and Jeremiah looked at Sabrina skeptically. “So, Phil is okay with you coming to the dungeon?”
“Oh yeah,” Sabrina said. “Phil wants me to experience a dungeon firsthand.”
Jeremiah’s eyes narrowed. “He isn’t worried about you being here with me?”
“Oh no. He knows how powerful you are.”
“So, where is your Trainer?” he asked, suddenly realizing Regu wasn’t there either.
Jeremiah looked around, the wrongness of the current situation becoming more apparent by the moment. He didn’t know exactly what was happening, but he was certain of one thing.
“You’re not Sabrina!”
She put her hands on her hips and glared at him. “Of course I am!”
Then she lurched forward, the image of a pale-skinned, sharp-toothed monster superimposed over his friend.
He swung his sledgehammer instinctively, though his mind screamed at him not to kill his friend. At the last moment, he altered the path of the weapon, and it smashed into Sabrina’s body instead of crushing her head, sending her flying backward. His friend crashed into the wall of the cavern and crumpled to the ground.
The young woman looked up at him. “Why did you do that to me? I thought you were my friend.”
Panic flooded Jeremiah. What have I done?!
He approached her slowly and bent down to see how badly she was injured.
Sabrina quickly lunged for him, her features transforming once again into the pale, sharp-toothed monster.
Jeremiah summoned his dagger and slammed it into the monster’s heart.
An ear-shattering scream erupted from Sabrina’s mouth, and he reflexively put his hands over his ears, falling back in horror at what he had done.
A moment later, the monster shimmered, reverting to its true form before dropping to the ground dead.
>
>
> You have defeated Level 19 Changeling. Experience points awarded.
>
>
Regu was instantly at his side yelling. “What were you doing? I told you to run!”
“Hmm? That was you?” Jeremiah asked, giving his Trainer a glance before returning his focus to the creature that had looked exactly like Sabrina just a moment before.
He was truly disturbed. Not only had he been so thoroughly deceived, he also felt remorse—sort of—for killing the creature that he’d thought was Sabrina. He had been conflicted, sure, but that hadn’t stopped him from slaying something—someone—that a significant part of him had thought was Sabrina. A person. A friend.
Jeremiah told himself it would be different with a real human being. That he would never kill a friend.
Deep down, though, he doubted himself, wondering if he was only a step away from becoming a true killer.
“Why couldn’t I see the monster for what it truly was?” he wondered out loud. It was more musing than asking a question, but Regu had an answer.
“Changelings have extremely high Charisma. When the difference is large enough, they can make their victim believe almost anything, even when their mind—or their Trainer—is screaming that the illusion isn’t real.”
Maybe I shouldn’t have been ignoring Charisma, Jeremiah thought.
He shrugged. There wasn’t anything he could do about it other than keep moving forward. On that note, he reached down and looted the monster.
>
>
> You have looted Ring of Charisma (+2)
>
> You have looted Gold Coins.
>
>
Then again, maybe there is something I can do about that Charisma problem!
Jeremiah slipped on the ring and felt his likeability instantly improve. He looked at the floating camera orb and gave it his most charming smile.
“It’s time to get back to clearing this dungeon,” he declared to the universe.