Dungeon of Chance: Even Odds: A Dungeon Core Novel (Serious Probabilities Book 1) Jonathan Brooks (book recommendations txt) 📖

same wall made of rock, but by concentrating hard enough, he was able to start pushing at his boundaries.  It felt extremely…weird; it was almost as if he was enclosed in a large bubble that he could start to expand in one direction, but the rest of it began to collapse on him.  The more he pushed, the more he felt closed in on all sides except where he was pushing.  It wasn’t uncomfortable, necessarily, but it was difficult.

Even when he strained with all of his concentration, all he could expand his “bubble” out was maybe 50 feet.  Any more than that appeared theoretically possible, but wasn’t something he could achieve.  I can’t do it!  I’ll just have to take your word for it that the cliff face is there.

“Try again.  This should be an easy accomplishment for a Hero—.  Ah, never mind.  I keep forgetting that you’ve never had the opportunity to fully incorporate the mental fortitude needed for adapting abilities and spells for a Class.”

Yet another thing I’m a bit deficient in, I see.  Clay was feeling a bit despondent with one thing after another hampered by his lack of Herohood, but he wasn’t one to give up easily.  There had to be a solution, even if that solution was as simple as practice, practice, and practice.

“Now that you know in which direction to dig, you can start to hollow out your first hallway in preparation of making your Dungeon Boss room.  This is the easy part, Clay; all you have to do is mentally reach out to the stone in front of you and imagine it disappearing in the shape you’d like it to take.  You don’t have to worry about structural supports like Humans need to with their own buildings, as your presence alone is enough to sustain perfect integrity and extremely high resistance to external manipulation.”

There was a lot that Clay wanted to unpack in what Dwight had just said, such as what a Dungeon Boss was and what she meant by external manipulation; however, he was also thankful that he didn’t have to worry about structural engineering, because that was something he hadn’t ever studied.  And the thought of doing something that seemed impossible – like drilling through rock with just a thought – was enough of a draw that he ignored those questions for the moment.

Staring at the rock wall in front of him, he imagined it being eaten away in big chunks, hollowing a hole into his stony prison…and it worked!  As if some giant had taken a big bite out of it, the rock slowly disappeared, leaving a depression created with sizable furrows in the wall nearly a foot deep.

“You know, it doesn’t have to look like some monster literally ate its way through the stone,” Dwight interrupted his achievement.  “You can make the angles and architecture as precise as you want.”

Oh.  Taking her advice, he imagined the wall smoothing out and made the furrows disappear, so that the hole was starting to flatten out like a strange doorway.  Nice!  This is easy!

“I told you that was going to be the easy part.  Now, keep going for a few dozen feet and then make a room; make it at least 50 feet wide and long, and 20 feet high, so that you can fit just about anything in there at this stage.  Later on, you can physically move your Core deeper and further away from the entrance, allowing you to expand the rooms you already possess, as well as adding additional ones.”

Following her instructions, Clay kept going, expanding the hole straight ahead so that it formed a hallway of sorts.  He was originally going to make the hallway square, since that would make it uniform, but before he got too far he added a curved arch along the top.  It looked better to him because it wasn’t so austere, and he was pleased with the result.

After only a couple of feet, the new Dungeon Core realized that his awareness was expanding along with his efforts of a hallway.  Why is it doing that?

“Remember, I told you that your ability to sense things further away would increase as your Core Stage increased, as well as when you expand your dungeon,” Dwight replied.  “When you create rooms and hallways, and any other alcoves that you may wish to form in the future, your Dungeon Core will automatically expand your vision to encompass those areas.  This will also help you stretch out to see things further away, like you attempted to do earlier, though the distance will still be limited due to your inexperience and lower Core Stage.”

All that really meant to Clay was that his world was beginning to open up.  He hadn’t realized how confined he had felt inside the small cave before, but now that he was opening up a way out, it suddenly hit him.  He wasn’t normally claustrophobic and wasn’t necessarily afraid right now, but he also had a driving need to see the sky again.  Is this a normal feeling?

“No.  Heroes tend to spend a lot of time inside dungeons, which are primarily underground, so any type of claustrophobia is driven out of them quite early in their calling.  You are experiencing abnormal behavior…but it is also expected due to your status as a non-Hero.”

Regardless of his “abnormal behavior”, Clay was able to keep from panicking and freaking out too much; he was still eager to open up a way to the outside world, but he also knew that there was no rush, and that his new abilities would eventually allow him to break through quite easily.  Well, as long as the baby dragonling was telling the truth about being close to the cliff face, of course.

Within minutes of steadily progressing down an arched hallway for an estimated 30 feet, a curious thing happened.  A shining rainbow-colored mote drifted out of the