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

“Duty” again, but what really caught his attention was that she had said it might be “fun”.  He wasn’t sure exactly what that meant, so he asked her.

“You’ll just have to wait until you finish this; then I will explain.”

With renewed determination, Clay continued to work, removing dirt and stone at a faster rate.  In less than an hour, and with a total of 9 Crystal Chips in total consumed by his efforts, he was nearly done.  With 3 bare rooms, 4 hallways, and a quick stretch of his awareness past the end of the final hallway, he could see the open air behind a few more feet of rock.  As he removed the last little bit of material blocking him from the outside world, he saw and felt another Crystal Chip float away from his Core and disappear – but that wasn’t the only thing that happened.

Your dungeon is now open!

Crystal Chip replenishment is now activated!

Time until replenishment: 23 h 59 m 59 s

Core Stage 1 replenishment: 1 Chip

What?  Only 1 Crystal Chip every 24 hours?  Looking at his Transcribed Status again, Clay could guess that he needed to accumulate 500 Chips in order to move on to the next Core Stage, which seemed extremely time-consuming.  Even if he saved the 40 Chips he still had after constructing his dungeon, it would still take over 15 months of waiting to get to that point.

Dwight had ventured to the end of his newly constructed entrance in her baby dragonling form, and stared out beyond the confines of his dungeon.  Instead of answering his question, her thoughts were in a different direction entirely.  “I really think you should look at this.”

Since there was nothing he could do about his replenishment – nor his lack of a good amount of replenishment – Clay brought his vision to the edge of his “domain”.  While he couldn’t stretch his awareness far to see hundreds of feet through solid rock, as soon as there wasn’t any impediment to his vision, the new Dungeon Core was easily able to look out to the horizon.  And what a horizon it was.

He’d heard stories of the ocean before, but had never thought to see it.  He almost couldn’t believe there could be anything as what had been described to him: Water as far as one could see, and not a bit of it you could drink because it was full of salt, seemed far-fetched.  However, looking at it now, Clay had to admit he was wrong – totally and completely wrong.

It was…magnificent.

If he had still been able to breathe, his breath would’ve caught in his throat – it was that beautiful.  The sun was just starting to set on the horizon, painting the undulating waves with a mixture of blues, oranges, and reds, creating a stunning vista that seemed otherworldly.  Clay thought he could just stare out into the ocean for days or perhaps weeks, and never get bored of—

“That’s not what I was talking about.”

Hmmm?  What?  Clay was confused for all of a second, before he started looking around at anything but the vast ocean stretching out to apparent eternity.  It didn’t take long to comprehend why Dwight had been so insistent, fortunately.

It turned out that the cliff face that Clay had just busted out of hadn’t been on a deserted stretch of beach, where his dungeon was hard to find or difficult to reach.  All of the dungeons that the former general store worker had heard of were located in hard-to-reach areas, which made travel by Heroes around their country of Ardheid essential.  Clay’s dungeon, on the other hand, was certainly not hard-to-reach; the exact opposite, in fact.

His entrance sat approximately 50 feet up the gentle slope of a cliff face, easily in reach of a sprawling town just a half-mile or less up the beach.  There were piers and boats jutting out into the ocean, hundreds of buildings that he could make out from his position, and dozens of visible people going about their business of creating a bustling atmosphere even late into the day.  Worst of all, there seemed to be a small group of people heading along the beach in the direction of his newly created entrance.

Didn’t you say that I’d have weeks or months until my dungeon was found?

“Apparently not.  This situation is becoming more and more unusual as it goes on.”

I’m beginning to hate the word “unusual”. That was all he could say as he watched the group of 3 people advance upon his dungeon, completely unprepared for what they would bring.

Chapter 5

“Don’t blame me if you can’t haul a line properly, Arcen,” she laughed at her large friend good-naturedly.  “It takes something that you apparently don’t possess: skill.”

“Whatever, Jeska,” Arcen replied as he rolled his eyes dramatically.  “It’s not my fault; just because I tend to tear the exceedingly thin wires of these nets with my bulging muscles, that doesn’t mean I don’t have skills.”  He demonstrated his bulging muscles with an equally over-dramatic flex of his arms over his head.

It was Jeska’s turn to roll her eyes, as she hid her smile by turning away.  Her brother was ridiculous sometimes—scratch that, most of the time—but she had to admit that he was strong.  Like, obscenely strong; Arcen could practically lift the large skiff (that they were using to pull in their catch) while she was inside of it with one arm.  Therefore, it wasn’t a surprise that the delicate netting, which they were using to pull up the Golden-scaled Hornblower fish so prevalent around Chardelia, had torn when it got caught on something.  He tended to solve his problems with his muscles instead of using his brains. That didn’t mean he was stupid, though; far from it, actually – he was quite intelligent when he wanted to be. Sadly, that was