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

No one had any objection, so they rushed inside…

…and Jeska found herself waking up inside the dungeon entrance hallway moments later.  All she remembered was being hit by a barrage of different things, but it was all over so fast that it was a blur.  Looking around, she saw her other groupmates waking up as well, so it appeared as though it was a full-group wipe.

“Wow.  Did anyone see what actually happened there?”

Her brother nodded, but the others looked a bit clueless.  “I lived just barely longer than you all because of my Class’ resistance to damage, but we’re talking about only an extra second or two.  That black-colored Slime on the other side of the lava did something that covered all of us in this dark cloud – and it hurt!  I saw all of you fall nearly at the same time as you were pelted by stone shards and other things I couldn’t make out, but then I took something to the face…and that was it.”

They were all silent as they contemplated that.  “Okay, I guess that means it’s a little too hard for us right now,” Rosara interrupted the silence.  “At least the first room was easy enough – and it will provide us some much-needed items.”

That’s very true.  Jeska stood up and looked outside, seeing where the sun was in the sky.  “Looks like we’ve got time enough for one more run – shall we?” she asked.  “Minus room #2, of course.”

She didn’t have to ask them twice, as they jumped up and followed her outside.  A little over 5 minutes later, they were ready to go.

*          *          *

The sharing of information about the new rooms was invaluable to the other Hero groups, and there was steady progress made in the number of items they obtained.  The way that Jeska calculated, most of the groups were able to open up 39 Drop Chests from the monsters they slayed inside the dungeon every 25 minutes – and that was including the 5- minute wait outside while the dungeon reset everything.

The reason that they got through all 4 rooms so quickly was the fact that they elected to wear all of their gear, all of the time.  While it wasn’t impossible for one of them to die, especially when the 4th room got a little hectic at times, it was rare – and they inevitably picked up another piece of equipment that could replace what was lost.  When, during an entire shift, they opened up over 350 Drop Chests, options of what to wear or use as a weapon were becoming more and more prevalent.

After a week of a constant grind against the monsters in the dungeon, everyone had acquired so many pieces of equipment that they practically had a back-up set in case they lost it all. Jeska even had enough multiples of her robe, circlet, belt, shoes, rings, and her staff weapon (which was essentially all that could be equipped) that she could completely outfit two other Mages.  Not only that, but her group had acquired Skillbooks up the wazoo, giving them more ways to attack, defend, sneak up on enemies, control them, and heal.

It turned out that there was a relatively limited number of Skills that could be acquired for Tier 1 Classes, and that everyone could acquire them for their Class if they found the Skillbooks.  Mages had the most diverse Skills, numbering 8 in total, though Jeska could only ready 5 of them at a time in the boxes at the bottom of her vision.[11]

All of the other Skills she had seen the other Mages possess were available to her now, which meant that Jeska now had many options to use when fighting; the days of only having 1 ranged spell – Ice Shard – were over.  Now she could fling out sharp rocks at high speed, shoot out balls of flames, and even strongly “punch” a distant target with a fist of condensed air. The best thing about it, though, was the fact that she could chain all of them together, so that every few seconds she was sending out another blast of something – there was very little downtime.

As for her groupmates, their Skill list was a bit shorter, but still impressive.  For Arcen and the other Fighter Heroes, they received Skills that helped to do more damage with their weapons; they could better mitigate additional damage to themselves, and they even had a crazy Skill called “Shouting Taunt” that seemed to tick off every monster in a room.  When they were angry, they all attacked him at the same time, no matter what they were doing before, for 10 seconds; needless to say, he had to be a little careful with it, since he did it once in the 4th room and was immediately overwhelmed and killed.  Still, it was useful to have.

Pascale and the other Scouts all got their attack-from-behind Skill, as well as Darkvision, and something called “Blend” that let them escape notice by the monsters for a limited time (though only 1-Star monsters; he tried it against the 2-Star Gloom Kobold in the 3rd room and was almost immediately hunted down and killed).  He also received a Skill that increased his chances of making a monster suffer a “Bleeding” Debuff, which helped to damage them over a longer period of time.  It didn’t really work against Ferns, though, and she doubted it would be useful against the Slimes down hallway #2 in the future.

As for healing, Kelty got the worst break as far as additional Skills.  She had her Minor Healing spell that she had from the beginning, of course, but she only managed to secure two other Skillbooks for her Tier.  One was a Skill called “Minor Regeneration”, which was an effect that lasted 1 minute and would heal 1 point of Health