Dungeon of Chance: Even Odds: A Dungeon Core Novel (Serious Probabilities Book 1) by Jonathan Brooks (interesting books to read TXT) 📕

down again, its ability back on cooldown.  Whether it had planned for that or not was irrelevant, because the Creeping Fern was done playing games.

One of its fronds stretched backwards, similar to how the Stone-tipped Ferns acted when they were preparing to launch stone shards at Jeska and her party.  Instead of sharp pieces of rock, however, when it flipped the frond forward the entire frond detached.  A flying web of vines shot towards the racing Cat, who realized its mistake too late.  The Cat tried to stop and dodge the projectile, but the plant’s momentum was too great; the vine frond hit the Regional Threat with enough force to stop it in mid-stride and even knock it slightly backwards.

“Look, it’s like a net!” Pascale shouted excitedly from her right.  Wait…Pascale!  Jeska whirled around to see their group’s Scout smiling at her and the others.  He looked beat up and he was favoring his left leg, but he was alive – and at 2/13 Health.  Kelty immediately ran up to him and threw her arms around his neck, kissing him deeply – while at the same time using essentially every single healing Skill she had to bring him back to normal.

“I thought you were dead, Pas – good to see you made it,” Arcen said softly, which was unusual for him.  Looking around at the rest of the large Hero group, Jeska thought she knew why; only 3 other Scouts had managed to limp back to them, and she couldn’t see any more heading their way.  Either they were so hurt that they couldn’t walk…or they were dead.

A primal-sounding feline scream came from the other direction, and Jeska quickly turned back to the more pressing concern.  The Cat Champion wasn’t looking so powerful now, as it was currently on its side, surrounded on all sides in a net of vines that appeared to be rapidly constricting.  In addition, blood was running out from where the vines were touching its body, so Jeska could only assume that the vines were either sharp or had some sort of thorns attached to their undersides.

The massive feline’s entanglement was short-lived, however, as it managed to squeeze one of its paws out from the vine net.  The next moment, a quintet of sharp claws were tearing at the restraints, easily tearing through the plant matter with the same efficiency Jeska had earlier seen used on stone and iron armor.  Within seconds, the Cat had managed to get itself free and back on its feet, but it had lost track of its plaything; while it had been struggling to release itself from the vine net, the Creeping Fern hadn’t been idle.

A slight rumble from underneath it was the only indication that it was in trouble, but again the Cat reacted just a split-second too late.  Hundreds of vines shot out of the ground below the giant feline, many of them impaling the Champion even as it tried to move away.  The vines didn’t penetrate all that deeply, but where they did, they seemed to pump poisonous fluids directly into the Cat’s bloodstream.

The Regional Threat’s red Health bar started to pulse black and red, and Jeska saw “Debuff: Poison” underneath it.  Within moments, the damage from the net and the impalement of vines through its body had reduced the Cat’s Health down below 50%, and the poison Debuff was doing another small chunk of damage every second.  As the full Creeping Fern emerged from below the Cat where it had sunk down into the ground, it held the feline above it in some sort of strange victory pose.

The Cat wasn’t done, however; the gentle breeze around the Threat suddenly stopped as the giant monster struggled to free itself to no avail.  Instead of there being another sudden localized “tornado”, a rush of air seemed to start being sucked into the Cat at a rapid speed.  Jeska, even 200 feet away with the rest of the Heroes, could feel her ears pop as if the very air were getting thinner around her.

Then the sudden inhalation of air stopped for a moment, just as the Cat’s Health dropped to approximately a third of the red bar.  The next thing that the Mage knew, she was flying backwards through the air as a powerful blast of air slammed into all of the Heroes.  Jeska hit the ground hard at least 30 feet from where she stood, and she felt something wrench in her left knee.  Looking at her own health, she found that she had lost 5 points from her landing – and then the pain in her leg struck her, and she screamed. Lifting herself up on her arms from where she had landed, she looked down at her lower half and saw that her left leg was bent in a way it really shouldn’t bend.

Breathing heavily to work through the pain, she looked around at the groans and screams of pain from the other Heroes, and a flash of relief cut through her misery when she saw that no one else had died.  Many were hurt, some seriously, but none were obviously dead.  As Kelty went around and healed the others after fixing herself up, Jeska pulled a Minor Health Potion from her Inventory and started the healing process on herself.

Healing turned out to be even more painful, as it straightened her leg back out in the process.  When she was finished being blinded with pain and she could think again, she looked over to where the fight between the two behemoths had been happening – and was shocked at the devastation.  Large furrows in concentric circles around the pair of monsters had been torn into the plateau, evidence that the concussive release of air around its origin point had been significantly worse than what the Heroes had experienced.

As for the two monsters, they were still alive – if barely.  The Tornado Cat Champion’s red