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

But at what cost?  As much as she dreaded it, Jeska looked around the plateau, counting those still alive. Out of the 30 Heroes who started the day alive on the island, they were down to exactly half of that: 15.  And of those that were left, only Jeska and her own group were whole – they somehow hadn’t lost a single member.

As she stared around at the carnage, tears sprang to her eyes again at the devastation.  How did it come to this?  Is this what it’s going to be like every time?  How much stronger do we need to be to survive?  And was this the only Threat we’ll see – or was this just the first of many?

Deep down, she intuitively knew that this was just the first and perhaps the easiest of the Threats that they would face in the future.  All of which meant that they had to step it up and get much stronger as fast as they could.  The problem with that was the fact that they had taken some serious losses from just this one battle, and it would take more than a little while to recover from that.  At least, as morbid as the thought is right now, there should be some Drop Chests from these monsters that will help us get there—wait.  Why aren’t they disappearing?

Some part of her knowledge as a Hero knew that World Threats – and by extension, she assumed, Regional Threats – left behind Drop Chests when they were killed, just like the monsters in a dungeon.  In fact, it was strange that none of the monsters that had participated in the battle and been destroyed had disappeared.  Inside the dungeon, that only happened when they had forgotten to finish off one of the monsters in a room, which occasionally happened; however, all of the monsters out here had been utterly destroyed—

“It’s not over!” she shouted hoarsely, turning towards the one non-Hero that was still alive: The Nether Mage Slime.  Almost as if it could sense her attention, it turned towards her and started to raise its pudgy little “arms” – a sure sign that it was going to cast the deadly cloud of darkness over her and her group.  Looking at her Skills, she saw something she was hoping to see – her Fiery Explosion was off of cooldown.

Activating the Skill, she directed the explosion right on top of the Slime, knocking it back a little and burning off a portion of its slimy form – but it wasn’t nearly enough to stop it.  She frantically sent out an Ice Shard that was off of cooldown, but she also braced herself and readied to run—but 3 other Fiery Explosions rocked the front of the Slime, blasting holes in it that it couldn’t recover from.  Her Ice Shard slammed into it last, piercing its nucleus cleanly. As Jeska toppled forward in exhaustion and from the stress of the day, she managed to see the Slime collapsing into a formless pool of goo.

Okay, now we did it….

Chapter 36

The anticipation and worry were almost too much for Clay as he listened to the battle against the Regional Threat from the entrance of his dungeon.  He couldn’t see what was happening, of course, but he could piece it together well enough from what he heard; not only that, but a small part of his Dungeon Core could tell the exact moment when the monsters he sent out to help had died.  It was like there was a tiny little string running from his Core to each monster; it wasn’t enough to communicate with, control, or even tell their precise location, but it was enough to know that they still lived.

“Those connections were what allows the monsters to reintegrate with your dungeon if they succeed and return,” Dwight explained.  “They were created by you, so there is a permanent bond that nothing but death can eliminate.  Of course, you didn’t give instructions for them to return, so that is basically a moot point.”

When each of these little “strings” were cut, he grew more and more worried.  Eventually, even his 9-Star Creeping Fern was somehow killed, and Clay became concerned that he hadn’t done nearly enough to stop the Cat Threat.  When he saw 2 Heroes come flying off of the plateau up top and land in a lifeless heap on the beach, the worried Dungeon Core was convinced that all was lost.  Especially since the only monster he had left was his Nether Mage Slime, but against something that could kill his only 9-Star monster, he doubted it would do much.

Soon after, he felt even that small connection to his Slime monster disappear.  Well, Dwight, I tried; I’m sorry—

Congratulations!

With your assistance, the local Hero population has succeeded in ending the Regional Threat!  For your participation in the Regional defense, you have been awarded 10,000 Crystal Chips!

Battle Statistics:

Defeated:

1X Tornado Cat Champion★★★★★★★★

Losses:

1X Ice Bat★

1X Nether Mage Slime★★★

1X Stone Golem★★★

1X Mist Demon★★★

1X Colossal Serpent★★★★★

1X Giant Bush Spider★★★★★

1X Creeping Fern★★★★★★★★★

15X Tier 2 Heroes

They killed it?  And it looks like all of the monsters I sent out died, so I won’t be getting them back for use in my dungeon even if I had instructed them to—wait…15 Heroes died?  That’s…horrible.

“True, it is a higher percentage – I believe 15 Heroes would be 50% – of their total local population than normally perishes during a World Threat (or in this case, this mysterious Regional Threat), but there are always losses of some kind or another,” the baby dragonling said matter-of-factly.

It was as if she wasn’t speaking about the lives lost, but was instead only concentrating on the numbers. While he loved math and probabilities as much as he did, he couldn’t help but think that considering people as being “normally”