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

expendable was not the way he ever wanted to be.  Granted, he knew he didn’t have the experience with personally dying dozens or hundreds of times in a dungeon that most Heroes did, but something sat wrong with him from her seeming flippantness.

Yes, well, it obviously doesn’t always have to result in Hero deaths – such as what happened in Renton.  No Heroes had died in the Giant Ogress attack that he could tell, which meant that it had been a very successful defense.

“While that is correct, look at where that brought us, with you being the only one that died,” Dwight responded.  “As much as I can hear you disagreeing with my evaluation of the situation, there are reasons why it is necessary.  I hope you can see that.”

He could—he just didn’t like those reasons.

Estimated time until next Threat appearance: 6 months+

Warning!  Threat difficulty will likely exceed potential defenses.  Find a way to ensure victory at all costs.

What exactly does that mean?  All he could understand from the unexpected message was that they had at least 6 months this time to prepare, but the “Warning” was unclear.

Clay relayed what he had been shown to his guide; it took nearly a minute for her to respond.  “I think what it’s saying is that you have some work ahead of you.  This Regional Threat, for all that it was powerful and deadly, was only an 8-Star monster; yes, it was likely enhanced to make it even more powerful, but it was still manageable.  But on the mainland where most of the Hero Guilds exist, this Threat would’ve been eliminated quickly and without much trouble – perhaps by a single group, even.”

It was hard to believe that a single group of Heroes could “easily” kill a Threat like this one, which had killed half a dozen of his monsters and killed 15 Heroes.  However, considering that these Heroes were all only Tier 2, a much higher-Tier group just might make the difference.

That all might be true, but what am I supposed to do?  From what I understand, there might not be another opportunity for me to help out; this whole thing with sending forth my monsters from my dungeon to help with the defense may not happen in the future.

“Exactly.  This happening is extremely rare, and I can’t see it occurring again when the next Threat shows up,” she confirmed.  “Dungeon Cores aren’t meant to fight the battles against these Threats, after all; they are meant to be the ones to train the ones responsible for fighting those battles – the Heroes.  As for what you can do, I think it might be time to implement what I told you about before…once the Heroes have recovered enough from this recent battle.”

What do you mean by “recover”?  15 of them died – there’s no recovering from that.

“Yes, but remember what happened when that Hero rejected his duty and died permanently in your dungeon?”

He did.  He didn’t think he’d ever forget that.  Of course, but what does that—oh.  He was replaced the next day with another Hero…so that means that we’re going to have some brand-new Heroes here soon, aren’t we?

“Precisely.  As soon as they learn the ins and outs of being a Hero, you can implement the large raid function; it’s the only way I can see being able to train them for harder fights while still allowing them to gain the necessary items to improve themselves.  Unlike most defenses against Threats on the mainland – which usually consists of hundreds or even thousands of Heroes all battling within their smaller groups – there are a limited number of Heroes on this island.  They will have to learn to work together as a whole in order to succeed.”

He had seen the potential for it before, which was why Clay had already been considering it, but with everything that had happened, he saw even more reason to implement it.  Changing the restrictions of his dungeon to allow up to 15 Heroes at a time seemed insane, but it could also be very useful; upping that limit to 30 in the future was even more crazy – and yet he was planning on eventually doing that.  Because Dwight was right about all of it; Clay needed to train the Heroes to combat threats with just the few in number that they were, and what better way than make them fight as a large cohesive team.

As she had told him before, it would be a first for Dungeon Cores to implement something like that – but Clay and his unique status was all about world firsts.  Not intentionally, granted, but being the first in something wasn’t a singular experience for him.

Therefore, in only a couple of weeks – which should be long enough for the existing Heroes to recover and get whatever new Heroes were chosen up to speed – the Dungeon Core would enable what Dwight called the “Raid System”.

I agree.  In the meantime, however, having lost many of my most powerful monsters to the defense against the Regional Threat, I need to figure out what to do with some of my rather empty rooms.  I think it’s about time I go shopping; and wouldn’t you know it, I seem to have acquired another 10,000 Crystal Chips.

I just hope we’ve gotten past this entire “Cat” thing, however….

Chapter 37

The few days following the attack by the Regional Threat and subsequent loss of half of the Heroes set to defending against it were filled with sorrow, regret, and – strangely – joy.  Jeska, for one, was saddened by the loss of so many of her fellow Heroes; while she hadn’t known many of them before they all accepted their new duties, the last few weeks had let her come to know them on a more personal basis.  Most she would consider friends, comrades on the