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

“There are 6 Elements,” she went on, when Clay didn’t interrupt her—for once.  “Water, Fire, Nature, Air, Light, and Dark.  Water is stronger than Fire, which is stronger than Nature, which is then stronger than Air, and finally Air is stronger than Water.  Light and Dark are separate, and each are both stronger than the other while also being weaker; a Light-element Hero will do more damage to a Dark-element monster, while the Dark-element monster will also do more damage to the Light-element Hero.  Do you understand?”

Yes, yes, Water…Nature…Light….  Sure, sounds pretty easy.  It was a little tough to follow without seeing examples, but he was also positive that it would make sense…eventually.

Dwight was silent, and after nearly a minute Clay realized she was done with her explanations.  Now that he had a moment to concentrate on something else, he looked at his Transcribed Status again, saw that he was down to 25 Crystal Chips and that his Available Monsters now said 1/50.  He mentally selected it and a new menu popped up, though it was quite bare.

Available Monsters

Name

Rarity

Quantity

Required for Evolution

Ice Bat ★

Common

1

10

What is this Evolution thing that I see here?

“Simple, really,” Dwight responded matter-of-factly.  “If you collect 10 1-Star Bats, you can combine them together in an Evolution to produce a new 2-Star Bat, which will look different and have heightened abilities.”

Huh.  Interesting.  Collecting 10 of a single monster seemed difficult to do, especially since they had different Elements—wait.  Did you say just “Bats”, or does it have to be only Ice Bats?

“No, any Elemental type of Bat can be used for Evolution; however, you may find that you will obtain different results depending on which Elements are fed into the Evolution.”

This is just getting more and more complicated as we go, he complained.  It wasn’t Dwight’s fault, he knew, because it was likely that a real Hero would’ve had most of this knowledge beforehand.  Still, he felt like he was getting a bit overwhelmed with information, and everything just seemed so difficult and foreign to him.

Whether it was this frustration over his lack of prior knowledge or the way the baby dragonling seemed annoyed at his inept abilities, Clay ended up doing something reckless and stupid – but he only knew how monumentally dumb it was afterward.

Going back into the Summoning Portal to purchase another Common Spawn Egg, he thought that having more monsters to look at might help him acclimate to all of the strangeness.  However, just as he was about to purchase it, he saw something at the bottom of the list; just past Bundle Pack #3 was something that said, “Convert Core Structure Health (CSH) to Chips?”  Just after that, it said that he would get “10 Chips per CSH at Core Stage 1”.

He figured that if opening up a few more Spawn Eggs would help him learn more, then opening up dozens of them would really help him learn.  Seeing that he had 20 Core Structure Health, he decided that he might as well “convert” some of it to Crystal Chips.  Without asking about it, or retroactively wondering if it were a good idea in the first place, he mentally selected the option and another menu window popped up asking how many CSH he wanted to convert.  Selecting 16 CSH – since that would give him 160 Chips and still have plenty CSH in reserve – he confirmed his choice and then heard a sudden *crack*, followed almost immediately by pain, which he wasn’t even sure how that worked since he was a gem and all.

“WHAT DID YOU DO?!” Dwight immediately shouted in response to the cracking sound coming from his Core.  Clay barely even heard her, though, because he was still reeling in pain; he looked outside of himself to see what he had done to himself, expecting his Core to be shattered into pieces…but it looked whole.  A bit less substantial-appearing, maybe, but whole.  Therefore, he reasoned that the pain he was feeling was more mental than anything, but that didn’t mean it didn’t hurt.  A lot.

When the pain finally started to subside a little, either that or he was getting used to it, he finally answered the baby dragonling.  I converted some of my Core Structure Health to Chips, so that I could purchase some more Spawn Eggs.

“Well, that’s not so bad; converting a couple of CSH points into Chips is a frequent strategy used by Dungeon Cores to temporarily increase their Crystal Chip count,” Dwight returned, a little bit calmer.  “Though you need to make sure you don’t convert too much at one time, for a multitude of reasons.  How many did you convert?  2 or 3?”

Uh…16?

Clay was expecting her to rave and scream at him, as it was obvious that he had done something wrong, though other than the annoying pain that still lingered, he wasn’t sure what that might be.  Instead, she was silent for nearly a minute, and then slowly settled on the floor, shaking her head sadly; while it was hard to evaluate facial expressions on a dragon, even a baby dragonling, she exuded so much sadness in the gesture that it was hard to miss.

“I only have myself to blame for this.  I should’ve taught you more and warned you about the dangers, but I’m still having difficulty adjusting to the fact that you weren’t ever a Hero before,” Dwight said slowly.

It’s not your fault—

“It is my fault; I was designed to be the best guide, helper, and teacher to a Dungeon Core, but I have failed in almost everything up to this point.  And now you might be destroyed, making this probably the shortest life of any Dungeon Core, ever.”

What?!  I thought you said I was invulnerable?  He was relying on his invulnerability to keep him alive, but if that was gone…what happened?

“Yes, you were