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

they left the city proper, it only took about 25 minutes of walking across the rocky beach to reach their destination, and everyone – including the normally vocal Mayor – was silent as they approached within 100 feet of the portal into the cliffside.  Suddenly, as if they had triggered something by proximity alone, Jeska could hear and feel something *click* in her mind, and she was again flooded by information, though this time it was available to her.  Looking around, she saw the same shocked expressions and cries of startlement and amazement as the rest of the Heroes experienced the same thing.

“What’s wrong, Jes,” asked her father, worriedly.  He put his hands on her shoulders to take a good look at her, but she waved off his concern while still getting adjusted to…whatever this was.

“I’m fine.  I think we’re all fine.  Somehow, being this close to the dungeon has…activated…something within us,” she said, before holding up her hands for him to stop.  “No, it isn’t something bad, but it definitely confirms that this is a dungeon, for me.”

“And me,” her brother said from beside her.

“Me as well.  And…I sensed the threat coming this way, just like you said.”  That was from one of the sailors who had become a Hero, which was echoed by pretty much all of the others that she could see or hear near her.  Good.  They finally understand what is at stake here.  It’s one thing for fancy words to convince them partially; it’s something else entirely to have that knowledge come to them from another source altogether.

When all of the other Heroes now claimed to have sensed the future threat to their island, most of those who had come along grew pale and started to cry; they literally just heard that their doom was coming from their loved ones’ own mouths, and they were the only ones that could prevent it.  Jeska felt sympathy for them, but she had already come to terms with what felt like the inevitable, so it wasn’t that big of a deal to her anymore.  She just knew that she was determined to get better and face the challenge with the same vigor she applied to everything else she did in her life.

“What did it…activate?”

She tried to tell her father exactly what it was, but she had yet to actually look at it quite yet.  Or at least what felt like the most important parts.

Hero Status

Name:

Jeska Porter

Hero Name:

(None Chosen)

Class:

(None Acquired)

Tier:

0

Health:

10/10

Attack:

1

Speed:

2

Defense:

1

Inventory

Class Orbs Available

Class Skills

“It seems as though it’s some sort of…status…detailing my attributes in numerical form,” she slowly explained after getting over the shock of the Hero Status chart in her mind.  It felt like it was floating a few feet in front of her face, but when she tried to reach out and touch it, her hand went right through it, as though it weren’t even there.  It soon became apparent that everyone else was checking out this…Status…as much as she was, and she couldn’t see theirs.

“Ooh, check this out, Father!” Arcen said from next to her, and suddenly he had changed clothes in a flash.  Instead of his lightweight clothing that nearly all of them wore because it was so hot, he was wearing a plain, white, heavy cloth tunic and brown pants; where the rest of his clothes and the sandals he had been wearing had gone, she didn’t know, but he was now sporting some thin leather boots…and was suddenly holding a stout-looking wooden stick.  It was small enough in his meaty hands that it could theoretically be considered some sort of crude club, while in hers it would probably be a staff.

As if her brother’s sudden change in wardrobe started a chain reaction, one after another of the new Heroes standing near them changed into an identical outfit and held the same staff/club in their hands.  Fortunately, they were all wearing clothing that fit their bodies, because if the uniform had all been the same size as Arcen’s, they would’ve had some difficulty moving through so much fabric.

Intuitively, as it came with the new knowledge that had been imparted to her and the others, Jeska saw the option for “Inventory” near the bottom of her Hero Status chart, so she immediately touched it with her mind.  Her Hero Status went away, only to be replaced with something else.

Inventory

Tier 0 Tunic

Tier 0 Boots

Tier 0 Pants

Tier 0 Training Weapon

(Equip Best Available?)

Surprisingly, there was actually something in her “Inventory”…wherever that was.  Jeska expected some sort of bag or pouch to show up on her hip or something, but it appeared as though whatever inventory she had access to was, well, somewhere else.  She didn’t think about it too hard, because something at the back of her mind told her that it wasn’t really important; that same “something” also hinted that it was part of the same interdimensional spatial void capacity she would also use for storing the Tier Orbs she would pick up along the way…so, yeah, there was that.  She hadn’t a clue about what all of that meant, but suffice it to say that as long as it worked, she wasn’t going to complain.

Because carrying around a wardrobe that draped itself over your body at a mere thought was just too good to question at that point.  Not that she had a lot of normal clothing changes that she wanted to carry around (because she didn’t own more than a half dozen outfits, anyway), but because she had the distinct feeling that she would be acquiring a whole lot more “Hero” clothing in the future.

Instead of trying to put on each item of clothing automatically, she did what most of the others had likely done and mentally selected the Equip Best Available? option—and suddenly she was