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

“Where is it…where is it?” asked the man, looking down towards the ground as the others fended off another attack by the Spiders, with one taking another bite to her shoulder before the monster was knocked away by one of the others.  A groan of death signaled that the Explosive Shambler was alerted to their presence and on the way, and Clay saw the Heroes shudder.  No doubt they were told about what happened when it exploded.

“There it is!”  A hefty *thwack* by his wooden weapon on the body of the Cave Spider caused it to collapse in place, snapping one of its legs – but it kept coming.  “Hey, need some help here!”

One of the women turned to assist him, but the Jumping Spider near the ceiling – even with 2 broken legs – took advantage of her inattention and landed on her back, biting down on her neck and opening up one of her arteries.  As she screamed in pain and blood practically fountained out of the wound, the other women hit the Jumping Spider at the same time, crushing and killing it.  They were able to turn back in time to hit the other one jumping at them, killing it within a few blows as well.

The heavily wounded Hero wasn’t done yet; even as she was losing a lot of blood, she still managed to slam her weapon down a few times on top of the Cave Spider, before falling to her knees in weakness.  Her wooden stick clattered to the floor just as the Explosive Shambler “shambled” into sight.

“Sasha!  We need to get you out of here!” the leader said, rushing by the dying woman’s side.

“No…kill this thing…and this Health Band should heal me…”

Clay had to agree with her about the healing, but actually defeating the Shambler would be extremely hard.

“Do you think the Band will work if we drag you out of the room?” asked the man, watching the Shambler get closer.  When it was about 5 feet away, with the Heroes standing around their heavily injured group member in a defensive posture, the undead monster started to hiss internally.

Uh, oh – they better hurry….

“It’s too strong!  The other group had all 5 of their members attacking this thing and almost made it, but we’re down 1 – there’s no way we can do it.”

The others saw the truth of this and grabbed the wounded Hero – who was now unconscious – and dragged her back through the hallway leading to the first room.  The Explosive Shambler continued to follow, but as soon as they were past the threshold it stopped…and disappeared from their view.

None of them saw any more than it stopping, however, as they were more worried about their friend.  As soon as they were out of combat, the gaping wound on the Hero’s neck sealed up, and color started to come back to her face.  After about a minute, she opened her eyes to see everyone smiling down on her.

“Did I die?”

The leader laughed.  “No, we just dragged you away so you could heal.  When you’re all better, we can finish off this monster and see what else this place has deeper inside.”

I would advise against that, but it will be nice to see if my BOO is protected enough.  The baby dragonling next to his Core nodded in agreement.

A few minutes later, the nearly dead Hero was all healed up, showing how miraculous the Health Bands could be.  Clay watched them walk inside the second room again, just now noticing that the Shambler wasn’t nearby anymore.  When the Dungeon Core looked to see where it had gone, he was surprised to see something else.

“Wait…where are those Spider corpses?”

That was what Clay had seen – or hadn’t seen, as it were.  The corpses of the Spiders that they had killed had disappeared, but they didn’t leave behind a Drop Chest.  Instead…the 3 Spiders were right back where they were before the Heroes walked through the entrance of the room the first time.

Dwight answered his thoughts before he could ask the question, finally catching on to him not knowing how things operated.  “If the Heroes all leave a room before the monsters are defeated, it will be reset to how it was before they arrived.  Leaving combat heals them via the Health Bands, and the same thing essentially happens to the monsters in the room; this prevents them from attacking and killing one or two monsters in a room, then ducking out to heal, and then coming back to finish the job.  It’s all or nothing, which is what these new Heroes are now learning.”

It was a lesson they didn’t care for, based on their complaints, but Clay thought it was entirely fair.  A World Threat wouldn’t allow them to hide away for a little bit to heal up, after all, so this was a lesson they needed.

The leader was walking inside, looking around in confusion.  “What happened to our Drop Chests?  We killed those things, so we should get our reward; this is complete bull—”

Suddenly, she was attacked by 2 Jumping Spiders, who tore into the unsuspecting Hero.  She was so unprepared that she didn’t even think to protect herself with her weapon, and just screamed as she was torn into from rapid Spider bites.  Individually, they didn’t do a whole lot of damage, but if allowed free rein, they could kill someone quite quickly.  The group leader was a bloody mess, and her Health was down to 2 by the time her groupmates had arrived to help, but by that time it was too late.

In addition to the damage the bites had done, she had the same “Debuff” he had seen on the woman that had nearly died