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

which instead of looking snobbish like it had before, it now looked deliberately staged to be as endearing as possible.  After some conversations with their new Support Class, the group had discovered that her new stat, “Charm”, was the reason she had been transformed so thoroughly.  I can’t even imagine what she will be like if she’s able to increase her Charm even more.

“Oh, it’ll probably hurt before we’re done, but it will be worth it in the end,” Arcen said.  “Trust me.”

Jeska did trust him in many things, but knowing his way around surviving in a dungeon wasn’t quite one of them.  “How about we test the waters first,” she ventured.  “I wouldn’t jump into the ocean without knowing exactly what the sharks swimming around will do, so I think the same could work here.  Since they aren’t attacking from ambush, it should be easy enough to see how they will react to our presence.”

“What, like run around real quick and see what they do?  I can do that—”

Pascale cut him off.  “I’ll do it, Arcen.  I’m the ‘Scout’ after all, even if I don’t have the Class Orb for it yet.”  He paused for a moment, before muttering loud enough that everyone could still hear him, “Besides, I’m much faster than you.”

“Ha!  So you are,” her brother said, not taking offense in the slightest.  He was very strong, but he wasn’t very fast – and he was well aware of his capabilities.  “Go for it.”

Moving to the front, Pascale stood on the threshold of the room for a moment, before taking off at a sprint.  How does he move so fast from a stationary position?  It wasn’t something that Jeska could do, for sure, but she supposed it was something a former pickpocket needed to learn to get away with ill-gotten gains.

Crazily, instead of just running in front of the platforms to see the monsters’ reactions, Pascale ran behind them, making a full circuit of the room at full speed.  He went to the right, at first, where the Ice Bats were hanging on their wooden “T”, and Jeska watched as they dropped from their upside-down perches, extending their wings and frantically flapping to gain altitude.  It was only by the time Pascale had rounded their platform and was halfway to past the center platform that they were actually able to attack.  They dove at the future Scout Class but missed him as he dodged out of the way. As they flew through where he had been, she saw what appeared to be a mist-like smoke trailing in their wake.

It took her a few seconds to realize that it wasn’t smoke, but instead was cold ice reacting with the warmer air.  There were a few times when she had been sailing that she had ventured a little further south than she was used to, and the mornings had been extremely chilly; she remembered being fascinated at how her breath had caused clouds of smoke to emerge into the frigid air.

The Serpents were in the middle, and they immediately went after Pascale as soon as he entered the room.  The bluish-scaled Pond Serpent slithered quickly after him, but Pascale was much too fast for it to catch up with him.  The Spitting Serpent – as she had suspected – slithered a little forward before stretching the forward half of its body upward, so that its head was elevated.  It opened its jaws, showing shockingly small fangs; but the next moment, a green glob of spit was expelled, It missed the quick Hero, however, and landed against the stone wall of the room, where it sizzled and hissed.  Hmmm…not venom, but…acid, maybe?

The Gliding Serpent was a little more of a worry.  Its speed was more than double that of the Pond Serpent, as it almost seemed to, well, “glide” over the ground without even touching the ground. While it wasn’t necessarily flying, it wasn’t landbound, either.  It was on Pascale’s heels almost immediately, but it didn’t really have enough inherent tactics to cut the Hero off, instead trailing behind as their future Scout ran fast enough to avoid being attacked.

As for the Boars on the left-most platform, they didn’t move, other than to rotate their positions so that they were facing Pascale as he ran around the room.  As he neared their platform, however, they charged ahead almost as one, having enough smarts to predict where he would be, instead of where he was at that moment.

“Look out!” Kelty shouted from the hallway, her hands in front of her mouth in worry.  It was unneeded, though, because Pascale was well aware of the danger. However, instead of stopping or trying to avoid the 3 Boars, he jumped and dove over them, landing in a tumble from which he was able to rise without stopping.  After the tumble, he ran the rest of the way to the awaiting group members.  As for the Boars, they ran into the wall when they didn’t hit the Hero, and they seemed a bit stunned for a moment.

“Phew!  I haven’t had to run like that since the time I swiped—er, never mind,” Pascale said as soon as he was back, though he looked at Kelty and stopped what he was about to say.  He was only breathing a little hard from his run, which led Jeska to being impressed by the former pickpocket.  “Did everyone get a good look, at least?”

“Oh yes, excellent job, Pascale.”  Jeska was replaying how the monsters had reacted in her head, and she already thought she had a plan.  “Okay, this is what I think we should do….”

Chapter 24

With the last of her strength, Jeska swatted at the Ice Bat diving for her face, hitting it squarely in its lower body. Instead of the sound of her wooden weapon impacting flesh, a *crack* echoed through the room as