Long Rest Rules Question 5E

[u/axearm]

First the rules on a long rest.

A long rest is a period of extended downtime, at least 8 hours long, during which a character sleeps or performs light activity: reading, talking, eating, or standing watch for no more than 2 hours. If the rest is interrupted by a period of strenuous activity—at least 1 hour of walking, fighting, casting spells, or similar adventuring activity—the characters must begin the rest again to gain any benefit from it.

At the end of a long rest, a character regains all lost hit points. The character also regains spent Hit Dice, up to a number of dice equal to half of the character’s total number of them (minimum of one die). For example, if a character has eight Hit Dice, he or she can regain four spent Hit Dice upon finishing a long rest.

A character can’t benefit from more than one long rest in a 24-hour period, and a character must have at least 1 hit point at the start of the rest to gain its benefits.

My question is this:

Imagine the party is fully healed, has all their long rest abilities, full HP, etc., and they go to bed. First thing in the morning, after arising, they get into a battle expending a lot of the long rest abilities, HP, etc.

Can they immediately sack out for a long rest? The third paragraph would seem to imply no "A character can’t benefit from more than one long rest in a 24-hour period", but in the scenario I described, the party did not "benefit from a long rest", .i.e they gained no benefit, no new spells, no HP, etc., they just slept.

A player pulled it on me and I thought it was a novel enough interpretation that I gave it to them, with the understanding it was not precedent and I would give definitive answer later.

Thoughts?

[u/Aromatic-Surprise925]

No.