Chapter 5: No More Cracking Teeth (Patreon)

Getting back to the carcass, Dominic was less interested in eating than he was in checking whether he could finally level up – and then finding out what rewards he’d gained from the Challenge.

Progress to Evolution: 464/462 PP level up

‘Yes!’ he cried to his companion as he saw it. It was close – only two more Prey Points than he needed, but that didn’t matter: he’d finally got enough! ‘No more cracking teeth!’ 

‘That will be a relief,’ Leo agreed. ‘I’ve felt embarrassed every time we’ve shown our teeth to the females. Thanks for that, by the way,’ he says with a heavy dose of sarcasm. 

‘For what? I didn’t realise that the acid was going to eat at our teeth!’ objected Dominic. 

‘No, for teaching me how to feel embarrassed.’ 

‘Ah,’ Dominic realised. ‘It’s a human emotion.’ He grinned mentally. ‘Welcome to humanity. We have cookies.’ At the thought he couldn’t help moaning softly. He missed cookies. 

‘That or having a primate run around in your body and make a disgrace of itself is enough to teach anyone embarrassment,’ Leo retorted, bringing Dominic away from a daydream of cookies, and brownies, and cakes, and bread, and sandwiches, and pasta, and anything that wasn’t raw meat, however nice said raw meat actually tasted to him now. 

He mentally poked his tongue out at the pain-in-his-brain. 

‘Anyway, to get back on topic, I’ve been thinking.’

‘Is the sky falling?’ Leo commented irreverently. Dominic sent him an impression of an eyeroll, but refused to be diverted. 

‘Hopefully, this is the next half-step which might mean that we have more options to choose from. Last time we had an extra option; if this is the second half-step, then we might even have two extra enhancement possibilities.’ Anticipation ran through him as he considered that. 

‘And if it isn’t the half-step milestone?’ asked Leo, probably playing devil’s advocate again. 

‘Then I still have two options to choose from,’ Dominic shrugged. ‘I think we need to make a plan for enhancements, anyway.’

‘I agree. What do you have in mind?’

‘Stamina is our biggest need,’ Dominic stated bluntly. ‘We run out far too fast, and now that we have Regeneration, our health replenishment speed actually far out-paces our stamina replenishment. Enduring Stamina would help, but we need to hunt wildebeests for that first – we need stamina now.’ 

‘I’ll agree that it’s a rather urgent need – we have too many Abilities which use it. Second Wind does come in useful, though.’

‘That’s true, but Second Wind is more of a stop-gap solution, not a proper one. Still, I’ve been considering that one too. It’s not an enhancement, but surely there’s a better way of increasing Second Wind than just waiting for a good moment in a battle?’

‘Like what?’ Leo asked, sounding a little confused. 

‘Well…’ Dominic trailed off, bringing up the description of Second Wind from his status screen. 

Second Wind (T1) level 1 (24% to level 2) – activatable when under 50% health or stamina. Gain 50% of your maximum health and/or stamina for the duration of the timer. Timer: 05:00. At the end of the timer, lose 50% of your max health and stamina.  

‘It says that it’s activatable when under 50% health or stamina. What happens if I’m not under 50% health but I am under 50% stamina? Or the reverse? Do I lose both health and stamina when the timer runs out? My health regeneration is more than enough now to replenish my pool in the time allotted. If I can bring myself down to under half health, trigger the Ability, then wait out the timer, then wait for my health to replenish completely before starting again, I reckon that that would be a good way of grinding the Ability. As long as it doesn’t take both health and stamina, that is. But again, that’s what the testing would be about.’

‘And how do you suggest getting to under half health in a controlled environment?’ Leo asked dubiously. 

‘We’re surrounded by other predators, Leo,’ Dominic pointed out.

‘You mean to ask the lionesses to –’

‘Yes. Or perhaps it would work with stamina instead of health. If it did, that would be easier to do, thinking about it,’ he said thoughtfully, more to himself than Leo. ‘That way I wouldn’t even need to get the lionesses involved – I’d just have to run around a bit. Hmm.’

Leo huffed in consideration when Dominic stopped talking, his thoughts disintegrating more into wordless musings. 

‘It might work. But if it doesn’t? Or Second Wind needs to be used in a proper combat environment to increase?’ Dominic shrugged, his focus sharpening again on the conversation. 

‘We’ll cross that bridge if we come to it. Anyway, we’ve gone on a bit of a tangent. Coming back to the point, we agree that stamina is a priority. I want to put Roar as a second priority.’

‘Why Roar?’ Leo asked curiously. ‘I know why I would choose it – to be able to signal to males far and wide that this is my territory, but I suspect that that is not your reasoning.’

‘And you’d be right,’ Dominic responded with a mental grin. ‘No, I was thinking about the Place of Power. You know the current protectors?’

‘No, I have no idea what you’re talking about,’ Leo replied sarcastically. ‘It’s not like they haven’t featured in a few of my dreams.’ 

‘Really?’ asked Dominic, momentarily diverted. 

‘Really,’ confirmed Leo grimly. ‘What, you think that lions can’t have nightmares too?’

‘I mean, no, I just…hadn’t really thought about it,’ admitted Dominic after scrambling for a good response. 

‘Well, we do,’ huffed Leo. ‘And those creatures definitely have featured. Along with my teeth dropping out.’

‘They say that dreaming about teeth falling out indicates lack of confidence or loss of something important,’ mused Dominic. Flashing a mental grin at his companion, he continued. ‘Could you be worried about, uh, performance issues?’

‘I could tell you in great detail why I’m not at all worried about performance issues,’ the lion threatened. ‘With illustrations.’

‘Anyway, back to the topic,’ Dominic moved on hurriedly before Leo could carry out his threat. ‘I was thinking about their main weapon: sonic vibrations. They’re probably caused by soundwaves, right?’

‘I have no idea,’ commented Leo dryly, but Dominic wasn’t actually listening. 

‘So what if we could disrupt those? Or wield our own sonic weapon?’

‘And you think that enhancing our roar would do that?’ asked Leo, finally taking some interest. 

‘I think it’s a good possibility,’ Dominic nodded. ‘It would be better if some of the lionesses also somehow enhanced their roars too, but I don’t know if they’ll be able to do that.’ 

‘I could try communicating that with them,’ mused Leo. 

‘That would be great,’ agreed Dominic. ‘So you agree about putting Roar up the priority list?’

‘Yes, but I think there’s something else we need to consider too,’ interjected Leo. 

‘What’s that?’

‘Our mane.’

‘Again Leo –’ Dominic groaned, before the lion cut him off. 

‘Hear me out,’ Leo told the former-human seriously. Sensing that his companion wasn’t trying to be facetious this time, Dominic sent a sense of listening. ‘If we darken our mane, we gain more charisma towards others of our species, right?’

‘Right.’

‘And what exactly are we trying to do at the moment?’ 

Realisation dawned for Dominic.

‘You think it would help integrate the other lionesses into the pride?’

‘I’m sure it would.’

Dominic considered that for a moment. 

‘But this is a temporary state. And hopefully they’ll integrate anyway,’ he pointed out. ‘Do we want to use one of our enhancements to gain something a little faster that we’ll probably gain anyway?’

‘What if this situation repeats itself?’ Leo asked. Dominic was stopped in his tracks for a moment.

‘You think it will?’

‘I think it’s likely. As we expand our territory, we are likely to encounter other lions. Besides, even if this particular situation doesn’t repeat itself exactly, having better charisma is likely to make our life in the pride easier and improve our ability to convince the lionesses to do what we want.’ 

Dominic considered it. Leo made some good points, though he was a little dubious about whether increased charisma had anything to do with being more convincing. Then again, he thought to himself, who would I prefer to do things for? A beautiful woman with great tits and a gleaming smile or an ugly old bag who’s always frowning? 

‘Alright, I take your point,’ Dominic accepted. ‘So we’ll do stamina and darkening our mane for the first two enhancements, then do stamina and roar for the next enhancements. That’ll either be here if we’re offered extra enhancement possibilities, or next time we level up. Agreed?’

‘Agreed.’ 

Looking down his status screen, Dominic realised that there was another question to discuss. 

‘So, we have two Abilities to take. Sure Feet is a definite one, right?’

‘Yes.’

‘But do we definitely want Acid Spit? What if it destroys our teeth or something?’ Having experienced what life was like with broken canines, Dominic had no desire to make that a permanent state of affairs. 

‘It’s a risk,’ Leo said slowly. ‘But consider what happened with Powerful Kick – it became Powerful Swipe which worked much better with our body.’

‘Though that’s another consideration,’ Dominic pointed out. ‘I suspect that we’ll have to choose between the amount of modifications made to our body; what if we choose limited modifications and it nerfs the Ability completely?’

‘Meaning…?’

‘Well, what if instead of Acid Spit it becomes…Acid Dribble, or something,’ Dominic suggested, his imagination failing him. Though he couldn’t help but grimace at the mental image that created: a lion looking a bit like a drooling mastiff with green liquid trickling out of the corners of his mouth and falling to sizzle on the ground. ‘Or what if it meant that we might hurt the lionesses when we mated with them because our skin became alkali in response,’ he added.

Leo recoiled at the possibility.

‘Do you really think that’s likely?’ he asked, more than a little anxiously. 

‘I don’t know, that’s the issue,’ Dominic replied in frustration. 

They were silent for a few long moments .

‘I think that it should be fine,’ Leo said finally. 

‘And why do you say that?’ Dominic demanded. 

‘Because so far, even though we’ve accrued Abilities from a wide range of creatures, none of them have been actively counter our nature.’

‘We’ve never taken an Ability from a lizard before,’ Dominic pointed out. 

‘Look,’ Leo said, losing his patience. ‘I think that the potential risk is worth the reward. That’s what you thought when you contemplated using a magic scroll which, might I add, caused damage to our body which we still haven’t managed to overcome – and might never. I doubt that acquiring Acid Spit is likely to cause anywhere near the amount of damage that Lightning Discharge did – or offer the same risk to our life.’

‘...You have a point,’ admitted Dominic, though he wasn’t sure that it was a completely valid argument – two wrongs don’t make a right and all that. ‘You want to acquire Acid Spit? To take the risk of it doing something irreversible to our body?’

‘I think that potentially having a ranged weapon and the ability to leave acid eating away at the bodies of our enemies is worth the risk, yes.’ 

‘OK then,’ Dominic replied, because honestly, even though he wasn’t entirely personally convinced that Acid Spit was worth it, it was true that he had unilaterally put them both at risk when he decided to open the Lightning Discharge scroll back in the dungeon. Leo deserved the opportunity to make the same sort of decision. ‘Though after this, no more complaining about me taking Lightning Discharge, OK?’ he asked Leo pointedly. 

The lion grumbled for a moment but then agreed. 

Activating the level up, Dominic was disappointed not to see any sort of message about having reached the next half-step threshold. He’d really thought that if level 10 was the threshold for the first tier, level 20 would be the threshold for the second half-step. 

Then again, the first half-step was level 6, not level 5… Maybe the half-step is level 21 instead? He’d have to find out later. 

For now, he chose Heart and Mane (darken) as they’d agreed, then accepted Sure Feet and Acid Spit as Abilities. 

Sure Feet went through with no problem, but as expected, accepting Acid Spit brought another message flashing up in front of him. 

[Warning: Acid Spit requires significant change to the User’s physiology. 

Option 1: Continue with Acid Spit (significant physiological changes)

Option 2: Transform Acid Spit into a similar Ability which is more suited to the User’s current form (minor physiological changes)

Option 3: Reject Acid Spit]

Hesitating for a moment, Dominic wavered between the first two options. Option 1 ran the risk of changing his body in a way that would then cause him issues. Option 2 on the other hand risked him getting a dud that would be useless. 

Hoping that he wasn’t making the wrong choice, he selected an option and then accepted the level up.

*****

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Chapter 6: We Are All Lions