Chapter 19: Progress (Patreon)

The sun was rising on another day. Dominic had long lost count of how many it had been since the System had arrived. Something in his brain seemed to resist keeping track easily and he didn’t care enough to pursue too much. Leo didn’t care either – one day was much like another to him. 

He was tired: they were returning from another hunt. That was something else he’d lost track of. The only way he had a sense of time was both the lionesses’ increasing levels and the way one deputy had turned into two, then three. 

The intra-pride communication system that he’d chosen from the Pride Enhancement options was definitely coming in useful as neither Anuke nor Menhit had developed Telepathy when they reached level 10. Perhaps they hadn’t because he’d already chosen the communication option, thereby eliminating the need. If so, good, since what they had gained was much more useful than having two more telepathic lions. 

The communication system was something between telepathy and a party chat. Leo was correct in saying that it would take them some time to get used to it: they essentially had to just send their thoughts…outwards. Then anyone within a certain radius would ‘hear’ the thoughts as if they’d been spoken. 

Of course, it was more complicated when considering the non-verbal lions, which the majority were. Then it basically acted like a projection of the lion’s body language, scent, and vocalisations. Menhit and Anuke had started developing verbal thoughts once they hit level 10, as Sekhmet had. By this point, the last was much more comfortable with them – her vocabulary had developed in leaps and bounds since her level up. Probably the two more level ups she’d had had helped – Dominic had a feeling that she might have dedicated at least one improvement to her brain.

At this rate, she’ll surpass me in Intelligence, he commented wryly to himself. It wasn’t inconceivable at the rate she’d been improving, but it was a little discomforting as a thought nonetheless. 

Still, it meant that he’d been able to send Sekhmet with a group of her own out to hunt from directly after the wildebeest hunt. She’d taken to it easily enough, clearly comfortable with the idea of leading. Convincing the other lions had been a bit more of a challenge: Dominic had been keen on mixing the prides and the other pride still looked at the fact that she was quite young over her level. 

They’d got around that by starting small – only sending a couple of younger lionesses from the other pride with a couple of older ones from their original pride. Once the other pride started seeing just how much their pride-mates were improving, they became more interested. 

By the time Menhit and Anuke reached level 10 and were able to start taking out parties of their own, both prides were becoming a lot more mixed and everyone was on board with this strange new way of getting stronger. Well, almost everyone. Two of the male juveniles were lazy sods who regularly declined to join a hunt except when they were hungry. 

Honestly, Dominic was starting to lose patience with them. They weren’t exactly draining resources from the pride as they were only allowed to eat when they hunted and they wouldn’t get Prey Points except for then either. It wasn’t that they hadn’t tried – when a lioness had a carcass nearby, the young males had tried to steal it from her on multiple occasions. 

Dominic admitted to feeling a bit of schadenfreude when, after the lionesses started getting a couple of levels, they refused to give ground and the lions started going away hungry. One of the male lions had changed his tune after that, showing more interest in the hunts. The last one, however…. Dominic had actually decided to call him ‘prince’ because that was just what he acted like – expecting to have everything done for him. 

Overall, though, Dominic was pleased with the progress of the Pride. He pulled up the Pride screen just to admire it again. 

Pride status

Level 4 Pride (progress to next level 28/35)

Current information shared:

Health, Abilities

Current members:

Tier 2, Level 21 –> 22 x1 (Leader – Dominic: Quick Strike, Second Wind, Group Attack, Crushing Bite, Pounce, Powerful Swipe, Sharp Nip, Rapid Attack, Acidic Bite, Sure Feet, Enhanced Stamina, Momentous Charge, Majestic Roar)

Tier 2, Level 10 –> 12 x1 (Sekhmet: Pounce, Sharp Mind, Telepathy)

Tier 2, Level 9 –> 11 x 1 (Anuke: Pounce, Rapid Attack, Quick Strike)

Tier 1, Level 9 –> 10 x1 (Menhit: Pounce, Sure Feet, Wind Breath) 

Tier 1 Level 8 –> 9 x4 (Hathor: Pounce, Rending Bite) (Neith: Pounce, Keen Senses) (Jenkins: Pounce, Quick Strike) (Isis: Pounce, Protective Mother)

Tier 1 Level 5 –> 7 x10 (Mara: Pounce, Rending Bite) (Cleo: Pounce, Keen Senses), (Leona: Pounce, Stunning Roar), (Simbi: Pounce, Quick Strike), (Lyla: Pounce, Sure Feet), (Zarini: Pounce, Ambush), (Kalista: Pounce, Rapid Attack), (Niamh: Pounce, Quick Strike), (Saffron: Pounce, Sharp Mind), (Luna: Pounce, Keen Senses)

Tier 1 Level 4 –> 6 x7 (Serena: Pounce, Quick Strike), (Nova: Pounce, Pride Attack), (Fang: Pounce, Sharp Mind), (Kiera: Pounce, Rapid Attack), (Amber: Pounce, Ambush) (Aurora: Pounce, Rending Bite), (Leah: Pounce, Piercing Bite)

Tier 1 Level 3 –> 5 x1 (Lionel: Pounce) 

Tier 1 Level 3 –> 4 x1 (Prince: Pounce)

Pride enhancements:

10% increase in Prey Points for all Pride members – level 4

Increased damage for Pride members fighting together by ((number of enemies/number of pride members in the fight)*level of enhancement)% – level 4

Equally shared Prey Points for all Pride members (within a single fight) – on

10% increased chance of Pride members gaining a higher tier Ability on their next Tier or Half-Tier – level 2

Intra-group communication system – on

Lion’s Share – 90% of the points of all kills made by pride members to the leader – off

He’d been struggling to come up with names so had basically completely abandoned the whole goddess theme, naming the new lionesses either after something that they reminded him of, or just a name that he thought sounded nice. Serena got her name because she was always calm; Luna earned hers because she seemed fascinated by the second moon, and Amber because her eyes reminded him of light-yellow amber. Saffron was named after the colour of her coat, though it wasn’t really as orange as true saffron was – he didn’t think anyone would be criticising him for using the incorrect colour name any time soon. 

There were a couple of interesting Abilities which some of the lionesses had gained on level up. Along with the repeated ones, Nova had picked up one called ‘Pride Attack’, which he had to guess was some sort of enhancement to her when fighting as a pride. What exactly it enhanced, he couldn’t yet tell. Leah had picked up one called Piercing Bite – since she appeared to be going down the sabertooth route, that was probably a good one for her. 

Still, they’d all made good progress. Even the layabout Prince had managed to increase by level; everyone else had either gone up by two or three. Apart from Dominic’s original pride, but that wasn’t because of laziness – it was because of the difference in Prey Points required for each level. 

The now 10% increase in Prey Points probably helped with levelling, as did the increase in damage for Pride members fighting together – a fight which was over more quickly meant that they could go and find more prey soon enough.

Though that was actually becoming a problem: they had cleared a good portion of the area around them and finding prey was becoming harder, even other predators. With the points he’d gained from the lions increasing their levels past the thresholds, he would be able to choose some more enhancements, but that was only useful if there was prey to use it on.

Definitely time to consider moving to pastures new, Dominic thought decisively. Indeed, now that almost all the pride was level 6 or above – with their second Abilities too – he felt that it was well past time to go and investigate the Place of Power. They’d only lost one lioness, something which saddened both Leo and Dominic when it had happened – it had been when Anuke took out a party for the first time. 

What Dominic guessed had happened from what Anuke had told and shown him afterwards was that she was too inexperienced as a leader to notice when one of the lionesses was struggling. As a result, the lioness had sadly bled out before her sisters could come to help. 

After that, Dominic had made sure that Anuke only went out with the higher level lionesses for a while until she’d got some more experience in leading. They hadn’t had another death, fortunately, which, when considering just how many fights they’d been in, was actually something of a miracle. Part of it was probably that the majority of pre-system adult deaths had not been instantaneous but had been caused by a lingering injury causing the lion to slowly starve to death. 

As for Dominic himself, he’d also made excellent progress. He’d even managed to level up! He was now a level 22 lion.

Status of Dominic Martin Cole / Leo

Species: Lion (body) / Human (mind), Two-Souled, Chimera

Level: Evolved Beast Level 22 Tier 2 (Path of Evolution) 

Progress to Evolution: 3/615 PP

Unfortunately, it looked like level 22 wasn’t the next half-step either. By this point, he figured it was likely to come at level 30 or 31 – or perhaps not until level 50. 

On level up, he and Leo had agreed on enhancing his speed and his reactions. The former because he’d noticed that the others were also getting faster and he wasn’t quite keeping his edge; the second because he suspected that if he enhanced his speed, his reactions would fall behind it. 

He was glad he’d chosen both of those because of what happened next. 

Enhancing his speed had brought his Muscular Body up to level 10. Apparently level 10 was as important for parts of his body as it was for his whole body: Muscular Body had transformed into something different – Enhanced Muscular Body. 

- Muscular Body level 10 (max speed 34 m/s; max speed duration 17s) (400 SP) –> Enhanced Muscular Body level 1 (max speed 40 m/s; max speed duration 34s) (600 SP)

Although not all of his stats had doubled, an increase of 6m/s was nothing to sniff at – it was the difference between being able to run at around 120km/h and 140km/h. Now, he could break the speed-limit on a European motorway! And a UK one too, but he’d been close to that with his previous speed anyway. 

His maximum speed duration had doubled and his stamina had increased by half again which meant that the effect of his speed was significantly greater. How it worked that he could run for twice as long, but only had half again the stamina, he didn’t know. Maybe he used stamina more efficiently when running now? 

Either way, it was a good improvement. As for his nerves, they hadn’t been nearly as dramatically improved. 

- Nervous System level 1 –> 2 (reaction speed +20% –> 30%)

Unfortunately, what that meant was that it was Dominic was having to be a little careful with his new speed: his reactions definitely weren’t keeping up with it now. He had a feeling that he might even need to dedicate his next level up to reactions alone just to not risk stumbling over his paws at the wrong moment. 

As for his other Abilities, not only had he been using them plenty in battle, but he’d also been practising with them in between hunts. Once more, he had been pushing himself, only sleeping the minimum his body required to function. All that meant lots of improvement. 

Acquired Abilities:

Quick Strike (T0) level 3 –> 5 (15% to level 6) – 3 SP for +35% speed; 8 SP for +70% speed.

Second Wind (T1) level 1 –> 3 (29% to level 4) – activatable when under 35% health or stamina. Gain 65% of your maximum health and/or stamina for the duration of the timer. Timer: 05:00. At the end of the timer, lose 40% of your max health and stamina.  

Crushing Bite (T0) level 2 –> 3 (79% to level 4) – Use stamina to enhance the crushing power of your jaws. +10% - 100% Crushing damage for 1-45 stamina per second. 

Group Attack (T0) level 1 –> 3 (3% to level 4) – +5% to offensive damage dealt per other being who is considered to be in the same group during an attack or defence. 

Pounce (T0) level 2 –> 3 (56% to level 4) – +100% damage to a hit which is delivered without the target being aware of you until the attack is too close to avoid. +55% damage to an attack which is made directly to a vulnerable area.

Powerful Swipe (T0) level 3 –> 4 (98% to level 5) – Use stamina to enhance the damage of your swipe. +10% - +100% damage increase for 2-63 stamina per second. 

Rapid Attack (T0) level 1 –> 2 (15% to level 3) – Spend 2 SP or MP to attack for a second time within half a second. SP or MP costs double per additional attack within a quarter of a second of the previous. Maximum number of chained attacks at level 2: 7.

Sharp Nip (T0) level 1 –> 2 (89% to level 3) – When lunging to bite at something, consume stamina to offer a burst of speed. At level 2, consuming 1 SP will offer +20% speed. Consume 3 SP for +30% speed. If the bite is to a flesh and blood creature, a Bleeding effect may be applied.

Sure Feet (T0) level 1 –> 2 (43% to level 3) – A passive improvement to your ability to your balance and traction. At level 2, this ability offers +20% to your steadiness when moving slowly and +10% to your steadiness when moving at speed (more than 25% of your maximum speed). The bonus this Ability offers may increase as Ability increases in level and other effects may be discovered.).

Acidic Bite (enhanced) (T2) level 1 –> 2 (52% to level 3) – Use an acid gland below your tongue to shoot balls of acid. At level 2, the maximum range is 2 lengths, and the maximum diameter is 3.5 cm. Enhancement: your teeth have become resistant to acid damage and your top canines have become capable of absorbing the acid and transferring it in your bite.

Enhanced Stamina (T0) level 1 –> 3 (79% to level 4) – Maximum Ability use period at level 1: 15 minutes: -3% reduction to rate of passive stamina decrease; -5% reduction to rate of active stamina decrease. Recuperation period: 5 minutes: +5% to rate of passive stamina decrease; +7% to rate of active stamina decrease. Current exchange of HP for extension of use period or reduction of recuperation time: 1HP/s

Momentous Charge (T2) level 1 (0% –> 23% to level 2) 

Majestic Roar (T2) level 3 (0% –> 56% to level 4) 

With all the improvements, Dominic had to admit to feeling a lot more confident. He was stronger, his Abilities were stronger and cost less, and he now had a large pride. Surely he could take control of the Place of Power now?

*****

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Chapter 20: You Be Careful