NOVEL NEXT Chapter 102: A Bird In The Hand
‘So, lions are using tools now,’ Dominic told his companion in a bit of amusement. ‘What next?’ It was rather interesting to see how the lionesses had taken to killing their opponents with a means other than claws and teeth.
Dominic had finished poking the lizards down from the canopy with his stick. He’d even jumped onto the branches themselves, patrolling the tree top just to make sure he hadn’t missed any. Although he’d found a couple he’d had to nudge with a smaller stick – since there was no way he was taking that long thing into the branches with him – most had been successfully dislodged.
Of course, successfully dislodged didn’t mean dead, but the lionesses were swiftly doing their best to remedy that situation.
Dominic dropped lightly to the ground, intentionally avoiding the lizards there. He hadn’t completely avoided injury while ‘harvesting’ his prey – walking on the ground meant that he’d been a target for their corrosive spit. However, the stick had meant that he was out of most of their ranges, and he’d managed to dodge a good few goblets anyway. Ultimately, he’d only had a few spots he’d needed to lick with a tongue coated once more in the secretions from a lizard’s skin.
Incidentally, both liquids tasted absolutely horrible. Though he’d been a bit occupied earlier with the pain of the burning substances, this time, he was able to actually taste them. He’d rather he couldn’t, though, given how disgusting they were.
After Neith had successfully killed the first lizard, Dominic had seen how the other lionesses had become more interested. Jenkins, actually, was the next to pick up the trick, and she rather gleefully had fun picking up rocks and dropping them on the lizards’ heads. Hathor took longer, but even she had managed before Dominic had finished prodding the lizards off their branches.
Since there were still a few lizards to kill, particularly on Dominic’s side of things, he got to work. About to pick up a rock from the ground with his teeth, the lion paused. What if….?
Touching a good-sized rock with his paw, he put it into his storage space. Thankfully, he had a bit more room in there due to Consuming a few of the queerb carcasses. Then, lifting his paw above a lizard’s head, he took the rock out of the storage space again.
As hoped, the rock appeared exactly where it had been when it had been put in the storage space: at the end of his paw. At that point, gravity took over, and Dominic saw the satisfying notification of the lizard’s death flash up before him. He grinned mentally in pleasure – no need to risk breaking his teeth by picking up rocks!
After that, the clean-up was quick. Within a few minutes, the four lions were surrounded by splattered lizards, blood- and acid-coated rocks lying all around.
Dominic sent a sense of pleasure to the other lions, trying to do his best to congratulate them on a good job, but not sure how to communicate that. From the returning sense of pleasure that he got from each of them, he had to guess that it was good enough.
Each of them blurred a moment later, indicating that all the lionesses had managed to level up. Dominic watched in interest, seeing some small changes. Hathor was the most obvious, her teeth having extended longer. Actually, it wasn’t all her teeth – just her canines. That made Dominic think back to the choice of Path he had to make all the way in the beginning. Had Hathor been given the same choice and chose to Devolve? Could she be drawing on the sabre-tooths in her lineage?
Neith and Jenkins weren’t immediately obvious, but from how Jenkins started leaping around, her movement noticeably a little faster than before, she had chosen to increase her speed. Dominic couldn’t tell what Neith had chosen, but if the other two lionesses had leant into their strengths – Hathor with Rending Bite had improved her teeth; Jenkins with Quick Strike had improved her speed – he guessed that she might have improved one of her senses. Though maybe she improved something else which would become clearer later.
Checking his own progress hopefully, he wasn’t surprised when he saw it. Disappointed, yes, but not surprised – each level just cost so many Prey Points these days.
Progress to Evolution: 245/462 PP
‘Looks like we’re going to have to wait a bit longer to fix our teeth,’ Dominic told Leo with a mental sigh. The lion made an indecipherable grumbling sound, clearly not happy. Well, he’d have to live with it: Dominic was more concerned about their teeth not being up to whatever threat they’d have to face next: they’d rather got off lightly by being able to kill the lizards with rocks. He didn’t want to know what could have happened if he’d tried to bite them all!
Though speaking of the lizards, Dominic wondered what their Cores might hold.
Curious, he touched the closest lizard with just the tip of one claw, triggering Consume. Though the lizard’s small size and low level meant that his health was barely increased, he didn’t care too much – he hadn’t used much stamina at all, and his health would recover within a few minutes anyway. No, he was more interested in the Core.
Unfortunately, it turned out to be a bit of a disappointment.
[You have obtained a Beast Core: Skeet Level 5
Ability: Acid Spit]
Not unexpected, sighed Dominic to himself, but annoying nonetheless. He wondered if it was even worth looking at the Ability description, but decided that he might as well. Who knows, maybe he would come across these creatures again in the future – forewarned is forearmed.
[Acid Spit (T0): The venom production for your naturally venomous bite has been increased and enhanced, allowing you to use your attack at range. The acidic concentration of your venom may increase as Ability increases in level, as may your range and quantity of spit.]
Yep, not something I particularly want, Dominic concluded. Acid spitting wasn’t really on the list of Abilities he wanted to gain. And that was assuming that the Ability would even confer it on him: the information text only talked about ‘enhancing’ after all. Though, he did find it interesting to see the implications of what might have happened when the System came in.
Clearly the lizards had already been venomous even before the system, and that their venom was probably acid-based seemed likely considering it talked about increasing the ‘acidic concentration’ of the venom, not changing it completely. Dominic did have to wonder how they used to hunt given how slow they were. Did they used to drop out of the trees onto whatever came below, digging in their teeth and injecting the venom? Perhaps.
The lion was sure of one thing, though: he’d be paying more attention to what might be lurking in the canopy above! Baboons and monkeys were one thing; corrosive lizards were a completely different story.
Not too interested in gathering a load of acid Cores which might not even work, Dominic didn’t bother trying to dig them out of the lizards’ heads. He was interested in keeping the lizard carcasses, though. Not as portable health potions this time, but as weapons. After all, if they’d struggled with the corrosive properties of the lizards’ secretions, surely anything else would too.
By the time he’d stuffed the twenty-odd bodies of the skeets into his storage space, filling up the area recently vacated by the queerb carcasses, the area was a lot clearer, though still blood-spattered.
The odd Core glinted in the fingers of light let in by the small leaves of the tree canopy above, and Dominic hesitated. While he didn’t want the ability to spit acid, his inner hoarder didn’t like leaving them lying around either. What if another chimera came around and took them? He didn’t want to hand a weapon to a potential rival.
‘Just absorb them,’ Leo told him, as impatient as the lionesses were by this point. ‘We don’t have to accept the Ability on level up, even if we somehow succeed in getting it to a hundred percent progress.’
Dominic hesitated a moment longer, but then accepted his companion’s reasoning.
‘And maybe if I can get more control over what I gain in the future, it might actually be useful,’ he told Leo thoughtfully. After all, although he didn’t want to spit acid, having a venomous bite might not actually be such a bad thing, as long as his teeth didn’t weaken or something as a result. Though, thinking about it, he’d be more likely to gain an Ability for that from a snake.
After quickly absorbing the few small marbles which lay on the ground below the trees, Dominic joined the lionesses. Tired of waiting for him, they’d already started moving, so he had to jog for a bit to catch up.
*****
By the time they found the rest of the pride, the night was pretty much over. The four other lionesses along with the single set of surviving cubs had obviously been busy.
‘Is this Sekhmet’s influence, do you think?’ Dominic asked Leo as he surveyed the battleground.
‘It must be,’ the lion replied, sounding rather baffled. The former-human didn’t blame him: what he saw before him was not what he would have expected from a pride of lions.
Neith, Hathor, and Jenkins had already gone forwards to rub heads with the rest of the pride, so Dominic quickly padded over to do the same. After greetings were over, the lionesses joined their sisters in munching at the carcasses, clearly unable to pass up food, despite having eaten not so long ago.
The carcasses in question were, in fact, a whole load of familiar creatures, though not ones that Dominic had so far encountered. Not since merging with Leo, anyway. However, he’d seen quite a few of them as a human in South Africa.
Baboons. A whole troop of them.
As far as Dominic knew, lions didn’t really hunt baboons, and baboons didn’t generally tangle with a pride of lions.
‘We hunt them if there’s nothing better to eat,’ Leo corrected him. ‘But to see this number…it’s unusual. Surprising.’
Dominic understood what he meant, especially when the lion shoved a few memories at him. In the natural way of things, if the lions had decided to attack the baboons, they would have taken a few before the rest of the troop became too wary and then run off. There certainly wouldn’t have been this kind of massacre.
Because what Dominic and Leo could see could only be called that. Each of the lionesses must have gone on a killing spree as the bodies were everywhere. Dominic tried counting them, but gave up after he’d gone past twenty-five. Considering there had only been four lionesses there, it was an impressive kill record.
That wasn’t normal. ‘A bird in the hand is worth two in the bush’ was definitely a maxim a lion could live by: they would secure the prey they had instead of going for more. They weren’t like foxes who would kill a whole hen-coop just because they could. But that was what they’d done here.
There was only one lioness Dominic could ask to find out what had happened. Padding over to her, he sent Sekhmet a sense of his curiosity.
