NOVEL NEXT Chapter 18: Inspired
‘Leo, can you see this?’ Dominic asked, his tone mystified.
‘I’m looking at it now. Are you going to take it?’ Leo asked, sounding as baffled as Dominic felt.
‘Now that’s the question, isn’t it?’ Dominic murmured. One part of him wanted to leap at it: combining Abilities had to be a good thing, right? And he hadn’t found any other creature with Stunning Roar since the scrin; this way he’d actually get some use out of it.
However, another part of him was inclined to stay far away. There were far too many warnings there for his peace of mind, and not nearly enough guarantees. If he was reading the text correctly, it looked like he could completely nerf all of the Abilities – and Aspect – if things went wrong.
And what was that with the final warning? Did that mean that if he lost the Ability for some reason, or something went wrong in the combination, he’d also lose his Roar? Would he just become incapable of roaring at all, or would it merely be that it would lose its more magical elements?
The problem, as always, was that it didn’t give any indication of the risks of all this happening. He always seemed to be making decisions with no real understanding of what was most likely to happen.
At the same time…he was sorely tempted by the potential power. Combining the Abilities…surely that would make them better than individually?
‘I want to do it,’ he decided, speaking to Leo. ‘But I won’t if you don’t agree.’ The lion was quiet for a long moment.
‘My instincts say nothing,’ he rumbled. ‘I do not know which way to turn. If you wish to do it, I shall not stand in your way.’
‘Alright then,’ Dominic replied, his stomach boiling with nerves. He’d learned a lot more about the System and what could go wrong since he stood in that dungeon room, the decision of whether to take a magic spell for the first time before him. Yet, like then, he reached for power, for potential. Hopefully it would end up better than the last time.
‘Accept,’ he thought at the box before his eyes and it vanished. The feeling of his level up went through him, but this time he felt something change in his voice-box. It wasn’t painful, nor was it pleasurable. Instead it was just…odd. And a bit uncomfortable. Like there were snakes writhing in his throat.
The feeling went on longer than his normal level ups did, but not so much so that he started becoming fearful. As the shimmering around him died down, he felt the snakes stop moving, his throat returning to feeling normal, or rather, a new normal.
Wanting to know exactly what had happened, he pulled up the changes in his status screen.
Status of Dominic Martin Cole / Leo
Species: Lion (body) / Human (mind), Two-Souled, Chimera
Level: Evolved Beast Level 21 Tier 2 (Path of Evolution)
Progress to Evolution: 5/559 PP
Health Points: 600/600
Stamina Points: 320 –> 400/400
Mana Points: 15/15
Acquired Abilities
Majestic Roar (T1) level 3 (0% to level 4) – As the lord of all you survey, challenge your rivals with an ear-splitting roar. Those who feel inferior to you may flee; those who feel they are your equal may attack. Those who feel they are your superior will be enraged by your Challenge and may attack blindly. (50% + level difference%) chance that your opponent will be stunned for a varying amount of time. Determination of inferior, equal, and superior is according to your level with a level range according to this Ability’s level (3). All non-ally listeners have a 40% - 80% chance of feeling intimidated by you and losing some or all motivation to fight or desire to follow orders. All ally listeners have a 40% - 80% chance of feeling inspired by you. A further 5% chance of gaining a 5 minute buff: *inspired*.
General abilities:
- Muscular Body level 9 (max speed 34 mps; max speed duration 16s –> 17s) (320 –> 400 SP)
Dominic inspected the changes, then mentally frowned. There was one that he didn’t see. Opening his full status sheet, he scanned it, his disturbance coming out as a rumbling growl.
‘Where’s Roar?’
‘Maybe that’s what the warning was speaking about,’ suggested Leo.
‘It must be,’ Dominic sighed, giving up. Since it had disappeared from his status screen completely, he had to guess that he wouldn’t be able to choose Roar on level up any more which rather put paid to his notion of hopefully gaining an effect of his roar to combat the sonic attack of the wolves. Hopefully he wouldn’t come to regret that…. ‘Well, let’s look at what we have now.’
The bare bones of the Ability were the same; the changes seemed to have gone down the route of adding features rather than taking them away. As he read it once, then a second time, Dominic found his disquiet about losing Roar falling away. This…the Ability definitely seemed better than the sum of its parts.
‘We still have the enraging and intimidating aspects, but now we seem to have a more positive side to it too,’ he mused at Leo. ‘Allies’ hadn’t been mentioned before, though he had noticed that his allies hadn’t tended to be intimidated unless he was directing the roar at them. Now though…. ‘What’s *inspired*?’ he wondered. Focussing on the word, he asked for more information.
It seemed like the System was feeling obliging because another box appeared in front of his vision a moment later.
[Inspired (buff): Targets of this buff will receive +10% to health regeneration, +15% to mana regeneration and +20% to stamina regeneration for each instance of the buff (stackable).]
Nice, murmured Dominic appreciatively. It might only be 5 minutes, and a 5% chance of applying it at all, but perhaps if he increased the level of the Ability, those numbers would increase. Plus, if it was 5% for all his allies, then that argued that every time he roared, at least one out of twenty should receive the buff. If it worked that way. Knowing that it was stackable too was useful to know.
‘It’s a good name,’ Leo said abruptly.
‘What, inspired?’
‘No, Majestic Roar. Like the king that we are, putting fear into our enemies and heart into our allies. It suits us,’ he explained with more than a touch of arrogance. Dominic scoffed at him, but secretly was glad to hear the return of it. Leo had been a bit subdued ever since the hyenas had driven them off their territory; it was good to have him going back to ‘normal’.
‘It seems like a pretty good Ability,’ Dominic agreed. ‘We’ll have to practise with it; see what it’s like in action.’
‘Shall we go and find some vermin to test it on, then?’ Leo asked with more than a bit of anticipation.
‘Well, I don’t know if we should go searching for hyenas, but we can certainly go hunting. I’m just going to grab the Cores from these wildebeest – waste not, want not – and see if anyone wants to go with us.’ To himself, Dominic thought that it might be fun to go hunting with Sekhmet. It probably wasn’t the most efficient way of doing things, but he kind of wanted to take her out on her own, just like the first time.
Playing with the idea, he finally decided against it with a sigh. They still had the time pressure of taking over the Place of Power before the sonic wolves got too strong, or something else came to take over.
Actually, that made him think about something…..
‘Leo, how far are we from the Place of Power at the moment?’ Dominic asked.
‘Sniff at the air a bit,’ the lion instructed. Dominic did so, standing tall and scrunching his nose up as he scented the air. ‘Not that far,’ he said finally. ‘Perhaps half a day’s travel away if we push it.’
‘Thanks,’ Dominic replied, moving to the closest carcass. The lioness currently eating it scooted out of his way as he came closer. He crunched the skull, using judiciously applied Crushing Bite, then absorbing the Core when it was in his mouth, spitting out the rest of the skull. Actually, maybe Acidic Bite would work better, he mused as he moved off.
The lioness who had been chased off returned to the carcass after sending him a wary and confused glance. Dominic headed for the next carcass. This time, it was an older lioness who tried to snarl at him. He just snarled back, showing his much bigger teeth and looming above her to show his much bigger body. She didn’t argue any further, scarpering off.
Acidic Bite worked better, Dominic decided, the strong acid melting away the flesh and then making the bone so fragile that he barely needed to bite to get through it. It didn’t do anything to the Core though, fortunately – he had thought only after covering it with acid that that might not be a good idea.
‘What are you thinking?’ Leo asked as Dominic moved onto the third carcass, his patience clearly exhausted from waiting for Dominic to explain why he’d wanted Leo to identify how far away the Place of Power was.
‘That more time has gone past than I was intending to leave before returning to the PoP.’
‘And? We’ve been busy,’ replied Leo, a little defensively.
‘I know, and that’s not the issue,’ said Dominic matter-of-factly. ‘It’s just that I don’t know what the situation is. I’m making plans based on facing the sonic wolves, but what if, I don’t know, a load of scrin managed to defeat them and so any plans I’m making are pointless? Or what if it is still sonic wolves that we’ll have to defeat, but that I’m overestimating how tough they are? Or underestimating.’
‘You want to go there,’ Leo concluded.
‘Yes. I think we need more information.’
‘And what about our pride? And the new pride members? We can’t leave them for too long – you recall what would have happened if we hadn’t appeared at the right moment earlier?’
Dominic paused for a moment, then continued onto the next carcass, the temporarily displaced lion returning to his meal. He recognised the next lioness as being one of those to have approached his group earlier to go hunting with them.
I think I’ll call her ‘Mara’, he decided. It was moving away from his theme of Egyptian goddess names, but he was rather running out of good ones. Anyway, Mara was a good name for a bold lioness.
Instead of objecting or running away, Mara just watched him with curious eyes, then took a few steps away and lay down. It wasn’t a challenging posture, or a submissive one; it was just a patient one. Has she realised that I’m not chasing her off the kill? Dominic wondered curiously.
He extracted the Core, then stepped away, watching how Mara returned to the carcass as soon as he was a couple of paces away, her demeanour completely chilled. Quite different from how the other lions had been.
‘I take your point, Leo,’ he said finally. ‘I think we need to go hunting with all of the new pride members; make sure they’re mixed groups. Then, when all the other lions are level 6 or higher, I think it will be OK.’ He turned his head to gaze at Mara again. ‘Maybe it would be OK as long as all of them are level 5 or higher,’ he corrected himself.
‘That seems more reasonable,’ Leo agreed. ‘Though how are you going to convince lions who have just hunted to go hunting again?’ was his next question. And to that, Dominic could only give a sigh of frustration.
‘I’ll do some practice while I wait for them to digest their meal a bit,’ he concluded with a little annoyance.
