NOVEL NEXT Chapter 3: Prey Points
One of the dog-things darted towards Dominic’s front legs and he lifted one paw to swipe at it. Even if the blow had connected, he doubted it would have done much damage because his claws were still sheathed, but that was irrelevant since he missed by a mile.
A sharp pain from one of his back legs revealed that the attack to his front had never been intended to connect anyway.
<You have taken 3 damage (Tearing)>
The message flashed up briefly before his eyes, but strangely it didn’t distract him. Much. The knowledge seemed to enter his brain even before he’d read the message.
Before he could process it, another dog-thing snapped at one of his forepaws.
Ignoring it, he turned awkwardly towards the one about to bite his back leg again. Snapping at the attacker, his teeth clicked together fruitlessly as he failed to corner the wily creature.
A sharp pain speared from his back leg:, the one he’d ignored before when it feinted took advantage of his lack of attention.
<You have taken 4 damage (Tearing)>
Growling angrily, he bit at one of the dog-things approaching his side.
Another feinted at his leg; he swiped at it.
With each bite or swipe that hit air, he felt like he lost a bit more of his cool. The little buggers might be only a fraction of his size, but at this time they were winning.
His tail hurt. As he whirled around to grab his attacker, he almost lost his balance.
<You have taken 2 damage (Tearing)>
A lucky bite to his front paw made blood start to trickle down and his answering swipe hit only air.
<You have taken 3 damage (Tearing)>
One of the dog-things actually jumped and managed to grip onto the loose skin at his throat, clinging on and dangling from its mouth.
<You have taken 3 damage (tearing)>
Although his straggly juvenile mane was no barrier to its attack, the loose skin at his throat meant it didn’t even approach doing any real damage to him. In fact, it was even less than one of the bites to his back leg. However, Dominic felt the last of his cool vanish.
Having something gripping onto his throat and not letting go was a panic point for both Dominic and the lion passenger in his mind. Dominic had just almost died by being choked out by the very jaws he now controlled; even if the actual damage of the bite was negligible, it sent him into a flashback of all too-recent trauma. The lion’s reaction was no less powerful, its natural instincts driving it to protect its throat.
All thought wiped from his human mind, Dominic truly felt like a cornered animal, and that is when any creature is at its most dangerous.
As he stopped thinking and started just reacting, the awkwardness and precariousness left his steps. In their wake, they left fluid, sinuous feline movements. The dog-things were quick and agile, but in the face of a more powerful creature with just as much speed and agility, they could only fail.
Where before Dominic’s teeth had been clicking shut on empty air, now they found hot flesh and blood. As a dog-thing darted forwards, it found his jaws snapping down on its back. Dominic’s leonine canines pierced straight through its weak body and his bite pressure crushed its body.
Hot blood filled Dominic’s mouth. It should have made his stomach revolt, send nausea through his system; it didn’t. Instead, it made him feel hungry.
With renewed vigor, Dominic whirled on the other dog-things, his claws out and teeth bared.
Snap. His teeth closed on the back leg of a dog-thing and he threw it up in the air, gravity pulling it down to thump heavily on the ground. It didn’t move.
Tear. His claws flashed out to rake along the side of another, sending it skittering out of his range with a cry.
Pain. A searing sensation from his back leg.
<You have taken 3- >
Blood in his mouth, another one falling under his teeth.
Pain. Teeth in his back paw.
<You have taken 3- >
More emerge from the bush to bolster their falling numbers. He roared a challenge, bloody fangs bared.
Pain. Blood. Pain. Tear. Pain. Bite.
<You have taken- >
<You have- >
<You-
By the time that the two almost-intact dog-things remaining decided they’d had enough and turned tail, the lion was surrounded by their dead and dying fellows. He stood, his paws planted firmly on the hard earth and roared as they ran off with a strange chirruping sound.
His two surviving attackers tried to limp pitifully after them. One was dragging its hindquarters, the other was bleeding copiously from a rip in its side that had its guts half-hanging out.
The lion shook his mane. Had it been his adult one, it might have looked magnificent. As it was, the thin ruff of tawny-coloured hair didn’t give quite the impression he’d intended. No matter.
Strolling fluidly over, the predator gave the two injured dog-things the coup de grace in terms of a crushing bite to their spines. Still on high alert, he surveyed the dead or dying dog-things around him, and then looked around his environment, all senses working together to inform him of any further danger.
It was when his lips lifted and nose scrunched as he breathed in through his mouth to get a better ‘taste’ of the air that he realised what he was doing. Coming back fully to ‘himself’ felt a bit like surfacing from a warm pool into cold air.
What happened there? Dominic asked himself with concern. I...merged with the lion somehow? Or maybe ‘merge’ was too strong a word to use. Perhaps it was more that he’d leant into the leonine instincts buried within the mind cohabiting with his own and the body itself.
Suddenly, he realised what the issue had been before when he’d been moving: I was overthinking it. This body already knows how to move, how to fight. He’d been unconsciously trying to apply human movements to a distinctly not-humanoid body. When he’d stopped thinking, all that had fallen by the wayside and the leonine instincts had taken over.
Looking around at the scene surrounding him now was a different experience from a moment ago. His human mind felt sick at the sight of blood, nauseous at the entrails gleaming wetly in the sun. The stink of blood and other, worse, bodily fluids was clogging his nostrils, his sense of smell significantly better now than it had before.
Yet...Dominic found he didn’t care as much as he thought he should. It’s a different world, he justified to himself. I’m different. He’d already accepted the need to kill when he’d planned to hunt down a gazelle. Almost dying once had been more than enough for him; he wasn’t going to allow human morals to interfere with what needed to be done. I’m a lion now, he concluded. Lions kill and eat things so that’s what I need to do.
Of course, it helped that these things had been the aggressors – he felt no guilt over their deaths when he knew all too well that they would quite happily have taken him to pieces one small bite at a time. As for the smell of blood...he couldn’t forget how good it had tasted. An inveterate carnivore’s sense of taste was significantly different from an omnivore’s, it appeared.
I need to lean into the instincts of the lion, he concluded. But right now, he had other concerns. Status.
Status of Dominic Martin Cole / Leo
Species: Lion (body) / human (mind), Two-Souled
Progress to Evolution: 108/100PP Level up
Hunger level: 93%
Thirst level: 51%
Defensive abilities:
- Fur level 1 (1-2 slicing/piercing damage reduction, 2-3 crushing damage reduction)
Offensive abilities:
- Claws level 1 (5-10 slicing damage, 4-7 tearing damage, 1-2 piercing damage)
- Bite level 1 (32-50 crushing damage, 27-50 tearing damage, 25-35 piercing damage)
General abilities:
- Muscular Body level 1 (max sprint speed 20mps; max sprint duration 10s) (21/45 SP)
- Carnivore Constitution level 1 (265/300 HP)
A thrill of elation went through him. Apparently each of those things must have been worth at least 20PP each. Whatever PP are. As soon as he thought it, he realised that he ‘knew’ the answer: prey points. The name seemed pretty self-explanatory, just like SP (stamina points) and HP (health points).
On that note, clearly he’d used a fair bit of stamina in the fight. In fact, based on the fact that he’d gone through more than half of his stamina and less than a sixth of his health, he’d have been more likely to collapse from lack of stamina than die from his health points hitting zero. At least, that’s what Dominic assumed happened with health points otherwise what was the point – pun intended.
Actually, was there a way of accessing the notifications that had flashed up during combat? Due to his state of mind, all he’d noted was that he’d caused damage and made kills. But it would be useful information to access the text later.
As he thought about it, a series of lines flashed up into his vision with exactly the information he needed. OK, this interface is more intuitive than I’m giving it credit for, he admitted. Although there were only six lines in front of him at any time, scrolling up or down to access the most recent or oldest messages was easy. He did notice, however, that it only seemed to be a damage log – damage taken and damage given. The messages that had come up in the black in-between space weren’t there, nor were any of the System ones since he’d arrived. Still, the damage log was exactly what he needed.
<You have taken 3 damage (Tearing)>
<You have taken 4 damage (Tearing)>
<You have taken 3 damage (Tearing)>
<You have taken 5 damage (Tearing)>
He skipped past the litany of damage taken, noting that they were all between 2 and 5, with 3 being the most common injury. Then came a more interesting set of three.
<You have caused 26 damage to Trodil (Piercing)>
<You have caused 34 damage to Trodil (Crushing)>
<You have killed Trodil (Basic Beast level 1)>
<You have earned 21PP>
Skipping quickly through the rest of the damage log, he saw that he’d caused a varying amount of damage each time, but the total was never below 57 or above 65. The most interesting takeaways were that his damage types were additive. Dominic theorised that the damage potential of his bite was possibly as much as 135 if he maximised piercing, crushing, and tearing. And that was pretty awesome, though he wondered what impact the location of the bite made.
If he bit the back leg of something, would he be able to apply as much damage as the maximum? Could biting the back leg kill the creature if it had fewer than 135HP? Or would he only achieve maximum damage if he bit it in a vulnerable spot such as tearing out its throat?
All interesting questions to be answered later. However, the most exciting thing was that he could level up! It wasn’t only in his status screen, but also in his notification log.
<You have earned 108/100PP. Level up to increase your power!>
Well, don’t mind if I do, thought Dominic with some excitement.