S_Winter
patreon
Chapter 91: Flow of the Fight
🕑 Added 2024-02-15 19:00:04 +0000 UTCThe resorels were clustered around the body, giving him flashbacks to the last time he’d been in this situation. Hopefully it wouldn’t end with him almost dying. Again.
Sending a telepathic signal of ‘ready?’ to Sekhmet, Dominic tensed his muscles. It was very tempting just to leap into the fray and become a whirlwind of death, but he couldn’t forget that the main purpose of this expedition was to help the lioness increase in level. Which meant that, though he’d mourn the lack of Prey Points, his role was relegated to secondary importance.
Essentially, he would need to do his best to keep the resorels attacking the lioness while keeping an eye on her in case she started getting overwhelmed. He did his best to communicate this to her, but had a feeling from her sense of confusion that she didn’t understand.
‘Just, kill as many as you can,’ he ended up saying, accompanying his slightly frustrated words with an image of her surrounded by dead and dying resorels. She sent a wary sense of acknowledgement, clearly feeling a bit unsettled by the unusual approach to a hunt. Dominic hoped that after she’d experienced the benefits of doing things this way, it would be easier to convince her in the future.
On his signal, Sekhmet leaped out of the bushes and targeted the closest resorel. It wasn’t the approach Dominic would have chosen, but that was OK – he wasn’t expecting her to do things just like him. She shouldn’t, anyway – her body and capabilities were different from him.
She did, however, have Pounce, and clearly that along with whatever damage her claws and teeth could do, was sufficient to earn her the first kill of the fight.
[A member of your party has killed Resorel (Basic Beast level 5)]
[You have earned 5 PP]
Ah well, better than nothing, I suppose, Dominic sighed to himself. It was interesting to note that the System considered him to be part of the party and awarded him points despite him not having actually done anything so far in this fight.
Was it because of the previous fight with the wildebeest? Or because they were recognised as being part of the same pride? There was nothing in his status screen about that, but perhaps it wasn’t recorded by the System?
A resorel nipped at Dominic’s fur and the sharp pain brought his head back to where it should be: squarely in the fight at hand. Just because they were only level 5s didn’t mean he could start daydreaming. The hyenas had only been level 5 too, and look at the damage they’d caused.
The lion batted at the resorel, the force of his strike taking more than half of its health, despite him not having enhanced it in any way. As for the resorel’s bite, it had only taken about two of his health points – the creatures would have to work a lot harder than that to take him down.
Grabbing the heavily-injured resorel in his mouth, he padded over to Sekhmet and dropped it by her feet. She spared him a glance and a confused feeling but bit at it and shook her head violently.
[A member of your party has killed Resorel (Basic Beast level 5)]
[You have earned 16 PP]
Huh. So the System recognised that he’d done most of the job and awarded him accordingly, despite him not actually being the one to kill it. Good to know. Kill-stealing shouldn’t be a thing, then. On the other paw, it meant he couldn’t half-kill all of these resorels for the lioness to scoop up all of the points.
Shaking his mane, Dominic realised that his role would have to be purely managing the flow of the fight.
And that was going to be necessary – looking at the lioness, he could see blood already streaming down from where the resorels had bit at her. She was smaller than him so where they could only reach Dominic’s upper legs at the most, they were able to target her belly and sides.
I wonder if I could see her health bar. She’s not an enemy but I don’t see why not, Dominic thought, ignoring the irritating nips grabbing at his fur. With each attack only taking a couple of health points from him and him regaining a health point per second, his healing was almost keeping pace with the little the creatures managed to pull from him.
Concentrating instead on the lioness, he focussed on being able to see her health bar. The System resisted a little, but then, with almost an audible pop, the red bar appeared. To Dominic’s dismay, it was already down by a good chunk, almost by a third.
How is it so low already? he wondered.
‘Don’t forget that we were already Evolved when we encountered these creatures,’ Leo pointed out. ‘There was a significant level difference between us – in our favour. This is a different story. If this female is the same level as her sister was, she’s actually a level below these beasts.’
That was…a very good point. Dominic hadn’t thought about that. Right. Time for him to help her out.
The first order of business was to make sure that she wasn’t surrounded. He’d try to avoid causing as much damage as possible so as not to steal the Prey Points, but he could take their bites easily; she couldn’t. With a thought, he summoned his tail armour – it might help.
Pushing through the mass of resorels surrounding them, Dominic sent an urgent thought to the lioness, an image of her touching her paw to one of the corpses and it dissolving into golden smoke.
Fortunately, the lioness clearly remembered exactly what had happened with the hyenas as she didn’t waste any more time in following his directions. She touched a nose to it instead of a paw, which did mean she put her head down into harm’s way – the reason he’d suggested a paw in the first place. But evidently she was going more off memory than his image.
The body disintegrated as expected, the golden smoke rushing towards Sekhmet. Dominic saw her health bar jump up, and she didn’t waste time in doing the same to the second resorel.
With her health in a better state and most of her wounds more than half-healed, Dominic felt more confident in leaving her to it. He struck lightly at a number of the oddly formed predators, leaving small wounds on them which were enough to gain their attention.
Repeating that with most of the resorels around him, he found that he had a flock of the things jostling for his attention. With around fifteen avian-lizards all doing their best to take a piece out of him, Sekhmet was left with only six.
Dominic kept an eye on her, but she seemed to be doing fine, especially once she started thinning the numbers out.
[A member of your party has killed Resorel (Basic Beast level 5)]
[You have earned 5 PP]
[A member of your party has killed Resorel (Basic Beast level 5)]
[You have earned 5 PP]
[A member of your party has killed Resorel (Basic Beast level 5)]
[You have earned 5 PP]
The kill notifications from her side started rolling in. Resorels which were unable to get at Dominic started losing interest in him and moving to focus on Sekhmet. Not wanting that to happen, he quickly attacked them again with shallow scratches, having to work harder to not damage them than it would take to kill them.
The newly-injured resorels were gripped by blind anger again, and attacked Dominic once more.
[A member of your party has killed Resorel (Basic Beast level 5)]
[You have earned 5 PP]
[A member of your party has killed Resorel (Basic Beast level 5)]
[You have earned 5 PP]
Her opponents reduced to one, Sekhmet started attacking resorels at the periphery of Dominic’s cluster. He was glad of it: although each of the resorels’ strikes were only doing a couple of points of damage each, being hit by fifteen or so of them every couple of seconds was actually making quite an impact on his health.
[A member of your party has killed Resorel (Basic Beast level 5)]
[You have earned 8 PP]
When his health dropped down below half, he struck out at one of the closest resorels. This time, he didn’t hold back. He didn’t enhance his strike either, deciding to save his stamina. As a result, it took a swipe and a bite for the beast to die.
[You have killed Resorel (Basic Beast level 5)]
[You have earned 18 PP]
At least Sekhmet would still earn points from that kill, just as he’d been earning them from her kills.
Consuming the body, he saw his health jump up a little, though the increase was not nearly as dramatic as Sekhmet’s had been. Expected, really. The same reasons for why the attacks had less effect on him also meant that Consuming the bodies wasn’t as useful.
Seeing as he was still near half, he killed and Consumed two more resorels to give himself a little boost.
The two lions worked surprisingly well together. Sekhmet had somehow grasped the strategy without Dominic needing to tell her outright. She pulled off a couple of resorels every time she was down to one or none, and Dominic killed a couple here or there to keep his health around half.
By the time the smaller predators realised that they weren’t going to be killing either of the lions and decided to run for it, their numbers had been severely whittled down. Only five resorels made a break for it, running away with surprising speed.
Dominic managed to take one down with a well-timed leap.
[You have killed Resorel (Basic Beast level 5)]
[You have earned 18 PP]
To his surprise, another notification flashed up a moment later.
[A member of your party has killed Resorel (Basic Beast level 5)]
[You have earned 8 PP]
Looking over, he saw Sekhmet gazing smugly at him, her jaws set in another resorel’s carcass. Her fur was painted in red, she was panting, and her health bar was down pretty low. Even with all that, she was clearly satisfied.
Dominic wasn’t in a much better state. His health was higher, but he had blood all over his legs and muzzle. Still, that seemed pretty successful, he decided. She should have earned enough Prey Points to level up.
As if waiting for him to think about it, Sekhmet seemed to…shimmer. It was like the air around her blurred for a moment. It cleared but he didn’t have time to see any details before she was obscured again. Two level ups? Dominic questioned eagerly.
When it cleared for a second time, Sekhmet was visibly bigger. She took a moment to inspect herself, twisting one of her paws and extending her claws for a moment. They gleamed and Dominic wondered if they were sharper than before.
Then she looked up and her eyes met his with a piercing quality which had been missing before. If she was level 4 before…that would mean she’s now Half-Step Evolved, Dominic realised. I wonder what the differences will be.
*****
Discord server link here!
Chapter 92: Little Shiny Balls
Comments
S_Winter
Indeed :D And no, not something they want to see any enemy doing, especially since they know that when the enemy stops blurring they'll be full on health and stamina. On the other hand, perhaps the blurring would offer a moment of opportunity....
Samuel_Almonihah
Well that worked well. :D And interesting, that's what leveling up looks like from the outside... ...not something they'll want to see a hyena do mid-battle for sure. :D Hopefully they're not teaching Sekhmet to copy her namesake's legendary bloodlust here...
S_Winter
Sorry? 😉
Smiling Reader
Cliffhangers should be band, no matter how small they are.
