Kuiper
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Re: Dragonize chapter 36
🕑 Added 2023-04-03 18:37:21 +0000 UTCChapter 36 is now available for Gallant-tier patrons. The latest chapter (and all other advance chapters) can be found here:
https://www.dropbox.com/sh/ykimenyvbkx8brv/AAAzYM01DdnyYlhlNqToYZNKa?dl=0
Chapter 36: Old Enemies
The path from Octavia's cave to the ant's nest was fresh enough in my mind that I didn't need to rely on an ant to lead me there. If someone had asked me for directions, I wouldn't have been able to describe it, but there was something about retracing my steps that felt familiar: the texture of the ground, the few scattered rocks that weren't really big or notable enough to serve as landmarks but were nonetheless impossible to miss when you got close to them… When I arrived at the entrance to the ant nest and bowed my head, my nostrils flared in what felt like an almost Pavlovian response. This is the spot.
I exhaled the same volley of breath attacks I'd used the last time: [paralyzing breath]. [poison breath]. [noxious breath]. [poison breath]. [noxious breath]. Possibly overkill, but when it came to killing fire ants, I preferred to overshoot rather than undershoot, especially when it was so close to bedtime anyway. I'd wake up with full SP anyway. Can't take it with you.
With that thought in mind, I decided to sprint back to the cave. On my way back, the kill notifications started scrolling by.
Fire ant defeated! 1% exp toward next level Fire ant defeated! 1% exp toward next level Fire ant defeated! 1% exp toward next level [...] SP: 5/16
There was something about the rapid scroll of notifications that gave me a thrill. But as I watched them pass, a few things struck me as subtly different. For one thing, I was making progress slower than I had previously — for one thing, I had reached the point where a single ant kill was no longer enough to provide 2% of the exp that I needed to level up. Perhaps one day I might outgrow the ability to effectively "ant farm" as a way of easily leveling up. Part of me had hoped for the opposite: I had invested some of the returns from the previous ant hunt into leveling [mouth] (the points that I hadn't spent mastering [roar] and [speech] specifically), and my damaging breath attacks supposedly scaled with mouth level; I had hoped that I might actually attain a higher kill count this time.
But it seemed the opposite seemed to be true: the kill notifications were scrolling slower than they had the previous time. A natural consequence of busting the same bunker twice, I supposed: ants were likely once bitten, twice shy. That, or I had just offed a significant amount of their population that they hadn't successfully replaced yet.
As I sped back to the cave, there was a bit of movement that I caught in the corner of my eye, something that actually made me slow down for a moment to check. All I could see was the outline of the jagged landscape. I was well aware that a jagged landscape could hide all sorts of things, but I didn't have time to track down what might have just been a tumbleweed, so I continued toward the cave.
As I neared the cave, I saw a familiar shape near the entrance: the silhouette of a hyena. Ah, I was wondering where those went. How odd that my first reaction was one not of fear, but of recognition. Of course, I hadn't forgotten: Hyenas hunt in packs. I glanced to my sides, and saw their shapes closing in. One from the left, one from the right. Wait, no, scratch that: two from the left, two from the — no, wait, maybe more than that. They seemed to blend in so well with the texture of the ground, and hyenas on each side of the formation kept weaving in a way that made it difficult to track their movements. I tried to focus on one, and it almost seemed as if its hide was subtlety changing in hue as it moved to match the color of the rock. Active camouflage? If it was a [scale] ability that I had access to, maybe hyenas had access to something analogous…
Best to avoid this fight for now. I had urgent business back at home, and this ambush didn't change that. I charged at the one hyena that was at the center of the formation, standing between me and the cave entrance. Two smaller hyenas revealed themselves, almost fading into visibility beside the the one in the center. Actually, it wasn't that the two side hyenas were small — it was that the center one was exceptionally big, standing perhaps a foot taller than the rest. The alpha of the pack?
No way out but through. In the past, I'd successfully body slammed hyenas, but the size of this one — and the mass that size implied — made that move seem like a poor choice. Best to go around than through. The hyenas flanking the alpha — which now numbered two on each side — made that trickier, though. I'd have to break through the mammalian wall at some point, so I might as well pick a weak point. I sized up the hyenas, picked the one that looked the smallest (second one on the left), and charged straight at it.
The hyenas, seeing my direction change, adjusted their formation so that the largest one again stood directly in my path. This time, I didn't adjust course: I charged straight for the middle one, then at the last moment, swerved to swing myself sideways into the smallest of the bunch.
I heard a yelp of pain, and the hyena went flying, landing several yards from the cave entrance, limp and whimpering. I had lost momentum from the collision, and felt a bite on my tail that was so sharp I almost didn't feel the pain as it went in — though I certainly felt the pain once the squeeze grew tighter. I opened my mouth and emitted [noxious breath].
SP: 4/16
I tried to march forward, expecting the toothy grip on my tail to loosen as the gas cloud enveloped me, but it didn't. I looked behind me, and saw the largest hyena, standing in the sickly green gas cloud, still gripping my tail and not letting go. I exhaled [poison breath], but the hyena persisted, its massive teeth still holding my tail, but it still didn't let go.
SP: 2/16
I panicked. Using damage-over-time as a deterrent only worked against foes who had a small enough health pool for the damage over time to present a potentially lethal threat. Larger size probably meant a larger health pool. In my fear and panic, I used the last of my remaining SP and exhaled [paralyzing breath]: if I couldn't kill the thing, I could at least immobilize it.
SP: 0/16
The grip on my tail seemed to stiffen — the large hyena slumped to the ground, its legs lacking the ability to support its weight, but its jaws were still clamped around my tail in a vice-like grip.
My first thought was to take advantage of the hyena's paralysis to attack it with my claws and teeth, but as I swiped and bit at it, I was shocked to find that I couldn't pierce its hide. I did my best to force my claws into it with enough pressure, but my [level 1 claws] seemed incapable of accomplishing that task. I tried biting it, sinking my own teeth into one of its legs, and had more success — I managed to puncture the hide, and it started bleeding — but the hyena's own teeth-grip on my tail didn't loosen. Could I even kill this thing before the paralysis wore off?
What I wanted most was to attack the hyena's face — to claw at it, gnaw at it, anything — but it was impossible to reach the hyena's face with any of my claws or teeth when its jaws were locked around my tail — attacking it with my teeth would literally have been like trying to bite my own tail, something my body was not flexible enough to do.
I looked toward the cave, which was less than ten yards away, and crawled forward, dragging the stiff and paralyzed body of the hyena behind me, and started crawling forward.
While the hyena gripping my tail seemed undeterred by the effects of the [noxious breath] and [poison breath], the smaller hyena I'd smacked into earlier was still trapped in the cloud, and it wheezed desperately in the moments before the damage seemed to overtake it.
Shadowstalker Hyena defeated! 20% exp toward next level
Crawling forward while carrying a massive deadweight hyena was agonizing, the only comfort being that the gas cloud was enough to deter the other hyenas from attacking me as I crawled. But even though I was making progress toward the cave entrance, I still didn't have a plan for how to escape this hyena's grip, not with 0 SP. Should have gone with [harden scales] instead of breath attacks, I realized with hindsight. Nothing to do now but move forward.
The gas cloud was nearly dissipated, and the pack of hyenas behind me — which now numbered at least half a dozen — was starting to circle in closer.
Then, Octavia emerged from the cave entrance, scuttling behind me. "Don't stop!" she yelled.
"Hadn't planned on it," I breathed as I crawled forward.
I couldn't see what was happening behind me as Octavia went to work, but I heard the sickening sound of tearing flesh, and a few seconds later, I could feel the grip around my tail starting to loosen. And a moment later, my tail was free, and I hurried forward, not taking the time to look behind me. As I ducked into the cave entrance, I heard a bone-chilling howl which rang out for a moment, then was abruptly cut short.
Ironhide Hyena defeated! 15% exp toward next level
As I saw the notification, I glanced back, and saw that the large hyena — and a sizable area around it — was covered with the same inky black sludge I'd seen Octavia use before. The other hyenas made no effort to follow us through the stuff, and Octavia made no effort to attack them. She scuttled behind me.
"Best that you avoid touching me for now," she said. "Just head inside, and I'll tidy up my web behind you."
"Alright," I said, walking ahead of her. I tried to avoid damaging her web floor as much as possible, but large chunks of it still clung to me, though it didn't prevent me from making my way past the entrance tunnel and back to the cliff overlooking the central chasm. A minute later, Octavia came in behind me. "Sorry I took so long to arrive," she said. "I was monitoring things on the lower level."
"Understandable," I said.
"I was wondering why you were taking so long," she said. "You missed the party. Or, most of it. I can still show you some of the aftermath."
"Is it time sensitive?" I asked. "Do we need to go right now?"
"The parts that would have been time-sensitive are already over," said Octavia. "Whatever's left of the ants, it's not going anywhere any time soon."
"I've never seen a hyena like that," I said, glancing back toward the cave entrance. The system notification had called it an [ironhide hyena]. "I've seen dozens of hyenas, and I've never seen anything like that 'ironhide.' Come to think of it, the other hyena I also killed seemed to be different. It was stealthier in its approach. And…also smaller than the others. A 'shadowstalker' hyena. Up until now, I've only dealt with 'ravenous hyenas.' I'm wondering if it's a reason to be concerned."
Octavia nodded. "I think it might be. Hyenas like that are rare. There used to be more of them, many years ago. But when you see one, there's rarely just one. That would explain why you encountered two new variants tonight."
"At least two," I said. "Who knows if the others were some other different kind of hyena."
"It's odd," she said. "I don't know why it's so rarely just one of them. In this place, things tend to rarely change, until they suddenly change all at once."
"Change begets change," I said. Somehow, the fact that this had happened days after my appearance in this desert didn't feel like a coincidence.
"There are two times in the past that unusual hyenas have appeared," she said. "On both occasions, the result has been that it's become harder to find food. Seems obvious why: bigger hyenas are hungrier hyenas."
"That does seem logical," I said. "But I wonder if you might be mixing cause and effect."
"What do you mean?" said Octavia.
"I know it's counterintuitive," I said. "But what if the food shortages — or the things that caused the food shortages — were the thing that caused the hyenas to evolve like that?"
"That doesn't seem right," said Octavia. "Food becomes more scarce, so the hyenas grow bigger?"
"Or smaller, in the case of the shadowstalker," I said. "I'm not sure if 'shadowstalking' requires more or less food. But generally speaking, selection pressures force creatures toward an equilibrium point. If food is scarce, then it's advantageous to be smaller. Are you familiar with the square-cube law?"
"I'm guessing that has to do with geometry," said Octavia.
"Yeah," I said. "Basically, as a creature grows bigger, its volume and weight and need for food scale up faster than its cross-section area, or footprint. That matters, because the cross section of your bones and muscles determines how strong they are, how much weight they can carry, and even how quickly your body can digest food. The most important thing is that the bigger you are, the less efficient you are. So if food is scarce, it's good to be smaller. Being smaller can also make you harder to hunt: less weight makes you more agile and nimble."
"That explains why some hyenas might get smaller," said Octavia. "Why would some become bigger?"
"Sometimes, creatures get locked in an evolutionary arms race," I said. "If you're much, much smaller than another creature, then you can compete on efficiency. Mice can flourish in the presence of elephants, or lions."
"Is that why elephants are afraid of mice?"
"I…have no idea," I said. "I think that's just a literary trope. But the point is, the existence of the much, much larger creatures doesn't really threaten the mouse so much. In fact, the mouse is so small that even the lion, a predator, might ignore the mouse. After all, as an apex predator, the lion can hunt much bigger prey. Its time is better spent going after antelopes, or zebras, or whatever."
"Makes sense," said Octavia.
"So, it can be good to be much, much smaller than other creatures," I said. "The problem is when you're slightly smaller than them. Say you're a hyena. You and the lion compete in approximately the same evolutionary niche: you hunt similar prey, and the lion might even steal prey that you've killed. And because the lion is bigger, it will win a confrontation with a hyena almost every time. Hyenas get by on the fact that they tend to live in larger packs: they're more reliant on group cooperation. And if the hyenas are the hyenas in this analogy, then…maybe I'm a lion."
"You don't seem like a lion to me," said Octavia.
"I just mean in terms of the ecological niche I occupy," I said. "Think about it: I can probably beat a hyena one-on-one; they have to rely on superior numbers to beat me. And I'm an obligate carnivore, so the hyenas would presumably be in direct competition with me for food. It seems like the hyenas only started changing like this several days after I arrived — and after I had several encounters with them."
"That's true," said Octavia. "So maybe the hyenas are 'evolving' in response to your presence."
"Yes," I said. "Back on earth, evolutionary timelines are super long, of course. For a hyena to grow bigger than a lion would take many, many generations. And because the hyena's reproductive cycle is measured in years — as opposed to days or weeks for smaller creatures like insects — that could take a very, very long time."
"Centuries," said Octavia.
"Try millennia," I said. "But here, evolving 'stronger teeth' or 'thicker hide' or even 'a bigger skeleton that carries more muscle mass' might be something that could happen in a matter of days. I mean, look at how far I've come in the past week."
"I didn't see you the moment you came out of the egg," said Octavia. "But I know what you're talking about. My first few weeks here were a tumultuous time as well. So, you think that this is all because of you?"
"Yes," I said. "Like you said, this is a very recent development on the hyenas' part. You said it's been a long time since you've seen hyenas like that."
"Years," she confirmed.
"You and I are kind of different," I said. "I mean that in terms of how we've developed, and the abilities we've chosen."
Octavia nodded. "I've spent a lot of skill points upgrading my metabolism, learning to digest new kinds of fruit, and learning how to make more webs with less energy."
"And I, meanwhile, have spent almost all of my skill points trying to make myself more lethal to other creatures," I said. "I mean, I did learn how to talk, but I only got to that point because I'd spent time upgrading my mouth to make myself better at poisoning or paralyzing other creatures." I glanced toward the cave entrance, then back to Octavia. "I think the hyenas used to be more like you. And now they're starting to become more like me."
"You think the hyenas were upgrading their stomachs?" she said.
"Maybe," I said. "I mean, they weren't learning how to digest plants like you were. But maybe they have other ways of upgrading their stomach, getting better at digesting spoiled meat, or just converting an equivalent number of calories into more energy. Maybe that's the thing that made them 'ravenous hyenas,' instead of 'shadowstalker hyenas,' or 'ironhide hyenas.' I mean, the word 'ravenous' is all about a creature's state of hunger."
"Wouldn't that imply they're less efficient, though?" said Octavia. "'Ravenous' seems to imply needing a lot of food."
"Maybe," I admitted. "I have no idea how hyena biology works."
"Neither do I," she said. "But I think your idea makes sense. The hyenas started changing for a reason. You really think this is all happening because of you?"
"Change begets change," I repeated. "What other recent changes have there been to the status quo? Not to sound egotistical or anything, but I'm pretty sure that in the past week, my arrival has been the most interesting development in the hyenas' lives. And now I've been here long enough that they've started to adapt countermeasures."
"Makes sense," she said. "Maybe we should stick to the underground for now."
"That seems sensible," I said. "But this new development is something to be concerned about."
"If it really becomes a problem, we can just avoid the hyenas completely," said Octavia. "It's been years since I've had any real encounters with them. They stick to the surface. I'll find ways to find food for you in the underground."
"It's not just them I'm worried about," I said. "I mean, think about what this implies about the effect that my presence is already having on the local ecosystem. It's got me thinking about what's already happened, and what might happen next. Because…what if the hyenas aren't the only ones who are developing new abilities?"
