‘Where we go?’ Sekhmet asked expectantly in the Pride chat as they cleared the last of the trees.
‘A dungeon,’ Dominic answered absently, looking out for any signs of danger.
By the time everything had been settled, with as many contingency plans considered and outlined as possible, the sun was already heading for the horizon. That wasn’t a bad thing: the night still belonged to predators, and the lions, while not the apex predators they used to be, were still high up there.
‘What?’ the lioness asked, exuding confusion. Not that that was surprising – any sense of the word ‘dungeon’ was completely alien to a savannah-dweller.
In response, he shoved a sense of a confined space where there was both risk and reward into the chat. Sekhmet seemed more thoughtful than anything else and just a touch excited. The other lioness of the group seemed cheerfully excited, while the rest of their reduced pride just seemed confused or uncaring.
It was a small group – anything more would be overkill and also pull too much defence from his still-vulnerable new territory. Dominic feared that he might have made a mistake by bringing Sekhmet with him – she would have done very well with coordinating the Pride.
In the end, though, he decided to bring her along. His reasoning had been that, although Sekhmet was the highest level of his lionesses, and the smartest of them, there were others who were not all that far behind her – she was therefore not essential for the defence. At the same time, Dominic was hoping that the dungeon might be helpful for helping her increase in level more quickly, as it had been for him.
Anuke was only a level behind Sekhmet and had stayed behind to help coordinate hunting parties along with the other Tier 2 lionesses. Isis and Simbi would be essential to keep the Pride members working well together. They had also been advised to keep an eye on the amesheks, the level 30 Nyx in particular.
If the amesheks seemed as though they were considering turning on the lions, Simbi, Anuke, and Isis knew that they needed to retreat with as many of the lions as possible – even if they had the advantage of numbers. Just Nyx alone would be able to kill far too many of them to justify trying to stand their ground, even if the negative aspects of her Abilities were no use against other Pride members.
Sure, Dominic definitely wanted to keep the Place of Power for what it offered him and his Pride, but he’d rather not lose any of his lionesses. If necessary, they could retake it on his return. With the fact that only an enlightened beast of Tier 3 or above could make contact with the sponsoring deity, Dominic was fairly confident that his agreement with Selessa would hold true even if he temporarily lost physical control. Plus, she wanted it more than he did anyway.
Of course, that was only in the worst case scenario where Nyx decided to turn on the rest of the Pride. Dominic, obviously, hoped that that wouldn’t happen but as someone had once said: ‘hope for the best; plan for the worst.’ Two other members of the party were part of his insurance policy: he’d brought two of the amesheks with him.
Nyx had displayed protectiveness over her pack from the beginning. Although it hadn’t been explicitly said, Dominic suspected she was intelligent enough to understand that if she did anything to harm his lionesses while he was away, her own pack members would feel the consequences first.
To round out the group were four more lions. Three of them were the sub-adult males they’d inherited with the second pride.
That was due to Leo. He’d refused point blank to allow the three males to stay without his supervision, not with two females on the point of going into heat. So it was either stay until the females were out of heat, chase the potential competition out and risk them returning once he’d left, or take the three males with them.
In the end Dominic decided to see it as a positive: this little trip should prove whether the three males were able to work with him without competitiveness, and were willing to pull their weight, or if they were too affected by the way things used to be to change. And perhaps he’d be able to prove to Leo that other male lions weren’t necessarily enemies. He could hope.
Realising that he was getting a bit outnumbered by uncertain allies, Dominic had decided to bring another of the original lionesses along, someone he knew would be on his side. Not wanting to weaken those staying behind any more than already was the case, he’d decided to take Jenkins.
Though she’d once been more of a liability than he was comfortable with, the time between their first hunt together and now had seen her mature significantly. While she was still a bit more impetuous than he would prefer, he was more confident at having her at his back in a fight. Plus, she was neither old enough nor high-level enough to be a significant part of the Pride leadership, and therefore her absence wouldn’t have too much of an impact. Hopefully.
They were currently padding through the savannah at a ground-eating lope. Lions didn’t have the best stamina in the animal kingdom – their forte was in quick ambushes and short pursuits. As a result, they’d probably have to stop every so often to allow the felines of the group to regain their breaths. The three males, Fang, Lionel, and Prince were the worst off in that regard due to their significantly lower levels.
Fang was the highest at level 7 – he’d clearly been putting some effort into going out hunting. Perhaps that was part of gaining Sharp Mind, like Sekhmet, at his half-step Evolution. Lionel wasn’t far behind him at level 6, and Dominic was rather excited about his half-tier ability: Healing Cloud. He suspected that this was one of the Abilities which had been affected by his Pride enhancement to the chances of getting a rarer Ability. Dominic was cautiously hopeful about being able to work with both of them.
Prince was another story. Still lagging behind at level 4, he’d obviously only put the bare minimum of effort into going on obligatory hunts, benefiting from being part of them without necessarily doing a lot of work. If he didn’t show a significant change of attitude in the next few days, Dominic had no compunctions about chasing him off and letting him make his own way. He’d probably wait until after he reached level 6, in any case – it would give him a better chance of surviving alone on the savannah as a last chance and would garner them a Pride point.
‘I don’t know why you don’t kick him out already,’ Leo grumbled in Dominic’s ears as they were forced to stop again for the lowest-level lion to regenerate his stamina. Dominic’s own bar was only depleted by a small fraction, and the rest of the group looked fairly fresh too.
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‘It is tempting,’ sighed Dominic. ‘But I feel like I should give him a proper chance. This isn’t a big group, so he’ll be forced to actually get off his backside. Or he won’t and then we’ll know that we don’t want him around.’
‘I already know,’ growled Leo.
‘Why we go?’ asked Sekhmet, taking advantage of their relaxation and inadvertently interrupting Leo and Dominic’s mental conversation.
‘We need to get something to help establish our new territory,’ Dominic explained, remaining fairly vague. Sekhmet accepted that without further question. Leo, however, wasn’t satisfied.
‘Come to think of it, you haven’t actually told me exactly why we need to go to the dungeon – and to this specific one in particular.’
‘You know why as well as I do,’ Dominic told him, confused. ‘We discussed this after the knowledge came through from Selessa.’
‘The knowledge from Selessa….’ The lion sounded as though he was trying to remember what Dominic was talking about. The former-human frowned mentally, concern creeping through him.
‘You know, the boon from Selessa? The infodump that made both our brains practically explode?’
‘Of course I remember that,’ Leo replied snappily. ‘It was rather uncomfortable.’
‘Then why don’t you know what I’m talking about?’ Dominic asked, baffled. There was a long pause.
‘It made a lot more sense to me soon after it happened,’ Leo admitted after the moment of silence. ‘The knowledge seems to have…largely escaped me like prey fleeing my claws. I can sort of access it through your memories but…it doesn’t stick.’
‘Odd,’ commented Dominic thoughtfully. Was this because it was from an agreement between him and Selessa, not Leo? Or some other reason? ‘Anyway, you remember that she offered me the answer to three questions, and gave me a massive boon of knowledge that included both the answers and information around the whys and hows of it all?’
‘Vaguely,’ agreed Leo. ‘These were the questions we discussed before, correct?’
‘Yes. I wanted to know if there was a way to increase my mana capacity and regeneration rate, how to get the most out of the Place of Power, and-’
‘Whether we could gain Abilities in different ways other than absorbing sufficient numbers of Cores,’ Leo interrupted. Trust him to remember that one – the lion really wanted to have Enhanced Fertility and so far not many of the creatures they’d hunted had had it. They hadn’t found any rabbits or rats, though, who were almost guaranteed to possess that Ability.
‘Yes, though I didn’t phrase it like that. Also, I think I have an idea of how we can give Abilities to the lionesses without using Pride Points, though it’s not something we can do right now.’
‘That’s useful,’ Leo noted with interest. ‘Is that why we are going to the dungeon?’
‘Partially,’ Dominic answered. ‘We’re going to a dungeon because there’s something there which will really help the growth of our Place of Power. We’re going to this dungeon because we know where it is and by completing the dungeon, we should find something which helps us with our mana situation.’
‘Oh?’ the lion questioned curiously. ‘Is this dungeon special in some way? It didn’t look particularly impressive.’
‘It’s more because that’s where the damage happened in the first place.’ Dominic hesitated. ‘It’s something about ‘echos’ or ‘vibrations’. I can’t say that I fully understand it, but the knowledge from Selessa tells me exactly what to look for and what to do if I find it. There’s no guarantee that it will be there, but it’s certainly the easiest way to deal with at least some of the damage to our mana heart.’
‘Interesting,’ Leo answered. ‘I wonder whether the dungeon will have changed.’
‘Yeah, I’m curious about that, too. I kind of hope that it’s got stronger, since otherwise it’ll be a bit disappointing, I think. I reckon we could wipe out all of the challenges without even using any of our Abilities if everything is the same way it was. Though that meerkat one would still be a pain.’
‘Not if we took an ameshek with us,’ Leo pointed out. ‘Their vibrating Ability would force those wretched rats to freeze, making the puzzle relatively easy to complete.’
‘True,’ Dominic acknowledged.
‘It will be interesting to return to the place where I first gained awareness,’ Leo mused, seemingly almost to himself.
Dominic had to agree. That dungeon had presented such a challenge to him at the start of all this, and had given him a step up with levels and equipment that had kept him alive once he’d left it. It would definitely be a walk down memory lane if it had remained the same layout and challenge. At the same time, he rather hoped that it might present a new challenge.
When Selessa had made the suggestion, he’d been rather wary of walking back into the place where he had been attacked and almost entrapped by the dungeon master. Fortunately, Selessa had reassured him on that matter. Apparently the dungeon master had taken advantage of a bit of a loophole in the laws that restricted it due to a number of factors including the recentness of the System intervention, the level of Dominic himself, and the fact that he had had a bit of a questionable status under the system seeing as he was in a soul-battle with a beast who was in the middle of levelling up to 10 at the time.
With none of those now a factor, he should have nothing to worry about; neither should any of his companions. They might be offered the same deal – to become one of the dungeon’s creatures, but they couldn’t be forced into it in the way the dungeon master had tried with Dominic. He’d already cautioned his group that it might happen, though wasn’t sure how much the three sub-level 10 lions had taken the warning.
Reassured, he had become more willing to go after the two things she’d said he needed.
Prince had stopped panting so frantically and now looked like he was questioning whether he could sleep. Dominic decided that that was a good opportunity to keep going.
‘Alright everyone, onwards!’