‘I agree with your thoughts about improving our sense of smell, Leo replied after a moment. It could certainly help us to find some females, he added. Perhaps we should consider enhancing our vocal cords. A more fearsome roar could help us as it highlights our power. Other males might run away instead of facing us if our roar is strong enough.’
Sure, Dominic equivocated, wondering how he could argue against this choice. Then he thought about something: the scrin had had Stunning Roar, an ability which used a bit of mana to turn a loud sound into a stunning attack. What if Dominic could develop other abilities by enhancing his vocal cords? Motivating Roar, or Fearsome Snarl, or Healing Croon, or something like that. If he’d learned nothing else in his time since the System arrived, it was that everything was possible, somehow.
Still, if he enhanced his sense of smell this round, he wanted to spend the other on something that might directly help him with combat.
‘OK, we’ll try the vocal cords next time, he agreed. But this time, sense of smell and processing speed, yes?’
‘Very well,’ Leo agreed, a little grumpily. Dominic understood: he hadn’t got either of his first choices, but was glad that the lion wasn’t going to fight him on it.
About to trigger the level up, Dominic paused.
‘Do you think it might be better to wait until we find the Place of Power to level up?’
‘Why?’ Leo asked, seeming a bit surprised at the suggestion.
‘If this is anything like the games I played and the books I read, the Place of Power is not going to be unguarded.’
‘You wish to keep this level up as an emergency heal in the event that the guardian of the Place of Power is too strong for us.’
‘Yes,’ Dominic replied.
‘I agree,’ Leo told him after a moment. ‘Improving our sense of smell is more for finding females, which we will concentrate on after we have explored this forest. There is no harm in waiting a little to do that. Better to have an emergency source of healing for the battles ahead.’
With that agreed, Dominic dismissed his status screen and started padding forwards. He made a mental note of what they’d decided, though, not wanting to forget.
It wasn’t long before the trees started thinning and he approached a large clearing. At the centre of the clearing was a single tree. Dominic knew immediately that this was the Place of Power.
‘We’ve found it,’ he said to Leo, exulting in the discovery. The tree was similar to the ones around him, but ever-so-slightly off. Instead of the pine needles which all the trees around had, this one had the broad leaves of the bushes. It was also very wide, about three times the width of even the widest tree Dominic had seen. Despite that, it wasn’t much taller.
It commanded the clearing with an air of power and dominance, nothing daring to grow beneath its canopy. The power coming off it was almost electric, yet for some reason Dominic didn’t feel any more powerful than usual. It was like there was static electricity in the air around him, but not actually touching him.
And there was a guardian, because of course there was.
The guardian was, unfortunately, fully aware of Dominic’s presence, standing on four paws and staring at him. However, as of yet, it wasn’t attacking so Dominic stopped and took the opportunity to study it.
‘It looks like a wolf,’ Dominic said. Not an Earth wolf; this one was clearly some alien beast, but it seemed to bear similarities to the wolves that used to roam the forests and plains on Earth.
It had four paws, a tail that was more whip-like than plumed, a long tooth-filled muzzle, and four eyes – two in front and two to the side. It wasn’t that big, perhaps a little smaller than Dominic himself. Strangest of all were the two antennae sticking out of its head and twitching. What is this, some lupine-insectile hybrid?
It was hard to know exactly what the likely weaknesses and strengths of this creature were. Wolves tended to come in packs, but this one was solitary. They also tended to be pursuit hunters with high stamina, but whether that was true of this one, he didn’t know. Eyeing the creature’s claws Dominic couldn’t see from his position whether they were retracted or permanently out: that was often a good indication of what kind of hunting the creature engaged in. Dominic flexed his own claws absently.
What else do I know about wolves? Not a huge amount. He knew more historical information about them than their hunting styles. And even though this creature kind of looked like one, that didn’t mean it would be identical to the Earth wolves anyway.
Antennae. Maybe that gave the wolf access to different information than accessible by its nose, ears, and eyes? If Dominic remembered correctly, insects used antennae to detect a range of things: sound, touch, smell, even hot and cold. Could this wolf’s antennae give it thermal imaging or something? Was that how it had so easily detected his approach?
Stolen story; please report.
But none of that really helped Dominic strategise except to encourage him to swipe at them if he could, and he would probably have done that anyway.
I’m just going to go for it, he decided. If it turns out it has some sort of attack which is too much for me, I’ll run away and come back later with a pride of females. Heck, that might even be the best strategy: he knew where the Place of Power was now; he could come back later.
Dominic wasn’t inclined to do that, however. Not with a challenge ahead of him which didn’t look insurmountable for him on his own. No, he’d rather at least give it a go, find out more about this creature and its way of attacking, and then run if necessary.
Since the creature was already fully aware of his presence, Dominic didn’t try to hide himself as he padded forwards and into the clearing.
The creature only reacted by baring its teeth, a gesture Dominic was happy to reflect back to it. He also snarled a bit, the rumble vibrating his chest and emerging from his mouth as a fearsome sound. Interestingly, the wolf didn’t actually make a sound in response.
Nor did it move as Dominic continued approaching it. Dominic did notice its muscles tensing and it crouched as if getting ready to spring. It was only when Dominic started circling around it, however, that it properly reacted. It’s probably my proximity to the Place of Power, Dominic realised in the second before the creature attacked.
The wolf’s spring was easily avoidable. It wasn’t that fast; Dominic’s ability to dodge was far better, even without using any abilities. Clearly speed was not one of this creature’s strengths.
As it ran and snapped at him, Dominic avoided the initial strike and then twisted back to strike at the wolf itself. The creature turned out to be better at dodging than it had been at striking, and Dominic only managed to graze the creature’s skin with his teeth.
Given how little red dropped from the wolf’s bar at that strike, despite it being more of a graze than anything else, Dominic had to assume that its skin or fur was armoured. Maybe both. Perhaps that was why it wasn’t as fast: it had enhanced its skin to the point that its movement was being impeded slightly.
They broke apart, both eyeing each other again. The little clash had taught them both something about the other. There was a stalemate for a moment, and then Dominic rushed the wolf.
Running towards the creature head on, Dominic waited for the wolf to commit to a forwards strike before using his momentum to push himself sideways and then slammed into the side of the wolf.
The creature grunted, the first noise it had made so far, but stood its ground despite a good four or five hundred pounds of mass slamming into it. Strengthened bones? Dominic wondered even as he took full advantage of his position to dig both claws and teeth into the body. Activating Crushing Bite, he was satisfied by a good chunk of red being stripped from the wolf’s health bar.
Of course, the wolf wasn’t going to take this lying down. Expecting it to try to pull away – counting on it, even, since that would worsen the wound and the damage thereof – Dominic was surprised when it instead started…humming.
Confused, but not above taking advantage of the moment, Dominic clenched his teeth tighter, his stamina bar slowly dropping as he kept Crushing Bite going, wrenching his head this way and that. The humming started to vibrate the body below him, but he ignored it.
Then the humming stepped up in intensity, and Dominic started feeling that he’d bitten into a vibrator. It didn’t stop there. He stopped feeding stamina into Crushing Bite when he realised that, despite himself, he was no longer able to control how strongly he was biting: the vibrating had numbed his teeth and loosened his muscles.
The humming increased even more. Now it hurt, like he was trying to bite a pile-driver or something. With more force than it should have taken, Dominic wrenched his teeth free of the creature.
As he withdrew his head, he spotted something yellow-white left in the wound. It was only when he felt around his mouth with his tongue and felt the bloody hole where one of his upper canines had been that he realised what had happened. I lost a tooth! he exclaimed in horror. What kind of ability was that? A dentist’s wet-dream, probably, and everyone else’s nightmare. Please let a level up bring that back!
A pain to his flank brought him back to the moment, reminding him that it was never a good idea to space out in the middle of a fight. The wolf had taken advantage of his inattention and had sunk its own teeth into the vulnerable flesh just behind his front leg.
When the humming started again, Dominic was torn between horror and a sense of discovery: he was pretty sure he’d spotted the source of the vibrations. The antennae.
Dominic pulled away from the teeth, a big chunk of his own health bar being lost in the process, not to mention the agony that willingly tearing his own flesh caused. It was worth it, though, as he was quickly able to get in a position to close his teeth around one antenna and rip.
The wolf moaned, the sound agonised. Dominic almost felt sorry for it. Almost. But that didn’t stop him from lunging for the second antenna too.
Unfortunately, the wolf wasn’t as distracted as he might have hoped, and it met his lunge with its own teeth. After a short jaw-to-jaw clash where more blood joined what had already been in his mouth, they both withdrew.
The wolf was the next to make a move, opening its jaws and lifting its head to make a loud moaning noise. It was an eerie, other-worldly sound which set Dominic’s teeth on edge. That wasn’t only because of the weirdness to it, but also because it carried a hint of the vibration which had already taken one of Dominic’s canines.
Worst of all, he found himself completely unable to take advantage of the perfect opportunity in front of him to rip out the wolf’s throat. Something about the sound fixed his muscles in place far more thoroughly than even the dungeon master’s pain. It was like there was an electric current running through his body, disrupting the signals which his brain tried to send.
Fortunately it didn’t seem to be damaging in any way, and the wolf wasn’t taking advantage of his inability to move to actually attack him. In fact, other than a delaying tactic, he didn’t see much use in it.
After what felt like far longer than a single breath could manage, the wolf went quiet and it looked expectant as it lowered its head. Dominic hesitated, not liking the confidence he sensed emanating from the creature. Then he heard a sound behind him.
Backing away a little, Dominic twisted so he wasn’t exactly presenting his back to the creature he’d been attacking, but also so that he could see what was going on behind him.
Dismay curdled inside him as he realised that the sound hadn’t been an attack; it had been a summons.