‘What is this place?’ Leo asked, as if he hadn’t heard Dominic’s question. He was staring above and around him at the bookcases, the decorations, the fireplace with its crackling flames.

‘I asked first,’ Dominic pointed out, nudging Leo with his nose. Then, feeling like the gesture didn’t fully illustrate his feelings, he concentrated on going into a human form and poked the lion with a finger.

‘Ow,’ Leo complained petulantly. Then, looking over at Dominic, sighed. ‘I’d almost forgotten you were a human.’

Dominic huffed in self-effacing humour, the sound leonine despite his human form.

‘Frankly, I feel that I’m starting to forget too. So, anyway – you tell me what you saw, and I’ll tell you what this place is. Actually, maybe one of us had better take over our physical form before something comes along and tries to kill us. Again.’

‘You have no connection to our senses either?’ Leo asked, surprised.

‘No,’ Dominic responded seriously. ‘This is where I come when you’re having fun with the lionesses.’ The lion huffed in amusement. ‘So, who is taking over now? Me or you?’

‘You can continue,’ Leo said magnanimously. ‘I’m sure that the females will be keen to make up for lost time when we get back.’ Dominic felt Leo’s amusement at his automatic discomfort at the idea. Sticking his tongue out at the lion, Dominic slid back into their physical form.

Fortunately, it appeared that nothing had found him in the time since he’d retreated into his mental space. Or if they had, they’d decided to let sleeping lions lie.

‘So, how about you tell me what I want to know, then?’ Dominic quickly moved on before the lion could continue talking about mating. Interestingly enough, if he concentrated on Leo’s presence in his mind, he could actually see him. A bit like how he’d see a vivid memory – what his eyes truly saw still took precedence, but he had the sense of seeing something else too.

The lion yawned, revealing his long, sharp teeth. Longer and sharper than Dominic remembered them being the last time they were in this space together. Clearly the other lion was taking on board the enhancements applied to their body. Dominic wondered if the same was true of his own mental leonine body. Without a mirror, it would be hard to get an answer to that, though.

‘I suspect there’s a rhino nearby,’ the lion said off-handedly.

‘A rhino?’ Dominic exclaimed. ‘And you think we should go for it? Are we talking about the same thing here – big, built like a tank, sharp horn on its nose? And that’s before the System; who knows what it’s like now?’

‘That’s it.’ Dominic stared at the lion.

‘Have you gone mad?’ was all Dominic could say in response to the ludicrous suggestion from the previously sane lion. Wasn’t Leo supposed to be his Jiminy Cricket? The voice of reason to curb his most dangerous impulses. This…didn’t sound like Leo. Had he perhaps spent too long at the back of Dominic’s head? It couldn’t be healthy being relegated to an onlooker in his original body.

‘I do not believe so,’ Leo responded thoughtfully. ‘I believe that a rhino, though dangerous prey indeed, is not beyond our capabilities at this time. They tend to be solitary, or in small family groups, so we are unlikely to have to contend with many of them at a time. Individually, their main strengths are the momentum they can build in a charge, and their sharp horns. Our usual strategy neatly side-steps those issues.’

Now he was thinking about it, Dominic was starting to be a little less against the idea. But only a little – he still was not at all sure this was something he should attempt.

‘Would we be able to do enough damage to it, though?’ he pointed out. ‘As far as I know, a rhino’s skin is pretty tough. Post-system, it’s probably even tougher.’

‘Which is why I think it’s a good target for testing our new Abilities. We need to see how our damage enhancers like Crushing Bite and Powerful Swipe interact with Rapid Attack. Not to mention to see how well our claws work now they’re so much longer and sharper. Other prey just die too quickly or are too dangerous for us to even consider attempting. I recognise that we may still have an issue, but we can always run away if necessary. Rhinos are surprisingly fast for their size, but I’m sure that we’re faster.’

‘Or could potentially climb out of its reach,’ Dominic mused, starting to get where Leo was coming from. He was still surprised that the more cautious lion was the one to suggest this – it seemed more up his street than his companion’s.

But perhaps he was being emboldened by the knowledge that no matter how much damage he had done to him, as long as he could survive the battle and didn’t have any status effects reducing his regeneration, he’d be able to recover within a few minutes. Damn, Dominic thought quietly to himself, I hope I’m not going to have to be the voice of reason here on out, or we’re in trouble.

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‘Alright,’ Dominic agreed ‘audibly’. ‘We’ll give it a go.’

As they headed along the trail that Leo pointed out, Dominic explained what he knew about the room he’d pulled Leo into. He talked about his theory of it being the space which they’d been in for the post-level-10 dominance battle, but also about his ability to change it.

He felt Leo’s interest turn into thoughtfulness, and then a weird sensation. He couldn’t quite describe it. If he had to, it would be similar to when one of his friends licked his finger then stuck it in Dominic’s ear. Except instead of being in his ear, it was in his head. It was a vaguely slippery, rather gross feeling and he had to shake his head to get rid of the after-effects.

‘What did you just do?’ he asked Leo, a little aggrieved. You’d better not have just marked ‘your territory’ or something like that! The lion, however, refused to tell.

‘I want to know if it will still be here when you retreat to this space while I’m with the lionesses. If you know about it, you may unintentionally force it to be present when it otherwise wouldn’t.’

That was an interesting point, Dominic decided, and didn’t push his companion any further, hoping that that was an indication it wasn’t what he’d feared. Anyway, honestly, he’d also like to know the answer to that question. He wondered if Leo had felt the same sensation when he’d done all the previous construction of the space, or if he’d only felt the sensation because Leo was obviously affecting something that Dominic had already changed.

Well, he could always test that later. For now, he had a battle ahead of him.

As he came up to his prey, he took a little care to be less conspicuous, ducking below the level of the grass. There were two of them, one slightly larger than the other. Taking a moment to scent the air, Dominic drew on Leo’s instincts to identify them as a male and female. Strangely enough, the male was the smaller one – it was probably an almost full-grown calf. Certainly, they both had sharp horns on them.

‘Should we really be attacking these?’ he asked Leo, having second-thoughts. ‘I think rhinos are endangered.’ The lion’s disbelieving huff told him immediately about his companion’s point of view – one he should have expected.

‘If we don’t hunt and kill, we’ll become endangered,’ the lion told him. ‘I truly don’t understand this human preoccupation with numbers. If a species is incapable of surviving without intervention on its behalf, it ought to die out and be replaced.’

Dominic sighed. It was a lion versus human thing again. Humans were the only ones on Earth who exterminated or destroyed the habitat of so many species that preservation to protect the ecology of a planet was even necessary. Without that concern, it did truly come down only to predator and prey.

Oh well, Dominic said to himself, I suppose that the question is now more about whether the species on Earth can survive and adapt to the onslaught of the System than about whether they can cope with humans. Humans themselves are potentially at risk of becoming an endangered species unless they adapt.

He re-focussed on the two rhinos ahead of him. The world had changed too much for him to be concerned with conservation issues. He just hoped once more that there was some sort of protection built into the System for herbivores.

From what he knew – both from his own memories and from Leo’s – rhinos had poor eyesight. As long as he didn’t move too quickly when they were looking in his direction, he should go unnoticed.

He was already downwind – that decision had been made almost automatically. So, logically the rhinos shouldn’t have been able to smell him. If he was lucky, he might even manage to get in an attack with Pounce. I wonder if I could combine that with Rapid Attack?

Although he generally didn’t like to have damage notifications flare up since they were too distracting, this time he thought that he should reactivate them. That way he’d be able to quickly see what kind of effect his Abilities were having.

Once he’d done that, the next task was to get himself set up for his first moves. If I can attack unnoticed, I’ll get a +50% bonus to my damage. If I can get a vulnerable point, I can get an additional +25% bonus. But where’s vulnerable on a rhino?

It was a good question. The herbivores looked even bigger and more thickly-armoured than he remembered them being from Leo’s memories. Their eyes were small and would be hard to target. Their spines were still potential weak points but were probably covered by thick skin-armour. As for their bellies, though they might be less-armoured than the rest of the animal, they would also be much more difficult to target.

‘Maybe I’ll have to be satisfied with a +50% bonus,’ Dominic remarked to Leo.

‘Yes,’ the lion agreed. ‘And I’d suggest focussing on disabling them first. Once they’re on the ground, they should be more vulnerable.’ Dominic accepted the suggestion, finding it a good one.

‘If I’m lucky, I’ll hit an artery and get them to bleed out,’ he commented to his companion.

After having had the luxury of actually being able to plan his fight against the behemoths, Dominic had better be able to take them down. With his heart beating hard in his chest, he prepared to spring.

‘Here we go,’ he told Leo, a mixture of excited and nervous. Refusing to let himself procrastinate any further, he pushed off the ground with all the force he could muster. Quick Strike at its fastest added further speed, sending him sailing into the air.

He landed exactly in the spot he’d envisaged, right on the biggest rhino’s back, between its two pairs of legs.

A fraction of a second before he’d landed, he’d mentally activated Crushing Bite, and Powerful Swipe to 10% increase. Time to see what kind of damage he could do to even this walking tank.