Unlike every other use of Consume where the dust had been quickly absorbed in one go, this one took longer – there was just so much of it. His health and stamina ticked up quickly over time, the most of each that he’d ever taken from a single creature. And that was despite the fact that it wasn’t nearly the highest level animal he’d killed and absorbed to date. It was definitely the biggest, though.
By the time the dust cleared, Dominic was startled to see that he was practically eye to horn with the second rhino. Oddly enough, he was pretty sure that he saw some of the cloud drift over to the great beast – was it stealing his kill dust?
Jumping to one side, he avoided its attempted strike, mentally grinning at the lack of pain. He wasn’t fully healed, but he wasn’t far off either. Certainly, the massive wound which the horn had caused was now just a shallow hole in two places. Whether his gut was still perforated, he didn’t know, but he knew it didn’t hurt.
‘I hope whatever healing this has done also includes clearing up anything that escaped from my gut while it was damaged – I don’t want any of that floating around my system.’
‘Worry about that later,’ Leo snapped at him. ‘Right now, deal with the rhino that’s trying to stab us again!’
Good point. Dominic jumped again to the side as the rhino attempted to charge at him. Without an injury impeding his movement, he was easily able to get out of the way. He did have to jump again when the rhino stopped its charge unexpectedly quickly and came close to stabbing him.
‘Are we attempting to take this one down?’ Leo asked Dominic. The human-turned-lion considered the question, watching the rhino carefully, dodging its attempts to strike him.
It was a good question. He wasn’t exactly gaining much from the Prey Points, not with only thirty-two of them on the line. However, that hadn’t been his principal reason for starting the fight – gaining more progress towards Charge and testing his new Abilities were the real objectives.
He felt more confident with his new Abilities, like he had more of an understanding of them now. He didn’t feel like another fight with a rhino was likely to improve much there.
As for making progress towards Charge, he wouldn’t know how beneficial this had been until he checked his status sheet, and he wasn’t willing to do that while in the middle of a fight. Besides, he had the Core from the rhino tucked in his storage space; again, he wasn’t going to try using that until he was out of the fight.
But was it a bad idea to continue the fight?
His main injury in the previous fight had come from this very rhino when he’d been distracted, not the one he’d been attacking. He’d practically healed from that, and now that the majority of the damage had been erased, Regeneration was quickly ticking his health back up to full.
Stamina had also been almost refilled, his pool up to just under two hundred points. If the rhino had stolen some of his golden dust – if such a thing was possible – then its own health and stamina was likely to have been refreshed. Essentially, it was a bit like they were starting the fight again.
Though there were a few differences. The rhino knew he was there for one – no chance of using the bonus of Pounce to enhance his first blow. Secondly, Dominic didn’t have quite as much stamina as he’d had when starting the first fight.
Then again, he also knew a strategy which worked, something he hadn’t when he’d first attacked.
‘I think we should give it a go,’ Dominic decided, leaping to one side and slashing at the rhino’s eye with one paw. It responded by trying to hit him with the side of its head. He just shifted out of the way. ‘Do you disagree?’
The lion was silent for a moment.
‘Not as long as you focus better,’ he said finally. ‘We shouldn’t have lost track of the second rhino. If we hadn’t, we wouldn’t have been injured that badly.’
‘Alright, deal,’ Dominic agreed.
Surprising the rhino, he used Quick Strike to actually move away from his opponent. Of course, a moment later, he whipped around and gathered his feet under him to pounce.
Unfortunately not benefiting from the bonus of Pounce, the leap still took him up into the air. The rhino tried to turn the tables on him by backing up.
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For a moment, Dominic feared that he might land on the rhino’s horn, impaling himself, but fortunately a mid-air gyration with his tail twisted him so that he actually landed on the rhino’s head, his belly a few inches away from the higher – and, happily for Dominic, shorter – of the rhino’s horns.
The herbivore’s first reaction was, of course, to shake his head. His claws slipping on the tough skin, Dominic struggled to keep his balance. Seeing the rhino’s ears, he instinctively grabbed for them.
Being thinner skin, the rhino’s ears yielded more easily to his claws and he regained some stability. In revenge, he dug his back claws into the rhino’s face, shifting his weight from one side to the other.
The rhino bellowed in pain and tossed its head frantically. This time, Dominic didn’t manage to keep his position, the ears under his forepaws ripping and tearing under his weight.
He fell to the side, doing his best to turn a fall into a more controlled leap by pushing off with his back feet.
Landing to one side, Dominic quickly leaped back in case he was about to be gored with a horn. The rhino was temporarily rather too occupied to do that, though.
One of Dominic’s back feet seemed to have struck lucky – for him, that was. The eye to the right of the rhino’s head was bleeding heavily. The lion didn’t know if he’d damaged its eye or just the skin around it. Either way, it meant he was now facing a half-blinded foe.
Taking full advantage of the moment, Dominic kept in the enraged herbivore’s blind spot even as it twisted and turned, trying to spot him again. Its nostrils flared, perhaps trying to sniff him out; whether it would be able to do that considering how much their combined scents were infusing the air, he didn’t know.
It was irrelevant – it would soon know where he was, not that it would be able to do much about it.
Once more leaping, he landed successfully on his opponent’s back. Since the last time had worked, albeit slowly, he bit into the same spot.
Knowing now that this would be a battle of attrition rather than one of quickly overwhelming his opponent, Dominic sought to conserve resources. He did rip at the rhino’s skin with all four claws, but that was more to create a good foothold for himself in the inevitable attempts to buck him off than to cause damage.
His main focus was, once more, his teeth.
Biting straight down, he dialled up Crushing Bite to 30%, finding that to be a good balance between damage and stamina cost. Clenching his teeth, he pulled at the flesh with all the strength his shoulders could muster. Then releasing his bite, he quickly bit again, once more yanking at the flesh in his mouth.
[You have dealt 58 damage to Black African Rhino (23+5 Slicing damage, 9+5 Tearing damage, 11+5 Piercing damage)]
[You have dealt 121 damage to Black African Rhino (35+11+10 Crushing damage, 31+5 Tearing damage, 24+5 Piercing damage)]
It was a pitiful amount of damage, really, especially now that he knew that the health pool of these creatures had to be well over 1000 HP, maybe even 2000 HP. But this was far more sustainable than what he’d been doing before.
He had decided not to activate Rapid Attack – he didn’t feel that this was a battle which necessitated sacrificing stamina for time. In fact, it was the reverse – with the rhino unable to get at him, but a hard nut to crack, he had far more use for the stamina. If Rapid Attack had replicated the same attack with no other output of stamina than the cost of the Ability itself, he might have considered it. As it was, though, it seemed like too much of a waste.
Similarly, he hadn’t chosen to increase the damage his claws offered with Powerful Swipe: although any damage was good, his aim was to get through to the rhino’s spine and sever it as quickly as possible. That was work for his teeth, not his claws.
Although… he thought as inspiration came to him. It was true that he’d need to use his teeth to crush the spine bones themselves, but what about all the muscle he had to work his way through to get there?
First he’d need to make an open wound, though.
Finding the notifications more irritating and distracting than informative – he knew he wouldn’t be causing much damage, but he had to do it anyway – he mentally focussed on turning them off again.
Diving in, he tore and chewed at the tough skin between his teeth until a chunk came free in his mouth.
In the meantime, the rhino had not been standing passively. It had been trying to buck him off, charging in one direction and then halting suddenly, even trying to rub against a couple of trees. Those were also casualties of the fight – the force of the rhino had pushed them over at odd angles.
None of its actions had succeeded; Dominic knew what would be its next recourse. Sure enough, a moment later, it started lowering itself awkwardly to its belly, and then started tipping to the side.
Dominic leapt off the rhino’s back as it began rolling, aiming himself towards its front legs. Diving into the gap the herbivore's actions had created, he sank his teeth into the flaps of skin covering the rhino’s throat.
The beast bellowed angrily, rolling back towards him and attempting to gore him with its horn again.
Dominic backed off, leaping back onto the rhino’s back as soon as it started standing up again. Returning to the small hole he had made in the armoured skin of the dangerous herbivore, he used his claws, enhanced with Powerful Swipe, to cut further.
Not caring so much about numerical damage, he looked more at how well each attack was getting through the flesh. Noticing that his claws actually seemed to be doing a better job at ripping and tearing, he continued using them to dig down into the rhino’s body.
He alternated like that – aiming for the spine of the rhino until it started trying to roll, then attacking its throat. Without needing to avoid the horn of a companion, the situation became less of a fight and more of a slaughter.
Without intervention, the rhino stood no chance against a lion who was both able to get through its tough armour and avoid its attempts to gore him.
By the time Dominic managed to paralyse the rhino, it was already on its last legs. Literally, afterwards. Feeling a bit sorry for the magnificent former-African denizen, he tried to hasten its death by ripping out its throat.
The last bit of red trickled away from its bar, and it died with nary a sound.