Watching the fight from the backseat had been as interesting as always. Dominic had seen each death, and had kept vague track of the numbers involved. It was therefore not a big surprise when all three of the lionesses shimmered as they levelled up. What was a slight surprise was that they didn’t change in the same way.

Jenkins got bigger again, having obviously chosen that as her enhancement. Hathor’s teeth grew longer. As for Neith, there were no obvious physical changes. Perhaps it would be something he’d be able to see in the party – pride – status screen.

Unfortunately, Dominic himself hadn’t yet earned enough points to level up.

Progress to Evolution: 326/420 PP

Still a way to go, he sighed to himself. And that was even though he’d gained the lion’s share of the points – despite not picking that enhancement in the pride status screen, that’s just how the fight had ended up.

‘I think we should pick the enhancement to share points,’ he said to his leonine partner. ‘When we have enough Pride Points to do it, anyway.’

‘Why do you say that?’ Leo asked, not sounding like he disagreed, just that he was curious about Dominic’s reasoning.

‘Think about that fight. It was so easy for us to kill the queerb. The fight could have been over in a fraction of the time if we’d been able to let loose. But we couldn’t, because then we’d have got almost all the Prey Points and the lionesses wouldn’t have been able to level up.’

‘We can’t do everything for them, though,’ Leo pointed out. ‘The youngest female is foolish because she is inexperienced. The older females are wise because of their experience. If we take away the experience, they will not be able to fight as well.’

That was a remarkably good point. Dominic went silent briefly as he thought it over. Then he returned to the lion who had started chewing at the closest queerb. Dominic got the sense it was more out of curiosity about what this new beast would taste like rather than actual need.

‘I take your point about experience. But the lionesses need levels, and at the moment, these kinds of scavengers which are so good for Prey Point gain, are also a bit too much for them to handle. If we can power-level them until they’re all at least Half-Step Evolved, they’ll be more able to take care of themselves in the fight.’ He silently thought about something. ‘It would be good if the shared experience was something we could turn off and on again at will; I don’t know if it is.’

‘Perhaps,’ Leo allowed. ‘Right now it’s irrelevant: I don’t think we have enough points for it. We can discuss it more when it actually becomes a choice.’

‘Fair point,’ Dominic agreed. ‘For now then, though, what about those Cores?’

While the two of them had been talking, the lionesses had started nosing at the carcasses, chewing at the flesh themselves. Having just levelled up, they were all fully healed and clean. They also didn’t seem particularly hungry, so Dominic urged Leo to go and collect the carcasses.

There, they ran into a problem: they couldn’t fit all of these carcasses into his storage space with the rhino still in there along with the Cores from the hyenas and a few resorel carcasses.

‘We’ll have to dump a few of the carcasses,’ Dominic said to Leo, dismayed.

‘Agreed. Which ones shall we be rid of?’

The former-human thought about it.

‘Actually, can we swap? I think it’ll be easier if I do it rather than tell you what to do.’

‘Very well,’ Leo agreed. Within a few moments, they had switched positions once more.

Now back in the driver’s seat, Dominic focussed on the contents of his gorget. Obviously, the rhino was the biggest single item there, but he wasn’t keen on getting rid of that: it just offered so much health and stamina regeneration in one shot that he wanted to keep it around for now. He did pull out the rest of the resorels – they were older than these newest queerbs, so would go off sooner. If he had to choose, he’d rather keep the newer stuff.

However, he did want to have their Cores first, so started digging out the Cores and laying them on the ground next to him, putting the Core-less carcasses into his storage. He also pulled out the hyenas’ Cores that he’d stuck in there for good measure: that would free up a little space.

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Continuing to do that until he couldn’t get any more into his storage space, he found that there were only five carcasses left. Pulling the Cores out of them, he checked out each of them one by one.

As expected, three of the hyena Cores contained Rage in addition to Crushing Bite. The other two were slightly more interesting.

[Beast Core: Spotted Hyena level 7

Ability option 1: Crushing Bite (70% chance))

Ability option 2: Clan Bonds (30% chance)]

[Clan Bonds (T1): Improves teamwork between the one with the Ability and any in their party. Team members will unconsciously work in cohesion with the intentions of the one with the Ability, assuming that their objectives are the same or the team members are willing to work towards the Ability-holder’s objectives. More facets may be revealed later.]

‘That’s pretty vague,’ Dominic commented to Leo. ‘’Improves teamwork’ and ‘more facets may be revealed later’. Where are all the percentages?’ The lion gave a sense of a shrug, clearly not bothered by it.

‘Why is it necessary to quantify everything in numbers all the time? This would be a good Ability to have.’

‘Sure, I agree with you. It might help Jenkins actually follow a battle plan for once. But it would be nice to actually see how much this is supposed to help.’

‘Maybe there are too many other factors. Maybe it relies on existing teamwork and will work better for those who already have a good hunt strategy in place.’

‘If that’s the case,’ Dominic replied glumly, ‘it’s not going to work very well on Jenkins.’ The lion actually laughed at him.

‘She’s young. She’ll learn,’ was all he said, amusement tingeing his mental voice. Dominic definitely got the image of a young lion with paws too big for it, stumbling around and getting in everyone’s way. Apparently that was how he still saw the youngest lioness. Perhaps if Dominic thought about it that way, he’d be less grumpy about it.

Then again, she’d almost got them all killed so maybe not.

‘Let’s try to aim for that Ability, then.’ The other Core had it too so there was a reasonable chance that he might get it on at least one of them. Of course, then he needed to find other Cores with the same ability, but given how often they seemed to run into hyenas, maybe it wouldn’t take so long. Though he had been a bit taken aback by how the hyenas had gone to their deaths rather than try to run.

I wonder if the hyenas have access to a party system, said Dominic to himself thoughtfully. Now he knew it existed, what if he wasn’t the only one who had been able to co-opt it? Though, there was the evident requirement of ‘sapience’.

Then again, who was he to say that a hyena couldn’t have reached sapience? They’d certainly shown evidence of adapting to the changing reality. What if a hyena had been given some sort of opportunity to level quickly, just as he had with the dungeon? What if it had levelled sufficiently to gain sapience?

Now he knew about the options available to him as a pride leader, it made a little more logical sense that a leader might send their group to their deaths: if they got 90% of the Prey Points from whatever the group member killed, then maybe the individual group member’s survival wasn’t as important as whether it took others down with it….

That was a rather worrying thought. The hyenas had already proven to be foes to the lions; to have them be gaining in strength as they had been was rather worrying. After all, there had been five level 7s in that fight. The hippo had been both helpful and a hindrance, offering both distraction for two of the hyenas at the same time as being another threat to keep an eye on, particularly when it set its sights on Dominic himself.

Ultimately, though, there wasn’t much Dominic could do about it that he wasn’t already doing. If the hyenas were gaining strength quickly, his pride would have to get stronger even more quickly; choosing the option to share Prey Points when he could and then him tearing through lower leveled foes seemed the best option for that.

For now, all he could do was look at the options the other Cores offered him, then absorb the Cores themselves and hope that he got the good options.

Looking at the queerbs' Cores, he found that the initial Ability they all gained was probably not his cup of tea.

[Bloodied Stalwart (T0): Ignore pain and injury to continue supporting and protecting others of your group. Intelligence is consumed according to the level of injury sustained as your focus narrows due to the effort needed to continue moving.]

It was the Ability with the most drawbacks Dominic had seen so far – and that was including Second Wind’s side-effects of potentially killing its user if the timer ran out. Being able to continue protecting others of his pride even after sustaining injury would be great – if it didn’t come with the side effect of making him lose his ability to reason. At least, that’s what he interpreted by ‘Intelligence is consumed’.

Sure, if he only used it for minor wounds, it might not have too much impact, but then he could already do that. Imagine being in a fight like where he’d been impaled by the rhino’s horn, and then suddenly be unable to think properly because of this Ability. Not what he wanted.

It was therefore pretty annoying that it was the main Ability for these creatures. There were some Cores Dominic didn’t even want to absorb at all: the other Ability offered something sounding too similar to Gore to be at all something he wanted. It was called ‘Rend’, but seemed very much in the same vein. Not something he likely had the equipment for – he had no desire to grow tusks accidentally if the Ability was incompatible with his body.

There were a few more interesting ones, though. Bleed seemed to be able to be applied with any weapons, applying a bleeding effect on successful strikes – a good addition to his damage enhancements. Four of the Cores had that.

They also had Enhanced Fertility, which made Leo perk up – six of the Cores contained that. With the lack of a better option, Dominic was more willing to attempt to get that one this time. They only had 20% chance of gaining those Abilities compared to Bloodied Stalwart, though.

Ah well, I don’t have to accept the ability upon level up, even if I do get it to a hundred percent, Dominic told himself a bit reluctantly. Time to roll the dice.