ALL NOVEL Chapter 20: I Never Wanted to be Mufasa
Dominic let out a short snarl of fright as a void suddenly opened up below him with a loud grinding sound. Fortunately, he reacted faster than his brain could process, using the last bit of purchase below his back feet to give himself a little bit of impetus forwards.
Stone which is already falling is a poor launch pad, but it was enough to allow his fore-paws to slam into the solid edge of the surprise pit. His claws dug in frantically, searching for a crack, a divot, any sort of grip they could gain. His fall was slowed, but not stopped.
It seemed hopeless, his weight tugging him backwards, down into the void below. His claws, excellent for climbing trees or catching prey, were not designed to allow him to scale stone.
And then his back feet slammed into the wall of the pit below. He scrabbled with them, those claws also fully out and searching for purchase.
Bit by bit, he slid. The few inches he had gained with his final leap disappeared with every shift backwards. He was a fraction of an inch from losing any sort of grip at all and tumbling down into the unknown darkness below.
Then, one of his forepaws caught. Two claws alone had found somewhere to grip. It arrested his backwards slide for a moment.
Hope filled Dominic. His grip was more than tenuous, but he finally had a moment to breathe. His whole weight almost completely dangling from two claws was causing pain to those digits, but he had to ignore that.
Moving very, very carefully, he shifted his other forepaw, attempting to find some sort of purchase with that one too. It took longer than he’d have liked – if he’d still been human, Dominic would have bet that his forehead would have been sopping wet with fearful sweat – but finally three of his claws caught on something.
His heart reducing its frantic beat a little, Dominic felt just a little more secure. Next, moving his back feet equally carefully, he attempted to find some way of hooking them into the wall.
Just as he found purchase for one of his back feet, the forepaw which had caught originally suddenly slipped. With a startled wheeze, Dominic pushed up with his single back foot and slammed it back down onto the stone.
To his relief, it caught once more – whether it caught in the same place or a different, Dominic didn’t know and, honestly, didn’t care. All that he knew was that he was panting and his heart rate had leapt through the roof once more.
Completely done with this encounter, he searched for a foothold for his final limb. Come on, he urged mentally, I never wanted to be Mufasa! Tension built in his belly as well as his muscles as the seconds ticked by without finding anything.
His position was a strain, so many muscles tensed at once. It was having an impact on his stamina, the yellow bar ticking down bit by bit. What happened when he eventually ran out of SP? Dominic knew the answer: he would drop back into the pit and whatever awaited him there.
A growl started in his chest, his frustration and fear turning into anger. I am not going to die in this dungeon, he swore, his movements becoming stronger and more reckless as time went by. I refuse!
And then, as if a miracle, his flailing foot finally caught on something. Dominic could feel by the way it shifted that it wasn’t going to last long as a foothold, but hopefully it would last long enough.
His original idea of climbing foot by foot out of this trap wasn’t going to work. He didn’t have enough stamina, and the footholds had proved too difficult to find. The lion was going to have to take a chance and hope that his physical capabilities were up to the task.
Releasing a little of the tension in his forearms, he let his weight fall more on his back feet. It was a risk, especially with how dubious he felt his second foothold was, but a risk he had to take.
Tensing the muscles in his hindquarters, he suddenly leapt.
Power flowed into his back-legs, propelling him upwards. Further power flowed into his forelegs, his claw-holds pulling him forwards. Using Quick Strike turned his motion into a blur, but also added more impetus to his forward motion.
He cleared the pit with three feet to spare, landing heavily down on the stone floor, his back feet a bare foot away from the edge of the pit. Though not wanting to trigger another trap, Dominic was unable to do more than just collapse straight on the ground, sheer exhaustion pulling him down like a magnet.
It was physical tiredness, Dominic realised as he saw just how low his stamina bar had got – activating the stronger version of Quick Strike as well as the exertion of the jump itself had drained it practically down to nothing. However, it wasn’t only physical exhaustion; it was also mental. He’d felt closer to death that time than any of the encounters since he’d actually died.
It was strange, especially since his health points were actually pretty high. Not full – since he hadn’t leveled up, they hadn’t yet regenerated themselves from what they’d been at the end of his final fight with the trodils – but way over half. Yet he’d been convinced mentally that he was only inches away from death. It took a toll mentally, whether or not it was accurate.
Since nothing fell on his head, pierced his flesh, or dropped him into another pit, he had to guess that there was no trigger for a trap where he had leapt. Fortunately. Dominic therefore allowed himself to rest a little. Not sleep – he was too keyed up for that – but just...rest and recuperate a little.
When he was feeling slightly better, he opened his eyes, pushed himself to his feet, and carefully turned around, watching closely for more trap triggers. Time to see how close to death I actually got, he decided. If it turned out to be a bare ten foot deep pit that he could have easily leapt out of, he would be really annoyed with himself.
Finally getting a proper view of what he had just survived, Dominic noticed that the stone had fallen away in a square pit about nine feet across in each direction. It stretched most of the way towards the walls of the corridor, leaving perhaps seven or eight inches of floor between the edge of the pit and the wall.
Dominic wasn’t sure where the trap trigger had been, but if it had been anywhere near the centre, he could see this being a major problem for any humanoid. It was only because he was a fair bit longer than the average human’s height that he had been able to actually push forwards enough to set his fore-claws into the edge of the pit.
Then again, he supposed that if someone was able to trigger the pit ahead of the crossing, they could probably edge around the pit via the thin walkways left either side. Or they could have avoided triggering the trap at all. That would probably be the better option for everyone involved.
Peering over the edge of the pit, the young lion felt a shiver go all the way down his – long – spine. Perhaps my sense of impending death wasn’t that inaccurate, he thought to himself. Was this dungeon designed by Vlad the Impaler, or something?
It was a good question. He’d already avoided one spike trap; to see another one here smacked of the dungeon designer having a certain kink. If one could call sending sharp pointy objects into an explorer’s body a ‘kink’.
The bottom of the pit was bristling with gleaming spikes. They were different lengths, different widths; the one thing they all had in common was that they were obviously razor-sharp.
Dominic winced as he imagined having lost his grip and gone falling backwards into that. Well, he mused a little hysterically, at least it’s not a herd of wildebeest. He made a mental note never to bring his devious and jealous younger brother with him to this dungeon. Not that he had a younger brother. Is that a point in my favour?
Dismissing the thoughts, Dominic tried to focus more on the present than the past. He wasn’t far from the bend now, the pit actually taking up a good third of the corridor’s length. Still, that didn’t mean there were no other traps waiting for him to blunder into them as he had just done.
Maybe I should level up, he thought to himself. Although his stamina was slowly replenishing itself, it would take a good few hours for it to fill completely. And his health points had only moved by about two points since entering the temple. I don’t want to risk being in a situation and dying because I don’t have enough HP or SP, he decided.
Quickly pulling up his status panel, he chose Heart, once more reasoning that more stamina was a safe bet. Although having claws that could carve into stone would have been useful in that last trap, he doubted that a single enhancement to his claws would gain that effect. Though is that something I could aim for? he wondered idly.
He could imagine it – claws that could carve through stone, teeth that could pierce metal, skin or fur which could resist both. He’d be unbeatable…. The fantasy was nice, but he brought himself back down to earth shortly after. If he could advance that far, everyone else sure would too. What good were claws that could carve through stone if everyone else was ten times more impenetrable than it? Or skin that could resist metal if it was against enemies who could carve through metal with ease? But those were thoughts for another time.
He’d also considered putting another point into his constitution, but had decided against it in the end. Although more health was good, it wouldn’t have helped him at all in that last trap, unless he’d had enough health to be able to be impaled in multiple places without dying.
And even then, it would have only staved off death until bloodloss caught up with him. Stamina gave him more time to actually deal with whatever the issue was, as well as giving him more of an option of running away since it also increased his maximum sprint time.
- Muscular Body level 5 (max speed 24mps; max speed duration 15s) (105 SP)
Once more, the amount of stamina he’d gained had increased – 25 SP more this time. He’d gained 3s more in terms of his maximum speed duration. With both resources now full again, and feeling a whole lot more refreshed, he felt a bit more confident about facing whatever this dungeon had next in store for him.