ALL NOVEL Chapter 61: Until He’d Gained Enough Sapience
Leo padded through the savannah, regularly breathing through his mouth to search for both the scents of water and other lions in the air. Although he was not detecting any hint of lion yet, it was only a matter of time. The marking on the tree was only a few days old, meaning that it had happened after the world had changed. Besides, the tree which was marked was one of the new variants.
It was reassuring to know that there was a pride alive and well not far away, because why else would another male mark his territory? And if there was a pride around, they would inevitably come to a waterhole either to drink or for the prey which themselves came to imbibe the water.
Every so often Leo would come across the traces of another animal, but his single-minded focus on finding the pride meant that he wasn’t diverted into a hunt. If he came across the tracks and scent of a warthog, he might be willing to follow it: his brother seemed to put some strange importance to gaining their ability. Why the former-monkey wanted to gain the ability of a prey creature like that, Leo wasn’t sure, but he accepted that his brother did many things he didn’t quite understand.
Like try to take on a group of almost-baboons in the trees. Leo shook his mane in irritation at the thought of that particular humiliation. Perhaps the former-monkey hadn’t quite left his origins behind and wished to be back in the treetops. Still, Leo had to admit that the practice they’d had had allowed them to escape those strange wild dogs. Worse than hyenas, those things were. He wasn’t looking forward to facing them again, but had a feeling that his brother would insist.
For some reason, his brother was fixated on this Place of Power, so he doubted that he would be willing to just stay with the pride, mate, feed, and raise cubs the way Leo would be. From what Leo had seen of his memories, that was how humans were: always seeking to make things bigger, better, more. They sought something, and then when they got it, it wasn’t enough and they needed something else to satisfy them. Yet they were never satisfied.
Now Leo understood something which he’d never really thought about until he’d gained enough sapience to question it: the human encroachment on the wild savannah. With Dominic’s memories of learning about swathes of wild areas being destroyed for humans to be able to have more things to fill their dens with, Leo had learned two new emotions: gratitude...and rage. Gratitude that he had grown up in an area which was intentionally left for wildlife to flourish. Rage that it was not something he could take for granted.
Humanity had spread far beyond where they should have, and used their advantage of supernatural weaponry to take a place in the natural hierarchy far above where they should be. Baboons were not something to take lightly, but they did not seek to dominate the savannah and transform it to their selfish benefit. They had natural predators and fell prey to all sorts of misfortune. Humanity, as a whole, didn’t seem to do that.
Could lions do the same thing? Leo found himself wondering. I’ve changed a lot since the world changed and I started gaining both strength and sapience. Is it unrealistic to think that with our natural advantages, lions might not gain true domination over the area now we have access to magic and healing and greater capacity to think and reflect? And if we gain that, what might we do to the environment around us?
Though he did have a big question mark over the possibilities. After all, how much of his own growth was to do with the fact that he shared a body with a human? Or at least, a mind which had once been in a human body?
With copious amounts of time to think and reflect, now that he had the capacity to do so, Leo was all-too aware about how his own thinking had been influenced by the developed capacity for thought that was Dominic’s mind. His brother’s mind had been influenced by Leo’s own body and physical brain structure; Leo, as an unanchored mind, had grown and blossomed thanks to Dominic’s.
When Leo had first become slightly aware, probably back at level 3 or so, he’d been a bundle of emotions and reactions, little else. Slowly, he had gained more understanding of his own emotions, and from there been able to work out the ‘why’ of them. While at first he had been discomforted by their intensity, now he found himself more able to manage them, especially when he started being able to think in words.
What other lion would have that same benefit? To be able to experience thought as a human, while still staying unashamedly lion? And what did that mean for their future progress along with others of their kind?
Humans are still going to have an advantage though, aren’t they? grumbled Leo to himself. Not quietly enough, it seemed as his brother perked up at his thought.
‘Why do you say that?’ Leo was going to have to work on making his thoughts quieter when he was in control of the body: he didn’t have to pay the same attention when he was riding as the co-passenger. Perhaps that was the reason why he had changed more than his brother: he was inundated by the former-human’s thoughts whether he wanted them or not. ‘Leo?’
‘Didn’t you interpret the same thing from the dungeon as I did? Because we’re a Beast, not a human or, perhaps, Humanoid, we can’t gain the full benefit out of our equipment: it has had to be modified to allow us to wear it. If that wasn’t enough, we also clearly do not progress in the same way: Prey Points rather than XP. We have to risk our life to hunt down other Beasts of increasingly greater threat in order to continue advancing, where the humans would have gained a big dollop of XP just for touching the altar at the end of the dungeon. How is that fair?
‘Well, humans would have had to risk their lives in the dungeon to get to the altar at the end,’ his brother pointed out. ‘And that we can use any equipment at all is good – a lion trying to use an AK-47 would be a bit of a disaster, judging from my attempts to pick up a damn candle. Besides, just because humans earn XP doesn’t mean that their way of progressing is any easier; just different.’
The human had a point, but Leo just knew that the humans had been advantaged in some way.
‘Well, we need it,’ Leo’s brother responded to his unspoken thought. ‘I mean, humans need it. We…they are soft, weak, vulnerable. No claws, or teeth, or fur to protect them. They need to make claws and teeth and armour to survive. Heck, without clothes, we’d…they’d die of exposure in a short space of time in a number of climates.’
‘My claws and teeth do not shoot painful bullets,’ Leo told him sulkily.
‘Neither did humans for the vast majority of our history. That’s only a technological development in the last three hundred years or so.’
‘Which humans will no doubt take into this new world, and once more spread like a disease across the planet’s surface, taking more of its resources than they should ever have been able to claim, and making decisions to doom the rest of us in the meantime,’ Leo told his brother angrily, the feeling of rage flaring once more inside him. ‘Don’t think that I haven’t seen your memories of all that.’
Dominic was silent for a long moment, the sense of guilt drifting across from his corner of Leo’s mind.
‘Look, you’ve got a right to be angry,’ he said finally, almost too quietly for Leo to hear. ‘We weren’t very good caretakers of the world. Some people tried to make up for what we were doing, but as a whole we were taking actions which were too little, too late. Perhaps this whole System is a good thing – if nothing else, it’s given us more time.’ He was silent for a little longer before speaking. ‘And perhaps humans won’t be so clearly the dominant species on this new world.’
‘If the new System doesn’t cheat as badly as the old one, perhaps,’ Leo groused, though his rage had been doused by his brother’s clear guilt over it all. There was no point in them fighting over such a thing; it was just proof of how far Leo himself had moved from his baseline leonine state that he cared at all. But it wouldn’t help their survival to muse over could-have-beens; he didn’t want to absorb so much of Dominic’s personality that he ended up unable to keep focussed on what was truly important.
On that note, Leo realised that his musings had brought him close to his target: ahead of him, he could see the glint of water between trees.
The area around the waterhole was likely to be dangerous: predators and prey would throng here alike. Still, it wasn’t yet dusk so most creatures would probably still be hiding away from the sun rather than on the prowl. Though that was the way things used to be Before; who knew if they were different now?
Even Leo was starting to get a bit overheated after walking in the afternoon sun for a while. He’d noticed that he’d been feeling hotter more easily – the longer fur was probably to be blamed for that. Still, it had given him a mane some time before he might otherwise have expected to start properly growing it, so it wasn’t all bad.
On that note, Leo decided to seek shade – once he’d seen his reflection in the water. After all, if the enhancements he’d encouraged his brother to take hadn’t given him enough of a mane to be willing to show himself to the females, he’d have to make sure that mane enhancements were the only choices considered in the next level up.
Although he took the last stretch of land towards the water carefully and slowly, he didn’t actually see anything move. Clearly it was as he had thought: the sun had chased everything under cover. Standing by the side of the waterhole, he looked eagerly at his reflection.
What met his gaze was not what he remembered seeing the last time he had visited a waterhole, a day before the world changed. The lion in the reflection was bigger, for one. Broader too. His eyes were sharper and more aware. His face was pretty much the same, though when he opened his jaws, he saw his teeth were longer and sharper. Fortunately, his level-up had replaced the tooth he’d lost to the dog-things: he’d hate to present himself to the females like that.
He was also a bit shaggier, his fur about double the length it had been. No wonder that he was overheating. He was abruptly glad that his brother had talked him out of growing it further.
As for his mane, although it wasn’t all that he had hoped, it was a good sight better than it had been. He actually had a mane, which was more than had been the case before. The darkening and lengthening of the fur which had been there meant he had a nice ruff around his head and going down his throat a bit, the colour darker than the rest of his sandy-coloured coat.
Though, he was rather displeased by the interruption of the leather collar around his neck – while he knew it was called a ‘gorget’, it looked a lot more like a collar. But at least it was protective rather than restrictive or he would put up more of a fuss: he wasn’t a pet cat! That was the only reason he’d put up with it marring the line of his mane too.
So overall, he was quite pleased with the development of his most important, and attractive feature. It wasn’t anything like his sire’s mane had been, but one day maybe he’d get there.
I wonder what happened to him when the world changed… he found himself wondering. Then he shoved that thought away from him: there was only so human he was willing to let himself get.
