Chimera Rising: Beast King Ascension [How a human-turned-lion went from Zero to Absolute Ruler]

[You have killed Nile Monitor Lizard Minor Guardian (Evolved Beast level 20)]

[You have earned 22 PP]

As always, while the actual number of earned Prey Points looked very low, the reality of it was that this was only a sixth, meaning that the monitor boss had been very lucrative indeed. They’d already earned enough Prey Points from the other minions which had been killed for the next level, but Dominic was never going to say no to more Prey Points. 

In the backseat, but not in the mental space, Dominic watched as Leo leapt back up to the tree top above, using the same method as last time to reach the lowest branch. There they sat for a little bit to recuperate – they’d used a lot of stamina in that one attack, and they hadn’t been full to begin with. While biting down, they had also ingested some poison, which was not pleasant 

The reason for jumping back to the tree top was obvious: though the poison cloud was slowly dispersing now the monitor lizard wasn’t pumping it out every second, it was still very thick around the body of the boss. The rest of the pride were busy taking out the rest of the minions, able to start advancing forwards again as the poison cloud dispersed at its edges first. 

What kind of poison it was, Dominic didn’t know – it had irritated their eyes and respiratory system, but it had had more direct effect on their health rather than obvious physical effects. It would be pretty awesome if he could get that Ability, especially since the Pride enhancement he’d already purchased should mean that it would only negatively affect his enemies. 

The notifications kept flashing up as the snakes and smaller monitors were hunted down one by one. 

‘So, we’ve got enough Prey Points to level up again. Wings this time, then?’ Dominic asked Leo hopefully. ‘You’ve realised how useful the wings are, I know that. Expanding their functionality can only help,’ he pointed out. 

The lion was silent for a moment before letting out a grumbling sigh.

‘Yes, fine. I agree to enhancing wings in this level up.’

‘Twice?’ asked Dominic, pushing his luck. 

‘Our reaction speed still needs work,’ Leo argued. ‘We still can’t react quite as fast as we are capable of moving.’

‘Then let’s do that next time,’ suggested Dominic. ‘Face it: these two rooms can’t be all there is to the dungeon. Even if this beast had a pretty cool Ability, it wasn’t tough enough to be the final dungeon guardian. Which means the chances of us being able to level up at least once more in the near future are high. We’ll increase Brain and Nervous System then.’

Leo hesitated for a moment.

‘We could do that with Wings,’ he pointed out. 

‘You agreed that we could enhance our Wings on this upgrade,’ Dominic accused.

‘And I’m not saying we can’t,’ Leo denied. ‘I’m just saying that one upgrade is probably enough to see whether dedicating more is necessary.’

‘Yes, but two will show that even better,’ Dominic argued. ‘Besides, you’ve already seen how we can use Wings to get above the enemy, drop on them from above, and kill a level twenty in one strike. We haven’t even tried using our Wings as a weapon themselves, but we can. I really think that we should give them both enhancements now, and then enhance the other things on the next level.’

Leo considered Dominic’s words for a few seconds and then acquiesced. Since he was the one in control of their body, he was the one who had to trigger the level up. He did so, Dominic feeling him think about how he wanted to enhance their wings.

‘OK, we need to choose what kinds of enhancements now,’ Dominic told him as the message flashed up in front of their eyes.

‘We can enhance size, strength, or change the shape of our wings, right?’ the lion asked.

‘Yes, exactly,’ Dominic responded, a little surprised he’d remembered. ‘I’d say we should choose strength,’ he mused. ‘I don’t think our wings are too small – if anything, they’re a bit too big to use in confined conditions. And I don’t know enough about the advantages of different shapes to suggest that we change it right now. What we need is to be able to fly,  and not just glide, and I would guess that strength is the way to go for that.’

‘Since I know even less about feathery prey than you, I will have to go with your suggestion,’ agreed Leo, his mock-grumpiness a cover for his interest. Sometimes Dominic wondered why he was so reluctant to show his interest or how happy certain things made him. Except for mating, of course. 

‘Good,’ Dominic told him, then quickly added, ‘wait.’

‘For what?’ demanded Leo. 

‘Maybe we should check out the Cores first. And clear away the rest of the minions. If enough of the snakes have the Hypnotise Ability, we might be able to earn that one. And for all we know, there might be something else we can earn. If we level up first, we may end up kicking ourselves.’

‘You…have a point,’ Leo admitted reluctantly. ‘Now, how do I get rid of these things in front of my eyes?’

‘Actually, maybe we should-’ Dominic cut himself off a moment later as Leo managed to dismiss the level up prompts from their vision. ‘Oh. You’ve done it.’

‘You didn’t want me to?’

‘I was just worried it might stop us levelling up at all or something.’

The lion paused for a moment as he considered that.

‘Well, it’s done now.’

Dominic felt like rolling his eyes.

‘Yes, Leo. Thanks for pointing out the obvious,’ he told his companion sarcastically.

Seeing as they were going to level up soon, Leo evidently decided that Second Wind was worth triggering. Refilling his stamina and topping up his health he glided over to the opposite side of the room from his pride, attacking the snakes and lizards he could find there. 

While Leo did that, Dominic mused a bit over the single attack which had taken out the level 20 lizard. It had most definitely been overkill – so many of their Abilities worked together to enhance each other. Looking at the damage notification, he had to guess that while Group Attack and Pounce weren’t multiplicative bonuses, they were at least additive – the bonus he’d got wouldn’t make sense otherwise. 

Factoring in the additive bonus of +10% he got from Feathered wings brought his mental calculations up to the multiplier of +142% that he saw in their initial attack. Even better, the System had considered both claw and tooth attacks to be the ‘initial’ attack. It didn’t take the venom or acid into account, but both Powerful Swipe and Crushing Bite were clearly enhanced by the bonuses. 

Then there was the damage that he guessed was done simply by their impact. Apparently, even if none of his actual attacks were enhanced by momentum like his Tail Strike was, physics still applied and they got some additional crushing damage in. 

Of course, the lion had also taken damage from slamming into the lizard at high speeds, but being the bigger and heavier creature, he’d taken less damage than his opponent. Not to mention that his own fall was cushioned by the lizard’s soft body, where the monitor had been trapped between the proverbial rock and hard place.

Even better, that impact damage also counted as part of his initial attack, which meant that it was enhanced by his bonuses. It was rather broken, giving him well over 2000 points of damage in that one attack. Let alone what followed with the injection of his venom and the further acid attack.

Of course, Dominic was sure that the lizard had had defences. The fact that it had taken four large balls of his acid on the back of its neck and still only lost the first few layers of scaly skin was proof of that. 

Still, it was just proof of how truly crazy his Abilities were becoming when they were added together.

Maybe I need to focus on gaining enhancing Abilities rather than lots of new attacks, Dominic mused. Right now he had several attacks which made his teeth more effective, a couple which affected his claws, and one which affected his tail. I don’t have anything that’s particularly good for groups or for enemies attack at range, though, he mused. Almost all of my Abilities rely on being close to my opponent – if I encounter an enemy significantly faster than myself I might have an issue. 

Acid Bite is a good start, but that poison cloud AOE the lizard boss had would definitely be helpful. Maybe Lightning Discharge will be able to have a ranged option later – hopefully this trip will enable me to make it functional without committing crazy numbers of enhancements to my Soul or Mana Heart. 

It wasn’t long before the room was clear of poison mist and enemies. Leo ceded control back to Dominic once the last snake was dead: he had no interest in combing through the carcasses and Cores to work out the best ones to absorb. 

The rest of his pride were in bad shape by the end of it, but not fatally so. Lionel had done a superb job in keeping them all alive, rotating Poison Cures to clear away the effects of both the bites and the mist from the snakes and venomous lizards. At the same time, he’d kept a constant healing cloud going, allowing those who were getting low on health to dart back for a bit to benefit from it.

There were a number of Cores sparkling on the ground, the bodies which had held them already Consumed. Despite that, Lionel was looking practically skeletal. Dominic had to guess that if he ran out of stored carcass golden dust, he sacrificed his own health along with his mana to create the healing cloud. 

‘How are you feeling, Lionel?’ Dominic asked the young male with concern, carrying several carcasses over to him in his mouth. 

‘Fine,’ the young healer answered. ‘Tired,’ he admitted a moment later at Dominic’s stare. A longer moment went by before he said anything else, during which he absorbed several carcasses at once. ‘Hurts,’ he confided quietly, as if concerned that Dominic would shout at him or something. 

‘Because you used too much Healing Cloud in the battle?’ Dominic asked neutrally. 

Lionel absorbed three more carcasses before sending a brief sense of agreement in the Pride chat. Already, he was starting to look better, his flesh filling out beneath his skin. His health bar was also replenishing, though slowly, as if the first few points were reluctant to appear while he was still looking half-starved. 

‘You need to be careful,’ Dominic told him firmly. ‘Absorb carcasses as you need and back away from the battle when you’re using too much. Heck, even call one or more of us to come and help if necessary. We can bring you carcasses if you need them.’

‘I’m not looking after another male!’ Leo rejected indignantly, fortunately speaking privately to Dominic. 

‘Then you’d be stupid,’ Dominic responded in kind. ‘Not only is Lionel part of our Pride, but he’s also our only healer. Losing him would put the rest of the pride at risk – including Sekhmet, the only one here you seem to care about besides us.’

‘Don’t pretend that you don’t care about her,’ Leo responded sulkily. 

‘I’m not,’ Dominic refuted. ‘I just care about all of them.’ Though, admittedly, that didn’t mean he cared about them equally. Still, the healer was high on his list, and not only for that.

Lionel seemed receptive to his advice so Dominic just brought him carcasses until his health was full. The benefit of that, of course, was that a large number of Cores collected near the healer. 

Looking through them and others he found was a mixture between gratifying and disappointing. There didn’t seem to be any snakes with Hypnotise as their half-tier Ability and apart from managing to increase his Tail Strike to the next level, he didn’t get much towards his current Abilities. Some more percent for Venomous Bite, but that one seemed to increase pretty slowly from absorbing Cores – maybe because it had merged with another Ability? It seemed to increase on its own from his use normally enough, though. He also got a few percent towards Spatial Awareness from three of the slons’ Cores. 

The Core from the big monitor lizard was pretty awesome, though. 

[Beast Core: Nile Monitor Lizard Minor Guardian level 20

Ability option 1: Tail Strike (50%))

Ability option 2: Venomous Bite (50%)

Ability option 3: Poison Cloud (50%)]

Those percentages definitely didn’t add up to a hundred percent, but maybe that was just dungeon rules – Dominic remembered there being something odd about the Core from the final guardian last time too. Though there was also the oddity with the amesheks’ Cores. Related or not? he wondered. 

What it meant to him now, though, was that he had an equal chance for all of them. It would be really cool to get the third option, though he was kind of curious about what would happen if he got a second Venomous Bite: would it just add more to Venomous Acid Bite, or would he potentially earn another kind of venom? The Cores from the snakes and monitors earlier which had held Venomous Bite hadn’t formed a new Ability, so probably more likely the former option. 

In the end, though, he decided that the option of Poison Cloud was better than his curiosity. Of course, this was assuming that this Core followed the same rules as the previous Guardian’s had, in that he would be able to gain an Ability directly from the Core rather than having to collect enough of them to earn the Ability. 

‘Agreed?’ he asked his companion. The lion just sent him a sulky feeling of ‘do what you want’, clearly still seething over their argument earlier. Dominic rolled his eyes mentally. Well, if Leo didn’t have an opinion, he’d just go for it. 

Absorbing it, he focussed on wanting Ability option number three. 

A moment later, he opened his status screen eagerly.

Poison Cloud (50% to level 1)

Only to be disappointed. 

Is it because it came from a ‘minor’ guardian? Dominic wondered. It was much more than any Core before had given him towards an Ability, but it was definitely disappointing that he wasn’t going to be able to cheese the rest of the dungeon with an awesome new AOE attack. Then again, he already had a good number of advantages on his side, so perhaps he shouldn’t complain too much. Though, it did raise another question for him – was the 50% which had followed each Ability in the description about the chance of getting it, or the percentage he earned when he chose the Ability? 

As he absorbed the carcass, his disgruntlement eased slightly when he found out that it gave him another 30% towards the Ability. His disappointment vanished completely as he saw that something was materialising in the space where the carcass had been before.  

‘Hey everyone, come over!’ he said in the Pride chat with obvious excitement. He was aware of the pride members quickly coming over and gathering around him. His eyes, however, stayed focussed on something else. I’m glad this reward after a fight hasn’t changed about the dungeon! he thought happily to himself.

With the monitor lizard’s large body having dissolved away, it had left space for something to appear: something the shape of a large chest. 

‘Oh man, do you remember these things, Leo?’ he asked his companion in his anticipation. ‘We got the gorget from one of these.’

‘I remember vaguely,’ Leo responded with apparent disinterest; Dominic could tell that there was genuine excitement below it, though. The biggest indicator, though, was that the lion has shaken off his grumpiness.

‘Alright, everyone, brace yourselves,’ Dominic said in the Pride chat with anticipation. ‘On three. One, two, three!’