ALL NOVEL Chapter 75: What The Hell?
It had worked before when he tried this technique; almost too well. This time, he’d make sure not to stick around in the bloody area for too long. Though, if another scrin appeared, he might be tempted to stay for the rematch: the abilities the first scrin’s Core had offered were too good to pass up unless it was actually Evolved.
Once again, he controlled his battle area a little. Although he didn’t have any handy piles of stone nearby this time, there were trees. While there would probably be plenty of attackers who could follow him up into the branches above, Dominic was sure that there were fewer than could pursue him on land.
Either way, it offered another potential escape route in addition to the normal option to run for his life. He wasn’t sure if the lionesses would help or curse him if he brought a threat back to them, but facing a too-strong opponent with the might of the pride could be a good strategy.
Actually, maybe that could be a way of getting the lionesses past level 6 – kite a number of reasonably-levelled enemies in their direction and get them to gain Prey Points in defending themselves and the cubs. It would be a bit of a risky strategy, but if he couldn’t convince the lionesses to do it in any other way…he would keep it as a backup plan.
Hopefully once they were past the half-step threshold, they would recognise the point of killing even without the drive of hunger. Dominic wondered, as he had done a number of times before, exactly how the System proposed to deal with the gratuitous killing which, if it hadn’t already ensued, would start soon enough.
After all, even assuming that humans couldn’t make progress from killing, something Dominic thought was unlikely, there would be many predators who gained enough intelligence to realise how to make themselves stronger: the hyenas clearly already had.
If there was no mechanism in place to prevent this or protect the herbivore populations, the world’s ecology would soon be taking a greater hit than it had with the introductions and displacement of so many species.
Maybe it’s going to spawn flagging populations like a real game, Dominic considered. Or maybe that’s the point of predators offering more Prey Points: it becomes much more beneficial to hunt the hunters rather than pure prey. That was, after all, exactly what he was doing here by killing a few barasinghas and then letting the scent of their blood draw in his true prey.
While he’d been musing, he’d been dragging the barasinghas together into a pile near some bushes and not far away from a tall, reasonably sturdy tree. It wasn’t of a species either he or Leo recognised, but it looked like it should be able to bear his weight. If he didn’t go too high up, that was.
Gazing at his handiwork with his head tilted, he decided that three carcasses was probably not necessary. One should be enough. Less suspicious too, if the creatures were starting to get smart enough to start suspecting too-good situations.
Not sure what the Ability would be, but fairly confident that it would be different from the other ones he’d had, he decided to crack open the skull and get to the Core before he Consumed the body. Though it probably would only be one or two percent that he lost by Consuming the body first, every little counted!
With the crushing power of his jaws, particularly enhanced with Crushing Bite, it wasn’t hard to crunch through the bone of the skull. Using his claws, he fished out the hard marble of the Core and quickly checked out the Ability.
[You have obtained a Beast Core: Barasingha Level 3
Ability: Fleet Foot]
Not terribly surprising, Dominic thought to himself. The barasingha were deer-like creatures which had few defensive capabilities; their best defence was probably running away. Getting an Ability which was most likely a movement-enhancer was a bit of an obvious choice for them.
Still, he checked out the Ability’s description – he might as well.
[Fleet Foot (T0): Increases your out-of-combat speed. +10% to maximum speed; +10% to maximum speed duration. Percentages may increase as Ability increases in level.]
It wasn’t a particularly good ability, but it could still be useful. The biggest kicker was the ‘out-of-combat’ tag. Though Dominic didn’t intend on running away from many fight, when he would inevitably need to, the faster he could go, the better. After all, he’d barely made it out of the fight with the sonic-wolves: if he’d been able to go faster or for longer, then he might have escaped them without retreating to the trees.
Though, it was a question about what ‘out-of-combat’ meant. He had to guess it was applicable as long as the barasingha hadn’t landed a blow – or perhaps tried to do so – since he didn’t see much use for the ability otherwise. To have a travel-enhancer which failed when the creature was being pursued by a predator seemed rather detrimental.
In the end he shrugged and gulped it down: an Ability was an Ability, and right now he had no other uses for the Cores. He wouldn’t make an effort to gain enough Cores to earn this Ability, but if he happened to do so, then he’d see what it was like. If it turned out to be useless, he simply wouldn’t use it. There didn’t seem to be any downsides to doing things that way. Not so far, anyway – hopefully there wouldn’t be any limit on the number of Abilities he could learn that came up at just the wrong time.
Consuming that body and the other level 3 one, and absorbing the Cores of all three barasinghas didn’t get him a long way towards gaining the new ability, but it made a start.
Fleet Foot (15% to level 1)
Tearing at the body of the single remaining barasingha corpse, he exposed its organs to the open air. Steeling himself to take a few good chomps, Dominic both loved and hated the delicious taste that rolled over his tongue. Raw meat fresh off a living creature he’d just killed just shouldn’t taste this good.
Then again, people do like steak tartare. Or very rare steaks. And carpaccio, Dominic told himself. Not to mention other raw things like oysters and sushi, he continued distastefully. Though that brought to mind other stories like people eating raw octopus and dying when the suckers choked them. He shivered and redirected his thoughts.
Right, so if I hide in the bush over there, I should be able to choose if I attack or not, like last time. Following his own thoughts, he made himself comfortable under the cover. He’d purposefully chosen the one which wasn’t a thornbush to set himself up near, so he didn’t have any sharp bits of plant jabbing at him.
While he waited, he pulled up his log, curious about exactly how many points of damage he’d inflicted in the three attacks. Scrolling down the log, past the notifications of kills, he found the attack on the first barasingha.
[You have dealt 466 damage to Barasingha ((75+18+10 Crushing damage, 91+5 Tearing damage, 67+5 Piercing damage)*1.75)]
[You have dealt 94 damage to Barasingha ((17+5 Slicing damage, 15+5 Tearing damage, 7+5 Piercing damage)*1.75)]
Dominic stared at the log. No wonder the barasingha had gone down without a sound. He had done 560 points of damage in a single attack. And that hadn’t been with Crushing Bite maximised: he’d gone for a 40% increase instead of the maximum of 60%. That single attack would have killed him too if he’d been on the receiving end. Suddenly Dominic felt very vulnerable.
Maybe I should get myself some more health points. Or armour. Or both, he thought uneasily to himself. Pounce was a very impressive Ability. That alone had accounted for three sevenths of the damage he’d inflicted. He hadn’t even imagined that the bonus from Pounce would apply to all the bonuses as well as base damage. Very impressive…and very scary.
After all, it was only considered to be a Tier 0 ability – what would Tier 2 and upwards look like? Though, there did seem to be a vast difference between even the same Abilities in a Tier: look at Pounce versus Fleet Foot, for example.
And, he reminded himself, not everyone is going to have all the extra benefits I have. After all, he’d got thirty-five points of base damage from Strike, which with Pounce translated to seventy points. He only got Strike because he’d gained Quick Strike by absorbing Cores. Unless there was another two-souled around, the chances of another beast having both Pounce and Strike were not high. Add to that the chances of also having Crushing Bite, and it was getting improbably low.
Plus, he’d put several enhancements into his Bite and Claws, which meant that even the base damage which two of his Abilities were scaling off was quite high, and it accounted for the crazy damage which he did in a single strike.
Though, he was determined to consider his own defences in the next upgrade: the chances of another lion having Pounce were pretty much certain. Assuming they put their own enhancements into their teeth or claws, they could still do a huge amount of damage if they caught Dominic unawares, even without the extra Abilities.
If he looked at his own base damage with the enhancement of Pounce alone, he could personally do around 450 points of damage in a single attack. Even assuming that his own defences activated fully, that still meant he’d only be left with just over 100 HP, or almost 200 HP if the attack was to his neck, and he’d no doubt be heavily injured. Losing three or four fifths of his health pool in the opening attack would be a huge disadvantage.
Going to the next barasingha’s damage, he saw much the same results: 554 points of damage instead of 560 – clearly he’d been a few millimetres off the vulnerable spot he’d got in his first kill. Still, it was just as obviously enough to take the deer-like creature down without any issues.
His third barasingha kill had been almost as fast as his previous two, but his damage log was significantly less impressive.
[You have dealt 267 damage to Barasingha (71+28+10 Crushing damage, 87+5 Tearing damage, 61+5 Piercing damage)]
[You have dealt 51 damage to Barasingha (16+5 Slicing damage, 14+5 Tearing damage, 6+5 Piercing damage)]
He hadn’t been expecting to get the 50% increase of a successful ambush, but clearly he hadn’t hit a vulnerable enough spot to even get the 25% increase from Pounce. Maybe because although he’d got her spine, he hadn’t got it in a vulnerable enough place? Or maybe because she was alert she’d had more defences up?
Evidently she’d had a health pool of less than 318 Health Points, though, as she’d died quickly after the attack. 560 damage was probably way overkill on the others.
Still, while it did make Dominic feel a bit vulnerable about his own back, it also excited him a bit. Just another reason to increase his speed and power: if he could ambush a creature and then turn around and ambush its friend without the friend noticing the first one’s death, it was double the Prey Points for him.
Who knew I’d kinda be going down the Rogue route, he thought to himself in amusement. Dismissing the screen, he settled down to wait.
It wasn’t long before his bait started drawing in some scavengers. Not hyenas this time.
Wait, what the hell? Rabbits?!
