NOVEL NEXT Chapter 65: Rawhide Balls
When he dismissed the screen, he realised that none of the others in the room with him were those he'd entered it with.
'I'm surprised you didn't notice them leave,' Leo told him scornfully.
'I had a big blue box in front of my face,' Dominic pointed out defensively.
'Didn't you feel them through Spatial Awareness?' the lion asked pointedly.
'I was focussing on the rewards, OK? If it was such a big deal, you could have told me.'
'You should have noticed by yourself. It is good practice. If you do not practise, your lack of awareness will get us killed.'
'Hey, leave off,' Dominic growled at Leo defensively. 'It's not like I zoned out in the middle of a fight! There's no danger here.'
The lion didn't respond verbally, but Dominic could feel his discontent. He didn't know why his companion was so grumpy, but knew better by this point than to engage too much with Leo when he was in one of his moods.
Collecting his items, Dominic shifted carefully out so he didn't disturb the seven other Pride members currently each touching a crystal, their gazes as focussed on thin air as Dominic's had probably been just a moment ago.
Dominic found that he was glad to get out of the small room – he hadn't realised how claustrophobic it had felt until he was back in the open air. At least the canopy was so far above his head that there was no way he could feel confined by it. Not like with the roof of that room.
Outside, he saw that the Pride was relaxing, split between lying in either the sun or the shade cast by the trees. Even Berion had relaxed a little – he was sitting on the ground next to Sekhmet, apparently deeply in conversation. Dominic went over to join them.
'Honoured Brother,' the elf greeted, touching his left shoulder briefly and making as if to stand up.
'Sit, sit,' Dominic urged him, moving to lie down himself close to his lioness. Sekhmet shifted closer immediately, laying her head on Dominic's paws. 'What were you guys talking about?'
'Honoured Sister was explaining to me how you defeated the final guardian in the dungeon,' Berion explained, sounding impressed. 'I am glad that my party never tried to defeat it. We would have surely all perished.'
'It was tough,' Dominic admitted. 'I'm just happy that we all survived. If we hadn't had the poison cure potions from the other parts of the dungeon, we probably wouldn't have.'
'I got more of those nasty-tasting liquids,' Sekhmet put in, lifting her head and flourishing her paw. Popping out of her bracelet came a green health potion. It was the brighter green colour of a moderate potion. Dominic didn't know how many points the others in his Pride had earned, but clearly Sekhmet had gained enough for at least a moderate potion. Maybe it was due to her contributions to the fights – apart from Dominic, she and Nyx had probably got the biggest numbers of Challenge Credits.
'Is that all you got?' he asked. Sekhmet huffed in amusement.
'No. I got this too.' She turned her head so that Dominic could see something glinting at the base of her ear. It was an earring, not that dissimilar to the one she bore on the other side of her head which held her armour.
'A storage device?' Dominic asked her, trying to remember back to the list he'd seen. He couldn't remember what the earring had offered.
'Yes. The bracelet is good, but it is limiting. I cannot put as much in there as you can,' she said matter-of-factly. Dominic felt that she was being a little critical – while she couldn't put as many different types of things in her space, for sure, at the same time she could arguably put more volume into her bracelet as the limits seemed to be the number of items in a stack, not the size of the items in question. But he supposed that she'd shown a fair bit of frustration when they'd been storing away as many carcasses after the recent fight as they could – finding the right number and shape of carcasses for maximum stacking effect was sometimes a bit like doing a puzzle. And even then, the stacking storage spaces only won out when they were storing high-volume goods.
'Are we showing what we chose?'
Dominic didn't jump – he'd felt Jenkins moving closer through Spatial Awareness. He mentally poked at Leo just to make sure the lion was aware that he hadn't been surprised this time.
'Yes, yes, you're actually paying attention. Good job,' Leo told him sarcastically. Dominic was really starting to regret him learning how to do that.
'Yes, we are,' Dominic told Jenkins, deciding that the lioness was a better conversation partner than his grumpy male companion. 'Do you want to join us?'
The lioness didn't reply with words but settled down, lying half across Dominic's back legs. She then sat up for a moment, ruffled her wings, tucked them away more tightly, and then lay back down. Dominic eyed the pale cream appendages.
'You seem to be able to fly with those now – how does it feel?' he asked, curious about the experiences of another winged lion. He'd noticed her flying on their way back from the fight. She hadn't been able to maintain flight for very long, but she'd doggedly done it whenever she had the opportunity.
'Amazing!' she told him brightly, rubbing her head against his hip. 'Howler says I need to practice so I don't look like a cub on the wing for the first time, but I'm just happy to be able to be up in the air with them even if it's difficult.'
'Excellent,' Dominic replied, but was then distracted as Berion pushed himself to his feet.
'I should make sure that all is going well inside the reward centre,' he said to excuse himself, 'Let me know when you wish to return to the outskirts of the city and I shall guide you.' With that, he touched his hand to his left shoulder again, dipped his head slightly, and then strode towards the room which, even now, members of the Pride were entering and exiting.
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Dominic watched him go thoughtfully. Did he really need to check the rewards centre or was it just an excuse to leave them? He'd seemed to be enjoying the conversation with Sekhmet, so Dominic hoped he hadn't made the elf feel unwelcome. But at the same time, he didn't call out to the elf to explicitly invite him to stay – honestly, he'd prefer not to show someone who wasn't in his Pride what he'd chosen.
His line of sight on Berion was disrupted as Nyx stepped into it and moved towards them with quicker steps. When she arrived she lay down in the space that Berion had recently vacated, completing their little group. 'Did you find some things you liked in the rewards centre? Apart from that storage bracelet?'
The ameshek seemed pleased, either at what she'd got or that he'd asked.
'I did.' She extended her front paw. Now, lying above the spiked bone bracelet that she wore, was the bracelet she'd told him about. This one Dominic recognised as almost a duplicate of Sekhmet's – the common storage bracelet. 'I have already filled it with some items.' With brief flourishes, several green health potions and brown stamina potions flashed into view before being tucked away again. 'Best of all, I found these,' she said with anticipation.
Dominic leaned forwards in interest, but when he saw what the 'best' of her finds was, he almost laughed. It was a ball of rawhide, about the size of a large marble. He recognised it immediately – he had three of them himself since they'd only cost a Credit each and he'd had three left over after his other purchases so he'd decided he might as well.
'Have you tried them yet?' he asked, interested.
'I have,' Nyx responded brightly. 'They are very tasty.'
The balls had been advertised as perfect pet treats – filling and tasty. Dominic was glad that they were indeed tasty, though he'd almost balked at choosing something for a 'pet'. Pulling one out from his storage space, he licked it up and started chewing.
'They are tasty,' he admitted a moment later. Meaty and chewy, it didn't fall apart immediately either – he had to use his tongue to keep it on his back teeth so he could keep chewing at it and releasing delicious meaty flavours.
It turned out that all of them had bought the balls, and Dominic suspected that his companions had bought significantly more than his three balls. Oh well – at least they had a type of emergency rations since he doubted that the balls would go off anytime soon.
'How did you choose these?' Dominic asked, unable to prevent himself from trying to get an answer to a question which had been bugging him. 'And how did you know how much more you could choose?' Only the kesh were able to count, to Dominic's knowledge, and he doubted that they could read since he hadn't seen any evidence of a writing system among them.
'When I touched the glowing rock, pictures appeared before me. Looking at each of the pictures gave me a sense of what they did. At the same time, it felt like…I had a weight on my paws. And when I looked at the pictures, it indicated how much of that weight I would lose by selecting it. Then when I touched the picture with my nose, something fell to the ground near my feet, and my paws felt lighter.'
Nyx's explanation was corroborated by the two lionesses, though Jenkins said that it had felt more like she had something big in her jaws and Sekhmet replied that it felt like something heavy on her back. Clearly, the System was felt differently by different beings – Dominic wasn't sure why they'd each had that particular metaphor indicated to them, but perhaps the System chose something that was the most familiar to the beast in question.
His curiosity satisfied, and feeling relieved that at least his people weren't being discriminated against for not being able to read or count, Dominic asked what else his Pride members had got.
They shared the different items they had bought with their Challenge Credits. At first, Dominic was a little shy about showing off just how much he'd bought – and expensive things too – as he didn't want his companions to become jealous. But he soon realised that jealousy wasn't something the beasts were likely to feel – at least for that. In fact, when he revealed that apart from his potions and few rawhide balls, none of his purchases were edible, his companions seemed to think that he was almost to be pitied for what he'd chosen.
Only the Uncommon storage bracelet that he'd purchased met with their approval, though Sekhmet and Jenkins seemed a little displeased with his decision to put it on his hindleg. He'd decided to put it there when he realised that all of his companions' storage devices worked the same way as his gorget – they didn't have to touch the storage object itself to whatever he wanted to put in it, they merely had to touch the object with a part of their bodies and will it into their storage devices.
Fortunately, it seemed that all the storage devices did work for beasts since none of them were having trouble once they'd got over putting it on in the first place. For Dominic, he called a kesh over to fasten the bracelet to his hindleg and tighten it correctly to fit his leg snugly.
The only thing was that he did have to be more careful about where he directed the objects now – he hadn't taken off his gorget. Not only did it offer protection for his throat even when he didn't have the rest of his armour on, but having more storage had to be better than having less – they could have brought all of the bodies along if he'd had the bracelet a day ago. Though, prior to the battle, he wouldn't have had enough Challenge Credits to buy it anyway.
The main reason Dominic had got that storage device, though, was the fact that in the description it had said 'stasis'. He was hoping that that meant bodies put into his new storage wouldn't rot at all. On experimentation, it fortunately turned out that moving things between his storages was as simple as willing them to do so. He'd therefore already transferred all of the carcasses from his gorget to his bracelet, though he'd left the Cores in his gorget so as not to take up unnecessary space in his bracelet. Though with 28 cubic metres of storage, he didn't think he'd be filling it up any time soon. Besides, it would be easier to lose his new bracelet in a battle than his gorget so it made sense to keep the more precious items in the latter. As a result, he'd made sure all his new potions were in his gorget too.
The lionesses had also approved of the potions he'd got, though they hadn't recognised the off-white mana potions. Dominic had got ten of the minor potions – five which offered better boosts and five which offered better regeneration. He'd decided that it was worth testing to work out which helped him more. Plus, with the potions at hand, he might finally be able to level up his magic Abilities a bit – he wouldn't have to worry about being empty of mana in an emergency. And if he increased their level along with repairing more of his Mana Heart and Soul in his next level ups, they might even start costing less.
Plus, he wanted to play with another of his new acquisitions. The scroll of Fireball met with as much disinterest among his companions as did the metal cube which the Artifact of Zola turned out to be. Dominic didn't blame them, but he hoped that the artifact would prove itself to be worth the Credits. He'd decided to take the risk because if he could block off the centre of the Place of Power to others, that would take a major worry off his mind. And if he couldn't, a barrier might come in handy at various other points. He'd have to explore it a bit further to figure out how it could help them. As tempting as Misha's Baton was, it had been less definitely useful than the defensive barrier.
He'd also picked up a few stamina potions – despite all the work he'd done with his stamina, it was still a problem sometimes, so perhaps potions could help for now – and a single moderate health potion. His health pool and regeneration was such that the minor potions wouldn't do much for him. On the other hand, moderate potions were expensive, and anything above them even more so. He'd decided to prioritise mana over health since he already had so many advantages to help with the latter. But that meant that with everything else he'd bought, he'd only been able to buy a single moderate health potion. He'd have to save it for a true emergency.
Several other Pride members stopped by their little group to show off their purchases – the vast majority had also invested in storage devices, potions, and the rawhide balls. There were a couple of outliers, primarily beasts who for some reason hadn't realised that the elves would be giving them armour and weapons and had bought a weapon or piece of armour that they couldn't use. The kesh had bought the same kinds of things, but had chosen a different kind of pet treat than the rawhide balls. One had even bought a breastplate sized for a child, but had promptly taken it off – apparently it hadn't 'felt' right.
Then there was the one juvenile lioness who had got only rawhide balls and had promptly been buried beneath them. Dominic only saw it when she'd almost rolled out of the reward centre, her feet sliding out from beneath her as she struggled to walk on the marble-like treats. She had slunk to her mother Isis, shamefaced, since she had no storage to carry them. As far as Dominic knew, Isis had done so for her, but Dominic wondered whether she'd be helping herself to her cub's stash.
Finally, the trickle of beasts entering and leaving the reward centre came to an end. Everyone who had had Challenge Credits to spend had done so; it was time to go.